Measures of Spatial Segregation

The measurement of residential segregation patterns and trends has been limited by a reliance on segregation measures that do not appropriately take into account the spatial patterning of population distributions. In this paper we define a general approach to measuring spatial segregation among multiple population groups. This general approach allows researchers to specify any theoretically based definition of spatial proximity desired in computing segregation measures. Based on this general approach, we develop a general spatial exposure/isolation index (̃*), and a set of general multigroup spatial evenness/clustering indices: a spatial information theory index (̃), a spatial relative diversity index (̃), and a spatial dissimilarity index (̃). We review these and previously proposed spatial segregation indices against a set of eight desirable properties of spatial segregation indices. We conclude that the spatial exposure/isolation index ̃*—which can be interpreted as a measure of the average composition of individuals' local spatial environments—and the spatial information theory index ̃—which can be interpreted as a measure of the variation in the diversity of the local spatial environments of each individual—are the most conceptually and mathematically satisfactory of the proposed spatial indices.     

Age residential segregation in Canadian cities

Des indices de dissimilitude relativement a la distribution rCsidentielle de la population canadienne sont calculis ici pour les groupes d'ige de plus de 65 ans et de moins de 65 ans, ainsi que par sexe. Les donnPes de toutes les villes compris dans les programmes des secteurs de recensement de 1971 (30 villes), 1976 (32 villes), et 1981 (36 villes) sont utilisCes. L'analyse de I'annPe 1981 prksente un indice moyen de 27.5, pour des valeurs s'khelonnant entre 16.7 et 38.2. Les villes de I'ouest canadien presentent les indices de segregation les plus ClevPs, et les indices des femmes igCes sont plus PlevCs que ceux des hommes du mime ige. Depuis 1971, on note une augmentation de la segregation rksidentielle des personnes igCes, et aussi une augmentation de la difference sur la base du sexe. A partir de la thCorie Ccologique, une explication de la variation d'une ville a I'autre des degres de segrCgation est proposCe, puis est fortement appuyee par I'analyse.
Indexes of dissimilarity, measuring the dissimilarity of residential distribution between the population aged 65 years and over and the population aged under 65, were computed for all tracted cities in the 1971 (30 cities), 1976 (32 cities), and 1981 (36 cities) Censuses of Canada. Separate indexes were computed for elderly males and females. The results show an average index in 1981 of 27.5, and a range of 16.7 to 38.2; with cities in Western Canada having the highest segregation indexes. The indexes were higher for older women than for older men. Trends since 1971 indicate an increasing residential segregation of the aged as a group as well as a widening sex differential among them. An explanation of the variations in segregation levels among the cities based on ecological theory received strong support.     

Organizational Contradictions in Public Bureaucracies: Toward a Marxian Theory of Organizations*

An alternative approach to organizational theory is outlined, based on Marxian categories and propositions. The concepts of “productive force” and “social relations of production” are specified in terms of various organizational phenomena such as organizing activity vs. organization; historical contradictions between organizational control structures and new forms of organizing work activity (e.g., occupational and professional status groups vs. administrative rationalization and bureaucratization; bureaucratic and technocratic administration vs. self-organization of labor and workers' control); the contradictions between such organizational dimensions as labor-power and its manifestations in terms of skills and knowledge, the object of labor (complexity of task structure), the means of labor (technology), the division of labor, the control of labor (cost-accounting and hierarchical authority relations), and the organization of labor (e.g., either in terms of occupations and professions or unions, corporate management, state bureaucracies, or self-organization and workers' control). Organizational contradictions between functional as well as historical phases of the work process are described for work organizations, in general, and for public service bureaucracies and courts of law, in particular. For example, administrative and technical innovations designed to increase productivity tend to come into contradiction with strategies of established authority structures (e.g., of the professional judicial elite) designed to expand domain, thus impeding or nullifying various organizational reform efforts. The paper concludes with a more general discussion of Marxian method.     

A structural equation model of the effects of diversity characteristics and inclusion on organizational outcomes in the child welfare workforce

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of diversity characteristics and organizational inclusion on organizational outcomes (e.g., organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and intention to leave) among public child welfare workers. The study used secondary data collected from public child welfare workers across a diversified Mid-Atlantic state. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used to test the conceptual model. The results indicated that workers' higher perceptions of inclusion resulted in significantly higher levels of organizational commitment and job satisfaction. Furthermore, higher levels of workers' organizational commitment played a role in significantly reducing their intention to leave. The findings of the study provide practical implications for enhancing diversity management and organizational commitment, including instituting more participative decision-making structures and processes, and creating more accessible organizational information networks.     

Racial Residential Segregation,Perceived Neighborhood Conditions,and Self-Rated Health: The Case of Houston,Texas

Previous research has linked racial residential segregation to a number of poor health outcomes. Yet, the mechanisms that could account for this association remain poorly understood and have seldom been empirically tested in the literature. In an analysis of the Houston area, we test one potential mechanism—perceived neighborhood conditions, as measured by two indices for neighborhood disorder and environmental quality. Using individual-level health data from a survey of Houston residents and neighborhood-level sociodemographic data from the U.S. Census, we estimate a series of multilevel models. We find that black and Latino segregation are linked to the perceived neighborhood disorder index, but no such relationship for the environmental quality index. Moreover, we find that both indices are related to poor self-rated health in that residents who evaluate their neighborhood conditions negatively are more likely to evaluate their health as poor. We also find a direct effect of black and Latino segregation on poor self-rated health, and that perceived neighborhood disorder partially mediates this relationship. We do not find a mediation effect for environmental quality. The results suggest that in order to improve the health of these communities, both residential segregation and neighborhood conditions need to be addressed.     

Exploring the association between board and organizational performance in nonprofit organizations

Note: This study investigated six dimensions of effective board performance, as suggested by Chait, Holland, and Taylor (1991), in relation to three theoretical explanations (agency theory, resource dependency theory, and group/decision process theory) of how board governance activities potentially influence organizational performance. Survey research findings revealed that strategic contributions from the board are more robust in organizations with higher financial performance. In addition, organizations that are judged to be higher performing also reported having high‐performing boards across all dimensions. In particular, the interpersonal dimension provided a unique explanation of judgments of organizational performance.     

Measuring stakeholder identification with nonprofit causes: the development and validation of the identification with social causes scale

Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) achieve desired outcomes by fostering organizational identification. However, little research has explored how identification with the cause or the recipients of support relates to identification with the NPO. This study developed the Identification with Social Causes Scale as a mechanism for distinguishing organizational identification from identification with a social group or cause. Data were collected using two groups: the homeless (n = 318) and HIV positive (n = 314) individuals. Exploratory factor analysis and multigroup confirmatory factor analysis yielded a 9-item scale measuring two dimensions: attachment and consubstantiality. Initial construct validity of the scale was established.     

Ethnic Integration and Spatial Segregation of the Chinese Population

Because of the overwhelming numerical dominance of the Han within the Chinese population and the highly localised distributions of most minority groups, it is difficult to assess the level of either segregation or ethnic integration in China in a systematic or meaningful manner. Previous studies have either been limited to mapping the locations of minority groups or have been based on provincial data, which for analytical purposes are too coarse to characterise the geographical distribution of minority populations at the sub-provincial level. In this paper, county-level data were used to calculate a diversity index for each county to illustrate the level of ethnic diversity. The results of these analyses indicate that high levels of diversity for a particular province are limited to a specific geographic region within it (especially along the international boundary and in some mountainous areas), rather than characterising the province as a whole. The approach used in this paper also employs a new measure based upon the idea of a standard deviational ellipse—a measure that is used to evaluate the level of spatial segregation between ethnic groups. An index illustrating the degree of spatial correlation between ethnic groups was derived for each province using county-level data. The results indicate that, although major population groups in southern and western China display a low level of spatial correlation (i.e. they are highly segregated), these same areas nevertheless exhibit relatively high levels of ethnic diversity.     

How publics react to situational and renewing organizational responses across crises: Examining SCCT and DOR in social-mediated crises

The prevalence of social media among networked publics calls for more research regarding how organizations can conduct effective crisis communication on social networking sites. Based on the situational crisis communication theory (SCCT) and the discourse of renewal (DOR) theory, this study examined how social media publics’ sentiments were affected by situational and renewing organizational responses in various clusters of crises. Twitter data of six crises representing three crisis clusters varying in the responsibility attribution (i.e., ambiguous, accidental, and preventable) were collected. We conducted a content analysis on organizations’ official tweets during crises (N = 59) and sentiment analysis on publics’ replies on Twitter (N = 4,340). The results showed that publics’ positive sentiments toward organizations were affected by organizational crisis responses that included instructing information, sympathy, systemic organizational learning, and effective organizational rhetoric. We recommend that crisis managers express sympathy toward publics as well as organizational learning that prevents a crisis from happening again.     

Inter-rater Agreement Indices for Multiple Informant Methodology

This paper addresses the potential applications of multiple informant methodology (MIM) to family research. The MIM is used when data on the same unit of analysis are collected from more than one informant, and when the researchers’ purpose requires a dyadic or group level of analysis. The MIM relies on inter-rater agreement (IRA) indices, which are needed to both estimate agreement among informants and aggregate scores from different informants. This review describes the main IRA indices: reliability within-group index (r_WG), agreement within-group index (a_WG), average deviation indices (AD_M and AD_Md), intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC), and random group index (r_WG). For each index, we describe the aim, application contexts, formula(s), ranges, cutoffs, requirements to apply the index, and its possible application to family research.     

Critical Analysis of the Relationship between Local Ownership and Community Resiliency*

Abstract Collectively, current resource‐development literature has given little attention to organizational features of ownership as important variables in community resilience. By drawing from six local buyout cases in Canada's forest sector, we reveal the complexity and numerous constraints on local ownership and expose a more nuanced context than most sociologists tend to consider. Our findings suggest that the meaning of local ownership and community resilience varies depending upon the composition (e.g., private vs. public; mill vs. forest license vs. coupled mill & forest license), type (social, cooperative, trust and/or direct‐share ownership), extent of ownership (percentage of local versus extra‐local shares), and the level of control (e.g., proportion of locally held seats on the Board of Directors) associated with ownership. Future research on local ownership should more carefully differentiate between the nature of local ownership and its associated outcomes.     

Back to Inertia: Theoretical Implications of Alternative Styles of Logical Formalization

This article applies two new criteria, desirability and faithfulness, to evaluate Péli et al.'s (1994) formalization of Hannan and Freeman's structural inertia argument (1984, 1989). We conclude that this formalization fails to meet these criteria. We argue that part of the rational reconstruction on which this formalization builds does not reflect well the substantive argument in translating the natural language theory into logic. We propose two alternative formalizations that meet both of these criteria. Moreover, both derive the inertia theorem from much weaker, so much less constraining, premises. While both new formalizations draw information only from the original statement of the inertia theory, they reflect two different interpretations of inertia accumulation.
The two new formalizations are compatible with some recent theory extensions in organizational ecology. However, they lead to substantially different consequences when additional sociological considerations are added to their premise sets. The interplay between logical formalization and sociological content is highlighted using the example of Stinchcombe's (1965) liability-of-newness theorem. Even modest extensions of the proposed models lead to contrary implications about the age dependence in organizational mortality rates. Even "faithful" logical formalizations of arguments ordinarily involve implicit theory building.     

Understanding the Importance of Organizational Resources to Explain Organizational Problems: Evidence from Nonprofit Sport Clubs in Germany

Nonprofit sport clubs experience organizational problems regarding the recruitment and retention of members, volunteers, and coaches, and the financial situation of the club. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of different types of organizational resources on the severity of organizational problems. A theoretical framework based on the concept of organizational capacity is presented, which explains the influence of human, financial, infrastructure, and cultural resources on organizational problems. The empirical evaluation is undertaken using data from a nationwide online survey of nonprofit sport clubs in Germany (n = 19,345). The regression results show that human resources (women on the board, secondary volunteers, etc.), financial resources (Herfindahl index), infrastructure resources (own facilities, and public facilities), and cultural resources (e.g., strategic policy, formation policy, value of conviviality, and variety of sports) are significant determinants of organizational problems. The findings of this study have implications for the management of voluntary sport organizations.     

Measuring residential segregation in multi-ethnic and unequal European cities

Immigration flows and social inequalities reflect increased social and multi-ethnic segregation in contemporary urban Europe. For a better understanding of these processes, the present study investigates the main strengths of the multi-group residential indices, testing sensitivity and reliability under different metropolitan contexts in five European countries. These indices focus on different research dimensions and approach multi-group residential segregation conceptually and mathematically in a different way. A multivariate exploratory data analysis was adopted to classify the observed segregation patterns into a few homogeneous types and to delineate the multivariate relationship between the indices. The results of principal component analysis demonstrate that the indices assessing uniformity and disproportionality of the social groups analysed (H and D) contribute largely to the diversification in today's multi-ethnic communities, clarifying the importance of the dimension of evenness. Our results highlight how segregation is more evident in economically disadvantaged metropolitan regions with high levels of social vulnerability.     

Gender Segregation,Size of Workplace and the Public Sector

Gender segregation is considered to be a key structuring factor in the labour market, and is central to explanations of phenomena as diverse as the everyday experience of men’s and women’s employment to the underachievement of women and the limited impact of equal pay legislation. Studies of occupational segregation by gender tend to be polarized between qualitative and quantitative extremes. At the quantitative end, a primary focus of research has been to quantify segregation to a single index, permitting simple comparisons between countries and over time. However, detailed case studies of particular occupations have often hinted at ways in which breakdowns in occupational segregation have been replaced by other forms of gender segregation. This paper will present data showing that even within occupational categories there is still significant gender segregation and concentration by public/private sector and by size of workplace. For instance, female pharmacists are very over-represented, and female gardeners very under-represented, in the public sector. And the general tendency for women to work in smaller workplaces is severe for some occupations (e.g. office managers) and reversed in other occupations (e.g. production fitters). These analyses question the usefulness of single indices which take account only of segregation or concentration by occupation and therefore underestimate the gendering of job opportunities even within mixed occupations.     

Racial Residential Segregation and Crime

Racial residential segregation is a pervasive and persistent feature of life in urban America. The consequences of segregation are numerous and are generally deleterious for minority populations. One consequence of segregation is inflated rates of crime in segregated areas. However, the study of segregation and crime is limited to a handful of studies and many questions remain unanswered. These include: (i) Does the criminogenic effect of segregation remain when research employs a unit of analysis other than cities (e.g., neighborhoods, regions)? (ii) What is the primary theoretical mechanism by which racial segregation produces crime? (iii) What types of mediating processes can attenuate the criminogenic effect of segregation? The current article will summarize the interdisciplinary literature on segregation and crime and discuss avenues for future research.     

Psychological Contracts and Organizational Identification: The Mediating Effect of Perceived Organizational Support

Understanding the processes through which employees incorporate the organization’s identity into their own identity is critical to building positive employer-employee relationships. We draw primarily on organizational support theory to advance the argument that psychological contract breach is negatively related to organizational identification and positively related to organizational disidentification because it makes employees believe that their organizations do not value their contributions or care about their well-being (reduces perceived organizational support). Results from two studies generally provide support for our hypotheses: in Study 1, perceived organizational support fully mediated the relationship between psychological contract breach and organizational identification. In Study 2, Time 2 perceived organizational support fully mediated the relationship between Time 1 relational psychological contract breach (e.g., promises related to training, development, job security) and organizational identification, but not the relationship between transactional psychological contract breach (e.g., promises related to pay and work hours) and organizational identification. Time 2 perceived organizational support partially mediated the relationship between relational psychological contract breach and organizational disidentification, but not the relationship between transactional psychological contract breach and organizational disidentification. We conclude that organizations should be concerned with this erosion of the positive employer-employee relationship (organizational identification) and fostering of a negative employer-employee relationship (disidentification).     

Ethics at Work

ABSTRACT

This study examined the influence on substance use of organizational wellness and of attitudes toward the EAP. We developed the Organizational Wellness Scale (OWS) to assess perceptions of healthy (e.g., respectful) and addictive (e.g., workaholic) work climates. Employees from a municipal organization (N = 780) who scored high on the OWS reported less personal and co-worker substance use and enabling behaviors, and more favorable attitudes towards substance use policies. Results suggest that, beyond the influence of the EAP, work site health may effect both individual and work group substance use. Using the OWS, health service providers could benefit from monitoring die impact of organizational wellness on individual and work group health.     

What drives a tough call: Determining the importance of contingency factors and individual characteristics in communication executives’ stance decision-making through a conjoint analysis

To further the understanding of how communication executives make tough calls in times of organizational-public conflict, we use a conjoint analysis to identify key drivers for organizational stance decision-making. This is the first-ever conjoint analysis applied to advancing the contingency theory of strategic conflict management by examining the relative importance of key contingency factors as determined by practitioners with varied individual characteristics. This study investigates: 1) the relevant importance of and dynamics between three key contingency factors (i.e., external threats, organizational characteristics, and dominant coalition characteristics); 2) the influence of individual characteristics (e.g., gender, experience, and personal ethics) in stance decision-making process; and 3) how different types of organizational stances (i.e., general stance, action-based accommodation, and qualified-rhetoric-mixed accommodation) are determined by these contingency factors and individual characteristics in different conflict situations. Results generated among our communication executive participants include: individual characteristics (i.e., gender, ethics and social responsibility, whistleblowing tendencies, and over 20 years in the communications field) are influential for their strategic conflict management decision-making. Implications for refining the contingency theory and unearthing complex public relations decision-making processes via novel statistical techniques are discussed.     

Improvement indices of well-being

In recent years, various classes of indices measuring the improvement of well-being have been suggested. Formally, an improvement index is a function Q* (x ₁, x ₂), where x _t is the level of some attribute of well-being, e.g., life expectancy, in period t. This paper extends previous works on improvement indices by introducing a class of multidimensional indices which aggregates the improvement of a group of attributes of well-being. We propose a set of axioms which leads inexorably to a multidimensional generalization of Kakwani's class of improvement indices of well-being (Kakwani 1993).Financial support from the Social Science and Education Panel of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (research grant account no: 220201620) is gratefully acknowledged