Analysis of social pathologies in a policy context: A paradigm for action

Prevention continues to gain importance among the strategies open for governmental development of social policy. This paper offers two exploratory conceptual discussions related to prevention in social policy. The first is a representation of the policy making environment with special reference to the informational requirements for the development of policy. The second is a discussion of social pathologies, broadly defined as patterns of behavior with important negative repercussions on individuals whom we refer to as victims, and of possible strategies toward the development of (at least partial) preventive measures. The two discussions are interrelated as the shape of the second is dictated by the desiderata outlined in the first. The paper is divided into five parts:

1. Introduction: the conundrum of prevention.
2. The Development of a paradigm of the policy context.
3. Dependent variables: social pathologies.
4. Independent variables: a focus on structural determinants.
5. Conclusion: information requirements for preventive action.

     

An innovative approach to selecting an executive director

As a guide for how to select a new executive director, a family agency adopted the search committee process from higher education. The approach included clarifying agency goals and the director's qualifications, a board-staff screening, and interviews held jointly with public representatives before final board selection.     

Sensitivity of the Optimum to Perturbations of the Profit or Weight of an Item in the Binary Knapsack Problem

In the binary single constraint Knapsack Problem, denoted KP, we are given a knapsack of fixed capacity c and a set of n items. Each item j, j = 1,...,n, has an associated size or weight w_j and a profit p_j. The goal is to determine whether or not item j, j = 1,...,n, should be included in the knapsack. The objective is to maximize the total profit without exceeding the capacity c of the knapsack. In this paper, we study the sensitivity of the optimum of the KP to perturbations of either the profit or the weight of an item. We give approximate and exact interval limits for both cases (profit and weight) and propose several polynomial time algorithms able to reach these interval limits. The performance of the proposed algorithms are evaluated on a large number of problem instances.     

Buchbesprechungen

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Dual Career Couples als eine Variante von Work-Life-Integration

Dual Career Couples as a form of work-life-integrationThe author discusses the situation of dual career couples, when both are university graduates following an own career. Basing on a respective publication she delineates the current, mostly American research and reports on several German research projects, which endeavour to analyse the relation between gender and inequality in dual career couples.     

Von der Supervision zur Mediation und zurück

From supervision to mediation and vice versaMediation in organizations becomes more and more important because of increasing conflicts. The question is, which competencies of the counsellor are necessary, and above all, whether mediation is a particular method. The author explains the method of mediation and illustrates his concept of “patchwork-mediation”. This procedure allows to build a bridge between supervision and mediation.     

Ebert. Wolfgang (2001): Systemtheorien in der Supervision — Bestandsaufnahme und Perspektiven

Ohne Zusammenfassung