STRATEGIC APPROACHES TO MARITAL STUCKNESS*

Several strategic techniques are presented for unblocking marital therapy when an impasse has been reached. For each technique, the goals and applicability of the intervention are presented, as well as potential problems and modifications. All of these techniques employ the acceptance and amplification of the status quo. The techniques are not intended to be used in isolation and require careful and well-planned application.     

Target Reputation and Appropriability: Picking and Deploying Resources in Acquisitions

This study explores sources of acquirer satisfaction and achievement of strategic objectives following acquisitions. We develop two sets of factors based on picking and deploying target resources that we expect will affect these outcomes, and consider how the two interact. We find that target reputation is consistently related to desirable acquisition outcomes. In particular, product quality and financial reputation positively affect satisfaction; product quality is a strong predictor of achieving market-based objectives; and management and product reputation facilitate learning. Retaining top management after the transaction is also positively related to satisfaction. We support and extend the theory of relative standing—target executives are retained to a greater degree when management reputation is strong, and this leads to better outcomes for acquirers. Other deployment effects vary depending on the outcome and the strength of the acquired resource.     

Big Whigs in the Mobilization of Irish Peasants: An Historical Sociology of Hegemony in Prefamine Ireland (1750s–1840s)

This paper explains the manipulation of small-holding peasants by middle-class groups in their conjoint struggles against Anglo-Irish landlords during a precapitalist conjuncture of external pressures on the institutional practice of class rule in Ireland (see Femand Braudel [1980] On History, Chicago: University of Chicago; Theda Skocpol [1979] States and Social Revolutions, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Small-holding peasants and middle-class groups sought to reform the feudal practice of jurisdictional privileges by the greater gentry of Anglo-Irish landlords. A middle-class group of Irish nationalists exercised their hegemony over small-holding peasants during a social movement for Catholic Emancipation in the 1820s (see Antonio Gramsci [1975] Selections from the Prisons Notebooks,New York: International Publishers). The outcomes of this social movement included the political empowerment of Catholic whigs to reform the feudal practices of corporations in Irish towns and the frustration of peasant interests to reform the feudal practices of Anglo-Irish landlordism in the countryside.     

Modeling Contextual Effects in Developmental Research: Linking Theory and Method in the Study of Social Development

This special section was inspired by the recent increased interest and methodological advances in the assessment of context‐specificity in child and adolescent social development. While the effects of groups, situations, and social relationships on cognitive, affective and behavioral development have long been acknowledged in theoretical discussions of social development, empirical research has largely relied on the assessment of individual differences rather than contextual differences in these processes—perhaps due to the fact that advanced data analytic techniques are required to access contextual dependencies in such data. While still developing, best practice data analytic techniques enable us to access the ‘social’ of social development in more precision today than ever before. In this special section we examine three of these techniques through the work of our invited authors.     

Gender Mainstreaming: The Answer to the Gender Pay Gap?

This article examines the argument that gender mainstreaming offers the way forward for closing the gender pay gap. It juxtaposes research on the process of gender mainstreaming with our account of the processes involved in Australian state government Inquiries into the gender pay gap since the late 1990s. We indicate that the continuous process of analysis and response that gender mainstreaming can offer demands political will, intensive links between research and action, and adequate resources — which means that gender mainstreaming is seldom delivered in practice. We use our account of the Australian Inquiries to argue that, provided adequate political and financial resources are in place, the gender pay gap can be narrowed through the institutional mechanisms of an industrial relations system but that the regulatory approach is limited by its vulnerability to changes in industrial relations policy. The article concludes that, whatever strategy is used to narrow the gender pay gap, it must be able to show those who use and observe it that gender itself is a continuous, effortful and political process.     

GROWTH, WELFARE, AND THE SIZE OF GOVERNMENT

Using an endogenous growth model in which government purchases directly affect aggregate productivity and utility, fiscal policy experiments conducted here indicate that the macroeconomic effects of changes in fiscal policy are at least as sensitive to the mix of spending cuts as they are to the mix of tax cuts. In fact, reducing the size of the government actually reduces growth and welfare freductions in government expenditures are heavily weighted towards reductions in public capital or if the proceeds are not used to reduce capital taxation. In addition, across-the-board spending cuts are not likely to significantly improve growth and welfare. ( JEL E62, 041)