Preventing Face Loss in Donor-Assisted Families

Grounded in face theory (see Brown & Levinson, 1987; Cupach & Metts, 1994; Goffman, 1967) and exploratory in nature, the present study sought to understand the face-related experiences of parents whose children were conceived with an anonymous donor. The sample included 19 parents from the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada, who experienced infertility, were in a lesbian relationship, or identified as solo parents. The researchers identified face-related concerns parents have for themselves and their children and preventative facework strategies they enact to avoid or minimize face loss. Findings showcase parents’ desire for social approval, autonomy, respect, and preventing rejection. Also discussed are a variety of facework strategies, namely, disclosure, avoidance, closedness, humor, deception, and strategic donor choice. The findings support and extend previous research on donor-assisted families and showcase the complexity of face for members of these families by highlighting instances where communication simultaneously preserves and threatens face.     

Knowledge dissemination in operations management: Published perceptions versus academic reality

The channels for knowledge generation and dissemination in the business disciplines are many: presenting research at conferences, writing books, distributing working papers, offering insights in society newsletters, giving invited talks, publishing studies in academic journals, and many other venues, including even blogs and perhaps Facebook^®. But the most important venue is probably published research in “top-level” academic journals. In the discipline of Operations Management, many studies and lists have been published that attempt to determine which of these journals are supposedly the “top” according to either citation analyses, the opinion of recognized experts, author affiliations, bibliometric studies, and other approaches. These lists may then, in turn, be used in different degrees to evaluate research. However, what really counts is what the academic institutions actually use for guidance in evaluating faculty research. Based on a new source of ranking data from AACSB-accredited schools, we compare published journal-ranking studies against that of academe to determine the degree to which the studies reflect academic “reality”. We present rankings of OM journals based on this new source of data and on an aggregate of the stream of published studies, and evaluate their consistency.     

Socially Responsible Practices: An Exploratory Study on Scale Development using Stakeholder Theory

Socially responsible practices of firms have evolved into an important area of research in operations management; however, it remains challenging to identify specific scales that capture multiple dimensions of such social practices. In this exploratory study, we use stakeholder theory to develop new multi‐item measurement scales linked to multiple groups (i.e., internal, supplier, customer, and community stakeholders). Furthermore, we empirically test a higher order multidimensional construct that collectively assesses the socially responsible practices of a firm. Using these stakeholder‐derived constructs as taxons in a cluster analysis, we identify important patterns in the way that multiple groups of stakeholders are engaged. Finally, we demonstrate that the set of social practices are complementary and concentrating on one group can yield spillover effects to other specific stakeholder groups.     

Patches of grief and rage: Visitor responses to the NAMES project AIDS Memorial Quilt

This paper presents an analysis of comments written on signature square panels of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. In our paper we explore how collective memory regarding AIDS deaths emerges from conflict among members of vernacular, mainstream and official culture. The cultural contest waged over how individuals who have died from AIDS-related illnesses will be remembered in society fits within the realm of the sociology of collective memory. Visitor responses to the Quilt illustrate that as a form of commemoration the Quilt is interpreted as a therapeutic device and a political tool. Like other memorials, especially those for which there is social disdain or conflict (e.g., the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial), signature square comments provide an alternative conception of public memory. The fact that the Quilt is used to symbolically commemorate the dead, providing an outlet for collective grieving and inspiring social action, is what makes it an important sociological phenomenon. In our paper we put forward a conception of the politics of collective memory that extends previous work in this area. In doing so this paper contributes to an emerging understanding of public commemoration and to the debate over how different segments of society are to be remembered.     

The Common Factors that Connect all Approaches to Family Therapy

I've developed a sort of working document that proposes what family therapists do (on the basis of what they know and value, i.e. competency). I think that if we're talking about a national identity, we could also identify our shared competencies in the way that social workers and social welfare workers did in the mid‐1990s. This compilation is adapted from Sprenkle, Blow & Dickey, 1999; Miller, Duncan & Johnson, 2000; Walsh, 1998; Seaburn, Landau‐Stanton & Horwitz, 1995.     

Four different approaches to community participation

This paper explores some of the politics of community work byexamining four basic community participation approaches. Movingfrom the right of politics to the left, it overviews some ofthe different theoretical orientations, goals, processes andrecruitment practices that are commonly used but not alwaysrecognized to constitute different forms of community participation.Offered primarily to ‘lay’ community members, studentsand beginning practitioners, the paper is intended to clarifysome of the differences that emerge when participation projectsare designed, and to stimulate discussion about community participationmore generally.     

PROCESS, ROBLEMS, AND SOLUTIONS IN BRIEF THERAPY

The MRI problem-solving and the recently popular solution-amplifying approaches to brief therapy are described as based upon the same process point of view. A process view is described in contrast to a structural view of human interactions. It is argued that an exclusive focus on amplifying perceived solutions without clearly defining problem patterns may become a problem. Clear articulation of a therapist's assumptions about human interaction, problems, and therapeutic solutions is strongly advocated. Creativity, flexibility, effectiveness, and efficiency are likely to be by-products of such clarity. Without it, our therapeutic zeal in searching for solutions is likely to become a problem.
A Japanese coastal village was once threatened by a tidal wave, but the wave was sighted in advance, far out on the horizon, by a lone farmer in the rice fields on the hillside above the village. At once he set fire to the fields, and the villagers who came swarming up to save their crops were saved from the flood.