Why do they stay? A study of resilient child protection workers in three European countries

Whilst 50% of child protection workers across much of Europe and the affluent ‘West’ leave after two years, many stay and develop substantial professional careers. This paper discusses research in Italy, Sweden and England examining what factors explain ‘remaining’ for more than three years in this stressful job. Underpinned by a hermeneutic epistemology, qualitative interviews were undertaken and subject to an interpretative thematic analysis. The findings proved to be complex and multi-layered and this paper presents an overview of these. The theoretical framework for the project mainly drew on organisations and resilience, and the initial sections of the paper consider how formulations of resilience as contextual and relational can elucidate professional sustainability. Organisational issues are considered, including the impact of work management, of supervision and of allocation in different national contexts. The paper also focuses on the role of friendships and informal support at work. Threaded through these established themes are more, perhaps surprising, concepts: for example, creativity, power, reflexive spaces and interpersonal relations as explanatory of remaining in child protection work.     

Self-enforcing family rules,marriage and the (non)neutrality of public intervention

We demonstrate that the notion of a family ‘constitution’ (self-enforcing, renegotiation-proof norm) requiring adults to provide attention for their elderly parents carries over from a world where identical individuals reproduce asexually, to one where individuals differentiated by sex and preferences marry, have children and bargain over the allocation of domestic resources. In this heterogenous world, couples are sorted by their preferences. If a couple’s common preferences satisfy a certain condition, the couple have an interest in instilling those preferences into their children. Policies are generally nonneutral. In particular, wage redistribution may raise, and compulsory education will reduce, the share of the adult population that is governed by family constitutions, and thus the share of the elderly population who receive attention from their children.     

Corporations and the State in the Global Era: The Case of Seaboard Farms and Texas*

Abstract Employing the case of the expansion and regulation of hog confined animal feeding operations (CAFO) in Texas combined with the actions of the transnational agri‐food corporation Seaboard Farms, Inc., this paper probes the relationship between the state and corporations in the global era. It specifically investigates the ability of the state to control agri‐food corporations in a context in which the hyper‐mobility of capital has increasingly allowed corporations to by‐pass state regulations and requirements. Salient literature is reviewed by grouping it into three camps: the first views the state as largely controlled by corporations; the second stresses the powers left to the state and the fact that corporations need state assistance to successfully operate in the current global economy; and the third acknowledges the crisis of the nation‐state under globalization but maintains that the state has retained some ability to resist globalization forces. The case study documents the expansion of Seaboard Farms' hog operations in the Panhandle Region of Texas and nearby states and its interaction with local and state governments and agencies. The article indicates that the relationship between transnational corporations and the state is contradictory. Its source rests on the fracture between varying postures maintained by the state and the relatively homogenous behavior of the CAFO corporations. The case also reveals that the state's limited control of corporate actions is facilitated by state strategies; that corporate actions are successful if corporations enlist the cooperation of the state; and the state is able to control resistance and legitimize its actions to its constituencies. These conditions, however, do not prevent the emergence of anti‐corporate resistance at local and state levels. In the search for new forms of socioeconomic development, local residents and their leaders should be aware of corporations' ability to affect state action, state postures that favor corporate designs, and the fact that successful opposition to corporate designs can be, and is, carried out.     

The dual network structure of organizational problem solving: A case study on open source software development

We reconstruct the dual network structure generated by the association between 72 contributors and 737 software bugs engaged during a full development cycle of the free/open source software project Epiphany. Estimates of structural parameters of Exponential Random Graph Models for two-mode networks reveal the structural logics shaping activities of collaborative problem solving. After controlling for contributor-specific and software bug-specific characteristics, we find that contributors (“problem solvers”) tend to distribute their activity over multiple software bugs. At the same time, however, we find that software bugs (“problems”) tend not to share multiple contributors. This dual tendency toward de-specialization and exclusivity is sustained by specific local network dependencies revealed by our analysis which also suggests possible organizational mechanisms that may be underlying the puzzling macro-structural regularities frequently observed, but rarely explained, in the production of open source software. By combining these mechanisms with the influence of contributors characterized by different levels of involvement in the project, we provide micro-level evidence of structural interdependence between “core” and “peripheral” members identified exclusively on the basis of their individual level of contribution to the project.     

A model for the multiplex dynamics of two-mode and one-mode networks,with an application to employment preference,friendship, and advice

We propose a new stochastic actor-oriented model for the co-evolution of two-mode and one-mode networks. The model posits that activities of a set of actors, represented in the two-mode network, co-evolve with exchanges and interactions between the actors, as represented in the one-mode network. The model assumes that the actors, not the activities, have agency.     

Inventive productivity and patent quality: Evidence from Italian inventors

This paper examines the inventive performances of a regional set of Italian inventors. After stressing that the distribution of the inventors’ productivity is extremely skewed, we find that patent productivity is not influenced by individual characteristics, but it is higher for the inventors working in teams or in large firms with greater patent portfolios. Instead, patent quality is associated with some individual features such as age, gender and level of education. Accordingly, patented innovations coming from inventors working in small firms or independently can be as valuable as those generated in large companies. The policy implications of these findings are discussed.     

MEASURING SELF‐CONTROL PROBLEMS: A STRUCTURAL ESTIMATION

Abstract We adopt a two‐stage Method of Simulated Moments to estimate the preference parameters in a life‐cycle consumption‐saving model augmented with temptation disutility. Our approach estimates the parameters from the comparison between simulated moments with empirical moments observed in the US Survey of Consumer Finances; to identify the parameters we consider moments from liquid and illiquid asset holdings at different ages. We find evidence of a small but significantly positive degree of temptation. The temptation model predicts consumption choices similar to the model with standard preferences, and holdings of liquid and illiquid assets closer to those observed in the empirical data.