Managing during a merger.

In the November-December 1988 issue of Physician Executive, Dr. Marks' article outlined typical reactions to the uncertainty of being involved in a merger or consolidation. The article introduced the concept of the "merger syndrome," which encompasses executives' stressful reactions to a combination and the development of a crisis management orientation. The bottom line, if the syndrome is allowed to go unchecked, can be marred executive and employee performance and poor financial and operational results. The merger syndrome is a prime reason that two-thirds of all mergers and acquisitions are financial failures. Consumed by their reactions to mergers, executives frequently lose touch with the needs of employees. In this article, the author summarizes steps that can be taken by executives to help their employees cope with the trauma of merger; to minimize negative employee reactions, such as reduced productivity and increased turnover; and to build effective postmerger teams.     

Accounting for language background differences in the Australian National Assessments – Literacy and Numeracy

This study examines language background differences in the Australian National Assessments – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), and the extent that language background differences are accounted for by socioeconomic background, schools and contemporary influences. There are sizable, sometimes very large, differences in performance by language background. Students with Eastern and Southern Asian language backgrounds exhibited high, sometimes very high, mean scores, whereas students with African, Central Asian and Pacific language backgrounds had relatively low mean scores. Language background differences tended to be larger for numeracy than for reading. Parental occupation and education accounted for some of the effects of language background for some groups, but not for Asian groups. Generally, language background effects cannot be attributed to the unequal distribution of language background groups across schools. When considering students' prior achievement, most language background effects, including all language backgrounds with strong negative effects, were reduced substantially often to statistical insignificance. The exceptions are Chinese and other East Asian and Southern Asian language backgrounds.     

Evaluating Effectively Maintained Inequality: School and post-school transitions,socioeconomic background,academic ability and curricular placement

Effectively Maintained Inequality (EMI) is proposed as an explanation for contemporary socioeconomic inequalities in education. Socioeconomic inequalities are ‘maintained’ by students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds taking less advantageous curricula influencing their post-school destinations. The purpose of this study is to evaluate EMI by addressing several hypotheses derived from the EMI thesis using Australian longitudinal data. It analyses within-school transitions and the transition from school to post-school destinations (elite university, other university, vocational and no post-school study or training). The study also models curricular placement (subject choice). It finds that the transitions within- and post-school are more powerfully influenced by students’ academic ability than by socioeconomic background. Furthermore, subject choice has strong impacts on the transitions. Similarly, Year 12 subject choice is only weakly predicted by socioeconomic background, and more strongly influenced by ability and occupational interests. In turn, occupational interests are largely independent of socioeconomic background. The EMI thesis is not supported.     

The Real Book of Mormon Musical: Latter-day Saint Family Home Evening as a Weekly Ritual

Abstract

Scholars of religious ritual have noted that inadequate attention has been paid to religious ritual in the social sciences. Based on what has been done, it is apparent that sacred family rituals (when done well and with relational sensitivity) can enhance structure, meaning, and family unity. The present study examines the family-level ritual practice of weekly Family Home Evening among members of 26 Latter-day Saint (LDS) families (N?=?58 individuals). Qualitative analyses found the following three themes: (a) Family Home Evening as a Conversation; (b) Challenges of Family Home Evening; and (c) The Value of Family Home Evening. Primary data that support and illustrate the three themes are presented, along with implications and applications.     

Foreign-Born Emigration From The United States: 1960 To 1970

This paper presents estimates of emigration of foreign-born persons by age and sex for 1960 to 1970, based on 1960 and 1970 census counts of the foreign-born population, adjusted life table survival rates, and annual statistics on alien immigration published by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The effects of nativity bias are discussed. It is estimated that approximately 1,140,000 foreign-born persons emigrated between 1960 and 1970, of which 663,000, or 58 percent, were women and 477,000 were men. Almost one-quarter of the foreign-born emigrants were women 25–44 years of age in 1970. About 175,000 foreign-born persons 65 years and over in 1970 emigrated during the decade. The most significant finding, that more than one million foreign-born persons left the United States between 1960 and 1970, has important implications for U.S. immigration policy and for net immigration data used to estimate the population of the United States.     

Reframing child protection: A response to a constant crisis of confidence in child protection

Child protection systems appear to be in a continual crisis of confidence. They get criticised for not doing enough to protect some children, whilst at the same time being criticised for being too intrusive or not managing demand. This constant balancing act drives almost continual reforms, none of which appear to reduce further crises of confidence. The central issue facing tertiary child protection systems stems from their function as makers of sometimes highly uncertain risk screening decisions. Uncertainty leads to errors; false positives and false negatives. Two recurring issues challenging child protection agencies are concerns about these errors. Fears about doing too much are concerns about false positives and fears of doing too little are concerns about false negatives. The need to address both issues within the context of uncertain high stakes decision making, in a highly risk intolerant environment leads to poorly formed sentinel event driven policy that in turn leads to organisational fragility. A decision outcome-based performance model based on Signal Detection Theory provides indicators that explicitly outline the link between these two strategic issues facing child protection systems. This has improved dialogue, understanding and support from sponsors. It has led an informed focus on improving decision making and stabilisation of decision thresholds. It demonstrates that Child protection systems are in fact very responsive and do perform well in their decision making (risk screening) function. Social work decision makers provide value in their decision making in spite of highly uncertain decisions to make. Child protection systems do not need reform, they need to be “reframed” to better understand true performance and so avoid poorly informed reactive policy responses to the genuine challenges that they face.     

The Future is Now: Reducing Psychological Distance to Increase Public Engagement with Climate Change

Many people perceive climate change as psychologically distant—a set of uncertain events that might occur far in the future, impacting distant places and affecting people dissimilar to themselves. In this study, we employed construal level theory to investigate whether a climate change communication intervention could increase public engagement by reducing the psychological distance of climate change. Australian residents (N = 333) were randomly assigned to one of two treatment conditions: one framed to increase psychological distance to climate change (distal frame), and the other framed to reduce psychological distance (proximal frame). Participants then completed measures of psychological distance of climate change impacts, climate change concern, and intentions to engage in mitigation behavior. Principal components analysis indicated that psychological distance to climate change was best conceptualized as a multidimensional construct consisting of four components: geographic, temporal, social, and uncertainty. Path analysis revealed the effect of the treatment frame on climate change concern and intentions was fully mediated by psychological distance dimensions related to uncertainty and social distance. Our results suggest that climate communications framed to reduce psychological distance represent a promising strategy for increasing public engagement with climate change.     

Experience of Forced Sex and Subsequent Sexual,Drug, and Mental Health Outcomes: African American and Hispanic Women in the Southeastern United States

ABSTRACT. Objectives: This cross-sectional study examined African American and Hispanic women's (N = 1,509) self-reports of unwanted forced sex and its association with behavioral and mental health outcomes after the event. Methods: Twenty percent of the women had experienced forced sex (1st occurrence at age 15 years or younger for 10%, 1st occurrence at older than 15 years of age for 10%). Results: Regardless of when forced sex 1st occurred, women were more likely to have engaged in unprotected vaginal and anal sex, to have had multiple unprotected sex partners, to have sexually transmitted infections, to have reported binge drinking and illicit drug use, and to exhibit distress and have received mental health counseling. Conclusions: Forced sex may have wide-ranging behavioral and mental health consequences years later.     

Family,Work, Work‐Family Spillover,and Problem Drinking During Midlife

Using ecological theory as a theoretical framework, this study systematically examined the associations between multiple dimensions of family relationship quality, work characteristics, work‐family spillover, and problem drinking among a national sample of employed, midlife adults (n= 1,547 ). Multivariate analyses confirmed that work and family microsystem factors were associated with problem drinking above and beyond individual characteristics. Consistent with previous research, results indicated that a higher level of marital disagreement and more work‐related pressure were associated with higher odds of problem drinking. Results also indicated that a higher level of positive spillover from family to work was associated with lower odds of problem drinking, whereas a higher level of positive spillover from work to family was associated with higher odds of problem drinking. Psychological well‐being did not account for the association between work and family factors and problem drinking. Associations were similar for men and women.