Seasonality and Flexible Labor in Resorts: Organizations,Employees, and Local Labor Markets

Seasonality, a chronic problem in the resort industry, is addressed in this seven-year participant observation and in-depth interview study of five Hawaiian resorts contiguously arrayed along a sandy beachfront strip. In order to operate profitably, these organizations must keep their labor costs trimmed as they move through annual cyclical fluctuations that place different labor demands on each department. We examine their use of various kinds of "flexible" employees, including both seasonally contingent and adaptable full-time workers. We examine the way these organizations expand and constrict their labor force annually. Studies of contingency labor have shown the benefits of this solution for organizations but have ignored the effects of labor flexibility on employees and local labor markets. In this article we take this broader view, looking at the integration of organizations, employees, and local labor markets and the way their interplay is forged in symbiotic and exploitive ways to maintain a system of human resources that reinforces a stratified social relations of production.     

Benchmarking airports from a managerial perspective

Benchmarking airports is currently popular both in the academic literature and in practice but has proved rather problematic due to the heterogeneity inherent in any reasonably sized dataset. Most studies either treat the airport production technology as a black box, or separate the terminal and airside activities, assessing them individually. In this article we analyze airports as a single unit due to the direct complementarities, thus avoiding the artificial separation of inputs. Using data envelopment analysis (DEA), we open the black box in which a network describes the production process, thus demonstrating the sequential effects that separate final from intermediate outputs, including those under partial managerial control and those that are known to be non-discretionary. To further improve the benchmarking process, we identify appropriate peers for a case study of 43 European airports over 10 years, through a restricted reference mechanism according to pre-defined characteristics. Compared to basic DEA models, the results of the proposed structure provide more meaningful benchmarks with comparable peer units and target values that are potentially achievable in the medium term. By identifying each unit's individual reference set, unique outliers influence the performance measurement less severely than occurs under basic DEA. In addition, the formulations produce an implementation path that moves the airport towards the Pareto frontier gradually, taking into account the regulatory and business environment in which the unit is located.     

Dual-careerism and the conjoint-career couple

This article introduces and defines the concept of conjoint-career couples, marital partners that work in the same field or profession. Drawing on the narratives of three couples with structurally varied experiences (older man/younger woman, older woman/younger man, peers), we describe and analyze some of the problems and issues confronting a growing number of academics in the current labor pool. We conclude by discussing some of the overarching patterns common to this situation and the advantages and disadvantages associated with it. Finally, we propose a variety of social policies which academic institutions may want to consider to help meet the challenge of these changing market demographics. Currently she is writing and teaching in the areas of deviance, social theory, and the sociology of children. She is the author ofWheeling and Dealing (Columbia University Press, 1985) and coeditor (with Peter Adler) ofThe Social Dynamics of Financial Markets (JAI Press, 1984). He is the author ofMomentum (Sage, 1981),Membership Roles in Field Research (co-authored with Patricia A. Adler, Sage, 1987), and the editor, along with Patricia A. Adler, ofJournal of Contemporary Ethnography andSociological Studies of Child Development. Her special interests are divorce and remarriage and she is the author (with R.H. Rodgers) ofDivorced Families (W.W. Norton, 1987). His areas of interest are family dynamics with a focus on myth and ritual formation in families. His interests are in social control and political economy. He is the author ofCastles of Our Conscience: Social Control and the American State, 1800–1985, Polity Press, forthcoming. She is the author of books and articles on deviance and social control, qualitative methods, and gender, includingGender Issues in Field Research (Sage, 1988),Madwives: Schizophrenic Women in the 1950s (Rutgers University Press, 1987),The Court of Last Resort: Mental Illness and the Law (University of Chicago Press, 1982).     

Values,decision-making,and the rich life

Young people increasingly take only one value seriously in making decisions about careers, that of salary levels. They should understand that there are many values which need to be weighed in making decisions about employment. Given the present milieu, it may prove effective to use language which describes these other, nonmonetary values as contributors to the “rich lifer”     

Presenting DEA graphically

This paper introduces a methodology that permits presentation of the results of data envelopment analysis (DEA) graphically. A specialized form of multi-dimensional scaling, Co-Plot, enables presentation of the DEA results in a two-dimensional space, hence in a clear, understandable manner. When plotting ratios rather than original data, DEA efficient units can be visualized clearly, as well as their connections to specific variables and/or ratios. Furthermore, Co-Plot can be used in an exploratory data analysis to identify outliers, whose data require additional scrutiny, and potentially inconsequential variables that could be aggregated or removed from the analysis with little effect on the subsequent DEA results.     

The identity career of the graduate student: Professional socialization to academic sociology

The pathway through graduate school is challenging and difficult. Nearly everyone, at one point or another, confronts the existential question of whether they want to drop out or to continue. Several challenges emerge as key to graduate students’ success in progressing through their programs. p]The first is moving from the secure but sometimes suffocating structure of a core graduate cohort into the role of independent student. This requires navigating an individual pathway into areas of specialization and a mentor. Programs can do no more than make faculty and courses available; from there, students must make connections and decisions on their own. The second critical transition involves moving from absorbing to creating knowledge. Accomplishing this requires that students grasp the conceptual foundation of the perspective (the “sociological eye”), learn how to gather data, to master the challenge of moving from immersion in the specificity of their research to contribute to more abstract theory, and to understand the conventions through which they must present their scholarly work. Along the way there are myriad interpersonal challenges for them to negotiate. Allegiances that they forge are then relinquished to make way for new, more stage-relevant ones. Students often undergo radical changes in their values and consciousness as they progress through their programs. They are bonded into an equalitarian model of evaluation and support in their cohesive, early years in the cohort. But as they forge scholarly accomplishments and turn their eyes increasingly toward the discipline, they recognize that their democratic ideals must yield to the meritocratic reality of the profession.     

Abortion: A Social-Psychological Perspective

More than most medical procedures, abortion is embedded in a social context that has implications for psychological reactions of patients. Following a brief history of legislation and research on abortion, correlates of post-abortion reponses are reviewed. A social-psychological framework is suggested which views abortion as a stress experience. Responses to the experience will be a function of the nature and meaning of the pregnancy to the individual woman, her defensive and coping style, and the social environment surrounding the abortion experience. Psychological effects of the procedure on the partner and on health professionals who perform abortions are also considered.