DePaul University

About: DePaul University is a education organization based out in Chicago, Illinois, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Context (language use). The organization has 5658 authors who have published 11562 publications receiving 295257 citations.

Who volunteers? Constructing a hybrid theory

Abstract: This paper describes three major theoretical perspectives in research on volunteering: social theories that stress the importance of context, roles, and integration; individual characteristic theories that emphasize values, traits, and motivations; and resource theories that focus on skills and free time. It unites research from multiple disciplines into a single hybrid model, performs a preliminary test of the model on a nationally representative US dataset, and concludes with recommendations for scholars and practitioners. Using the 1995 Midlife in the US dataset, we operationalized concepts from each theoretical category and found that variables measuring each perspective played a substantial and independent role in predicting volunteering. Our hybrid model, which includes significant variables from each theory, offers some directions for recruitment and retention by showing how social roles and networks can constrain or encourage volunteering at different stages of the life course. As social roles and networks are both highly predictive and easily observed, volunteer managers can use them to recruit and retain volunteers. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Fairness, legal compliance, and organizational commitment

Abstract: Attribution theory is used to hypothesize a positive relationship between one's perception that a fairness motive underlies personnel/human resource management activities and one's organizational commitment. The hypothesis is tested via a survey of 48 operating managers in a Midwestern department store chain. Using hierarchical regression to control for job satisfaction and length of service, a significant positive relationship exists between commitment and the perception that a fairness motive underlies personnel/human resource management activities. Commitment is not significantly related to the perception that a legal compliance motive underlies the activities.

Towards a predictive framework for biocrust mediation of plant performance: A meta‐analysis

Abstract: Understanding the importance of biotic interactions in driving the distribution and abundance of species is a central goal of plant ecology. Early vascular plants likely colonized land occupied by biocrusts — photoautotrophic, surface‐dwelling soil communities comprised of cyanobacteria, bryophytes, lichens and fungi — suggesting biotic interactions between biocrusts and plants have been at play for some 2,000 million years. Today, biocrusts coexist with plants in dryland ecosystems worldwide, and have been shown to both facilitate or inhibit plant species performance depending on ecological context. Yet, the factors that drive the direction and magnitude of these effects remain largely unknown. We conducted a meta‐analysis of plant responses to biocrusts using a global dataset encompassing 1,004 studies from six continents. Meta‐analysis revealed there is no simple positive or negative effect of biocrusts on plants. Rather, plant responses differ by biocrust composition and plant species traits and vary across plant ontogeny. Moss‐dominated biocrusts facilitated, while lichen‐dominated biocrusts inhibited overall plant performance. Plant responses also varied among plant functional groups: C₄ grasses received greater benefits from biocrusts compared to C₃ grasses, and plants without N‐fixing symbionts responded more positively to biocrusts than plants with N‐fixing symbionts. Biocrusts decreased germination but facilitated growth of non‐native plant species. Synthesis. Results suggest that interspecific variation in plant responses to biocrusts, contingent on biocrust type, plant traits, and ontogeny can have strong impacts on plant species performance. These findings have important implications for understanding biocrust contributions to plant productivity and community assembly processes in ecosystems worldwide.

Collateral Spread and Financial Development

Abstract: We show that institutions that promotional development ease borrowing constraints by lowering the collateral spread, and shifting the composition of acceptable collateral towards firm-specific assets. Using a novel cross-country loan-level data set, we estimate collateral spread as the difference in rates of collateralization between high and low risk borrowers in a given economy. The average collateral spread is large but declines rapidly with financial development. A one standard deviation improvement in financial development due to stronger institutions leads to a reduction in collateral spread by one-half. We also find that the composition of collateralizable assets shifts towards non-specific assets (e.g. land) with increased risk. However, this shift is considerably smaller in more developed financial markets, thus enabling risky borrowers to use a larger variety of assets as collateral.