Illuminating Clinical Supervision—Past,Present and Future: An Interview with Dr. Lawrence Shulman

In an interview with Dr. Lawrence Shulman, he presents his insights on clinical supervision from a social work and interdisciplinary perspective. Dr. Shulman is a luminary in social work and interdisciplinary supervision, developing the Interactional Model of Supervision. In reflecting on his career in social work research, education, and practice, he shares his thoughts regarding the importance of process-oriented supervision as a needed focus for research and practice. Supportive of integrating art and science in social work practice, he offers his perspectives on the current state of supervision in the evidence-based era.     

Volunteer Reliability in Nonprofit Organizations: A Theoretical Model

The reliability of volunteers is a major concern for many nonprofit organizations. To address this problem in more detail, we develop a theoretical model of volunteer reliability based on psychological contract theory. By taking this perspective as a starting point, we explore how individual volunteer characteristics, organizational factors, and sociological developments shape the exchange of inducements and contributions between volunteers and nonprofit organizations. We discuss how these factors can create tensions in the psychological contract and determine the extent to which volunteers behave reliably. As such, we develop a theoretical framework for addressing the reliability problem in volunteer management.     

Playground Accessibility and Neighbourhood Social Interaction Among Parents

While the positive association between social interaction and access to green space is well accepted, little research has sought to understand the role of children??s playgrounds in facilitating social interaction within a community. Playgrounds are spaces designed to facilitate play and the interaction of children, but may also be important places of interaction between parents. In this paper we examine how access to playground spaces is related to social interaction between parents. We use two measures of accessibility (1) walking distance to the closest playground and (2) playground service area, a measure of the number of potential users of a playground based on population density. We use generalized estimating equations, an extension of generalized linear models, to control for the confounding effects of socio-economic status (income, education), neighbourhood dynamics (neighbourhood location, years in neighbourhood) and free time (daily outdoor activity, marital status, number of children) on the independent relationship between social interaction and access to playground spaces. Our results suggest that while accessibility to playgrounds is associated with social interaction among parents, the direction of the effect is opposite to existing literature on green space and social interaction; parents with low accessibility to playgrounds are more likely to interact socially with their neighbours than parents with high accessibility. Our results suggest a pattern of spatial behaviour in which the burden of poor access to some resources may actually encourage greater neighbourhood engagement. Future research studying the relationship between health and green space may benefit from studying the specific role of playground spaces.     

Moralische Arbeitsteilung

In modernity, organizations are the most powerful actors. All the more important is the “dark side” of organizational morality. While organizations, on the one hand, ensure or claim to ensure efficiency and reliance they have, on the other, a considerable potential to suppress the moral point of view and to produce or fabricate legitimation. The paper concentrates on this dark side—on problems of the moral division of labor, the organization of hypocrisy, legitimation through procedures, rent-seeking and the related corporate power vis-à-vis law, regulation and politics.     

Coaching und Mentoring

The program “Mentoring for female junior executives at schools” in Hamburg has the goal of recruiting more female executives for schools in Hamburg. As a headmaster of a high school the author has attended this program as a mentor. She discusses the following questions: What are the differences between mentoring and coaching? Where are the limits of mentoring? When is coaching the better method? The main result is, that the mentor has to be very attentively of his position as a member of the organization. He has to decide, if he can advise the mentee for example in conflicts with superiors or if a coach could do a better job. A missing link in the mentoring program is the analysis of the culture of organizations, because this is an important factor for a successful start into the new function.     

Optimal RSUs deployment with delay bound along highways in VANET

In order to broadcast an alert message from the accident site to the control center as soon as possible, the roadside units (RSUs) act as the critical component in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). It is not possible to make a pervasive RSU deployment due to the huge cost and market requirement. Hence, how to deploy a minimum number of RSUs in a given region becomes a challenge problem. In this paper, we present an analysis for the total delay of broadcasting alert messages in VANETs along highways. Based on the analysis, the relationship between optimal number of RSUs with the highway distance is given. Moreover, the experiment results verifies the delay analysis and the optimization of RSUs deployment.     

Bats in urban areas of Brazil: roosts,food resources and parasites in disturbed environments

Urbanization is a widespread intense land use that generally results in biodiversity decline. Among the taxa capable to adapt to urban landscapes, bats are particularly ubiquitous. Brazil has one of the world’s largest diversity of bat species and one of the highest urbanization rates of the world. Yet, few studies have synthesized the biology of bats in urban environments, especially in Brazil. To fill this gap, we systematically reviewed the published scientific literature on the bat fauna found in urban areas of Brazil. The knowledge of urban bats is still incipient and heterogeneously spatially distributed, mostly concentrated in the southeastern region of the country. The assembled list of 84 urban species, of which nineteen are new species records for urban areas (including one new family), represents 47% of the bat richness registered in the country. Thirty-one bat species (37%) were captured exclusively inside forest fragments. Moreover, we provide information on the resources used within the urban matrix by summarizing the roosting sites for 38 bat species, as well as 31 plants consumed by at least twelve bat species. Regarding parasitological aspects, we listed eleven zoonotic parasites hosted by 27 bat species and discussed their potential to become a public health threat. Likewise, we considered the different features linked to urbanization, including impacts on immunity, body condition and susceptibility to acquiring parasites, as possible bat conservation issues. Finally, we defined an agenda for bat studies in urban areas of Brazil.