Ethical dilemmas in a professional service context

This paper reports on the results of action research exploring the kinds of ethical problems that confront employees in the professional services industry. Data were collected from a single firm via participant observation methods at eight locations across the country. Issues raised included service delivery, responses to life threatening situations, marketing, client relationships, client entertaining, bribery, billings, as well as intra-firm issues such as support for professional judgments in the field, employee health and safety, and compensation. The paper concludes with an assessment of the utility of the approach taken by the firm, the generalizability of the issues beyond the single case setting, as well as an assessment of the managerial issues related to fostering and sustaining an ethical environment within a business organization.     

Hybrid Processing of Stochastic and Subjective Uncertainty Data

Uncertainty analyses typically recognize separate stochastic and subjective sources of uncertainty, but do not systematically combine the two, although a large amount of data used in analyses is partly stochastic and partly subjective. We have developed methodology for mathematically combining stochastic and subjective sources of data uncertainty, based on new "hybrid number" approaches. The methodology can be utilized in conjunction with various traditional techniques, such as PRA (probabilistic risk assessment) and risk analysis decision support. Hybrid numbers have been previously examined as a potential method to represent combinations of stochastic and subjective information, but mathematical processing has been impeded by the requirements inherent in the structure of the numbers, e.g., there was no known way to multiply hybrids. In this paper, we will demonstrate methods for calculating with hybrid numbers that avoid the difficulties. By formulating a hybrid number as a probability distribution that is only fuzzily known, or alternatively as a random distribution of fuzzy numbers, methods are demonstrated for the full suite of arithmetic operations, permitting complex mathematical calculations. It will be shown how information about relative subjectivity (the ratio of subjective to stochastic knowledge about a particular datum) can be incorporated. Techniques are also developed for conveying uncertainty information visually, so that the stochastic and subjective components of the uncertainty, as well as the ratio of knowledge about the two, are readily apparent. The techniques demonstrated have the capability to process uncertainty information for independent, uncorrelated data, and for some types of dependent and correlated data. Example applications are suggested, illustrative problems are shown, and graphical results are given.     

Rehabilitation outlooks for rural Louisiana: educational developments,economic trends,and global perspectives

The objective of this article is to examine current medical, economic, and social trends affecting the provision of rehabilitation services for rural citizens with disabilities. While the population of interest is citizens of Louisiana, the concepts are applicable across all geographic boundaries. The article is a review of clinical practice, job placement alternatives, economic trends, and assessment of process applications. It is concluded numerous steps may be taken to enhance the availability and quality of services provided for rural citizens with disabilities: greater statistical inquiry into rural disability trends, increased incorporation of the Internet into all aspects of rural economic and educational developments, further development of distance learning, promotion of sensitivities towards rural cultures, and continued recruitment of rural allied and vocational rehabilitation professionals.     

WORKERS, FIRMS, AND THE DOMINANT IDEOLOGY:

Theorists of work and class relations have argued that organizational processes within the monopoly 'core' induce employees to identify with the firm and consent to the social relations of production. The adequacy of this 'hegemony' thesis is evaluated using data from two Bell operating companies, whose workers hold relatively high-paying primary sector jobs and are exposed to a strong corporate culture. Although these factors should favor the thesis of managerial hegemony, the data provide only limited support. In fact, an oppositional consciousness is fairly common among the workers, but with marked variations between occupational groups. The data indicate that hegemony theory inflates the role of ideological mechanisms in the reproduction of managerial control and underestimates workers' capacity to form a critical consciousness of the employment relationship. Worker consent should be viewed as problematic—that is, as exceptional, occurring only under specific social and organizational conditions.     

The social “R & D” paradigm in child and youth services: Building knowledge convivially

Adaptation of agricultural and industrial research and development models offers new methods for bridging the worlds of research and practice in child and youth services. Social R & D methodologies provide effective means for generating new social technologies because they are product oriented and use a wide array of traditional and nontraditional data sources. This article discusses one social R & D paradigm—Developmental Research and Utilization. Permanency planning and community support systems research are used to illustrate the past and potential application of this methodology to the field of child and youth services.     

Rules in Organizational Context: Narcotics Law Enforcement in Two Settings*

Studies of organizational action tend to isolate actors, structures, and goals as if they were not concretely interdigitated in organizational conduct. In many cases, actors are omitted as relevant units of analysis; goals are stated as abstracted entities unrelated to complex collective processes of defining, clarifying and evaluating goal-attainment, and often rules are not studied as continuously negotiated through and by interaction. Unless a close analysis of how broadly defined rules emerge as narrowly defined procedures sanctioned as reasonable and proper conduct is undertaken, the assumptive nature of the concept “bureaucracy” is left unexamined, operates invisibly, and thus impedes sociological analysis. This paper, based on fieldwork and interviews in three police organizations, identifies the processes by which an abstract organizational goal is defined, deferred to and becomes actionable. The organizational contexts of the two narcotics enforcement units (from which most of the data presented here are derived) embed the rules said to guide the pursuit of major violators of narcotics laws and systematically make certain aspects of the work either visible or obscure. Thus, some members are exposed to negative sanctioning while others experience positive sanctioning. This suggests that since the context of rules, not the rules themselves, nor the rules about the rules (so characteristic of formal organizations), determine the consequential (i.e., actionable) meanings of acts, situated interactions, accounts and shared understandings should be examined in the sociological analysis of organizations.