Exploration of the impact of organisational context on a workplace safety and health intervention

ABSTRACT

The Safety and Health Improvement Program (SHIP) was designed to increase workers’ safety and health using supervisor/leadership training. SHIP was implemented and evaluated in a cluster randomized controlled trial with 20 supervisors and 292 construction crew members representing a high-risk industry. The intervention had three components: (1) computer-based training to teach supervisors ways to better support worker safety and work-life challenges; (2) supervisor behavioural self-monitoring to facilitate transfer of training to practice; and (3) team-based discussions with supervisors and work crew members to identify challenges and opportunities for improvement with 30, 60, and 90 day follow-up check-in meetings. Main effects for the intervention on perceptions of family supportive supervisor behaviors, team effectiveness, and work-life effectiveness were not found, suggesting that the pre-intervention context could help explain the lack of intervention effects. We found that the intervention was more beneficial for work crew members who had poorer pre-intervention perceptions of their supervisor (lower leader-member exchange) and lower perceived team cohesion, suggesting the important impact of the organisational context on intervention effects. We argue that perhaps these work crews were more ready for change and improvements in functioning than were the crews that were already functioning well.     

Parental participation in child protection case conferences

Child protection case conferences (CPCCs) are a fundamental part of child protection processes within the United Kingdom. They provide a mechanism for professionals and families to share information, enter an assessment dialogue, and develop a plan for intervention and support. The participation of parents is a core feature of U.K. and Scottish CPCCs. This reflects an international trend that recognizes the rights of family members to participate in the decision‐making processes of child protection. This article reports on the analysis of 11 qualitative interviews with parents who had attended CPCCs in Scotland. The findings highlight that parents were profoundly affected by these meetings, which were experienced as distressing. Parents lacked clarity about the purposes of CPCCs and found the large number of professionals in attendance intimidating. The discursive practices and structural arrangements of CPCCs acted to privilege professional voices and marginalize the voices of parents. The findings of this study raise important questions about parental participation in CPCCs in the contemporary context of child protection practice.     

When corporate actors take over the game: the corporatization of organic,recycling and breast cancer activism

Social change endeavors are increasingly shaped by corporate interests and, in some instances, large corporations take over ideas and practices initiated by social change advocates. We label this process ‘corporatization’ and argue that, while it is clearly a variant of co-optation, it has specific qualities that warrant a separate analytical framework. Using existing research to examine the cases of breast cancer activism, organic food, and recycling in the United States – all extreme examples of corporatization – we conceptualize corporatization as a subset of co-optation in which: (1) corporations come to dominate fields initiated by activists; (2) corporatized versions become widespread; and (3) alternative, ‘response,’ movements emerge to oppose corporatized versions. We posit that, in each case, ‘corporate takeover devices’ allowed corporate entities to ‘join the game’ and eventually come to dominate fields initiated by social movements.     

Effects of Mands on Instructional Control: A Laboratory Simulation

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior - The effects of two types of mands on participants’ adherence to instructions were examined across two groups using procedures based on Hackenberg and Joker...     

Using Dramaturgy to Better Understand Contemporary Western Tattoos

Spurred on by increasing participation rates, scholarship on tattoos in Western societies has increased noticeably in recent decades. Often focusing on members of the middle class, scholars have assumed that the increasing number of people with tattoos is evidence of mainstream acceptance. In the following article, I critically evaluate claims of tattoo's new mainstream status. Rather than being embraced by the mainstream and power elite, studies and legal proceedings show that tattoos and piercings are only tolerated to a certain degree. I suggest that applying Erving Goffman's dramaturgical approach to contemporary tattoos provides a more complete understanding of tattoo's cultural location. It also allows the focus of the discussion to move beyond the individual attributes and motivations of tattoo wearers and onto the social interactions surrounding them. Moreover, a dramaturgical analysis of tattoos shows the need to properly differentiate between tattoos that are always visible and those that can be concealed. I end by offering a conceptualization of visible tattoos for future sociological research.     

A Comparative Cancer Risk Evaluation of MTBE and Other Compounds (Including Naturally Occurring Compounds) in Drinking Water in New Hampshire

Methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) was added to gasoline in New Hampshire (NH) between 1995 and 2006 to comply with the oxygenate requirements of the 1990 Amendments to the Clean Air Act. Leaking tanks and spills released MTBE into groundwater, and as a result, MTBE has been detected in drinking water in NH. We conducted a comparative cancer risk assessment and a margin-of-safety (MOS) analysis for several constituents, including MTBE, detected in NH drinking water. Using standard risk assessment methods, we calculated cancer risks from exposure to 12 detected volatile organic compounds (VOCs), including MTBE, and to four naturally occurring compounds (i.e., arsenic, radium-226, radium-228, and radon-222) detected in NH public water supplies. We evaluated exposures to a hypothetical resident ingesting the water, dermally contacting the water while showering, and inhaling compounds volatilizing from water in the home. We then compared risk estimates for MTBE to those of the other 15 compounds. From our analysis, we concluded that the high-end cancer risk from exposure to MTBE in drinking water is lower than the risks from all the other VOCs evaluated and several thousand times lower than the risks from exposure to naturally occurring constituents, including arsenic, radium, and radon. We also conducted an MOS analysis in which we compared toxicological points of departure to the NH maximum contaminant level (MCL) of 13 µg/L. All of the MOSs were greater than or equal to 160,000, indicating a large margin of safety and demonstrating the health-protectiveness of the NH MCL for MTBE.     

On the Social Validity of Behavior-Analytic Communication: a Call for Research and Description of One Method

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior - It has often been suggested that nonexperts find the communication of behavior analysts to be viscerally off-putting. We argue that this concern should be the...