Social Return on Investment Analysis

This article uses a social return on investment (SROI) methodology to analyze the social impact of a social enterprise offering a job and skills training program to an unemployed, largely female population. The social enterprise is based in Toronto (Canada) and run by a nonprofit agency dedicated to the advancement and empowerment of women, primarily immigrants, through access to employment. We focus our analysis on a job and skills training program that provides clients with the skills and tools that they need to successfully seek employment in their efforts to (re‐)enter the Canadian labor market. Our goal is to determine the tangible and intangible program outcomes by applying and testing the SROI methodology.     

Gender‐Related Opportunities and Turnover: The Case of Medical Sector Employees

This study examined the relationships between gender, objective and perceived work‐related opportunities, and turnover behavior. This was achieved using an interdisciplinary approach that combined the macro‐level perspective on opportunities in internal and external labor markets, with the micro‐level perspective of individual perceptions of opportunities. The results revealed that the opportunities–turnover linkage is gender‐specific rather than gender‐neutral. Women's turnover behavior was affected by their ‘perception’ of employment opportunities in the organizational and local labor markets. By contrast, men's turnover behavior was affected by ‘objective’, organizational and local labor market conditions. These findings indicate that the objective opportunities of the work market may be compatible with men’s, but not women’s, work needs and hence question existing assumptions of a ‘gender‐neutral’ effect of opportunities on turnover decisions.     

Developing a variables repetitive group sampling plan based on process capability index C pk with unknown mean and variance

In this paper, variables repetitive group sampling plans are developed based on the process capability index C _pk when the quality characteristic follows a normal distribution with unknown mean and variance. The sampling plan parameters such as the sample size and the acceptance constant are determined to minimize the average sample number. Symmetric and asymmetric cases, in percent defectives due to two specification limits, are dealt with for specified combinations of acceptable quality level and limiting quality level. Tables are provided and examples are given to use proposed plans in practice.     

Conceptions of Progress: How is Progress Perceived? Mainstream Versus Alternative Conceptions of Progress

Progress is a powerful political concept, encompassing different and sometimes contradictory conceptions. This paper examines the results of a survey on progress conducted at the OECD World Forum entitled “Measuring and Fostering the Progress of Societies” held in Istanbul in June 2007. First, a distinction is drawn between the two approaches to progress (skeptical and optimistic) and four theories of progress (Liberal, Social Liberal, Green, and Conservative). Second, the survey results are examined in order to find the prevailing conception among the participants. Findings show that while the literature regards the Liberal, economically based theory of progress as sitting at the heart of the mainstream conception of progress, it is notable that, in fact, there emerged among the participants a different mainstream conception of progress: one that is optimistic in approach, yet both Social Liberal and Green in its theory.

Relational Interactions Between Immigrant and Native-Born Volunteers: Trust-Building and Integration or Suspicion and Conflict?

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - We investigate the bridging interactions between migrant-background and native-born volunteers. Bridging interactions are...     

Prescreening,In‐Depth Exploration,and Choice: From Decision Theory to Career Counseling Practice

The authors present a 3‐stage model—Prescreening, In‐depth exploration, and Choice (PIC)—aimed at increasing the quality of the career decision‐making process and its outcome. PIC provides a framework for a dynamic and interactive process that emphasizes the role of career counselors as decision counselors, whose aim is to facilitate an active decision‐making process. The proposed model offers the advantages of systematic, analytical processing, while remaining compatible with individuals' natural way of thinking. The authors outline the implementation of PIC, discuss the role of intuition in decision making, and compare the PIC with the person‐environment fit approach.     

THE CHOICE OF EXCHANGE‐RATE REGIME AND SPECULATIVE ATTACKS

We develop a framework that makes it possible to study, for the first time, the strategic interaction between the ex ante choice of exchange‐rate regime and the likelihood of ex post currency attacks. The optimal regime is determined by a policymaker who trades off the loss from nominal exchange‐rate uncertainty against the cost of adopting a given regime. This cost increases, in turn, with the fraction of speculators who attack the local currency. Searching for the optimal regime within the class of exchange‐rate bands, we show that the optimal regime can be either a peg (a zero‐width band), a free float (an infinite‐width band), or a nondegenerate band of finite width. We study the effect of several factors on the optimal regime and on the probability of currency attacks. In particular, we show that a Tobin tax induces policymakers to set less flexible regimes. In our model, this generates an increase in the probability of currency attacks. (JEL: F31, D84)