“Flawed Vessels”

The 2008 election was a watershed year in presidential politics, with two prominent women, Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin, drawing national media attention to gendered themes during the election. This study investigates whether/how the media connected these historic female candidacies to feminism by evaluating the national news media's framing of feminism during the election. Using qualitative media discourse analysis, we analyze how discussions of these two prominent female candidates, as well as Barack Obama, were linked to framing of feminism in the news media. During the 2008 presidential election, the media recast evaluations of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Sarah Palin into a discussion of the status of modern feminism. The news media framed the movement as fractured, highlighting existing conflicts within the feminist movement, while legitimizing post-feminism and choice feminism through the perspectives of the Obama and Palin nominations. The news media also trivialized the movement by emphasizing style over substance in their assessments of whether candidates were (or were not) feminists. The results suggest feminist movement actors and goals may not substantially benefit from greater media attention prompted by increasing numbers of female candidates.     

You Thought That This Would Be Easy? Seeking an Understanding of Episodic Volunteering

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - This article is intended as the leading article in a Special Issue of Voluntas devoted to episodic volunteering from a...     

Exponentially weighted moving average control schemes with variable sampling intervals

The idea of using non-constant sampling intervals has been of interest in quality control applications since it was first suggested for the “skip-lot sampling plan” of Dodge. Recent interest has focused on the use of variable sampling interval (VSI) control schemes. VSI control schemes use a short sampling interval is given     

UNSUCCESSFUL IMPLEMENTATION THE CASE OF A COMPUTER-BASED ORDER ENTRY SYSTEM

This paper discusses results of a longitudinal field experiment to evaluate the implementation of a computer-based system. This new system includes the introduction of an optically scanned order input form and new computer programs. It is hypothesized that successful implementation would be affected by the quality of service and the personal costs and benefits to the users of the new system. The experimental results show a marked reduction in job satisfaction after implementation of the new system. The implications of the findings for the implementation of computer-based systems in general are discussed.     

INTEGRATING THE COMPUTER INTO A BUSINESS SCHOOL CURRICULUM*

The results of a study of computer utilization in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford are presented. The benefits and costs of a dedicated time-sharing system acquired by the Business School to supplement the central campus computer facility are discussed. The study showed that the time-sharing system produced many benefits, including improved service and a lower per student cost for computing. The implications of the Stanford experience for other schools are discussed.     

Disabled people,inclusion and policy: better outcomes through a public health approach?

The social model of disability has implications for evaluation of disability policy. Public health analyses suggest that a population and environmental approach to enablement is more likely to impact positively on disabled people than person-centred action. The capacity of people living with disabilities to participate in a range of social activities and the attitudes of others to such participation are, along with environments, important factors contributing to disability situations and therefore the restriction of our promotion of personhood. These are areas where metrics could be used to evaluate the impact of disability policy.     

Global Economic Integration and Local Community Resilience: Road Paving and Rural Demographic Change in the Southwestern Amazon

Recent years have witnessed an expansion in international investment in large‐scale infrastructure projects with the goal of achieving global economic integration. We focus on one such project, the Inter‐Oceanic Highway in the “MAP” region, a trinational frontier where Bolivia, Brazil, and Peru meet in the southwestern Amazon. We adopt a resilience approach as an integrative framework to understand various types of road‐paving impacts. We focus on migration activity as an indicator of retention of collective memory, a concept associated with resilience. We pursue a comparative analysis of the three sides of the MAP frontier as well as subregions within each side. Since road paving may be mediated by other factors, we distinguish among the effects of multiple explanatory factors. Data come from a multinational survey of rural communities. The findings show considerable net migration and turnover, both indicative of eroding collective memory and a lack of demographic resilience to externally induced change in the MAP frontier. The findings indicate variation across the frontier, which road paving helps explain, along with some of the mediating factors. These findings contribute to the literature on the impacts of new infrastructure and integration as well as the study of social‐ecological resilience.     

ICT,young people and social work: distances and opportunities

ABSTRACT

The relationship between social work and Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) is an awkward one in Spanish tradition, particularly from social work perspective due to a certain lack of institutional and professional competence in terms of understanding the capabilities of ICTs. Young people use ICTs to connect to each other and express themselves, however. ICTs represent a means—increasingly the main one—for young people to build and communicate their own identities and understand reality. As with other social sciences, social work suffers from a difficult relationship with young people. Youth is often studied differently and sometimes perceived as a problem that ends when adulthood is reached. In this context, the relationship among ICTs, social work and young people is also a difficult one. But this problem may also be a solution. By adopting a critical ICT approach, social work can create innovative initiatives and frameworks to improve communication between social work practitioners and teachers as with young people and students. Imagination and empathy will clearly be key to achieving this, in addition to deeper involvement in the use of new software and applications that can offer enhanced communication and build bridges between social workers and young people.     

Robust cusum: a robustness study for cusum quality control schemes

A standard CUSUM control scheme and four modified CUSUM control schemes are evaluated for robustness. The average run length (ARL) for each scheme is evaluated using a contaminated normal distribution, a distribution that has longer tails than the normal. A CUSUM control scheme that ignores the first suspected outlier, but gives an out-of-control signal for two successive outliers is found to perform well.     

Competition network as a source of competitive advantage: The dynamic capability perspective and evidence from China

The search for competitive advantage is the defining inquiry of strategic management research. In this study, we draw on the dynamic capability lens to develop a counterintuitive view that positions competitors of a firm as an important source of competitive advantage. We argue that a firm's competitors form a competition network from which it can collect information about innovative ideas, product market, and related industries. Such information helps it calibrate market opportunities, update the resource base, and, eventually, strengthen its competitive advantage. This positive effect of competition network on competitive advantage will reasonably be contingent upon the proactive information search by the firm. The empirical results based on the survey data of 631 Chinese firms strongly support our theoretical model. This study identifies another distinctive source of competitive advantage than industry context or organizational resources as well as advancing our understanding of competition network.