Research in family financial counseling

Domains of family financial counseling research are proposed in order to establish criteria for assessing research needs in this relatively new field. Identification of the research domains implies progress for an emerging profession. A survey of the family financial counseling research to date is reported. Results of research in several domains are shown to demonstrate how results from empirical studies can contribute to the theory and practice of family financial counseling.Research conducted under the auspices of Agricultural Experiment Station Research Project 01803, Family Economic Problems and Resource Management.Dr. Williams is an Associate Professor in the Department of Consumer Sciences and Retailing, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907. Her Ph.D. was received from Purdue. Current research interests include income adequacy, economic security, financial problems, and financial counseling.     

ENTREPRENEURIAL SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE AND LOCALLY INITIATED ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN THE NONMETROPOLITAN UNITED STATES

A community embeddedness perspective hypothesizes that nonmetropolitan localities high on entrepreneurial social infrastructure (ESI) are more successful at implementing economic development projects than those lacking ESI. ESI is a format for converting social capital into organizational forms that facilitate collective action. Logistic regression revealed that localities with projects were more likely to have an unbiased newspaper, multiple contributions by financial institutions to community projects, and more external linkages, Project communities place more emphasis on citizen involvement through civic organizations than through local government. Community-based patterns of interactions and organization are associated with successful collective economic development action.     

Social Capital and Communities of Place1

Abstract This paper develops a framework for examining the questions: Does social capital make a difference for well being in communities of place? How might rural sociologists utilize social capital to further well being in communities? The author reviews social capital literature, contrasting rational choice and embeddedness perspectives. Opting for a marriage between embeddedness and conflict theory, he introduces entrepreneurial social infrastructure (ESI) as an alternative to social capital. ESI adds to social capital the notions of equality, inclusion, and agency. Research results are presented which support the embeddedness approach: community-level action (the community field) is not simply an aggregation of individual or organizational actions within the community; social capital and ESI contribute jointly and independently to community action. Examining economic development as a form of collective action, the author concludes?the following: a) ESI contributes to economic development, and b) inclusiveness (internal solidarity) is more closely related to community self-development while industrial recruitment is better predicted by strong external ties.     

Top issues and responsive strategies in public relations practice: An empirical assessment in the Greater China area

An online survey of 132 public relations practitioners in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and, Taiwan revealed three issues (i.e., finding, developing and retaining highly talented communication, professionals, managing the digital revolution and rise of social media, and dealing with the speed and, volume of information flow) as the most urgent ones to deal with in today's public relations practice. Consequently, various responsive strategies have been applied to deal with emerging critical issues.     

Types and dimensions of organization–public relationships in greater China

Public relations are the major force in the establishment of organization–public relationships (OPRs) in the United States and other countries. This study is a metaresearch that reports a meta-analysis of three studies on relationship management with publics in the greater China area, including mainland China and Hong Kong. A metaresearch is used to gain general and theoretical conclusions on a specific topic by synthesizing research results from similar studies [Grunig, J. E., Grunig, L. A., Sriramesh, K., Huang, Y. H., & Lyra, A. (1995). Models of public relations in an international setting. Journal of Public Relations Research, 7, 163–186]. The purpose of this study is to extend the concepts of relationship management to the Chinese context by investigating the types of relationships between organizations and the Chinese publics and other possible factors that affect the outcomes of the relationships. This article first provides a brief literature review on relationship management of public relations. It is followed by a report of the result analysis of the three studies in relation to OPR types and cultivation strategies. Finally, the research results, their implications, and future research directions will be discussed.