Uncertainty as a common ground for a dialogue between economics and sociology

The article focuses on inter-firm relations, primarily seen as protective devises crafted for keeping at an arm's length various kinds of uncertainties involved in boundary transactions. Taking a holistic view, it proposes the notion of relational habitat, which refers to the relatively durable constellation of relations that connect a given firm to its main business partners. Performing a double-edged protective function, this constellation both stabilizes and simplifies the immediate operational domain of the firm and, thereby, diminishes to manageable levels the complexity of the relevant parts of the environment. By expanding the control of the firm beyond its organizational borders, relational habitat reduces the constraining impact of boundary uncertainty and enhances the action capacity of the firm – facilitating the materialization of its chosen line of action and its desired objectives. The article specifies this notion in detail and highlights some of its implications, both for the theoretical development of economic sociology and for its relation to economics.     

Maladaptive Coping as a Mediator of Family Stress

Family members of women substance users may be at risk for stress-related problems. Family coping responses may affect outcomes for both families and women in treatment. Eighty-two women in treatment for substance use disorders (56 with comorbid psychiatric conditions) and 82 family members were interviewed. Stressors related to women's disorders were significantly related to increased family member burden. Women's behavioral problems predicted greater family member Worry, Displeasure, and Impact. Extent of women's drug or alcohol use predicted greater family member Stigma and Impact. Family member maladaptive coping partially mediated relationships between family member stressors and family member Displeasure and Impact. Family member maladaptive coping also functioned as a moderator between the stressors and Impact.     

The Greatest Veneration: Humor as a Coping Strategy for the Challenges of Aging

One hundred and thirty million Traditionalists and Baby Boomers are tackling the reality of aging. It may be captured by the lyrics to the Alan Menken–Tim Rice song “A Whole New World.” The salient characteristics and experiences of these two generations are examined along with a few of the mental and physical challenges they are encountering. Then the research on and applications of humor and laughter to these challenges are reviewed. Particular attention is given to the psychological, physiological, and medical studies that have specific implications for seniors. Coping strategies to deal with daily life challenges are described in terms of detachment from crises and problem situations and coping with interpersonal conflict. The Coping Humor Scale is provided for readers to assess their own coping skills. Then a list of techniques seniors can use to improve their own coping skills, including how to search for humor opportunities, is provided. Despite the potential research-based benefits of humor and laughter, their application to the lives of seniors are not well known. Those benefits should be part of the trend toward complementary or alternative medical treatments over the past two decades. It does not get any more “alternative” than “humor.”     

Supported Employment as a Paradigm Shift and a Cause of Legitimation Crisis

Supported employment in its original form represents a new service paradigm, where services are organised as individualised supports aimed at securing the presence of disabled people in their local communities. Using Finland as an example, this article analyses difficulties that arise when a new service paradigm is introduced that is incompatible with the old forms of service. In this case, the accession of Finland to the European Union brought with it an active employment policy of a marginalised workforce. Along with this development, funding for supported employment projects threatened to produce a legitimation crisis in old service organisations. The crisis was managed in two ways. First, the concept of supported employment was redefined to more accurately fit into old forms of service. Secondly the project activity was ceremonialised and its goals were made ambiguous.     

Mindfulness: an intervention for anxiety in schizophrenia

Despite evidence that individuals with schizophrenia spectrum disorders experience significant and persistent symptoms of anxiety, there are few reports of the use of empirically supported treatments for anxiety in this population. This article describes how we have tried to adapt mindfulness interventions to help individuals with schizophrenia who experience significant anxiety symptoms. Although mindfulness has been widely used to help individuals without psychosis, to our knowledge, this is the first study adapting it to help those with schizophrenia manage worry and stress. We provide an overview of the intervention and use an individual example to describe how our treatment development group responded. We also explore directions for future research of mindfulness interventions for schizophrenia.     

Mindfulness meditation: a path of transformation & healing

As nurses, we have the unique privilege of witnessing and nurturing the healing process of the whole person--mind, body, and spirit. Teaching mindfulness meditation is a nursing intervention that can foster healing. The consistent practice of mindfulness meditation has been shown to decrease the subjective experience of pain and stress in a variety of research settings. Formal and informal daily practice fosters development of a profound inner calmness and nonreactivity of the mind, allowing individuals to face, and even embrace, all aspects of daily life, regardless of circumstances. By emphasizing being, not doing, mindfulness meditation provides a way through suffering for patients, families, and staff. This practice allows individuals to become compassionate witnesses to their own experiences, to avoid making premature decisions, and to be open to new possibilities, transformation, and healing.     

新形势下上海促进就业的机制研究

为推动上海实现更高质量就业,必须通过健全促进就业政策,充分发挥政府、市场、企业与劳动力的合力,以经济发展创造就业岗位,不断提升就业质量,持续扩大就业总量。深入推进城市空间结构调整,有效加快郊区新城建设步伐,充分发挥郊区新城分流人口、扩大就业与推动增长的作用。继续完善创业环境,构建鼓励创业的城市文化与社会氛围,深入促进新兴业态发展,切实发挥创业促就业的作用。进一步构建和谐劳动关系,努力维护劳动者权益,适时制订、修改、完善劳动政策法规,推进劳动合同签订与工资集体协商机制,充分发挥失业保险和社会保障体系推动就业的应有作用。     

以就业为契机，提升大学生诚信水平

当前,由于学校应试教育以及家庭环境等多种因素的影响,部分大学生诚信缺失现象严重,不仅破坏了大学生的整体形象,也影响了大学生的顺利就业。高校应以就业为契机,将诚信教育与促进大学生就业联系起来,采取有效措施,引导大学生积极维护、开发利用自己的信用资源,提高大学生的诚信水平,实现成功就业。     

The Clinician as Neuroarchitect: The Importance of Mindfulness and Presence in Clinical Practice

Interpersonal neurobiology provides a framework from which to examine the incorporation of mindsight and mindfulness into clinical practice, employing the brain’s capacity for neuroplasticity to move oneself and one’s clients toward greater well-being. Through the lens of interpersonal neurobiology, this article will examine the benefits of mindfulness for clinicians, clients, and the therapeutic relationship. Lasting changes associated with mindfulness practices, including the hypothesized potential to alter one’s previously insecure attachment patterns, will also be discussed. An explanation of how to cultivate mindfulness by starting with presence and sustaining the practice with compassion will then be presented. Finally, practices that cultivate growth within the therapist–client relationship will be explained, along with clinical applications and recent research demonstrating the neural correlates of these practices and how they are effective at the level of the brain itself.     

The Appeal to 'Professionalism' as a Disciplinary Mechanism

The paper examines the deployment of 'professional' discourses in occupational domains not traditionally associated with the professions (eg management, clerical or sales staff are turned into 'providers of professional services'). It first proposes to analyse professionalism as a disciplinary logic which inscribes 'autonomous' professional practice within a network of accountability and governs professional conduct at a distance. It is argued that professional labour is autonomous labour where the conditions of autonomy have already been inscribed in particular forms of conduct embodied in the notion of 'professional competence'. The paper then suggests that the appeal to the discursive resources of professionalism in new occupational domains potentially acts as a disciplinary mechanism that serves to profess 'appropriate' work identities and conducts. The extension of the disciplinary logic of professionalism is illustrated with the turn to competencies to regulate managerial work in Teamco, a large privatised service company. However, the final section of the paper cautions against a deterministic analysis of the disciplinary logic of professionalism in regulating employees' conduct, and suggests that the constructed and contestable nature of professionalism makes it an inevitably imperfect form of government.     

Benefits of an Arts-Based Mindfulness Group Intervention for Vulnerable Children

We discuss qualitative and quantitative research findings from a study exploring the benefits and effectiveness of a 12-week arts-based mindfulness group program for vulnerable children (children who were involved with the child welfare or mental health systems and experienced a variety of challenges). Using post-group individual interviews with children/guardians, and pre and post-intervention self-report data (using the Piers-Harris Children’s Self-Concept Scale and the Resiliency Scales for Children and Adolescents), we hypothesized that children would have improved resilience and self-concept after having completed the program. Interpretive thematic qualitative analysis was conducted using transcribed interview data collected from 47 children (30 girls and 17 boys with a mean age of 10.38 years). The perceived benefits of participating in the group included improved (a) emotion regulation, (b) mood, (c) coping/social skills, (d) confidence and self-esteem, (e) empathy, and (f) ability to pay attention and focus. The quantitative analysis used self-report data from 77 children (43 girls and 34 boys with a mean age of 10.34 years). A repeated measures MANOVA was used to examine changes across the intervention period. Our hypothesis that children would have better scores on self-concept after having completed the program was partially supported and this result reflected the perceived improvements derived from the qualitative analysis. The hypothesis that resilience would improve post-group was not supported. Using these promising results, we discuss how strengths-based and arts-based mindfulness group methods may be effective in engaging vulnerable children in a beneficial helping process.     

Self‐Employment as a Response to the Double Day for Women and Men in Canada*

Malgré une augmentation récente de la participation masculine aux tâches de la maison, les femmes assurent encore la plus grande partie de ce travail, que ce soit les soins apportés aux enfants, le nettoyage, la cuisine, les courses, la gestion financière, l'éducation ou les conseils personnels. Toutefois, de nombreuses femmes mènent une activité professionnelle rémunérée, qui vient s'ajouter à leurs responsabilités au sein du foyer. Cet article pose la question de savoir si les femmes choisissent le travail autonome comme un moyen d'alléger quelque peu les pressions rigides que leur impose leur «double travail». Alors que les femmes semblent effectivement se tourner vers le travail autonome pour cause de conflits entre travail et vie de famille, les hommes ne semblent pas guidés par les mêmes raisons. Despite recent increases in the amount of work done in the home by men, most of this work is still performed by women. These duties range from child care, cleaning, and cooking to shopping, financial management and domestic discipline and counselling. Yet many women also hold down paid jobs in addition to their domestic responsibilities. This paper investigates whether women turn to self‐employment as a way of introducing some flexibility into the rigid pressures from both sides of this “double day.” While women do appear to turn to self‐employment as one way of coping with conflicting family and work pressures, the same is not true for men.     

Coping with dating violence as a function of violence frequency and solution attribution: a structural modeling approach

This study presents a structural model of coping with dating violence. The model integrates abuse frequency and solution attribution to relate to college women's choices of coping strategies. Three hundred and twenty-four undergraduate women reported being targets of some physical abuse from a boyfriend and responded to questions regarding the abuse, their solution attribution, and their coping behaviors. Solution attribution mediated the relation between frequency of the abuse and coping. Abuse frequency had a positive effect on external solution attribution, and external solution attribution had a positive effect on the level of use of active coping, utilization of social support, denial, and acceptance.     

Congruence and Coherence as Predictors of Congruent Employment Outcomes

Four diagnostic signs derived from Holland's (1985a) theory of vocational personalities and occupational environments were evaluated for their ability to predict personality-environment congruence in a sample of 87 employed persons with special needs. Participants, 40% of whom were female, had an average age of 35.6 years. The diagnostic signs were employment congruence, aspirational congruence, employment coherence, and aspirational coherence, all measured during an initial assessment. The outcome was personality-environment congruence in a job held 15 months after the initial assessment. Employment congruence was found to be the best predictor of future personality-environment congruence. Employment coherence was also predictive of future personality-environment congruence, and aspirational congruence was correlated with the latter. The clinical and research implications of the findings were discussed.     

新形势下上海促进就业的机制研究

在创新驱动发展、经济转型升级的新形势下,上海就业状况出现了一些新的变化:一是就业总量增长缓慢,就业结构受产业结构调整影响较大;二是就业人口加速流向郊区,区域性就业问题日益凸显;三是失业群体年龄分化,双高失业现象尤为突出。因此,在就业总量和就业结构上对就业体制机制提出了新的要求。上海应构建一个功能较齐备的市场就业系统,以制度保障、产业协调发展、政企协作、市场发挥作用和个人积极就业为导向,逐步构建多层次就业体系,进一步促进就业,实现高质量就业、充分就业和合理就业的目标。为此,一是要优化失业保险调整机制,建立就业促进基础平台;二是要构建多层次就业促进体系,实现充分就业;三是要对接产业调整导向,实现高质量就业。