Employability management practices in the Polish ICT sector

This article examines current career thinking and employability management practices within the Polish Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector. The aim of this contribution is to identify career management problems and to determine obstacles for implementing employability management practices at a company level. Semi-structured interviews aimed at establishing company needs were conducted with 18 managers of small and medium-sized ICT enterprises in Poland. These firms appear to apply various developmental approaches to stimulate competitive advantage. Faced with a more demanding environment, firms aim for versatility rather than adopting simplified solutions. Managing the careers and employability of ICT professionals is acknowledged as vitally important for the survival and development of ICT companies.     

Social context and the experience of emotion

This study examines the relationship between the social context of events and emotional experience. For each of six emotions four different vignettes were devised. Two of these four events took place in private circumstances and two in public. Furthermore, the sociality of each situation was systematically varied, and subjects were presented with situations framed in one of three social contexts: alone, in the presence of a stranger, or in the presence of a friend. Subjects were asked for self-reports of emotional state, evaluations of pleasantness and loneliness, perceived ability to cope with negative situations, and the likelihood that they would share the emotional experience with another person. Anger was the only emotion that varied as a function of the social context manipulation, and this effect disappeared when evaluations of social context were controlled for. However, for all emotions, the intensity of experience differed between private and public situations, suggesting that sociality and emotionality are related at a more global level.     

Long-Term Tetracycline Use in the Treatment of Acne Vulgaris—The Role of Routine Laboratory Monitoring

Abstract

The medical directors of 125 college health services were surveyed to determine the frequency and extent of routine laboratory monitoring of patients with acne treated with low-dose oral tetracycline. Thirty-seven percent of the practitioners in 89 health services treating acne routinely order screening tests. Thirty-five percent obtain blood counts, 24% obtain liver function tests, and 21% order both types of tests. Sixty-three percent of health service practitioners ordered no routine laboratory testing. A literature review revealed that the reported renal, hepatic, and hematopoietic side effects of tetracycline occurred in patients on high-dose intravenous therapy, in critically ill or hospitalized patients, in patients with initial renal insufficiency, or in older patients. Although idiosyncratiac reactions have occurred, no significant side effects found by routine monitoring have been reported with low-dose oral tetracycline in healthy patients. A more cost-effective approach to the use of the laboratory in tetracycline therapy of acne would be to obtain laboratory tests only on high-risk patients or on those patients who develop symptoms.     

Mostly the mother: Concentration of adverse employment effects on mothers of children with autism

Creating comprehensive and effective social welfare and anti-poverty policy is an ever-elusive task. A key component of such policies and their related programs is the encouragement and protection of parents’ employment. However, such efforts become more complicated when families are faced with additional challenges such as difficulties, which may arise when parenting a child with a disability. Although both paid employment and parenting are widely understood as far from gender-neutral activities, how adverse employment effects become concentrated on mothers is less well understood. This article examines circumstances under which negative employment effects become concentrated on mothers of children with autism. The results of the analysis suggest focusing policy on addressing short term threats to the continued success of established careers and on workplace reentry could help counter factors which tend to result in having mothers’ careers disproportionately affected as a result of having a child with a disability.     

Collective Action and Property Rights for Poverty Reduction: A Review of Methods and Approaches

This article provides a review of literature on the relationship between poverty and the institutions of collective action and property rights, as outlined in the conceptual framework of Di Gregorio et al. (2008). Using the elements of the framework as a guide, it offers an overview of how researchers and practitioners identify and evaluate these concepts. The article emphasises the multidimensionality of poverty and the necessity of applying various approaches and tools to conceptualising and measuring it. In addition to highlighting the crucial role that institutions play in poverty reduction, it shows power relations and the political context to be of fundamental importance in poverty‐related studies.     

Evaluating the effects of full-time vs part-time educational programs for the gifted: affective outcomes and policy considerations

This study evaluates the effects of student participation in two different educational programs/settings for the gifted, i.e., full time homogeneous classes vs mixed ability classes (with a part-time extension program), on a variety of affective outcome. Data on academic self-concept, test anxiety, achievement motivation, perceptions of giftedness, school attitudes, and satisfaction with school were gathered on a sample of 1020 Israeli gifted elementary school children in grades 4–6. Analyses of the data pointed to a less positive personal-social profile in students partaking in special full-time homogeneous classes, compared to their mainstreamed counterparts, as evidenced by lower evaluative anxiety, higher academic self-concept, and more positive labeling in the former setting. However, compared to their mainstreamed counterparts in mixed ability classes, students in special homogeneous classes for the gifted held more favorable attitudes towards various facets of the school/classroom environment (school atmosphere, level of instruction, teacher-student relations, teacher characteristics) and were also more satisfied with school in general when compared to their gifted counterparts partaking in mixed ability classes. The tradeoff between a more positive perception of the school environment and less effective personal-social adjustment for students in special gifted classes should be given due consideration by program planners and evaluators in any cost-benefit analysis of educational programs for gifted students.