The Role of Institutional Investors in Corporate Governance of Their Portfolio Companies – The Case of Croatia

The goal of this research is to examine the involvement of institutional investors in the corporate governance of companies in their portfolio by analyzing characteristics of institutional investors with respect to the type of investment, investment time horizon, and degree of involvement in the process of managing a company. The paper will outline the attitudes of managers on the level of investors’ involvement in the governance process in order to identify determinants of investment decisions, decisions to take corrective actions to enhance corporate governance, or decisions to leave the ownership structure. A qualitative approach was chosen, consisting of a series of structural interviews with 25 fund managers of different types of institutional investors. The results indicate that institutional investors are involved in the corporate governance of their portfolio companies, and that control mechanisms they use include voting rights, direct communication with the management with the aim of discussing strategies for future development, and collaboration with other institutional investors in the ownership structure.

All States Close but Red Districts Reopen: The Politics of In-Person Schooling During the COVID-19 Pandemic

How did political factors and public health affect state and local education decisions during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially the continuation of in-person schooling? Using an original data set of state policies, we find that governors ordered school closures in spring 2020 but left decisions to districts in the fall, regardless of partisanship. Analyzing local district reopening plans, however, we find that decisions were more tied to local political partisanship and union strength than to COVID-19 severity. Republicans in the public were also more favorable than Democrats toward in-person learning. States’ decisions to leave reopening plans to their districts opened the way for the influence of local partisanship.

Time to leave: Computations of when to end a social interaction depend on opportunity costs, depression, and loneliness

Positive social relationships are vital for mental health. There is an ever-increasing understanding of the cognitive and computational mechanisms that underlie how we process others’ behaviours during social interactions. Yet fundamentally many conversations, partnerships and relationships have to end. However, little is known about how people decide when to leave. Theories of decision-making posit that people stop a behaviour in favour of another based on evidence accumulation processes, shaped by the value of alternative behaviours (opportunity costs). Do people compute evidence to leave social interactions based on the opportunity costs of connecting to others? Here, in a novel economic game, participants made decisions of when to leave partners in social environments with different opportunity costs for moving on. Across four studies we find that people leave partners more quickly when the opportunity costs are high, both in terms of the average generosity in the environment and the effort required to connect to the next partner. People’s leaving times could be accounted for by a fairness-adapted evidence accumulation model, with a lower threshold for leaving in high opportunity cost social environments. Moreover, decisions to leave were modulated by depression and loneliness scores, which were linked to an interaction between the fairness of a partner and the opportunity cost of the social environment. These findings demonstrate the cognitive and computational processes underlying decisions to leave social interactions, and highlight that loneliness and depression may be linked to an atypical dynamic allocation of time to social interactions.

Student Retention in School Bands and Orchestras: A Literature Review

The purpose of this review was to synthesize the literature on attrition and retention in instrumental music and to identify strategies to encourage students’ continued participation in school bands and orchestras. Retaining members from 1 year to the next is a key factor in building ensembles and helping individual musicians reach their full potential. At least 35 years of research, however, has yielded little consistency in determining why students persist in or dropout of instrumental study. Most decisions likely involve (a) practical considerations, especially related to scheduling and other interests and commitments; (b) students’ attitudes on their musicianship and various aspects of the program; and (c) the influence of other people. The MUSICSM Model of Motivation can provide a framework through which stakeholders examine how their school bands and orchestras meet the needs of students, thus influencing their decisions to leave or remain in the program.

Learning to Leave and to Return: Mobility, Place, and Sense of Belonging amongst Young People Growing up in Border and Rural Regions of Mainland Portugal

This article examines how mobility is incorporated into the lives of young people growing up in rural border regions of continental Portugal. It also explores how municipalities are dealing with the contemporary imperative of mobility and its consequences. Young people from these regions are affected by decisions to leave to continue studying in higher education, or to find a job. Combined, these lead to an outward migration trend and thus loss of human capital. This paper is based on a multi-method research project carried out in the border regions and involves young people and other stakeholders from 38 municipalities. The data were selected from a questionnaire completed by young people (9th–12th grade; n = 3968), 38 semi-structured interviews with local policymakers, 50 biographical interviews, and 5 focus groups with young people. Results indicate that although most young people aspire to further education and do not fear leaving their region, they nonetheless tend to integrate the necessity to be mobile into their biographies. Hence, they do not associate it with displacement or as being tantamount to abandoning their region, and to which some of them want to return. We consider that in parallel with learning to leave local sentiments, policies, and actions are emerging towards coalescing a trend of learning to stay and returning. We propose an interpretation of this tendency as indicative of new understandings around these peripheral territories and which are shaped by young people’s experience of reconciling a sense of belonging to place and any associated mobilities.

Comparing sources of stress for state and private school teachers in England

Teaching is understood to be a highly stressful profession. In England, workload, high-stakes accountability policies and pupil behaviour are often cited as stressors that contribute to teachers’ decisions to leave posts in the state-funded sector. Many of these teachers leave state teaching to take jobs in private schools, but very little is known about the nature of teachers’ work in the private sector. This research addresses this gap in knowledge and compares the sources of stress experienced by 20 teachers in the state sector to those of 20 teachers in the private sector. The paper is based on qualitative data from a larger study. It analyses data collected in interviews and focus groups with classroom teachers and middle leaders working in mainstream primary and secondary phase education in England. The results emphasise state school teachers’ acute distress in relation to workloads driven by accountability cultures. In comparison, private school teachers report less intense experiences of work-related stress, but some identify demanding parents as a concern. The research’s novelty lies in this comparison between sectors and these sector specific insights may help to focus school leaders’ efforts to improve teaching conditions in both sectors.

Research shows scale of financial compensation, company culture and senior management performance have big influence on decisions to leave companies

Purpose The purpose of this study is to develop tree-based binary classification models to predict the likelihood of employee attrition based on firm cultural and management attributes. Design/methodology/approach After preliminary analysis, the authors tested three hypotheses. One was: “Conditioned on an increase in salary, the magnitude of increase enhances the likelihood that an employee will leave their current firm despite differences between the old and new firm culture.” Two was: “Employees whose original firm has an overall rating greater than the 75th percentile that was also founded before 1900 are more likely to stay…” Finally, three was that: “Employees that maintain a low overall original firm rating are more likely to leave their firm upon a job transition, whereas those with higher overall ratings have a greater chance of remaining.” Findings After analyzing thousands of online resumes submitted to Glassdoor’s portal, the authors found that the scale of financial compensation, the company culture and senior management performance all played a major role in influencing decisions to move on. Originality/value They offered three concrete recommendations based on the study. First, they said it was vital for companies to maintain strong Glassdoor.com ratings. The results revealed that firms in the top 10% of ratings were over 30% more likely to retain employees during a job transition than companies in the lowest 10%. Second, providing competitive salaries was necessary. Finally, the data showed a large discrepancy between senior management and CEO Glassdoor ratings. The researchers advised HR departments to closely monitor the impact of senior management behaviour.

Hope, Disillusion and Coincidence in Migratory Decisions by Senegalese Migrants in Brazil

Uncertainty is an essential characteristic of our lives. However, by moving from one country to another, from a familiar context to an unfamiliar one, uncertainty becomes a key element of migrants’ decisions. In times of restricted mobility regimes, migrants often do not know if they will be able to reach the desired destination. Even if they manage to do so, it is still uncertain if they will be able to fulfil their aspirations. However, uncertainty also leaves room for hope. Departing from the conceptualisation of hope as the simultaneity of both potentiality and uncertainty and from the concept of circumstantial migration, this article analyses (1) retrospectively the decision of Senegalese migrants to move to Brazil and (2) the intentions of onward migration. Based on empirical data collected through ethnographic fieldwork in four Brazilian cities, this article shows how migration as a form of social hope is redirected to new destinations and that this redirection is a consequence of circumstances and coincidences, which enable or prevent movement. Potential positive outcomes of migration outweighed negative ones, which play a minor role and hardly affect decisions to leave Senegal. However, decisions to emigrate are often based on incomplete information and ill-informed expectations regarding the circumstances at the destination and can lead to feelings of disillusion. The impact of uncertainties shows a more differentiated picture in the context of onward migration intentions. While some migrants are willing to take big risks in onward migration, others try to minimize uncertainties.

Exit as Care: How Motherhood Mediates Women’s Exodus From Violence in Mexico and Central America

Today, growing numbers of mothers and children are fleeing Mexico and Central America. Most scholars attribute this displacement to organized crime, and a few note the importance of gender violence in driving women’s migration. Yet, less has been said about how violence affects motherhood or how motherhood shapes women’s decisions to leave. Drawing on 44 in-depth interviews with Mexican and Central American women seeking U.S. asylum, we show how multifaceted violence intensifies the burdens on mothers. At the same time, we argue, motherhood can offer a source of agency in contexts of normalized violence, inspiring women to flee.