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Higher education students are required to demonstrate value beyond their curricula achievements to secure jobs in increasingly competitive labour markets. Focusing on extracurricular activities as one-way students can do so, this paper uses a motivation perspective to examine what drives students to engage in extracurricular activities, and how student motivation varies between early and late-stage students. We conducted 46 in-depth interviews with students in a post-92 widening-participation university and found that four motivations -- extrinsic, intrinsic, social, and pro-social -- explained extracurricular participation. The motivations varied across types of extracurricular activities; extrinsic motivation was prominent for employment, academic, society and volunteering extracurriculars; intrinsic and social motivations were vital for sports and societies; and pro-social motivation for academic, volunteering, and society extracurriculars. Moreover, we found important differences between the motivations of early-year and final-year students, suggesting that motivations vary across the university journey. Our paper contributes to the literature on extracurricular activities within higher education by providing new evidence on the motivations that propel students to engage in (different) activities in the current marketised higher education environment and by identifying the level of study as an important boundary condition shaping motivations for extracurricular participation.

Scholars have called for a better understanding of the performance consequences of individual ambidexterity. In this work, we utilize the context of academic entrepreneurship to study how and why individual ambidexterity impacts academic entrepreneurship performance, and whether relational context moderates this link. Alongside the benefits, we argue that higher levels of individual ambidexterity generate switching, coordination and cognitive costs that can harm performance. Acknowledging the simultaneous presence of varying costs and benefits over the range of individual ambidexterity, we propose that individual ambidexterity has an inverted U‐shaped relationship with academic entrepreneurship performance, in which moderate levels produce superior performance. We further argue that relational context enhances the performance benefits of individual ambidexterity through providing access to novel knowledge and resources. In doing so, it shifts the turning point so that a higher level of individual ambidexterity produces peak academic entrepreneurship performance before the relationship turns. Utilizing data on Taiwanese scientists, we find strong evidence of an inverted U‐shaped relationship between individual ambidexterity and academic entrepreneurship performance, and for the moderating role of relational context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Start-up subsidies play an important role in supporting start-up innovation and performance. However, what characteristics help and hinder start-ups to seek public subsidies remains unclear. We study whether and how founder personality links to entrepreneurs' seeking of start-up subsidies. We argue that greater founders' openness, extraversion, and entrepreneurial orientation enhance seeking of start-up subsidies, while greater founders' agreeableness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism inhibit it. Additionally, we argue that entrepreneurial orientation plays a mediating role in the relationship between big five personality traits and start-up subsidies. We find evidence for a positive role of founder entrepreneurial orientation. While we find little evidence for a direct association between founders' big five personality and subsidies, we document an indirect link through entrepreneurial orientation. We also show that personality is not associated with bank financing and borrowing from family and friends while the patterns for venture capital financing are similar to those for subsidies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern workplaces are becoming increasingly demographically diverse. However, the influence of workforce diversity on organizational outcomes is not fully understood. In this work, we study how and why workforce gender and racial diversity impacts collective turnover at the organizational level, and whether participation in and experience with diversity charters moderate this link. We particularly argue that greater workforce gender and racial diversity leads to greater collective turnover because it prompts social categorization and negative contagion in organizations. To mitigate these processes, organizations may participate in diversity charters, which are expected to provide support with managing workforce diversity and employee retention. We further argue that the influence of diversity charters follows a trajectory of maturity, so their benefits are magnified as an organization's experience with them increases. Drawing on a panel of UK universities, we find strong evidence that greater workforce racial diversity is associated with higher levels of collective turnover, but only weaker evidence for the positive link between workforce gender diversity and collective turnover. We further find that diversity charters may attenuate this link, but simply participating in them is not sufficient: instead, organizations must develop experience with charters over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The federal government has, on the whole, has done an excellent job, especially since 1996, in fostering the use of technology in K-12 public schools in the United States. The Department of Education's focus on getting computers and Internet access to low-income schools and communities is the right approach. This paper measures the impact of the federal investment in technology in the schools. Whether this is a worthwhile investment, the author notes, depends on one's view of technology as a learning tool. Here, the author summarizes the role of technology in the growth of the American economy, offers an exhaustive account of current federal programs, and presents the arguments for and against a larger role for technology in American schooling. He concludes by splitting the difference between advocates and critics of technology, endorsing middle-ground proposals that include increased aid to low-income and rural areas, an emphasis on teacher training and technical support, a national clearinghouse for software, the establishment of community technology centers, and a "computer civics" program that would teach responsible use of technology and its historical and social context. Comments by Tom Loveless and Linda G. Roberts are presented. (Contains 2 figures and 90 notes.)

Describes benefits of the Austin Free-Net, part of the nationwide movement "community networks" to provide public access to computers to low-income communities. Presents examples of users and discusses Internet instruction and location of terminals. A sidebar highlights 10 community networks, with areas served and Web site addresses. (AEF)

Where venture capitalists have traditionally focused on early-stage innovative firms, increasingly venture capitalists are investing in late-stage firms, especially in Asia. The performance consequences of this novel phenomenon of late-stage venture capital remain unexplored. This paper provides novel insight into this phenomenon by examining the impact of late-stage venture capital on two key dimensions of firm performance in the venture capital literature: innovation and financial performance. We link VC investment events to financial indicators of Chinese listed firms to account for the timing of VC entry and identify the firm performance impacts. Utilizing a matching and difference-in-differences procedure to account for selection biases, our results show that late-stage venture capital improves investee firms' financial performance but reduces their innovation performance. Our findings advance understanding about the emergence of late-stage venture capital and its performance consequences, especially in emerging economies. Our work has implications for entrepreneurs and policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An experimental study of the upstream flow separation in the boundary layer of an oscillating flap revealed time scales correlated to separated flow as shorter than those associated with attached flow as a possible consequence of spanwise flow in the three-dimensional separation zone. The flap oscillations were conducted in fully attached, crossing incipient separation, wholly distinguished flow types for a wide range of flap angles.

Computers, which are capable of producing accurate and useful information, also produce errors. The first stage of the Star Wars program ended in a disaster since the computer overboard the space shuttle was searching for a mountain 10,000 nautical miles high, while the mountain is actually only 10,000 feet high. More than $15 million was spent on the experiment, but it ended a total failure.

The properties of three-dimensional, vortical flows are studied, and the possibilities of defining a vortex centerline for steady flows are investigated. Vortical flows are solved using a parabolized Navier-Stokes code, and the vortex centerlines are defined by minimum streamline curvature, maximum normalized helicity and the edge of a separation sheet. Results show that for infinite Reynolds number, the vortex centerline, defined by an extreme helicity, agrees with the edge of a separation sheet, and the vorticity fields are aligned at the centerline.