Contents Volume 29 2000

Volume Contents

Contents Volume 29 2000     

Of Disciplined Minds and Disciplined Bodies: On Becoming an Ecologist

Phenomenologically speaking, the body is the hinge between the sociomaterial world and individual knowing. To illustrate the importance of this hinge in the making of ecologists, we draw on a two-year ethnographic project among field ecologists. Our study shows that becoming an ecologist involves not just the acquisition of skills and conceptual knowledge or just enculturation to a set of practices, such as occurs in university schooling, but also a disciplining of both mind and body, deriving from the physicality of engaging in the fieldwork itself. Becoming an ecologist therefore involves a disciplining that mingles the mental and the physical.     

Knowledge Creation and Dissemination in Operations and Supply Chain Management

During the last 25 years, the ecosystem of knowledge creation and dissemination in operations and supply chain management has improved remarkably. We now see OM as a vibrant community and an ecosystem in steady state. Yet, there are many opportunities ahead to revitalize our field and to expand our influence. In the spirit of continuous improvement, we propose that we focus our major efforts on accelerating the following four developments: First, having greatly expanded the domain of operations management, we should continue to expand its boundaries. Second, after a visible increase in exploratory studies, our community should accelerate our pursuit of such research. Third, we encourage OM faculty to develop programs that enable Ph.D. students to carry out part of their work in actual organizational settings. Fourth, we should further strengthen our interactions with the business community and create mechanisms to systematically disseminate our research to its members.     

Current State of the Sociology of Occupations

This report is a review of the recent literature (mostly since the mid 60s) of the sociology of occupations. The notion of measuring professionalism, especially as represented by the attribute approach, has failed to deal with crucial sociological issues. The sociology of occupations has been criticized for being without an overall theory, but the search for such a theory may not be a justified goal. Work in this field has produced many interesting and useful generalizations of a more limited range. Studies of this field are numerous, but they are distributed unevenly over the range of occupations and work issues. The strong point is the numerous detailed case studies of occupations. However, there are also some good examples of efforts to relate occupational behavior to a larger societal perspective.     

What Do We Know About Making Risk Comparisons?

The risks of unfamiliar technologies are often evaluated by comparing them with the risks of more familiar ones. Such risk comparisons have been criticized for neglecting critical dimensions of risky decisions. In a guide written for the Chemical Manufacturers Association, Covello et al. (¹) have summarized these critiques and developed a taxonomy that characterizes possible risk comparisons in terms of their acceptability (or objectionableness). We asked four diverse groups of subjects to judge the acceptability of 14 statements produced by Covello et al. as examples of their categories. We found no correlation between the judgments of acceptability produced by our subjects and those predicted by Covello et al. .     

A model for assertive training: Integration of feelings and behavior

The current emphasis in assertive training is based on behavioral and cognitive approaches. In this paper the authors present an approach which explores the interconnectedness of feelings and behavior in the learning of assertive skills. Creatively designed structured exercises are presented as tools used to bring people into contract with themselves, to highlight nonfunctional behavior, and to provide the means to try out and practice new assertive behaviors. The impact of the exercises as a learning vehicle in assertive training is described and discussed.