Post-employment covenants in the United States: Legal framework and market behaviours

In response to fundamental market changes that are giving labour a much more central role in product market competition, employers often seek to extend their control over human capital beyond termination of the employment relationship. Although empirical studies are scarce, the use of restrictive post‐employment covenants is indeed believed to be widespread. But to what extent can employers lawfully restrict the freedom of their former employees? The author examines the criteria that courts in the United States have considered in balancing employers' legitimate economic interests against labour market efficiency and workers' post‐employment freedom and mobility.     

Notes on contributors

Ethics is a central area for professional education in social work. The main educational strategies for the ethics component in social work programmes are often a combination of explicit attention to principles and implicit grounding in practice examples (such as ‘case study’ vignettes). These approaches equip students to recognise and respond to the complexities of ethics in practice. However, they may also encourage students to understand ethics as ‘rules of conduct’, in which there are ‘correct answers’ that can be learned and applied. This paper advances the view that it is more helpful to consider ethics as a ‘framework for thinking’ about the means/ends relationship in practice. It is argued that, as a consequence, the goal of ethics education should be to enable student social workers to grasp the inherently moral nature of practice and the ambiguities that follow from this. Such a position points to the paradox of social work education, that it involves teaching about things that cannot ‘exist’ separately from their being created in action. To explore this paradox in teaching ethics, the paper considers inductive approaches in learning as a way of responding to the ambiguities that are inherent not only in the subject but also in the experience of professional education.     

Contextualizing the Governance of Community Co-operatives: Evidence from Austria and Germany

The article inquires into the role of the institutional context in explaining the governance of community co-operatives. These organizations do not solely focus on a member’s advantage but act on behalf of some collective identity. To enhance our understanding of the nature of co-operative governance on the neighborhood level, we draw on theoretical concepts that are context-sensitive, helping us to catch the institutional conditions in a specific place which are enabling individuals and groups to act and organize collectively. Thus, we enrich the abstract concept of governance put forward by New Institutional Economics. Based on a systematic analysis of case studies, the paper shows that the governance of community co-operatives is based on place-bound values. However, the encounter of divergent imaginations of the neighborhood results in different co-operative practices: e.g., either a government-directed practice to “discipline” the community or a community-initiated practice of self-organization.     

Ridge regression: A multivariate analysis of criminal activity

The objective of the paper is to apply the statistical procedure of ridge regression to a multivariate model of criminal activity. The explanatory variables are of an economic, apprehension, and seasonal nature. The Time Shared Reactive On Line Laboratory (TROLL) computer package was used in estimating all regression coefficients and other pertinent statistics. The economic variables, which included per capita personal income, hours worked, and plant closing dummy variable, were found to be statistically related to criminal activity. In addition, police expenditures as well as the three seasonal dummy variables were statistically associated with the dependent variable. A comparison is made between the results obtained from the ordinary least squares procedure and the ridge regression approach.     

Professional ethics in social work: living with the legacy

Until recently, professional ethics in social work has often been characterised in terms of a debate between Kantian and Utilitarian approaches. However, both these approaches are founded on a common basis in universalism and liberal individualism, which have been challenged by current developments in social theory. This paper examines the implications of such changes for social work ethics and considers how the profession can think about living with the legacy of earlier approaches.     

分析电磁散射问题的MGFFT方法

采用多重网格法（ＭＧ）分析电大尺寸物体的电磁散射，这种ＭＧ方法与已有的几种多重矩量法有本质的不同，与其他多层方法相比，它是一种高效率的迭代方法。再利用积分方程的卷积特性引入ＦＦＴ方法快速计算迭代过程中矩阵与矢量的乘积，从而构成ＭＧＦＦＴ新算法，数值结果表明ＭＧＦＦＴ方法具有很高的计算效率，适用于电大尺寸问题的分析。     

唐代三教融合思潮对白居易思想的影响

儒、释、道三教融合,构成了唐代三教关系的最重要特点.在中唐诗人中,自居易的行为方式和生存智慧,真正体现了三教融合这一时代精神.在唐宋文化转型之际,自居易更以其独特的诗歌风格和人生思考,开种种风气之先.     

The present status of confidence interval estimation on variance components in balanced and unbalanced random models

Much research has been conducted to develop confidence Intervals on linear combinations and ratios of variance components in balanced and unbalanced random models.This paper first presents confidence intervals on functions of variance components in balanced designs.These results assume that classical analysis of variance sums of squares are independent and have exact scaled chi-squared distributions.In unbalanced designs, either one or both of these assumptions are violated, and modifications to the balanced model intervals are required.We report results of some recent work that examines various modifications for some particular unbalanced designs.     

Extension of two-sided test to multiple treatment trials

In a two-treatment trial, a two-sided test is often used to reach a conclusion, Usually we are interested in doing a two-sided test because of no prior preference between the two treatments and we want a three-decision framework. When a standard control is just as good as the new experimental treatment (which has the same toxicity and cost), then we will accept both treatments. Only when the standard control is clearly worse or better than the new experimental treatment, then we choose only one treatment. In this paper, we extend the concept of a two-sided test to the multiple treatment trial where three or more treatments are involved. The procedure turns out to be a subset selection procedure; however, the theoretical framework and performance requirement are different from the existing subset selection procedures. Two procedures (exclusion or inclusion) are developed here for the case of normal data with equal known variance. If the sample size is large, they can be applied with unknown variance and with the binomial data or survival data with random censoring.