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When unauthorized Mexican immigrants are able to change their legal status or naturalize, their adult children show better economic outcomes than the children of parents who remain unauthorized. Legislation that made legalization possible in the 1980s may have enhanced the educational attainment, English usage, civic engagement, occupational prestige, and incomes of the adult offspring of unauthorized immigrants. The ramifications of legal status apply to both fathers and mothers, although the relationships vary by gender. Fathers' legalization and naturalization status has a greater effect on children's income than mothers' status, and it particularly affects sons, as might be expected in a group whose labor migration is heavily male. But mothers' status has the greater effect on children's education. Data come from a new study called "Immigrant Intergenerational Mobility in Metropolitan Los Angeles," which focused on adults, ages 20-40, whose parents were immigrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars of Mexican migration to the United States have recently documented the increased dispersion of Mexican-born persons throughout the country over the past 25 years, particularly during the 1990s. The present research is guided by the general question of whether geographic dispersion of Mexican immigrants in the 1990s facilitated (or impeded) their socioeconomic incorporation. More specifically, considering the rigid barriers Mexican-born persons have encountered that inhibit relative wage growth or occupational mobility, has dispersion promoted alternative paths of socioeconomic incorporation such as increased housing affordability? What are the predominate factors that not only contribute to housing affordability differences between non-Latino whites and Mexican-born persons but how did geographic dispersion affect change in these factors in the 1990s? Preliminary results show that average housing costs among Mexican-born persons were reduced by 5 percent in 1990 relative to an increase of 1 percent among whites, resulting in a decline of 1.5 percentage points (or 24 percent) in the overall gap between the two groups. My analysis reveals that most of this decline was solely due to geographic dispersion rather than other effects due to differences between the Mexican-born and whites. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the face of competition for limited vacation and leisure time, meeting planners and membership associations have traditionally been interested in how to attract new members and enhance attendance at organizational conferences. This study empirically investigates members' intentions to attend organizational conferences using an accessibility-diagnosticity framework. Findings suggest that post-attendance attitudes are the most important factors predicting intentions to (1) attend a future conference and (2) recommend the conference to others. Furthermore, what one has heard about the conference (i.e., the buzz) and one's perceived congruence with the values of the organization are also found to be important when predicting attendance intentions. Purpose of the Research and Hypotheses The purpose of this research is to investigate members of professional organizations regarding their intentions to attend conferences. Toward this goal, we examine three types of information that might be relevant to the formation of conference intentions. These are: (1) the member's attitude toward the conference, (2) information acquired through word-of-mouth (i.e., the conference buzz), and (3) the member's perceived congruence with the values of the organization. We further utilize the accessibility-diagnosticity framework to provide a theoretical rationale for why the relative importance of these three information types might differ between attendees (i.e., those members who have previously experienced one or more of the organization's conferences) and nonattendees. Specifically, it is hypothesized that for attendees, attitudes toward the conference will be more diagnostic with regard to intentions to attend future conferences. For non-attendees, conversely, their attitudes will be less diagnostic, and therefore other information sources will be accessed and utilized. In addition, it is hypothesized that for non-attendees, attitudes will be formed primarily based on what they have heard about the conference, and from their general feelings about the organization. For attendees, attitudes will instead be formed upon more elaborative judgments (e.g., a cost-benefit analysis [perceived value assessment], or an analysis of how well expectations were met [perceived satisfaction assessment]). Underlying these hypotheses is our premise that the high degree of elaboration associated with these assessments makes attitudes more easily accessible and highly diagnostic. We were further interested in members' intentions to recommend a conference to others. By evaluating the relationship between attitudes regarding a conference and referral intentions for past attendees, and the relationship between word-of-mouth information and attendance intentions for non-attendees, this study will provide an empirical test of whether or not a reinforcing feedback cycle exists for conference attendance. Model, Methodology, and Results Our base model incorporates three antecedent variables predicting attendance: perceived organizational congruence, word-of-mouth information, and attitude toward the conference. In addition, this model includes relationships between perceived organizational congruence and attitude, and word-of-mouth information and attitude. An expanded model includes intentions to recommend, and adds three direct relationships between perceived organizational congruence and referral intentions, word-of-mouth information and referral intentions, and attitude toward the conference and referral intentions. A sample of 800 members of an organization for retired employees of a government agency was randomly drawn from the population of approximately 8,000 organizational members, and mailed a questionnaire.… [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing importance and responsibilities of sales personnel makes it imperative to understand and identify effective sales force training procedures. There is little debate over the importance of sales training, yet, research on sales force training is extremely rare. This is troubling given the substantial costs associated with training, the potential for effective training to lead to a competitive advantage (Weitz, Sujan, and Sujan 1986), and the ample supply of training alternatives has developed in the marketplace. There are well over 700 different sales training programs currently available claiming to arm a sales force with tools to improve (Kelly 1993). Companies that are spending significant amounts on sales training are increasingly required to formally justify these expenditures. As such, a central issue facing sales force training is how to consistently assess training programs and their outcomes. Researchers that have investigated sales training evaluation have adopted Kirkpatrick's (1959, 1960) fourlevel model of training evaluation. Kirkpatrick's (1994) typology remains the prevalent framework for categorizing training criteria. However, past studies have fallen short of exploring the usefulness and interrelations among various levels of evaluation. The purpose of this study is to critically examine these relationships. In today's ever more competitive market, it is critical to understand how specific measures of sales training effectiveness are or are not interrelated and predictive of outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on alternative theoretical perspectives about immigrant incorporation, this research develops comparative hypotheses about differences among immigrant groups in 1) parental combinations of entry, legalization, and naturalization trajectories (i.e., early political incorporation) and 2) how these relate to children's educational attainment. Theoretically, in the case of Asians, who most exemplify legal permanent settlers, we hypothesize such pathways will most closely resemble a classic assimilation pattern involving a single monolithic incorporation dimension (i.e., one involving aspects of political incorporation that co-vary across spouses and with other kinds of incorporation but do not uniquely affect the latter in the second generation). By contrast, in the case of Mexicans, who most exemplify unauthorized transitional sojourners, we hypothesize a segmented assimilation pattern involving multi-dimensional and variegated spousal trajectories which directly relate to the well-being of the second generation. To assess these ideas, we analyze intergenerational data on the young adult members of second-generation national-origin groups and their parents in Los Angeles. The findings show that the Asian immigrant groups almost universally exhibit uni-dimensional early political parental incorporation that exerts no independent cross-generational effect on children's education, whereas Mexican parents show more diverse pathways that have discernible (and sometimes negative) implications for children's schooling. The paper discusses the theoretical and policy implications of stymied immigrant integration resulting from a lack of pathways to immigrant citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Business service suppliers often lack transaction specific "hard assets" to lock current customers in for the long haul. To build exit barriers, business service providers need to explore other aspects of the business relationships with their customers. The current study suggests that through strategic customer value management, service providers are able to create high costs perceptions associated with switching, and hence, establish exit barriers for their customers. Through an extensive literature review, qualitative interviews, and an empirical investigation, the current study develops scales, empirically validates a typology of customer value for business services, and examines the relationships between three dimensions of customer value and switching costs. The findings show that value from relational/support services and economic value exert a strong positive impact on customers' perceptions of switching costs. However, the result does not provide sufficient support for the relationship between value of core/technical service and switching costs. Managerial implications and actionable strategies are discussed to simultaneously manage various aspects of value in order to build exit barriers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]