Beyond the Pale of Psychoanalysis: Relational Theory and Generalist Social Work Practice

Many have noted the consonance between contemporary relational theory and classic social work values and practice principles such as person in environment and starting where the client is. However, there have been few efforts to explore relational theory’s utility to the generalist social work framework. This paper takes the position that relational theory’s intersubjective stance lends new coherence to classic social work principles, and therefore elucidates the process aspects of evidence-based social work practice. In order to illustrate this point, the author applies relational theory to implementation issues around early childhood home visitation with Spanish-speaking immigrant clients—a social work service modality that, like so many others, does not fall into the category of individual psychotherapy in the context of private practice.     

Introduction to the Special Section

In this special section of The Career Development Quarterly, the authors pay tribute to the contributions of David Valentine Tiedeman (1919–2004) to the theory and practice of career counseling and development and vocational psychology. Tiedeman is honored as laying the foundation for the contemporary theory and practice of career construction. The articles published in this section emerged as a result of a special symposium dedicated to honor Tiedeman and his work that was held at the 2006 National Career Development Association Global Conference in Chicago.     

A behavioral mindset on environment policy

Environmental policy is made in a complex confluence of markets, missing markets, and no markets. Despite this messy mixture, economists offer working rules to help guide policy based on classic rational choice theory. But numerous behavioral studies suggest that rational choice is a poor guide—anomalous behavior like preference reversals and unexpected gaps in measures of value undercut the rational underpinnings of environmental policy. Other studies find, however, that these anomalies disappear once people must make choices within reach of others who can punish irrational choices. This paper reviews these conflicting behavioral views to better understand the power and limits of the rational economic rules used to guide environmental policy     

Alte Bilder — neue Heraufsorderungen: Ein Zwischenruf zur systemischen Organisationsberatung

Consulting based on social systems theory seems to have spread widely over the years. However, in public or even in professional discussions systemic consulting is still described in the same way as it has been from its beginning (focus on therapy-like settings, methods derived from family therapy, and so on). These images might cause problems with consultants facing changing demands in the consulting market. The following article therefore analyzes the difference that systemic consulting makes, or would be able to make, in comparison with other forms of consulting. It goes back to the theoretical foundations and the specific relationship between theory and practice which are unique features of systemic consulting.     

RATIONAL EXPECTATIONS IN THE AGGREGATE

This paper investigates the relationship between the way rational expectations is employed in practice and the argument initially put forth to justify its use. In practice rational expectations has meant that the expectations of each agent taken separately is consistent with the predictions of the theory. This is different than the argument frequently used by proponents of rational expectations that on an aggregate level expectations should be consistent with the theory. The primary findings are that standard and aggregate rational expectations typically yield systematically different equilibria and that the size of the difference depends positively on the degree of synergism.     

Power at a distance: Organizational power across boundaries

Organizational approaches can help to make sense of social phenomena, including inequality, politics, and culture. This is partly because large organizations exercise great power, both over employees and in their external environments. Revising Charles Perrow's classic account of the “society of organizations” in the 20th century, we argue that the organizational landscape has changed. There has been a dis‐embedding of individuals from organizations that contrasts with Perrow's idea of individuals being “absorbed” by organizations. Despite this hollowing out, there is a persistence of concentrated economic power or “concentration without centralization.” Organizational power in this landscape is increasingly exercised at a distance, not only geographically but also in the sense of moving across organizational boundaries and through technologies of valuation. Three bodies of research exemplify different types of power at a distance. (a) Research on global production networks shows how power travels across geographic and network distances. (b) Research on financialization and its consequences shows how power is mediated by frames and metrics. (c) Emerging research on big data and Artificial Intelligence shows how power is encoded into seemingly neutral technologies and made to seem inevitable. This work helps to update the sociology of organizations and opens up new research questions.     

A lame argument: profoundly disabled embodiment as critical gender politics

In this paper I explore how disabled embodiment offers radical theory and practice for gender politics. I use Adrienne Rich’s classic treaties ‘lesbian existence [and] the lesbian continuum’ and Judith Butler’s twenty-first-century queer interrogation of ‘the category of The Human’ to highlight the exclusion of disablement from gender politics despite its radical potential for theory and praxis. Using a crip ethos I not only explore the consequences of this exclusion for disabled people, but also the resultant limitations of able-bodied perception, theory and practice. A crip ethos facilitates politics and practices where disabled embodiment becomes a profound, severe, and radical challenge to normativity in all its aspects, and a vehicle through which to move beyond such restrictive frameworks.     

Organisationsentwicklung international. Themen, Trends und Perspektiven

Organizational development as a profession is still ongoing a continuous evolution of its theory foundation, methodology, as well as its subject matters. Organizational development is on the one hand a well appreciated and a welcomed part of corporate development but is threatened on the other hand to miss the connection to the radical changes which are occurring in companies as well as in general to economy and society. Some statements in this paper show possible ways to establish a foundation for organizational development in order to use the valuable accumulated experience in a constructive manner.     

Rethinking Management Consulting: Towards Integral Consulting

This article aims to transform the current approach to management consultancy so as to be in tune with the needs of business and societies of our time. Such transformation is necessary so that consultancies are enabled to integrate technological, economic and social innovation as opposed to the conventional form of business and technology alignment. It would then act as enabler for such social innovation, with a view to building a healthy, sustainable enterprise, able to meaningfully engage with the most burning social issues of the society in which it is involved. Social innovation, however, requires co-creation between the consultancy, enterprises, business schools and communities. Such a consultancy, so the core argument of this article goes, is indeed ideally positioned to reconnect these diverse parties. Hence, the evolution of management consultancy towards an integrating force; such an approach is called “Integral Consulting”. For Integral Consulting to happen, four core gaps need to be closed. The article describes these four gaps, and illustrates, in theory and in practice, how these gaps can be bridged. In what follows, the case of Integral Consulting is featured, emerging within Deutsche Telekom’s consulting affiliate, Detecon International, in co-creation with TRANS4M, a Geneva based laboratory for social innovation.     

CONVERGENCE IN RELATION TO LEVEL OF SOCIETAL DEVELOPMENT

A classic version of convergence theory was proposed by Marion Levy as part of his theory of modernization: If and as the level of modernization increases (defined as a higher ratio of reliance upon inanimate energy and tools relative to animate energy), the level of structural uniformity among relatively modernized societies continually increases. I test this hypothesis by using the coefficient of variation (V) as the measure of convergence. I analyze a wide range of variables: level of economic development, capitalist market economy, demographic variables, technology, the state and political democracy, cognitive modernization, health, income inequality and poverty, gender particularism–universalism, and information and communications. Each variable is treated as one test of the hypothesis. The hypothesis is first tested by dividing 201 societies into quartiles representing four levels of development as of 1990, and comparing their V scores at one point in time (around the year 2000). Full confirmation of the hypothesis is a monotonic decline in V scores as we move from the least to the most developed societies; this is observed in 19 out of 51, or 37 percent, of the tests. The second set of tests is a stricter, longitudinal test of the hypothesis. Among the 21 societies already developed in 1965, as their level of development continued to rise from 1965 to the present, they became more convergent in 32 out of 45, or 71 percent, of the tests. Thus, variation in social structure is greater among less modernized than among more modernized societies, and this has implications for theories of globalization.     

Development Tracks: The Theory and Practice of Community Development

It was and is an important text, and looking back, it becomesclear how in many ways New Zealand was advanced in its thinkingon Community Development. The language and the concepts wereexpressed differently from today, but that is a comment nota critique. The editor, Ian Shirley, with a history as a community workerand later an academic had produced other writings on communitydevelopment, but little of the standing of this work had beenwritten either before or since on the theory and practice ofcommunity development in New Zealand. Twenty-three years on,this book is still read by students and teachers of communitydevelopment. So, has it that stood the test of time or is therenothing to take its place? The book does not     

A measure of community members’ perceptions of the impacts of research partnerships in health and social services

Currently, there are no psychometrically sound outcome measures by which to assess the impacts of research partnerships. This article describes the development of a 33-item, survey questionnaire measuring community members’ perceptions of the impact of research partnerships addressing health or social issues. The Community Impacts of Research Oriented Partnerships (CIROP) was developed using information from the literatures on health promotion, community development, research utilization, and community-based participatory research, and from focus groups involving 29 key informants. Data from 174 community members were used to determine the factor structure, internal consistency, and test–retest reliability of the four CIROP scales, and to provide evidence of construct validity. The CIROP informs research partnerships about the extent of their impact in the areas of Personal Knowledge Development, Personal Research Skill Development, Organizational/Group Access To and Use of Information, and Community and Organizational Development, allowing them to demonstrate accountability to funding bodies. As well, the CIROP can be used as a research tool to assess the effectiveness of knowledge sharing approaches, determine the most influential activities of research partnerships, and determine structural characteristics of partnerships associated with various types of impact. The CIROP provides a better understanding of community members’ perspectives and expectations of research partnerships, with important implications for knowledge transfer and uptake.     

Theory and the School‐to‐Work Transition: Are the Recommendations Suitable for Cultural Minorities?

The special June 1999 issue of The Career Development Quarterly that dealt with school‐to‐work transitions was an admirable attempt to link theory to practice. However, both the theories used and the practices suggested failed to take into account the special concerns of cultural minorities. Suggestions for improving theory and practice to make them more culturally sensitive are made in this reaction.     

Practice standards in Australia: implications for social work education

In 2003, the Australian Association of Social Work launched Practice Standards that define minimal expectations for all social workers. The Practice Standards are outcome focused and specify what social workers are expected to achieve in the areas of Direct Practice, Service Management, Organizational Development and System Change, Policy, Research, and Education and Professional Development. This paper outlines the rationale for developing the Practice Standards, the process undertaken and the need for social work educators to build a curriculum that prepares students to be competent and effective in a complex working environment.     

Rationalists, Fatalists, and the Modern Superstitious: Test-Taking in Introductory Sociology

As sociologists we are guided by a rational approach to understanding the social world. This rational approach is also evident in the way we test students. But do students approach tests from the same orientation that we take in creating them, or are they influenced by such nonrational orientations as superstitions? To explore this question the authors created and administered the Luck and Superstition Questionnaire to 426 students taking Introduction to Sociology. We found that nearly 70 percent of students indicate some level of test‐related superstitious practice. However, we also found that superstitious practice was largely unrelated to religious belief and practice, gender and race, educational performance and grade expectations, and end‐of‐semester pressures. These results are entirely consistent with Colin Campbell's theory of modern superstition. Superstitious practice in modern society is self‐sustaining–not integrated into social institutions or systems of belief–and only “half‐believed” by the very practitioners of modern superstition.     

Lernen, Zwang und Niedergang in der Organisationsentwicklung

Organizational development needs a theory of the subject and a theory of change. The underlying values and mental models of learning, constraint, free will and mainting and/or disintegrating a system shape the theory of change. The objective of this essay is to increase the complexity of the theory and as a result, increase the ability of consultants to come in contact with different mental models that occur in organizations.     

Evaluating excellence: A model of evaluation for public relations practice in organizational culture and context

This paper represents the development of an innovative and comprehensive model designed to measure public relations excellence within an organizational context. Drawing on established scales of evaluation for public relations practice, researchers propose a measurement model situated within excellence Theory. Through a partnership between the research team and The Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) organization, a case study approach was developed and implemented, highlighting the relationships between organizational culture and communication. The Excellence in Organizational Context model was tested within the AER, using empirical data gathered through in-depth semi-structured interviews and a self-report questionnaire survey conducted with individuals from various identified organizational stakeholder groups. This mixed-method approach was employed to explore and understand the multi-dimensional nature of public relations practice within this organization.Researchers investigated eight dimensions of excellence in this model. Initial findings indicate that the Excellence in Organizational Context model proposed here is a valid and appropriate method for measuring public relations performance when applied as a mixed-method approach for measuring practice and establishing context within an organizational culture. This indicates the need for both organizational, stakeholder, and sector/national level data in confirming relevant benchmarks.     

Responsibility and sociological discourse

This article reads Chaim Perelman's theory of argumentation in order to formulate the task of social theorizing as responsible discourse. Taking rationality as sound argument which proceeds in terms of a link between speaker's intentions (the audience) and the public, the first part examines Perelman's notions about the relativity of facts to particular traditions of communication which link speakers, argumentation, and publics. Accepting that this view, shared by many sociologists, allows for no general criterion of rationality to be used as a principle for responsible speaking, the second part discusses how a choice for one or another tradition of reasoning in sociology might responsibly be made. This criterion for choosing is presented in terms of the relative generality and breadth of intended audiences and the relative openness to criticism of traditions of discourse.Preparation of this paper was assisted by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Leave Fellowship No. 451-801455, and the kind hospitality of lain Mangham and the Centre for the Study of Organizational Change and Development, University of Bath. Lloyd Bitzer, Joan Budge, Bob Hollinger, Valerie Sloane, Steve Turner and an anonymous, supportive referee have all helped me shape this essay. My gratitude for their assistance does not imply responsibility for the remaining faults and infelicities; that is mine.