Fund-raising by hospital foundations

1986–87 data for eighty hospitals in Ontario and their foundations are used to assess the influence of various socioeconomic characteristics of the constituent populations and selected characteristics of the beneficiary hospitals on foundation revenue. Six factors appear to increase hospital foundation revenue: a higher percentage of the population that is elderly, a lower percentage of the population born outside Canada, a higher percentage of the population that has not moved within the past year, a larger hospital market share, teaching-status for the beneficiary hospital, and a higher level of foundation expenses.     

企业绩效考核现状研究

伴随知识经济的到来，人力资源的开发与管理已成为现代企业管理的基础与核心。而人力资源管理中最难建立与操作的就是有效的员工绩效考核，科学的绩效考核是进行有效激励管理的前提和基础，而流于形式的、一般性的绩效考核将直接影响绩效考核结果的公正性，进而影响组织战略目标的实现，因此建立完善的绩效考核体系对企业具有重要意义。     

Measuring BSW Student Learning in Field Instruction

This study investigates whether undergraduate social work students deepen their professional foundation knowledge as a result of completing the field practicum and two additional social work foundation courses. The Area Concentration Achievement Test in Social Work (ACAT), which tests knowledge of the social work professional foundation, was administered to 70 students in the BSW program at the University of Texas-Pan American; 32 had nearly completed field instruction, and 38 were approved for field instruction but had not yet begun it. No differences were found between these groups related to performance on the overall ACAT or in four individual content areas. This counterintuitive finding challenges the assumption that knowledge deepens as students proceed through the curriculum and field instruction. Other variables that could affect performance on the ACAT are also explored.     

The expanded role of nurse case managers

1. Effective nursing practice is responsive to the changing needs of clients. The community, rather than the hospital, has become the primary treatment setting in which the long-term mentally ill manage their daily activities. 2. The professional role of rehabilitative nurse case management can provide an opportunity for nurses to expand their roles and develop new career directions. 3. The primary nursing model provides an excellent foundation for acquiring the attitudes and skills necessary in the delivery of a comprehensive rehabilitative model of case management.     

Hospital ownership and performance

This study compares the performance of three ownership forms of hospitals: for profit, private nonprofit, and public, further classified according to whether or not the hospital is run by a hospital chain. Data come from a 1979 national survey of U.S. hospitals. The authors find that hospital cost is quite similar among alternative ownership forms as is profitability. The results do not provide much empirical support for standard property rights theory. Several reasons are suggested why this may be so.     

Nonprofit organization financial performance measurement: An evaluation of new and existing financial performance measures

Consensus about financial performance measurement remains elusive for nonprofit organization (NPO) researchers and practitioners alike, due in part to an overall lack of empirical tests of existing and new measures. The purpose of the current study was to explore potential similarities of financial performance measures derived from two sources: current NPO research and key informant interviews with NPO foundation constituencies. The authors examined financial performance measurement ratios with data from fifteen Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Form 990 line items. Using factor analytic techniques, they found three performance factors, each with two associated financial measurement ratios, to be present. They categorized the performance factors as fundraising efficiency, public support, and fiscal performance. This article discusses implications of the findings and future research.     

Exploring trends: tracking evaluations data over several months by therapists and parents of children with cerebral palsy

A pilot study was conducted at the outpatient rehabilitation unit of a children's hospital to explore the overall performance trends of children in daily life as perceived by their parents, compared to the evaluations of therapists. A performance goal was set for each child by his/her therapist and parent at an initial consultation. Over a six-month period, data were collected from the parents of children with cerebral palsy (N = 53), and therapists assessed children at each therapy session as well. The evaluations of both parents and therapists showed statistically significant upward trends in performance over several months.     

高职学生职业素养培养的途径和方法探索

提高高职学生的职业素养,促进高职学生成长成才及职业生涯的发展,为学生参与社会竞争奠定良好的基础。文章以长沙电力职业技术学院为实践主体,针对目前高职学生职业素养缺失表现及高职学生职业素养培养的重要性,探索高职学生职业素养培养的有效途径和方法。     

THE CONSEQUENCES OF CARING:

Sociologists of emotion have examined the ways that workers are required to manage their emotions on the job, while studies of family emotion work reveal the effort involved in providing emotional support at home. Analyzing data collected from married or cohabiting women hospital workers, we examine the relations between women's job and family emotion work and the effects of both on women's job-related well-being. Consistent with "scarcity" views of women's emotional energy, we find that performance of family emotion work has negative consequences for women's job-related well-being. Consistent with "expansion" perspectives, however, women who perform some emotional labor on the job are more likely than other women to perform family emotion work. Our findings support a view that incorporates elements of both scarcity and expansion perspectives. We conclude that the job-related well-being of women hospital workers is less influenced by performance of emotional labor at work than it is by women's and their partners' involvement in family emotion work.     

The embeddedness of organizational performance: Multiple Membership Multiple Classification Models for the analysis of multilevel networks

We present a Multiple Membership Multiple Classification (MMMC) model for analysing variation in the performance of organizational sub-units embedded in a multilevel network. The model postulates that the performance of organizational sub-units varies across network levels defined in terms of: (i) direct relations between organizational sub-units; (ii) relations between organizations containing the sub-units, and (iii) cross-level relations between sub-units and organizations. We demonstrate the empirical merits of the model in an analysis of inter-hospital patient mobility within a regional community of health care organizations. In the empirical case study we develop, organizational sub-units are departments of emergency medicine (EDs) located within hospitals (organizations). Networks within and across levels are delineated in terms of patient transfer relations between EDs (lower-level, emergency transfers), hospitals (higher-level, elective transfers), and between EDs and hospitals (cross-level, non-emergency transfers). Our main analytical objective is to examine the association of these interdependent and partially nested levels of action with variation in waiting time among EDs – one of the most commonly adopted and accepted measures of ED performance. We find evidence that variation in ED waiting time is associated with various components of the multilevel network in which the EDs are embedded. Before allowing for various characteristics of EDs and the hospitals in which they are located, we find, for the null models, that most of the network variation is at the hospital level. After adding these characteristics to the model, we find that hospital capacity and ED uncertainty are significantly associated with ED waiting time. We also find that the overall variation in ED waiting time is reduced to less than a half of its estimated value from the null models, and that a greater share of the residual network variation for these models is at the ED level and cross level, rather than the hospital level. This suggests that the covariates explain some of the network variation, and shift the relative share of residual variation away from hospital networks. We discuss further extensions to the model for more general analyses of multilevel network dependencies in variables of interest for the lower level nodes of these social structures.     

Nursing home performance on select publicly reported quality indicators and resident risk of hospitalization: grappling with policy implications

This study examines how resident risk of hospitalization varies in relation to facility performance on select quality indicators (QIs). Using a 15% sample, three years of Medicaid reimbursement data from over 525 nursing homes (NHs) were linked with four years of hospital claims data and facility-level data to investigate whether residents of NHs with worse (better) than expected performance on QIs experienced increased (decreased) risk of hospitalization. Logistic regression results indicate that variations in hospitalization risk among NH residents are explained in part by facility performance on QIs. Residents from NHs with more decubitus ulcers, with greater use of physical restraints, and with a higher than expected incidence of unexplained weight loss/gain experienced increased risk of hospitalization.     

A LARGE-SCALE,ASYNCHRONOUS, WEB-BASED MSW COMPREHENSIVE EXAM ADMINISTRATION: OUTCOMES AND LESSONS LEARNED

Described is the administration and outcomes of an asynchronous, Web-based, comprehensive exam covering MSW foundation curriculum. Over a 48-hour period of test availability, 198 students completed the 4-hour-long exam composed of 100 randomly generated questions. Significant differences in student performance across college locations were found. A post-examination survey found a large majority of students were able to easily access the online exam, found the testing tool easy to use, and were able to complete the comprehensive exam with little difficulty. The future use of online assessment for the comprehensive exam was supported by 87% of respondents.     

Evaluating philanthropic foundations according to their social values

Philanthropic foundations are seen as enterprises committed to building what they view as a better world. Their visions of a better world are described in terms of social values that represent preferred end states for society or means of achieving such states. This article describes a procedure in which a foundation's espoused social values, made explicit, may serve as a referent to evaluate the foundation's performance. The process by which social values are determined is offered as a means to promote critical and reflective discourse not only within the foundation but with the public, especially those affected by the foundation's work.     

Wages,productivity, and costs in union and nonunion hospitals

This paper considers the effects of labor unions on the economic performance of hospitals. Two data sets are considered. The first includes 275 hospitals from 13 urban areas; the second includes 114 hospitals from Ohio. The analysis is designed to determine whether or not union-induced productivity improvements occur within the rather noncompetitive hospital market and questions whether or not there are cost differences between union and nonunion hospitals. On the question of productivity, both data sets indicate that positive effects occur in the hospital sector. The answer to the second question is less clear. The primary data set indicates that unionized hospitals actually have lower costs than their nonunion counterparts, while the Ohio sample indicates that unionized hospital costs are lower, but not significantly so. The author wishes to thank Donald R. Williams and an anonymous referee for their valuable comments.     

Multisystemic Treatment of Juvenile Sexual Offenders

Abstract

Multisystemic therapy (MST)is an ecologically-based treatment model that has proven effective with violent and chronic juvenile offenders and that holds promise with juvenile sexual offenders. This article describes the empirical underpinnings, theoretical foundation, and clinical features of MST and provides a brief review of MST outcome studies with juvenile sexual offenders. The theoretical foundation and clinical features of MST draw upon empirical findings regarding the multidetermined nature of serious antisocial behavior as well as upon social-ecological models of behavior in which the youth and family's school, work, peers, and neighborhood are viewed as interconnected systems with dynamic and reciprocal influences on the behavior of family members. In two randomized trials with juvenile sexual offenders, MST has had positive effects on key social-ecological factors (e.g., family affective relations, peer relations, school performance) associated with sexual offending and has demonstrated long-term reductions in criminal activity and incarceration. The success of MST can be attributed primarily to (a) the match between MST intervention foci and empirically identified correlates/causes of sexual offending in youths and (b) the flexible use of well-validated intervention strategies in the natural environment.     

Staging language: An introduction to the sociolinguistics of performance

Staged performance involves the overt, scheduled identification and elevation of one or more people to perform, with a clearly demarcated distinction between them and the audience. It involves the agentive use of language, building on the foundation of existing social meanings. Staged performances tend to be linguistically stylized, pushing the limits of language creativity. They have the potential to trigger significant sociolinguistic effects, circulating novel forms and contributing to language change. The paradigms used in this theme issue for approaching language performance include Bakhtin's notion of Stylization, Bell's Audience and Referee Design, Silverstein's Indexicality, Agha's Enregisterment, and Bauman's construct of Discursive Culture. Themes that run through the articles include: a concept of identity that is part product, part process; the centrality of the audience; the reflexivity of staged performance; and the importance of non‐linguistic modalities such as music and appearance. The language analysis in this collection of papers concentrates mainly on phonological features of varieties of English, finding instances of selectivity, mis‐realization, overshoot and undershoot in their performances of a range of targeted dialects.     

Infant Contingency/Extinction Performance After Observing Partial Reinforcement

Social information gathering by infants 6 and 12 months old was examined as a foundation for later social learning that may be uniquely human. Infant performance on a contingency/extinction task was studied following a caregiver demonstration of the contingency on varied reinforcement schedules. Infants who observed caregivers receive any reinforcing stimulation in pretraining decreased responding over their own acquisition period, possibly because they began to habituate to the reinforcer. In extinction, infants who observed caregivers receive partial reinforcement in pretraining were more persistent in responding than others. This suggested that direct experience with partial reinforcement is not needed for greater persistence in extinction. These studies revealed details of social learning in the 1st year.     

African-Centered Reality Therapy Parenting: An Alternative Paradigm

African-centered reality therapy provides a foundation for restructuring parenting. It has as its foundation an African worldview connected to reality therapy. The components of this paradigm are the task environment and the procedures that lead to change as defined by its epistemological and axiological systems. This parenting style teaches the basic needs as the key to empowerment. These needs are essential for making a shift to African-centered reality therapy parenting. This foundation connects African-centered reality therapy with parenting intervention and treatment.     

The Role of Social Capital in the Start-Up of Non-profit Organisations: The Case of Fondazione Welfare Ambrosiano

This article investigates how a start-up foundation can build its organisational social capital, meaning a network of strategic partnerships with other organisations based on trust relationships, in order to fulfil its mission. Based on a case study analysis of Fondazione Welfare Ambrosiano—an Italian foundation created in partnership with private organisations and local public institutions—we explored whether and how some characteristics of the social capital of the foundation’s members contributed to the organisational social capital. By applying Nahapiet and Ghoshal’s (Acad Manag Rev 23(2):242–266, 1998) social capital framework, we discovered that the social capital configuration of the founders and staff, linked to some characteristics of the foundation, had driven the development of the organisational social capital. Our paper contributes to an understanding of what constitutes the best configuration of social capital to allow a start-up foundation to take off.