The interplay between formal project memberships and informal advice seeking in knowledge-intensive firms: A multilevel network approach

In this study we investigate the interplay between knowledge workers’ formal project team memberships and their informal interactions from a multilevel network perspective. Conceptualizing knowledge workers’ affiliation with project teams as a membership network and their interactions as an advice network, we discuss how shared project team memberships as well as multiple memberships influence patterns of informal exchange in knowledge-intensive organizations. To empirically determine the impact of formal organization on informal exchange we apply exponential random graph models for multilevel networks to relational data collected on 434 R&D employees working on 218 project teams in a high-tech firm in Germany. Our results show that employees sharing project memberships create advice ties to each other but do not exchange advice reciprocally. In addition, we find a negative relationship between having a high number of project memberships and informally seeking or providing advice.     

Intimacy boundaries: between mental health nurses & psychiatric patients

This was the first research study in Canada to explore intimacy boundary violations and sexual misconduct between nurses (both RNs and registered psychiatric nurses) and patients. Using a researcher-generated survey, a total of 923 mental health nurses commented on their sexual attraction to patients, and dating and sexual intercourse patterns with patients. The findings indicated that very few nurses had dated or engaged in sexual intercourse with discharged patients, and the few nurses who had done so tended to be younger men prepared at the registered psychiatric nursing diploma level. A small number of nurses believed it was permissible to have a sexual relationship with a patient while the patient was hospitalized, but none reported having a current relationship. Given the severity of this intimacy boundary violation, nurses need to be educated regarding the serious and dangerous psychiatric effects that can result for patients from engaging in a sexual relationship with nurses. The Code of Ethics of the Canadian Nurses Association and nurses' obligation to follow it needs to be reinforced. Nurses engaging in intimacy boundary violations are vulnerable to patient-initiated lawsuits.     

Active Commuting Patterns at a Large,Midwestern College Campus

Abstract

Objective: To understand patterns and influences on active commuting (AC) behavior. Participants: Students and faculty/staff at a university campus. Methods: In April–May 2008, respondents answered an online survey about mode of travel to campus and influences on commuting decisions. Hierarchical regression analyses predicted variance in walking and biking using sets of demographic, psychological, and environmental variables. Results: Of 898 respondents, 55.7% were female, 457 were students (50.4%). Students reported more AC than faculty/staff. For students, the models explained 36.2% and 29.1% of the variance in walking and biking, respectively. Among faculty/staff, the models explained 45% and 25.8% of the variance in walking and biking. For all models, the psychological set explained the greatest amount of variance. Conclusions: With current economic and ecological concerns, AC should be considered a behavior to target for campus health promotion.     

Ethnographic boundaries: Culture,class, and sexuality in Tokyo

For those engaged in participant-observation, the first few months in the field are usually extremely difficult. By taking a reflexive turn, however, the events recorded during entrée are invaluable for revealing the social and cultural dimensions of the new life a researcher creates for him or herself. The following is an account of one researcher's attempt to enter a community in contemporary Tokyo. This account reveals the boundaries of culture, class and sexuality between the researcher and the community. The complex set of highly personal ramifications resulting from crossing those boundaries are also discussed.Many people have read various versions of this paper, but I would especially like to thank the following for taking the time to provide me with thought provoking comments: Beverly Eliasoph, Steven Brint, Deborah Davis-Friedmann, Ezra Vogel, Robert J. Smith, Shulamit Reinharz, and Lee Rainwater. I am especially indebted to Dorinne Kondo, whose insights and warm support proved to be invaluable. Of course, all of the usual disclaimers apply.     

Hospital cost shifting, a continuing debate

This Issue Brief examines the evidence on hospital cost shifting. It defines cost shifting, explores the incentives facing hospitals and payers, reviews and critiques the new evidence on cost shifting, and discusses the policy concerns that arise from the new learning. Cost shifting has a precise and easily understood meaning. It does not mean that some payers pay different prices than others. Different prices are commonplace throughout the economy. Rather, cost shifting exists when the prices faced by one group of payers are higher because another group pays less. To be able to cost shift, a hospital must have market power, and it must not yet have fully exercised that power. There has been a spate of recent cost-shifting studies. The better known studies focus on industrywide, revenue-to-cost margins by payer. They find that the extent of cost shifting declined in the mid-1990's. The methods underlying these studies have been criticized in the academic literature, with the strong suggestion that the studies overstate any true cost shifting. Cross-sectional studies compared measures of prices across individual hospitals. These studies have failed to find evidence of hospital cost shifting. However, they suffer from a potential inability to control for levels of service, quality, and amenities that may simultaneously have changed as well. Dynamic studies compare individual measures of hospital prices through time and allow each hospital to serve as its own control. These studies find no evidence of hospital cost shifting. As one analysis concluded: "We found no evidence to suggest that cost-shifting strategies that might protect hospital revenues in the face of financial pressure were undertaken successfully." Rather than cost shifting, the existing evidence points to hospital competition limiting the provider's ability to raise prices. Whatever market power hospitals once enjoyed is disappearing--and with it the ability to cost shift. This research suggests that Medicare reform or Medicaid restructuring will have little direct effect on the hospital prices that employers and their workers pay for health care. The author argues that cost shifting is dead. However, the increased hospital competition necessarily squeezes hospital profits. This reduces the amount of charity care they can provide. Expect to see more and more examples of hospitals unable to provide care to nonpaying patients. This also suggests that care for the indigent will become a more pronounced public issue. This is a form of "cost" shifting, one that the "system" will need to deal with.     

Transnational households and ritual: an overview

In this article we introduce five papers, all by social anthropologists, all concerned with transnational households and ritual. Despite wide–ranging research on transnational migration and diasporas, many aspects have been accorded less consideration than they deserve. The transnational practices of migrant families, other than remittances and other economic activity, remain under–investigated. Some thought has been given to the transnational dimension of religious belief systems, notably Islam, but the micro–politics of religion has been largely ignored, and there has been little discussion of transnational religious practices (rituals) at the level of households and families, especially those performed by migrants back in their countries of origin. Household–level analyses of the performances of and meanings attributed to life–crisis rituals and consideration of what Salih has called the ‘transnational division of ritual space’ offer a valuable route to understanding relations between place, culture, ethnicity and gender among migrants in a transnational world, and illuminate contemporary processes of globalization.     

Socioeconomics of female-headed households in Shiraz,Iran

"A significant portion of households in urban Iran are headed by females. This study explores the disadvantaged economic position of households headed by women vis-a-vis units headed by men in the city of Shiraz. Sex differentials in socioeconomic characteristics of household heads are discussed and housing facilities for households headed by males and females compared. Finally, an economic typology of female family heads is provided." Data are from a 1980 survey of 2,829 households, 235 of which were headed by females.     

Housing tenure,structure, and crowding among Latino households

This article examines the effect of federal housing and public assistance programs on the housing quality of different Latino households. The research tests models of crowding and housing tenure and structure for Latino households. The data for this research are from the 1990 Latino National Political Survey-Panel Study of Income Dynamics (LNPS-PSID). Findings reveal that housing and public assistance programs do help alleviate crowding among the Latino population, but they do not help Latino households achieve ownership of a single-family home. All the demographic variables in the model contribute to the explanation of crowding, and a majority also significantly explain housing tenure and structure. Significant differences are found among Latino subgroups in the explanatory variables for crowding, tenure, and structure. She is also the director of the Center for the Study of Aging at Illinois State. Her research interests include housing of minority households and congregate housing for the elderly. She received her Ph.D. from Iowa State University. Her research interests include housing needs of Latino households, resource management of female-headed Puerto Rican households, fertility decisions of Puerto Rican women, and student labor force participation. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois.     

Breaking the in‐group out‐group: shifting boundaries in transnational partner choice processes of individuals of Moroccan,Tunisian, Algerian,Turkish, Punjabi Sikh,Pakistani and Albanian descent in Belgium

The ongoing popularity in some second and third generation migrants in Western Europe of marrying a partner from the countries of origin of their (grand)parents is considered to be problematic for micro and macro level societal integration of some migrant populations. Partner choice and marriage practices in migrant communities are problematized in public, media and political discourses by discriminating them from marriage practices in the ‘native’ population on the basis of three related dichotomies: (1) agency versus structure, (2) us versus them and (3) romantic versus instrumental marriage intentions dichotomies. By means of in‐depth qualitative research methodologies on the partner choice processes of women and men of Turkish, Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian, Punjabi Sikh, Pakistani and Albanian descent in Belgium and an intersectional theoretical approach, this article aims to deconstruct popular and simplifying dichotomous representations of partner choice processes in these migrant populations. Our study reveals how religious, gender and social class boundaries are stretched to meet personal/individual desires and preferences. Individuals do experience social restrictions when it concerns social group boundaries and the potential partners that they can look for. At the same time individuals are never fully determined by their social environment, they creatively develop strategies to by‐pass certain restrictions and to some extent are able to meet their personal needs while being sensitive to the desires of their social environment.     

The many ways COVID-19 affects households: consumption,time, and health outcomes

Review of Economics of the Household - Many of the direct and indirect effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are mediated mainly through the economics of the household. The Review of Economics of the...     

Hospital pricing: cost shifting and competition

The issue of cost shifting has taken on enormous policy implications. It is estimated that unsponsored and undercompensated hospital costs--one measure of cost shifting--has totaled $21.5 billion in 1991. The health services research literature indicates that hospitals set different prices for different payers. However, the empirical evidence on hospitals' ability to raise prices to one payer to make up for unsponsored care or lower payments by other payers is mixed at best. No study has concluded that hospitals have raised prices to fully adjust for such actions. The extent of cost shifting is limited by the market. When a hospital has market power, it is able to set prices above marginal costs. However, when a buyer has enough patient/subscribers and a willingness to direct them to particular providers based on price considerations, hospitals have less flexibility in raising prices above costs. Thus, the extent of cost shifting is limited by the market. Cost shifting is not as easy as it may have been in the past because the nature of hospital and insurer competition has changed radically in the last decade. While hospital quality, services, and amenities still matter, some buyers are increasingly concerned about the price they pay. Evidence from studies of PPO and HMO negotiations with hospitals suggests that hospitals' market power is eroding, at least in some areas. In areas with relatively few hospital competitors and little PPO or HMO activity, Medicaid and Medicare price reductions and uncompensated care burdens will be partially absorbed by higher prices paid by private payers. In more price sensitive markets and in markets in which prices to private payers have risen to those commensurate with the market power of local hospitals, such cost shifting will not occur. A market-based approach in hospital pricing requires an explicit policy for the uninsured. In a competitive market, a hospital that traditionally cared for the uninsured by spending some of its profits on them will be unable to do so, at least to the same extent as it did in the past. Increased competition in health care without consideration of the uninsured will decrease the uninsured's access to care.     

Allocation of resources in households: children's perspectives

This paper incorporates children's perspectives on the issue of resource distribution in households. It is part of a relatively new trend of sociological explorations into childhood. The paper aims to review earlier studies and literature on children's access to money, food, space and time. The data illuminates norms governing distributive justice between adults and children in families.     

Using feedback,reinforcement and information to reduce energy consumption in households: A field-experiment

The department of Social and Organizational Psychology of Leyden University carried out a research project on the effectiveness of behavior modification strategies in influencing energy use in family households. A field experiment was carried out testing the effects on conservation of four strategies. These strategies were: (1) general information about how to conserve energy in the home, (2) weekly feedback with respect to the magnitude and financial consequences of people's personal energy consumption. (3) weekly feedback with respect to the magnitude and financial consequences of people's personal energy consumption compared with the consumption of people in comparable settings (i.e. same houses), (4) weekly comparative feedback and financial reinforcement for decreases in energy use.The results indicate that individual feedback (strategy 2) and financial reinforcement with comparative feedback (strategy 4) are effective in reducing energy use; that comparative feedback (strategy 3) is effective under certain conditions; and that general information (strategy 1) is not effective. The relation between residents' attitudes and their consumption levels is discussed.     

Contested boundaries,contested places: The Natura 2000 network in Ireland

Where to draw the boundary line between ‘nature’ and ‘society’ has perplexed sociologists, ecologists and geographers through the ages. This paper was inspired by environmental sociologist, Alan Irwin, who suggests that we shift our focus from asking ‘where to draw the line’ between what is considered ‘natural’ and ‘social’ to exploring the ‘very process of line-drawing’ as it occurs within specific socio-ecological contexts (Irwin, 2001). Nature conservation initiatives in the form of “protected areas” provide remarkable insights into attempts to devise and manage conceptual and spatial-geographic boundaries between nature and society. Here, I discuss Ireland’s contribution to the Natura 2000 network of protected ecological sites. I show how line-drawing in Natura 2000, from EU right down to local levels, is a highly contingent, contested and uncertain process; how both ‘nature’ and ‘society’ can frustrate attempts to draw and maintain these boundaries and the conflicts, uncertainties and dilemmas thrown up in the process. The paper ends by considering the extent to which this “boundary-work” analysis provides an insightful, though incomplete picture of the experiences of and challenges posed by Natura 2000 on-the ground, while posing some more philosophical questions about nature–society boundaries and the challenges they pose to nature conservationism.     

Gender preference,biased sex ratio,and parental investments in single-child households

This article investigates parental investments in single-child households. It shows that son preference triggers more parental investments in children and its effects are stronger on investments in sons. A rise in the sex ratio creates a marriage market squeeze. It, however, has ambiguous effects on investments in children, which depends on how strong these investments are as measures for influencing children’s marriage probability. A rise in the sex ratio may particularly raise investments in daughters and lower investments in sons, or vice versa, or it may induce more or less parental investments in both sons and daughters. If the sex ratio and preference of sons are correlated, then the effect of the preference for sons on investments in children is generally ambiguous. If the sex ratio is influenced by parental health investments, then son preference induces a higher sex ratio. However, the higher sex ratio has ambiguous effects on the subsequent parental investments before a child’s marriage. We also show that parental preference of child services over a child’s marital status may explain parental investments.

Multiple Risks,Multiple Worries,and Adolescent Coping

Summary

To describe the process that clinicians use to engage vulnerable urban adolescents in mental health counseling, the authors propose a tri-partite model of clinical engagement that takes into account: (1) consumer preference; (2) risk and worry; and (3) youth development (YD) perspectives. These conceptual lenses embody what adolescents want to talk about, their exposure to behavioral and environmental risks, and their coping and strengths. Based on responses given by urban adolescents seeking mental health services to a clinical self-assessment questionnaire (Adquest), this paper uses this tripartite model to summarize patterns of risk that service applicants experience, what they worry about, and how they cope. It explores the substructure of adolescent risk and vulnerability, through factor analysis of relevant items across a broad range of Adquest life areas, to develop a typology of adolescents by risk and worry. Patterns of coping and desire to talk across a range of life areas within this typology are described, as are the practice implications. The authors conclude that even those adolescents who most concern clinicians—because they have high environmental and behavioral risk and low worry-present many different opportunities for engagement.