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.     

Social and demographic determinants of abortion in Poland

Summary Most abortions in Polish hospitals and clinics are performed on social indications. In the 22 administrative areas of Poland, the high rates of divorce and large proportions of total population employed in non-agricultural pursuits reflect the individualistic approach to family planning which is characteristic of present-day urban society. Industrialization is disruptive to the normal functioning of the country's traditionally large families. In addition, the gross reproduction rate increases directly with the proportion of the peasant population in 17 voivodships and five large cities of Poland, whereas in the urban sector the gross reproduction rate has fallen below replacement level in the past few years. Rural birth rates will continue to decline. In view of increasing needs for future manpower, population policy aimed at increasing births through incentives to prospective mothers may achieve a limited degree of success in cities only among the educated segments of the female population.     

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.     

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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.     

Public Enterprise Reform in Fiji Islands

Reforming the public sector has been on the agenda of nations throughout the world since the late 1970s. Fiji is no exception. It has embarked on reforming its commercial and industrial enterprises since the late 1980s. The government of Fiji has reformed most of its enterprises with an avowed objective of enhancing profitability, productivity, efficiency and accountability. This paper makes an attempt to share some of the experiences of public enterprise reform process in Fiji. It aims to analyze the background, process, contents and impact of the reform and examine the factors impeding the reform program. It highlights that (a) both internal and external factors were responsible for introducing reforms; (b) the reform efforts have not been able to produce desired results; (c) the structural inadequacies in institutions and organizations have created bottlenecks in the reform process; and (d) uncertainty in the political sphere has contributed further to policy shifts.