Discovering the knowledge creation process of an expert group in women-friendly policy: The policy case of Seoul City

ABSTRACT

This research explores how expert knowledge is created in the process of women-friendly policy making, based on actor network theory (ANT). To address this purpose, this study uses the “Women’s Happiness in the City of Seoul” policy initiated by the local government of Seoul as one example of policy development. Research findings demonstrate that knowledge creation in expert groups followed the four stages suggested by ANT. In addition, this study found that various types of knowledge emerged from individual experts. This research elucidates the process of knowledge creation and its meanings for women-friendly policy.     

Understanding the effects of outsourcing: unpacking the total factor productivity variable

Research on why firms should outsource and how they should do it has proliferated in the past two decades, but few consistent findings have emerged concerning the benefits of outsourcing. We argue that this is in part due to the lack of an adequate framework for measuring the effects of outsourcing. To address this, we present such a framework based upon the Cobb–Douglas productivity function. We explain how our framework can be used to unpack one component of the Cobb–Douglas productivity function, the ‘total factor productivity’, which represents the other numerous sub-variables that affect outsourcing productivity, beyond the capital and labour expenditures. We also demonstrate the framework using a simple illustrative example.     

Stress and stereotypes: children's reactions to the outbreak of foot and mouth disease in the UK in 2001

In 2001 foot and mouth disease broke out in the UK and millions of farm animals were slaughtered in order to eradicate it. This affected farmers, town dwellers, adults and children. Based on a small sample of 56 e‐mails to a children's BBC (CBBC) message board and using an ethnomethodological approach, this article explores the way in which children in rural and urban areas responded to the effects of this epidemic and how they structured their understandings of one another through the use of rural and urban stereotypes. It shows that the stress felt by some of the children who lived on or near infected farms during the outbreak was exacerbated by the fact that they felt misunderstood by other children living in surroundings not directly affected by foot and mouth disease.     

Agency policy and the participation of children and young people in the child protection process

This article explores agency policy in relation to children's participation in the child protection process. This was done by examining policy documents and conference minutes and by interviewing social workers and conference chairs working in child protection in Wales. Issues and dilemmas surrounding the participation of children and young people in the child protection process are identified and examined. The lack of children's more direct participation was noted, but many agencies were taking action to inform themselves of children's views indirectly. Advocacy was being more frequently used, and highly valued where it was available, but did raise some role dilemmas. The essentially child‐unfriendly nature of child protection processes (particularly the conferences) was identified as a significant barrier to promoting children's voices. The contradiction of trying to promote children's direct participation in a process that is inherently not geared towards their direct involvement was noted. The total lack of children's input into service planning for child protection services was seen as significant. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Frame Changes and Social Movement Contraction: U.S. Peace Movement Framing After the Cold War*

This study analyzes framing processes and their relationships with ongoing social movement change. We examine peace frames found among U.S. peace movement organizations (PMOS) in its period of contraction at the end of the Cold War. On the basis of analysis of a unique two-wave survey of US. peace movement organizations in 1988 and 1992, we assess the extent to which organizational framing of the peace problematic changed. We found an overall shift in emphases from more bilateral frames like the nuclear weapons freeze to frames emphasizing multilateralism and global interdependence. PMO frame transformations that took place between 1988 and 1992 represent a trend towards broader, more radical (or structural) and less exclusive peace movement frames. We describe the frame transformations observed here as the emergence of “retention frames.” Retention frames embody several dimensions of movement abeyance structures and serve to sustain organizational continuity across episodes of movement surges and contraction.     

Redistributing Income and Relative Efficiency

This article considers the relative efficiency of marginally redistributing income from high- to low-income households. Additional spending on a negative income tax is compared with spending on an earnings or a wage subsidy. One set of reforms imposes the same burden on the nonpoor, and another set redistributes the same net benefit to the working poor. Additional spending on a negative income tax is more efficient than spending a similar amount on an earnings subsidy (the Earned Income Tax Credit), for some reforms and parameters. The wage subsidy is the most efficient, independent of parameters or type of reform.     

Testing retrospective hypotheses

This paper develops a conditional approach to testing hypotheses set up after viewing the data. For example, suppose X_i are estimates of location parameters θ_i, i = 1,…n. We show how to compute p-values for testing whether θ₁ is one of the three largest θ_i after observing that X₁ is one of the three largest X_i, or for testing whether θ₁ > θ₂ > … > θ_n after observing X₁ >X₂> … >X_n.