The family's role in person-centered care: practice considerations

Effective implementation of person-centered care requires a shared understanding and commitment to make it a reality by administrative personnel, direct care providers, and residents and their family members. Long-term care facilities must seek ways to engage residents' families in person-centered care through its training, policies, care planning, and documentation. Doing so may require revisions to policies and work practices, and ongoing leadership efforts to maintain this care framework within the realities of staff turnover and regulatory requirements. Developing protocols and procedures that facilitate family members' communication with staff and build consensus and shared values will result in a system that represents and honors the unique perspectives, values, and needs of each resident receiving care. It is important for facility leadership to set the tone for acknowledging the importance of family involvement in person-centered care by modeling acceptance of concerns and criticisms as valid and by acknowledging that direct care providers, residents, and their family members have a voice in care decisions. Such an approach has the greatest chance of success in promoting person-centered care and the shared values necessary to ensure its successful implementation.     

Why Don't They Just Change? Contract Farming,Informational Influence,and Barriers to Agricultural Climate Change Mitigation

Using a mixed‐methods study of contract seed‐corn farmers in southwest Michigan, we examine the effect of interlocking macro and micro social forces on climate change behavior and apply the theoretical frames of treadmills of production and informational influence. We find that competitive agricultural contracts in the seed‐corn industry impose significant structural barriers to adopting climate change mitigation behaviors. Seed‐corn contracts constrain adoption of those behaviors through competitive rankings based solely on net commodity production and by limiting farmers’ access to information to make judicious management decisions. At the micro level, our findings suggest that informational influence—that is, where farmers turn for trusted information—also affects climate change mitigation behaviors, and that these informational networks are embedded within structural constraints. Our findings suggest that agricultural contracts serve as a significant structural constraint on the adoption of mitigation practices and that climate scholarship and policy must address both macro and micro dimensions simultaneously to encourage adoption of climate change mitigation.     

Ethnic Diversity and Health Outcomes

This study hypothesizes a relationship between ethnic diversity and health outcomes. We explore the effects of ethnic and linguistic heterogeneity (measured by indices of ethnic and linguistic fractionalization) on various health outcomes in a cross-section of 91 countries. We explore outcomes relating to four major categories of health: (1) immunization rates, (2) prevalence of diseases, (3) life expectancy and mortality rates, and (4) health related infrastructure and staff. Across all dimensions examined, evidence suggests that higher heterogeneity is bad for health outcomes. We explore several potential mechanisms which could explain the observed negative effects of ethnic and linguistic diversity on health.     

Who is banked in low income families? The effects of gender and bargaining power

We use data from the U.S. Survey of Consumer Finances and a framework that accounts for intrahousehold dynamics to examine bank account ownership for low-income couples. We find that even among families who are banked, some family members are not. Those without accounts may lack access to financial services, be at a disadvantage within their families, or face financial risks if their partnerships end. Our results indicate that men and women are equally likely to be banked, but the factors predicting whether or not they have accounts differ. Women with more bargaining power are more likely to hold bank accounts and their families are more likely to be banked. Moreover, individual characteristics of male and the female partners have different effects on the chances that they, their partners, or their families are banked.     

A class of estimators for quantitative sensitive data

Randomized response methods for quantitative sensitive data are treated in an unified approach which includes the use of auxiliary information at the estimation stage. A class of estimators for the mean of a sensitive variable is proposed under a generic randomization model and the optimum estimator is obtained. Some special models are discussed in detail. To evaluate the degree of respondents’ confidentiality in models using auxiliary variables, a new measure of privacy protection is introduced. Different models are then compared both from the perspective of efficiency and privacy protection.     

Copyright Issues for the Distance Learning Professor

The Internet has made the accessibility of knowledge both instantaneous and global. The professor who teaches online must be aware of the legal issues created by digital technology. The scope of the Fair Use Doctrine in the U.S. Copyright Law is under debate by educators and copyright owners. Educators advocate amending the scope of works available for distance learning, under the Fair Use principle, to include the same range of exclusions allowed in face to face classrooms such as: audiovisual works, movies and videos. While copyright owners advocate licensing of materials, educators feel that licensing procedures and costs need to be geared to the needs and ability to pay of the educational institution, otherwise their distance learning students will not have access to the same materials as those who sit in the classroom. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

East meets West: a case example of knowledge transfer

This article highlights some of the similarities and differences in management theory and practice between the UK and the Former Soviet Union (FSU) and Central and East European (CEE) states. It does so in the context of a debate over the appropriateness and extent of cultural dominance in knowledge transfer of theory and practice, which has occurred during the last decade, and which is still unresolved. It reviews a scheme for knowledge transfer which offered a flexible structure within which the organizers could amend their material in the light of their growing experience with the way in which the scheme operated, and whereby they might avoid some of the mistakes of cultural dominance made within other schemes offered elsewhere The Joint Industrial and Commercial Attachment Programme (JICAP), its structure, approach and some outcomes are outlined as a case example. Sponsored by the British Council to arrange visits by middle and senior managers from the post-command economies to the UK for intensive management training and work placement in an organization complementary to their home employment, JICAP was typical of the best Western thinking in management development of the time. The espousals and realities, the benefits and flaws in this approach are examined, drawing on the perceptions of the JICAP delegates themselves in terms of their personal and business development. Czarniawska's model of the travel of ideas (Czarniawska and Joerges 1996) is used as an organizing framework within which the problems of knowledge transfer, culturally dominant or maximally flexible, can be examined, and the underlying issues identified. This notion of flexibility, within which alternative perspectives can be negotiated and new meanings created, constitutes the main contribution proposed by this paper.