Support for diversity practices in Norway: Depends on who you are and whom you have met

An increasingly diverse workforce is a reality for today's organisations in Norway, and a variety of human resource practices are being introduced in order to manage this diversity effectively. However, little is known about what leads to the successful implementation of these diversity practices. Thus, we need to find out more about what affects the willingness to implement that is held by those responsible for the process. In this study we examine how contact with minority groups, values, orientation, and individual differences relate to their perceptions and support for diversity practices. In a survey conducted with 385 Norwegian individuals employed in different organisations and business sectors across the country, we observed a relationship between positive contact experiences with individuals from immigrant backgrounds, diversity values, other-orientation, age, and gender on the extent to which the respondents were willing to support a diversity practice. Theoretical and practical implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

The use of multidisciplinary teams to support child welfare clients

Meeting the educational needs of young people in the child welfare system (CWS) requires effective collaboration between the CWS and the education system. In Norway and in other countries, there is an increased focus on interprofessional collaboration to support child welfare clients in and around schools. Multidisciplinary teams are employed to facilitate collaboration and coordinate supportive measures. The purpose of this article is to describe how teachers and social workers use such teams as part of a collaborative effort to support children living in difficult conditions. In an inductive thematic analysis of 13 interviews with 7 social workers and 6 teachers, the following five key themes were revealed: (i) solution-focused work; (ii) listening to the child; (iii) parental support; (iv) social/environmental opportunities for successful interactions and (v) ensuring school attendance through adapted education and support. In conclusion, we discuss the ways in which these themes reflect how teams support child welfare clients.     

National pension systems and mass opinion: a case study of confidence, satisfaction and political attitudes in Norway

It is commonly assumed that popular support for national pension systems depends on widespread satisfaction with projected benefit levels among the working age population, and in particular that public support for the system will be jeopardised if the taxpayers do not feel confident about eventually receiving the promised benefits. On the basis of Norwegian survey data, two sets of questions are addressed in the article: (1) Is there a widespread lack of confidence in and satisfaction with the Norwegian National Insurance pension scheme? and (2) Is there an association between confidence and satisfaction and people's political attitudes towards the National Insurance pension scheme? Although we do not find any signs of a dramatic erosion of confidence towards the system, we do find that overall satisfaction with projected benefits is low among the working age population. Contrary to what one might expect, however, confidence and satisfaction from the point of view of individual interests appear not to be associated with a political preference for privatisation.     

How child welfare workers view their work with racial and ethnic minority families: The United States in contrast to England and Norway

This study builds on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 93 child welfare workers employed in public child welfare agencies in the United States, Norway and England, and examines their perceptions of working with racial and ethnic minority families in contrast to White service users. Almost all workers reported on differences. In the United States, workers regarded cultural pluralism as a given and considered it an inherent feature of their work, regardless of the racial and/or ethnic background of the family. Further, they identified poverty, racism, and lack of feelings of entitlement as dimensions to practicing with minority families. A few mentioned language as an issue. The views of workers in the U.S. stand in stark contrast to the perceptions of workers in both England and Norway. They thought that communication challenges constituted a major problem, and that minority clients' lack of language proficiency and knowledge about society and social systems made it difficult for workers to understand families' meaning and intent (Kri? & Skivenes, 2009; 2010b). We discuss how caseworkers' perceptions may influence their decisions and affect minority disproportionality in the child protection system and analyze what factors may account for the cross-country differences we found. We also relate our findings to the broader question of citizenship and social rights in American society.     

What works for whom? An analysis of active labour market programmes in Norway

This article examines whether some active labour market programmes (ALMP) targeted at social assistance recipients are more effective for some groups than for others in increasing self-sufficiency , i.e. gross earnings . The study focuses on the interaction between two types of programmes – employment programmes and training programmes – and the social charac-teristics of the participants. The data are derived from the pool of the entire population of social assistance recipients registered in Norway in 1995. The study adopts a quasi-experimental design. To handle selection bias, a matching procedure based on a propensity score approach is applied. Training programmes yield positive outcomes overall and for subgroups, whereas employment programmes produce no significant effects overall. However, for employment programmes there is an interaction effect between the likelihood of participation and outcome: beneficiaries with social characteristics (e.g. age, education, work experience) that are associated with a medium chance of participating experience a positive and significant increase in earnings. For those with lower and higher chances, the effect is negative. This points to the importance of conducting stratified analyses in effect evaluations. Thus, the results are also likely to be more relevant to policy makers.     

Between Endless Needs and Limited Resources: The Gendered Construction of a Greedy Organization

One of the strategies of the modernization of public services is the decentralization of responsibilities and organizing work in autonomous co‐ operative teams with varied tasks. The empowerment of the public service workers in the front line is therefore a strategy in local government in Norway today. Under the assumption that women have ‘natural’ skills in caring, workers on the lowest levels are given responsibility for care and nursing. A study of the decentralization of public care for the elderly in their homes showed that being given interesting tasks and increased responsibility mobilized the efforts of the care workers. However, since the power of resources has been centralized, this has led to an intensification of work. In gendering the relevant discourses by explaining women's experiences of an over‐heavy workload as a result of their ‘mothering’ and their inability to set limits, women care workers were constructed by their managers as unprofessional and not to be taken seriously. This has made the public care organization a greedy organization for the women care workers.     

格里格《四首挪威舞曲》的创作特点

格里格善于在创作中使用一些个性化的手法,使作品体现出鲜明的创作特点和风格特征。本文对《四首挪威舞曲》的创作特点进行分析,并说明作品民族性、色彩性的音乐风格。     

Gender Quotas for Agricultural Boards: Changing Constructions of Gender?

This article explores the processes by which gender is given meaning through social interaction in boardrooms. In Norway, alongside mandatory quotas regulating the composition of Public Limited Company boards, voluntary quotas were designed to increase women's membership on the boards of agricultural co‐operatives. This radical step to secure a minimum of 40 per cent women makes these boards an interesting site for investigating the construction of gender in a traditionally male‐dominated organization. In the debate, arguments in favour of a quota accentuated diversity and differences between women's and men's competences, opinions and values. The analysis of interview data from the boards of four agricultural co‐operatives suggests that equal representation is a muted, taken‐for‐granted value. Equality and diversity are not understood as incompatible ideas, and gender is produced dynamically through practice rather than constituted as an inherent, fixed attribute. Gender as difference is less pervasive than expected as women tend to be recognized as belonging to the gender‐neutral category of a board representative despite any recognized differences. The study demonstrates that voluntary quotas may change the context and both challenge old assumptions and promote new understandings of gender in local situations.     

Religion and spirituality in social work practice and education in a cross-cultural context: findings from a Norwegian and UK study

As service populations have changed, social workers in Norway and the UK have responded to the needs of diverse cultures, which often include issues of religion and spirituality. Members of the Norwegian Union of Social Educators and Social Workers (FO) and the British Association of Social Workers (BASW) were sampled to explore attitudes regarding the placement of religion and spirituality in practice and education. UK workers were generally more accepting of religion and spirituality than their Norwegian colleagues. Factors such as secularism, differences in the educational systems, and different historical trajectories in the profession's development may contribute to differences between the UK and Norway. The authors recommend additional research in each country regarding the role of religion and spirituality in social work education and practice, the general culture, the bureaucratic delivery of social services, client and social worker interactions, and in the stratification of social class.     

A spatial model for the needle losses of pine-trees in the forests of Baden-Württemberg: an application of Bayesian structured additive regression

Summary.  The data that are analysed are from a monitoring survey which was carried out in 1994 in the forests of Baden-Württemberg, a federal state in the south-western region of Germany. The survey is part of a large monitoring scheme that has been carried out since the 1980s at different spatial and temporal resolutions to observe the increase in forest damage. One indicator for tree vitality is tree defoliation, which is mainly caused by intrinsic factors, age and stand conditions, but also by biotic (e.g. insects) and abiotic stresses (e.g. industrial emissions). In the survey, needle loss of pine-trees and many potential covariates are recorded at about 580 grid points of a 4 km × 4 km grid. The aim is to identify a set of predictors for needle loss and to investigate the relationships between the needle loss and the predictors. The response variable needle loss is recorded as a percentage in 5% steps estimated by eye using binoculars and categorized into healthy trees (10% or less), intermediate trees (10–25%) and damaged trees (25% or more). We use a Bayesian cumulative threshold model with non-linear functions of continuous variables and a random effect for spatial heterogeneity. For both the non-linear functions and the spatial random effect we use Bayesian versions of P -splines as priors. Our method is novel in that it deals with several non-standard data requirements: the ordinal response variable (the categorized version of needle loss), non-linear effects of covariates, spatial heterogeneity and prediction with missing covariates. The model is a special case of models with a geoadditive or more generally structured additive predictor. Inference can be based on Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques or mixed model technology.