Editors' Introduction

For the professional middle class in information industries, “working from home” is an increasingly common feature of the employment landscape, resulting from the affordability and portability of information and communication technologies (ICTs). The phrase invokes a sense of freedom from the banality of the traditional office, offering flexibility in both working hours and location when other commitments prevail. In recent debates in Australian politics, working from home is also offered as an empowered choice for women who seek to combine paid work and childcare duties, thereby consecrating a preferable version of (post)feminist subjectivity suited to neoliberal economics and ideologies. This paper shows how these subjectivities have been represented in recent ICT advertising for two purposes: firstly, to highlight the role of mainstream media in normalising preferred uses of new media technology for work purposes; and secondly, to note how this process contributes to wider discourses limiting the aspirations of middle-class feminist politics to an individual level. In doing so, the paper seeks to question the ethical horizon of new media advertising as well as the feminist and labour politics upon which its appeal relies.     

Educating undergraduate group workers: increasing confidence through experiential learning

This article documents the results of a study examining the extent to which undergraduate social work students attained increased confidence in group work facilitation. Social work students participated in 8-week experiential groups with the expressed purpose of exploring their own viewpoints and experiences of diversity. The study highlights the application and effectiveness of experiential learning theory in social work education Results indicate students perceived enhanced self-assurance in group leadership. Outcomes also denote increased sensitivity to issues of diversity. As a consequence, students expressed a commitment to continuing their education regarding cultural diversity. Implications for group work training and culturally competent practice are incorporated.     

Playing,Sitting Out,and Observing the Game: An Investigation of Faculty Members’ Perspectives on Political Behavior in Ethical Decision Making

Ethical dilemmas are inherently ambiguous, complex, and ill-defined. Additionally, these dilemmas involve multiple stakeholders. These characteristics may induce political behavior as a resolution tactic. Thus, the goal of the present effort was to investigate perspectives on politics among researchers in an ethical decision-making context. A qualitative analysis of interviews with university faculty members revealed that faculty members’ perspectives on political behavior in an ethical decision-making context fall into a number of categories, including positive, negative, and realistic views of political activity. The implications of these varying perspectives on ethical decision making are discussed.     

Decomposition of the difference between two rates with hierarchical factors

A decomposition method for the difference between two rates when data are classified by two factors, one of which may be considered as a more direct factor than the other for the event under consideration, is presented in this paper. The two factors are treated as hierarchical and thus this method is conceptually different from the decomposition methods of Kitagawa (1955) and Das Gupta (1978), in which two factors are treated as symmetrical. Our method is shown to be a balanced version of the Cho-Retherford (1973) decomposition method. Analyses of neonatal mortality rates using our method are presented as an example.     

Use of propensity score matching to evaluate a national smoking cessation media campaign

Sustained mass media campaigns have been recommended to stem the tobacco epidemic in the United States. Propensity score matching (PSM) was used to estimate the effect of awareness of a national smoking cessation media campaign (EX) on quit attempts and cessation-related cognition. Participants were 4,067 smokers and recent quitters aged 18-49 in targeted U.S. media markets. Controlling for potential confounders through PSM and regression analysis, confirmed awareness of EX was not significantly associated with either outcome at 6-month follow-up. Matched analyses excluding 217 quitters resulted in a significant effect of EX on both outcomes.     

Environmental and social supply chain management sustainability practices: construct development and measurement

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualise and operationalise the concept of supply chain management sustainability practices. Based on a multi-stage procedure involving a literature review, expert Q-sort and pre-test process, pilot test and survey of 156 supply chain directors and managers in Ireland, we develop a multidimensional conceptualisation and measure of social and environmental supply chain management sustainability practices. The research findings show theoretically sound constructs based on four underlying sustainable supply chain management practices: monitoring, implementing systems, new product and process development and strategy redefinition. A two-factor model is then identified as the most reliable: comprising process-based and market-based practices.     

Language,structure and agency: What can realist social theory offer to sociolinguistics?

The sociolinguistic enterprise raises fundamental questions about the nature of the relationships between social phenomena (such as social class or gender) and linguistic variation, while within social theory a persistent concern is the nature of the relationship between structure and agency. Sociolinguistics can draw on social theory for analysis of the relationship between speaker and system, the role of language in the creation, maintenance and change of social institutions, and the role of human agency in sociolinguistic phenomena. This article summarises the key tenets of a sociological realism, based on the recent work of Margaret Archer (in particular her exploration of analytical dualism) and of Derek Layder (specifically his theory of ‘social domains’). It relates these ideas to sociolinguistics, arguing that language can be seen to have a different significance, depending on which domain is the focus of the researcher's interest. The article considers the distinctiveness of this approach, contrasting it with structuralist and social constructionist accounts and with structuration. It concludes by identifying some methodological implications, suggesting that sociological realism offers a productive theoretical framework for sociolinguistics in dealing with questions of language, structure and agency.     

The Impact of Worker and Establishment‐level Characteristics on Male–Female Wage Differentials: Evidence from Danish Matched Employee–Employer Data

Abstract. This paper uses matched employer–employee data from Denmark to examine how gender segregation at the level of occupation, industry, establishment, and job‐cell impacts the gender wage differential of full‐time, private‐sector salaried and manual workers. Wage effects of gender segregation at the above four levels are estimated through fixed effects or through controls for the proportion females within these structures. We find that occupation has a much larger role than industry or establishment in accounting for the gender gap for salaried but not manual workers, and that for both groups there is a significant within‐job‐cell gender wage differential.