The premise of this article is that to understand how family affects business, the issue of how individual family members relate to the family must also be addressed. To that end, we propose family orientation (FO) to assess the extent to which individuals perceive and value family involvement. Drawing on the family therapy literature, including Bowen's family systems theory and contextual family therapy, we identify and develop five dimensions of FO—tradition, stability, loyalty, trust, and interdependency. We also discuss factors that might affect an individual's FO score, how FO might enhance understanding of other family business processes and practices, and future research directions.
In this paper, we examine differences in centralization and delegation practices of family and non-family firms. Using Aston studies measures, we examine specific types of decisions and the level of authority involved in decision making by ownermanagers. We use Rasch analysis to examine the concentration of authority in a sample of 124 smalland medium-sized firms. We find that family firms maintain more centralized decision making and delegate differently than their non-family counterparts. Whereas family firms prioritize centralizing operational issues, non-family firms centralize employment issues more. Our findings have implications for understanding the distinctiveness and professionalization of family firms.
The cognitive subscale of the Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale (ADAS-Cog) is used to monitor disease progression and treatment efficacy in clinical trials of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Using data from a 12-week drug trial, we retrospectively studied the effect of education on ADAS-Cog performance in a group of 444 patients with AD. The effect of education was statistically significant on baseline ADAS-Cog total scores. This effect remained statistically significant after controlling for age, gender, and dementia severity. Education effects were also statistically significant at week 12 for ADAS-Cog total and 10 of 11 subitem scores in 138 AD patients in the placebo arm of the trial. Post hoc analysis showed that non-high school graduates performed worse than those with greater educational levels across a broad range of cognitive domains. Our results, in conjunction with reports linking lower educational level with a higher risk for AD, suggest that educational level of patients be given consideration in the design and interpretation of cognitive tests in AD drug trials.
To the Editor: Recent studies have suggested a neuroprotective influence for nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS).'.~ The Rotterdam Study,' the Canadian Study of Health and Aging: and a co-twin control study3 found that anti-inflammatory treatments were associated with a reduced risk of Alzheimer's disease (AD). The Honolulu Heart Program study found that concurrent aspirin use was associated with superior cognitive scores in nondemented subjects.' We studied 444 AD subjects selected for a multicenter clinical trial to test the hypothesis that concurrent NSAID use in AD would be associated with superior cognitive performance.Baseline cognitive scores for 444 AD (270 women, age range 52 to 96, MMSE 17 to 24 inclusive) participants in a multicenter, clinical drug trial for AD (protocol S3A-222) were analyzed. NSAID users were defined as subjects reporting concurrent NSAID or aspirin use a t entry into the trial. All subjects met the NINCDSIADRDA criteria for the diagnosis of probable AD and the DSM-111-R criteria for primary degenerative dementia. Cognition was assessed using the 11 item cognitive subscale of the Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale (ADAS-CO~),~ a sensitive instrument used widely in AD drug trials. It is scored by errors and a higher score indicates worse performance. General linear modeling (GLM) technique and the Fisher's exact test were used to analyze the data. P-values less than 0.05 in the direction of our hypotheses were considered statistically significant.There were 205 (46%) NSAID users and 239 non-users. Distribution of gender, education level, and age did not differ statistically between the groups. NSAID users performed statistically significantly better than non-users on ADAS-Cog total score ( p = 0.022). NSAID users also performed better on five ADAS-Cog items, Recall of Test Instructions ( p = 0.003), Following Commands ( p = 0.024), Constructional Praxis ( p = 0.018), Word Recognition ( p = 0.049), and Spoken Language Ability ( p = 0.049). Other ADAS-Cog items did not differ between the groups (table). Our results support a beneficial association between concurrent NSAID use and cognitive functioning in AD. Hypothetically, NSAIDs may lower AD risk, delay onset, or improve cognition via anti-inflammatory mechanisms, improving cerebrovascular perfusion and/or by other unrecognized means. Since this was a retrospective analysis of AD subjects selected for a clinical trial, our findings should not be interpreted as justifying the routine clinical use of NSAIDs to prevent or treat AD. Prospective studies are
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