Looking Inwards,Looking Outwards: Dismantling the “Berlin Wall” Between Health and Social Services?

This paper argues that at a time when policy guidance urged closer collaboration and joint working between health and social services, the long-established cultural and professional gaps were widening and deteriorating. Drawing on data from four research sites, the paper argues that the deterioration was rooted principally in practitioners' preoccupations with changes within their own organizations and daily work, resulting from a major period of change in both health and social services, which, ironically, was at the expense of the joint working which the "Caring for People" reforms required. As the policy environment changes again, under the Labour government, it is likely that health and social care practitioners will be working within further organizational turbulence and change. It will be crucial that those changes are managed in such a way that they avoid the very real danger of compounding the problems which our respondents identified.     

Monte Carlo Sensitivity Analysis of Unknown Parameters in Hazardous Materials Transportation Risk Assessment

The US Department of Transportation was interested in the risks associated with transporting Hydrazine in tanks with and without relief devices. Hydrazine is both highly toxic and flammable, as well as corrosive. Consequently, there was a conflict as to whether a relief device should be used or not. Data were not available on the impact of relief devices on release probabilities or the impact of Hydrazine on the likelihood of fires and explosions. In this paper, a Monte Carlo sensitivity analysis of the unknown parameters was used to assess the risks associated with highway transport of Hydrazine. To help determine whether or not relief devices should be used, fault trees and event trees were used to model the sequences of events that could lead to adverse consequences during transport of Hydrazine. The event probabilities in the event trees were derived as functions of the parameters whose effects were not known. The impacts of these parameters on the risk of toxic exposures, fires, and explosions were analyzed through a Monte Carlo sensitivity analysis and analyzed statistically through an analysis of variance. The analysis allowed the determination of which of the unknown parameters had a significant impact on the risks. It also provided the necessary support to a critical transportation decision even though the values of several key parameters were not known.     

Solo-living and childless professional women: Navigating the ‘balanced mother ideal’ over the fertile years

One in five women are childless at midlife, and for an estimated 90 percent of these women, childlessness is not actively chosen. In this article, we explore how solo-living and childless professional women navigate the ‘balanced mother ideal’ over their fertile years and what this means for organizations and organization studies. Drawing on biographical narrative interview data from solo-living professional women in the UK, we argue that identifications with the balanced mother ideal change over the life course as a result of futurity, ambivalence, and suppression of negative emotions—part of the logic of both postfeminism and neoliberal feminism—and the ‘disenfranchized grief’ of contingent childlessness. At the point of late fertility, the absence of alternative social narratives to the balanced mother ideal appears to create a crisis point for childless women, including in the workplace. We conclude our article with recommendations for how organizations can better cater to the needs of this significant, yet largely silenced, demographic group.     

From sociolinguistic variation to socially strategic stylisation1

This article investigates the indexical relation between language, interactional stance and social class. Quantitative sociolinguistic analysis of a linguistic variable (the first person possessive singular) is combined with interactional analysis of the way one particular variant (possessive ‘me’, as in Me pencil's up me jumper) is used by speakers in ‘stylised’ interactional performances. The aim of this analysis is to explore: (1) how possessive ‘me’ is implicated in the construction and management of local identities and relationships; and (2) how macro‐social categories, such as social class, relate to linguistic choice. The data for this analysis comes from an ethnographic study of the language practices of nine‐ to ten‐year‐old children in two socially‐differentiated primary schools in north‐east England. A secondary aim of the article is to spotlight the sociolinguistic sophistication of these young children, in particular, the working‐class participants, who challenge the notion that the speech of working‐class children is in any way ‘impoverished’.     

Schedule flexibility in hourly jobs: unanticipated consequences and promising directions

This article considers the challenge of extending conventional models of flexibility to hourly jobs that are often structured quite differently than the salaried, professional positions for which flexibility options were originally designed. We argue that the assumptions of job rigidity and overwork motivating existing flexibility options may not be broadly applicable across jobs in the US labor market. We focus specifically on two types of flexibility: (1) working reduced hours and (2) varying work timing. We first review central aspects of the US business and policy contexts that inspire our concerns, and then draw on original analyses from US census data and several examples from our comparative case-study research to explain how conventional flexibility options do not always map well onto hourly jobs, and in certain instances may disadvantage workers by undermining their ability to earn an adequate living. We conclude with a discussion of alternative approaches to implementing flexibility in hourly jobs when hours are scarce and fluctuating rather than long and rigid.     

The emotional toll of postfeminist fatherhood

Postfeminism shapes the political economy of the workforce and household, constituting a re-entrenchment of traditional heterosexual gender regimes and the pressure to transgress them. Focusing on the understudied area of postfeminist masculinity, we analyze the emotional toll some fathers experience as a result of the fraught expectations to be the breadwinner, nurturing parent, and enlightened feminist spouse who completes equal domestic duties. Using empirical data of parents’ participation in a family-based health intervention, we argue that the paradoxical expectation to enact traditional gender relations and to adopt gender egalitarianism is exhausting, upsetting, and confusing for fathers. By focusing on the affective dimensions of postfeminism, we demonstrate how working to achieve the impossible expectation of doing “it all,” a bind that women have been caught in for centuries, takes an emotional toll on fathers and couples, leading to discontent at work and home, and in regard to their self-concept, parental role, and spousal relationship. We close by offering counter examples of fathers and couples who have disengaged from postfeminist parenting relations and have reached a state of contentment. Contrary to the alignment of postfeminism with positive affect, the experience of resisting postfeminist resulted in feelings of joy, pride, and satisfaction.