The sociology of organizations and the organization of sociology: some reflections on the making of a division of labour

This paper speculates on the emerging divide between 'organization studies'– a discipline largely practised in management departments – and the 'sociology of organizations'. Using organizational culture as a case study, I argue that 'forgetting' is a key move in the construction of a discipline. Much organization studies' writing on corporate culture and symbolism is predicated on an amnesia about a wide body of older sociological work on 'atmosphere', 'climate', 'personality' and 'informal structure'. This disciplinary constitution is productive of knowing, yet it also involves drawing boundaries that enable forgetting. Critically reflecting on the current division of labour in this area, as well as on the costs of amnesia, might encourage more historically informed forms of knowing.     

Table of Contents

ASAM on Medical Marijuana: No Such Thing ACA's Impact on Demand Variable, but Centers Honing Business Skills Detoxification Alternatives for Opioid‐Dependent Patients CEO of Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation on Need for Standards Still No MAT at Betty Ford Polaris and New Hope Collaborate on Web System McLellan Says NBC Misquoted him on AA Briefly Noted Coming up     

The godmother of gendered organizations: In celebration of the work of Joan Acker

Joan Acker can be considered the godmother of gendered organizations. In this paper, we reflect on the impact that Joan Acker's work has on our thinking and our careers as gender scholars in management and organization studies in Europe. First, we tell our personal stories of close encounters with Joan Acker. Second, we highlight what we consider to be two key contributions of Joan Acker. The first are the interrelated gendered processes regarding structure, culture, interaction and identity from her work in the early 1990s, the second the notion of inequality regimes from her later work on the intersections of gender, class and race. We then discuss how Acker's work has been influential in our research on gendered organizations, and in our teaching when we use it in our explanations of the functioning of gender in organizations to students, and in our work as advisors and consultants for organizations interested in equality, diversity and inclusion. Finally, we elaborate on new directions building on Acker's work, especially in current theorizing on gender and diversity in organizational change.     

A Review of Fathers' Accounts of Their Experiences of Parenting Children with Disabilities

Research on the effects on families of having a child with a disability has focused mainly on mothers or siblings with little attention being paid to fathers. While there is now a growing number of research studies and reviews regarding such fathers it is also important to assess fathers' own perceptions of their experiences. One source of fathers' perspectives are the published accounts by fathers of their experiences of parenting children with disabilities. This paper consists of a review of all eight such accounts which were located in the literature. Common themes which emerge from the review are discussed in the light of existing literature on the effects on family members. Finally the limitations of this review are discussed.     

Congressional passage of the Chinese exclusion act of 1882

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 marked an important turning point in the history of American race relations. According to the Act, the immigration of Chinese to the United States was completely halted. Chinese were thus excluded from the possibility of American citizenship. Previous studies on the Chinese Exclusion Act have found that the act was largely successful in systematically denying Chinese‐Americans their civil rights and for decades excluding them from the shores of the United States. Prior research, however, has tended to focus on the results of the act and has neglected a systematic analysis of the congressional vote on the act. Our study will examine the events leading up to the Chinese Exclusion Act in order to achieve a better understanding of the dynamics of the vote on the Act and conclude with a quantitative analysis of the vote on the bill in the House of Representatives in 1882. Our findings indicate that the House was severely divided on the issue of Chinese exclusion on partisan and regional lines.     

Fear of Crime Among Older People: A Reassessment of the Predictive Power of Crime-Related Factors*

The impact of victimization experiences and crime-related variables on act-specific fear of crime are reinvestigated. Perceived risk and vulnerability to crime were expected to mediate the influence of demographic and crime-related variables on fear. The results of this study suggest that fear of property loss is more explainable by crime-related variables than is fear of violent victimization. Perceptual variables diminish the direct impact of victimization experiences and local crime rate on each type of fear of crime. However, particular demographic and crime-related variables have different effects on fear of property loss and fear of violent crime. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research on the social determinants of fear of crime among the elderly.     

Analysis of the work of air traffic controllers of the approach control area (APP) of Porto Alegre, Brazil

This article presents a study on the activities of the air traffic controllers of the Approach Control Area (APP) of Porto Alegre, Brazil, in different real scenarios. Based on interviews, questionnaires and the analysis of film of real scenes, the following were identified and analyzed: i) the perceptions of risk and complexity of the different air traffic scenes observed; ii) the cognitive factors (knowledge, strategy and attention dynamics) involved in the task and iii) the perception of the controller's workload. The results showed that the task complexity depends on the weather conditions, the number and type of aircraft in observation and that the controllers perceive the scenes in a similar way irrespective of their time in the profession and the type of control (radar or coordination). Attention is the cognitive factor with the greatest impact on the work and mental demand has the greatest impact on workload followed by time demand. The literature on the controllers work in Brazil is scarce and, therefore, this study aimed to contribute to the understanding of the work in one APP in order to promote future changes in the very problematic Brazilian air traffic system.     

A comparison of objective and subjective measures of clinical competence

The purpose of this study was to determine if objective performance measures from a simulated patient practical examination were related to faculty subjective assessments of surgery students' performance. Another purpose was to determine if those students performing well on a simulated patient practical examination were the same students awarded honor ratings by faculty. Faculty ratings of students (n = 72) on history taking ability, physical exam skills, problem identification, use of investigations, problem integration, patient management, and patient relations skills were correlated with objective measures on these same criteria achieved on a practical exam employing three simulated patient cases. Correlations were also calculated to study the relationship between practical exam scores and honor rating recipients. Results indicated significant relationships between faculty subjective ratings and practical exam outcomes on all practical examination skills except physical exam skills and patient management skills. Findings also indicated the performance of honor students on the practical examination was significantly better than non-honor students on two skills: history-taking and patient relations. The implications of these research findings are discussed.     

A structured overview of 50 years of small-world research

This paper offers a structured overview of 50 years of small-world research. Initially formulated by Pool and Kochen in the mid-1950s, the small-world concept can be divided into six research foci, based on three dimensions (structural, process-related, psychological), and two process-related themes (diffusion, search). Building on this analytical distinction, the article provides a historical summary of the different phases of research on the small-world problem, and summarizes the empirical and theoretical progress on different facets of the small-world phenomenon. The paper concludes with a brief assessment of accomplishments and open questions, suggesting some possible future research areas.     

The Impact of Economic Crises on NGOs: The Case of Greece

The paper analyzes the impact of economic crises on organized civil society. A number of empirical studies have shown that a financial crisis can inflict a serious damage on the nonprofit sector—mainly through a sharp decline in revenues. However, the Greek case shows that a crisis can also have some positive effects on NGOs: many nonprofits introduced reforms that increased efficiency, the number of volunteers reached record levels, and there was a spectacular rise in funding by private philanthropic foundations. However, Greek NGOs continue to be dependent on external funding, unable to raise large sums from their members and the wider public. Organized Greek civil society continues to be turned upside down: dependency on EU and state funds is being replaced by dependency on private foundations.     

A Short History of the Sociology of Corruption: the Demise of Counter-Intuitivity and the Rise of Numerical Comparisons

This article examines the history of the sociology of corruption. It is shown that from the 1950s until the early 1970s, the sociological discourse on corruption was dominated by a functionalist approach that tried to offer a counter-intuitive perspective on deviant behavior in arguing that corruption has positive functions for political and economic development. Because of a political reading of this discourse, its ambiguous terminology and some difficulties in methodology, it was largely abandoned in sociology. However, this not only led to a change in paradigmatic orientations in the sociology of corruption, but also to a general decline in interest for the phenomenon in sociology. This gap was filled by economic models of corruption that could bypass some terminological difficulties in defining corruption and, building on this, also enabled a largely quantitative approach in numerically comparing, correlating and ranking corruption. The effect was a consensus on the mostly negative effects of corruption on development, a proliferation of the transparency ideal and the disability of sociology to offer an alternative perspective on evaluating the effects of corruption.     

The dynamics of welfare stigma

Drawing on the symbolic interactionist tradition, this paper focuses on the construction and management of welfare stigma in female welfare recipients' daily lives. In-depth interviews with ten women on welfare are analyzed, particularly in terms of how respondents manage their use of food stamps as stigma symbols. The complex and often contradictory pictures the women in this study painted of their feelings of stigma do not support the assumption, which underlies most research on welfare stigma, that welfare stigma is a coherent and relatively constant entity. The results of this study suggest instead that welfare stigma may vary depending on the social audience, situation, and recipient's life history. This analysis suggests that a symbolic interactionist approach to studying welfare stigma illuminates complex and dynamic aspects of welfare stigma that are obscured in other approaches and that future research on welfare stigma would benefit from drawing on the symbolic interactionist tradition.     

Impact of the tariff concessions of the RCEP agreement on the structure and evolution mechanism of manufacturing trade networks

In the world’s largest free trade area, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement will gradually eliminate tariffs on over 90% of member countries’ goods over the next 36 years. We construct a tariff policy effects evaluation framework based on the complex network theory. In this framework, the standard Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) model is recursively extended to generate forecasted data of bilateral trade. Based on this, we model the RCEP manufacturing trade networks and analyze the response of its core–periphery structure to the tariff concessions. Then, we evaluate policy effects on the evolution of trade patterns based on motif analysis. Finally, we construct separable temporal exponential family random graph models (STERGM) to explore the influence path and degree of the new tariff agreement on the evolutionary mechanisms of trade networks.     

The concept of adequate causation and Max Weber's comparative sociology of religion

Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, studied in isolation, shows mainly an elective affinity or an adequacy on the level of meaning between the Protestant ethic and the 'spirit' of capitalism. Here it is suggested that Weber's subsequent essays on 'The Economic Ethics of World Religions' are the result of his opinion that adequacy on the level of meaning needs and can be verified by causal adequacy. After some introductory remarks, particularly on elective affinity, the paper tries to develop the concept of adequate causation and the related concept of objective possibility on the basis of the work of v. Kries on whom Weber heavily relied. In the second part, this concept is used to show how the study of the economic ethics of India, China, Rome and orthodox Russia can support the thesis that the 'spirit' of capitalism, although it may not have been caused by the Protestant ethic, was perhaps adequately caused by it.     

Comparison on the Effectiveness of Different Types of Teacher Feedback on Correcting Oral Production in English Classroom of Postgraduate Education

This paper is mainly about the comparison on effectiveness of three types of corrective feedback: explicit Correction, recasts and elicitation. Through studying on students' oral production, corrected percentage of each feedback type can be calculated. Also by asking students to fill out questionnaires, their preference on different feedback can be concluded. The final research result will be obtained on the basis of these two parts, which brings valuable teaching implications and promotes education.     

Trajectory of Influence of Parental Divorce on Children's Heterosexual Relationships

This is a qualitative research study adopting a naturalistic paradigm in exploring the influence of parental divorce on childen's subsequent heterosexual relationship. Numerous studies have been conducted to verify the nature and extent of this influence though most of them adhere to the postivist-empirical tradition. However, the influence of parental divorce on children's subsequent heterosexual relationships is inherently an extremely complex human interactive process which is very difficult, if not impossible, to be understood through a positivist tradition which focuses more on verification rather than understanding. Gathered through a naturalistic paradigm, the data of this study reveal the complexity of the process involved "A trajectory of parental influence on children's heterosexual relationships" is proposed. The understanding of this process sheds light on the long-term effect of parental divorce on children regarding their adult heterosexual relationships. As such, this study bears significant implications for marital therapy to adult children of divorce.     

The Science of Practice and the Practice of Science: Pierre Bourdieu and the History of Science

Pierre Bourdieu is one of the most celebrated and widely known French sociologists of his time. During his long and very productive career, Bourdieu worked not only on very diverse areas of sociology, such as art, religion, the legal system, and education, but also on the culture of the Kabyle, on the marriage strategies of bachelors in Southern France, and on the sociology of the French intellectuals of his era. However, despite his international influence, his work has remained virtually unutilized within most contemporary historiography of science. This article aims to fill this lacuna. After a short presentation of his main theoretical concepts, I discuss Bourdieu's work on scientific practice. I then present his more historically oriented work and finish by suggesting some ways Bourdieu's insights can be useful for history of science.     

A comparison of pro- and anti-nudity college students on acceptance of self and of culturally diverse others

This study examined if college students supportive of social nudity would differ from students opposed to social nudity on self-acceptance and acceptance of culturally diverse others. Using data from 384 participants, pro- and anti-nudity groups were formed based on students scoring in the upper (n = 59) and lower (n = 64) quartiles on a measure assessing attitudes toward social nudity. Hypotheses were partially supported. Results indicated that pro-nudity students significantly differed from anti-nudity students on comfort with their bodies' appearances, but not on self-acceptance. Pro-nudity students also were significantly more accepting of other religious groups and gays and lesbians compared with anti-nudity students, but they did not differ on their attitudes toward the disabled. A trend was noted indicating that pro-nudity students were less prejudiced toward ethnically dissimilar others compared with anti-nudity students. Follow-up exploratory analyses suggested that pro-nudity students' increased openness to sexuality in general accounted for the two groups' discrepant views toward religiously dissimilar others and gays and lesbians. Pro-nudity students' relative tolerance for cultural diversity is discussed.     

Vulnerability to violence of girls of the street in Mauritania

This article is concerned with an empirical study of girls of the street in Mauritania. This study is original for three main reasons. First, it investigates Mauritania, a country where there have been very few studies of the phenomenon of children of the street. Secondly, it seems to us that though the academic literature on street children sometimes provides comparisons between girls and boys, very few studies focus specifically on girls of the street. Thirdly, the literature focusing on children of the street generally elucidates the mechanisms that lead some young people to live on the streets. On the contrary to previous literature, our study does not directly focus on mechanisms that lead some young people to live on the streets. Our study focuses on the question of the socio-economic determinants of the risk of violence. In other words, whereas the literature, following the hypothesis of aberrant families, uses violence as an explanatory factor for the phenomenon of children of the street, we attempt here to highlight the explanatory factors for the risk of violence and we treat this risk as an explained variable. A novel finding emerges from this study: there is less risk of violence facing girls of the street if the mother does not work. Conversely, the risk of violence is greater if the mother works and the father stays at home.     

The Effect of Joint-Child-Custody Legislation on the Child-Support Receipt of Single Mothers

Due to the preponderance of single mothers on public assistance, delinquent child support has been a contentious political issue in the U.S. We examine whether joint-child-custody reform affects the child-support receipt of single mothers. We use variation in the timing of joint-custody reforms across states to identify the effect of joint custody on the child-support receipt of single mothers. Joint-custody enactment raises the probability of receiving child support for all single mothers by 8%. The effect on all single mothers is driven by the effect on divorced mothers, as separated and never-married mothers are unaffected by joint-custody reform. We conclude joint-custody reform confers the most benefit on divorced mothers and their children, particularly those who do not receive public assistance.