Competitive Goals and Plant Investment in Environment and Safety Practices: Moderating Effect of National Culture

Operations managers clearly play a critical role in targeting plant‐level investments toward environment and safety practices. In principle, a “rational” response would be to align this investment with senior management's competitive goals for operational performance. However, operations managers also are influenced by contingent factors, such as their national culture, thus creating potential tension that might bias investment away from a simple rational response. Using data from 1,453 plants in 24 countries, we test the moderating influence of seven of the national cultural characteristics on investment at the plant level in environment and safety practices. Four of the seven national cultural characteristics from GLOBE (i.e., uncertainty avoidance, in‐group collectivism, future orientation and performance orientation) shifted investment away from an expected “rational” response. Positive bias was evident when the national culture favored consistency and formalized procedures and rewarded performance improvement. In contrast, managers exhibited negative bias when familial groups and local coalitions were powerful, or future outcomes—rather than current actions—were more important. Overall, this study highlights the critical importance of moving beyond a naïve expectation that plant‐level investment will naturally align with corporate competitive goals for environment and safety. Instead, the national culture where the plant is located will influence these investments, and must be taken into account by senior management.     

Prioritizing and Monitoring Concurrent Project Work: Effects on Switching Behavior

Project switching occurs when a multi‐project worker shifts his/her attention from one project to another before completing the first project. In this study, we study the effects of two areas of management policy on project switching behavior, project prioritization, and work monitoring. We conduct a controlled experiment to evaluate direct and combined effects of prioritization, scheduled progress checks, and managerial progress checks on project switching behavior in a distributed, multi‐project work environment. We use computerized tasks constituting multiple projects as a means of efficiently simulating a project work setting. Working professionals served as subjects for the experiment, thereby enabling us to control for experience and other individual differences that may vary across workers in real‐world projects. We find that clarifying priorities has little overall effect on the prevalence of switching in our multi‐project setting, while the presence of managerial progress checks has significant and distinct impacts, driving up switch tendencies. Interestingly, various attributes of the timing of these monitoring events also significantly impact the likelihood that workers will switch in response to these event triggers. We discuss the implications of these findings for managerial practice and for future research.     

Distributive justice revisited: A reconceptualization and an empirical test

Research on distributive justice has classified allocative standards into three distinct categories: equity, need, and equality. We empirically test the notion that equality should be further divided into two distinct constructs: absolute and bounded equality, thus leading to four distinct categories of distributive justice. Using a sample of 240 individuals (119 managers and 121 union activists), we further test for differences between managers and public and private sector unionists in their endorsement of these four standards. Results support all four of our specified hypotheses. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for distributive justice issues in the workplace, and future research directions are proposed. The authors thank John Delaney, Jean Phillips, and Linda Stroh for their comments on an earlier version of this paper.     

REVIEWS

Hardy, K. V., & Laszloffy, T. A. (2005). Teens who hurt: Clinical interventions to break the cycle of adolescent violence .
Hayes, S. C., Follette, V. M., & Linehan, M. M. (Eds.). (2004). Mindfulness and acceptance: Expanding the cognitive–behavioral tradition .
Swenson, C. C., Henggeler, S., Taylor, I., & Addison, O. (2005). Multisystemic therapy and neighborhood partnerships: Reducing adolescent violence and substance abuse .
Derrig-Palumbo, K., & Zeine, F. (2005). Online therapy: A therapist's guide to expanding your practice .     

GPs' and health visitors' participation in child protection case conferences

This study was conducted in two related but separate phases. Phase one compared the frequency and type of participation by general practitioners and health visitors in child protection case conferences. Two hundred consecutive case conferences involving 83 general practitioners from 33 practices were independently reviewed and scored to assess the level of general practitioner and health visitor participation, whether by written report and/or by attendance. Health visitors showed a far higher level of participation in case conferences than general practitioners and their attendance was more often rated essential by the social worker than that of the general practitioner. There was no evidence in those cases where social workers rated the general practitioner's attendance as essential that this resulted in increased general practitioner participation. General practitioners were equally unlikely to participate in initial, first review and subsequent review case conferences. Most importantly, general practitioner participation/non-participation was not related to length of notice given. In phase two, 76 general practitioners from the sample of 83 were interviewed in order to elicit factors underlying their decision on participation in child protection case conferences. Personal and practice characteristics and attitudes towards the case conference and towards social workers were examined and subsequently analysed. No significant associations were discovered apart from a link between previous training in child protection and a less negative attitude towards communication with social workers and the belief that the general practitioner's participation in the case conference helps him/her in the subsequent management of the case. Personal contact between local social workers and the primary health care team was seen as likely to be helpful in the establishment of a climate of trust which would facilitate the flow of sensitive information in both directions. Health visitors were often regarded by general practitioners as fulfilling the role of delegate to the case conference without having any formal remit to carry out this task.     

Building a Social Movement for America's Children

Americans are concerned with the conditions of children and young people, and this concern has proven to be pervasive, intense, and enduring. But it has also largely proven to be politically anemic. Beyond the consensus that children's well-being is threatened, there is little public agreement over who bears responsibility for these problems or what we should do about them. As a result, public unease has failed to translate into a coherent and widespread demand for political change. What explains this gap between public concern and political action when it comes to children's well-being? This paper addresses four aspects of this question: First, in what ways is the public concerned for the well-being of children? Second, why has this concern failed to lead to political mobilization? Third, what factors helped to translate public concern with children in earlier eras into political movements, and why were those movements able to contribute to the policy-making process? Fourth, what might contemporary children's advocacy—reconfigured in light of these insights—look like? Answering these questions sheds light on how collective public will develops and how and when it translates into collective political action benefiting children.     

When training and prevention meet

This article explores the intended and unintended consequences of CiN/child protection training when this training is offered to parents and grandparents who live in the community. It asks whether training can fulfil a preventative function on behalf of children and child protection systems. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Correlates of partner abuse in male same-sex relationships

We investigated correlates of partner abuse in male same-sex relationships in a randomly selected community sample (N = 186). We included factors associated with abuse in heterosexual relationships, as well as factors of relevance to gay relationships. We assessed perpetration and receipt of partner abuse to examine whether variables were associated independently with abuse perpetration and/or receipt. Correlates of same-sex partner abuse were largely parallel to established correlates of heterosexual abuse. Income, education, and attachment orientation were associated with bidirectional partner abuse, and family violence and substance use were uniquely associated with victimization. Further, there were factors unique to same-sex partner abuse; HIV status and public outness were associated with bidirectional partner abuse, and internalized homophobia was uniquely associated with abuse perpetration.     

The ethical issues in uranium mining research in the Navajo Nation

We explore the experience of Navajo communities living under the shadow of nuclear age fallout who were subjects of five decades of research. In this historical analysis of public health (epidemiological) research conducted in the Navajo lands since the inception of uranium mining from the 1950s untill the end of the 20th century, we analyze the successes and failures in the research initiatives conducted on Navajo lands, the ethical breaches, and the harms and benefits that this research has brought about to the community. We discuss how scientific and moral uncertainty, lack of full stakeholder participation and community wide outreach and education can impact ethical decisions made in research.