Social Support and Career Optimism: Examining the Effectiveness of Network Groups Among Black Managers

As companies look for better ways to managediversity, one of the approaches that is emerging is theuse of female and minoritynetwork groups. These groupsare not well understood, and there has been no quantitative analysis of their impact onminority employees. Social network theory suggests thatnetwork groups should enhance the social resourcesavailable to women and minorities and in that wayenhance their chance of career success, but somecritics of network groups suggest that backlash mightproduce greater social isolation and discrimination. Inthis paper, we analyze a survey of members of theNational Black MBA Association to find out whethernetwork groups have a positive impact on careeroptimism, what specific effects of these groups are mostbeneficial, and whether groups enhance isolation ordiscrimination. Results indicate that network groups have apositive overall impact on career optimism of Blackmanagers, and that this occurs primarily via enhancedmentoring. Network groups have no effect ondiscrimination, either positive or negative. There are someindications of greater isolation, but also someindications of greater contact with Whites.     

A Community Response to Tragedy: Individualized Services for Families

The murder of a 13-year-old young woman mobilized one community to initiate a wraparound service model for their most hard-to-reach families. These families struggled with parental substance abuse, youth at high risk, and associated complex needs cutting across existing categorical programs. The strength and empowerment based program, in which interventions were designed specific to each family, presented challenges in evaluating outcomes with traditional standardized instruments. This paper describes the project, its outcomes for families and youth, and the evaluation design that evolved to measure outcomes in a strength-based program with no uniform intervention.     

On Weighing Gains and Investments at the Margin of Risk Regulation

Analysts have long noted an apparent discrepancy in the level of investment seemingly necessary to meet "acceptable" levels of public safety. At the margin of risk regulation, i.e., where safety determination is judged acceptable, the traditional cost-benefit calculus appears to contribute obvious rationale to the final political decision. Efforts are now being made to introduce a measure of consistency into the application of risk-cost benefit analysis to radiological protection. This paper reviews these efforts from a UK perspective. It also looks at how the issue was treated in a public setting through the Sizewell B Public Inquiry.     

Study and analysis of occupational risk factors for ergonomic design of construction worksystems

Manual material handling (MMH) is unavoidable because of the nature of jobs or tasks as and man-machine interfaces in a construction worksystem. Data were collected from six strata of workers viz., masons, mason helpers, carpenters, welders, gas cutters and ground-level helpers (259 out of 700 workers) from a construction site of a steel plant located in India to analyze different types of occupational risk factors, such as awkward posture, repetitive movements and others associated with MMH activities to assess their impact on musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs). It is essential that these risk factors are required to be under control through application of ergonomics-based design approaches for construction worksystem. In this context, multinomial logistic regression analyses were used to identify the significant risk factors among the workers. The results shows that masons, mason helpers, carpenters, welders/gas cutters and ground-level helpers are greatly affected by static body posture, type of tools used, excessive stress due to repetition, awkward postures and extreme climate, respectively. Appropriate preventive and corrective measures are suggested for minimization of risks associated with such jobs/tasks to improve health and performance of the workers.     

The economic importance of air travel in high-amenity rural areas

The western United States offers a case study on the importance of access to large population centers and their markets, via road and air travel, for economic development. The vast distances between towns and cities in the American West can be a detriment to business, yet they also serve to attract technology and knowledge-based workers seeking to live in a picturesque setting. In spite of the increasing importance of amenities to migration and business location, also needed is access to markets, particularly via commercial air service. We test a new county classification system for the western United States to reflect differing degrees of access to population centers and account for the increasing importance of airports. Past classifications are based on population size and cross-county commuting. We examine the validity of this new classification and test for differences in economic performance among the three county types. Our findings show that there are three distinct Wests that can be classified using economic performance measures and socioeconomic characteristics. The results show that “metro” and “isolated” counties are clearly distinct, but “connected” counties, those that are rural in nature but have ready access to metropolitan areas via air travel, can be difficult to distinguish from “metro” and “isolated” counties. Much of the variation is explained by travel distance to airports. The findings illustrate the importance of airports in rural development, and the limitations facing those communities that are isolated from markets and population centers. The results apply to other parts of the world with similar characteristics that include large expanses of open space, natural amenities that attract migrants and stimulate new business, and different degrees of access to large population centers via road or air travel, and therefore different rates of economic growth.     

Between family and friends: a longitudinal study of friendship choice

The increasing role for chosen friends is a key element in current debates on individualization and the transformation of intimacy. This paper describes the changes in friendship choices over time and demonstrates how life events subsequently impact on those choices. We primarily distinguish between kin and non-kin nominations of friends and how these may be related to the social and economic turbulence inherent in late modernity. Analyses of data from ten years of the British Household Panel Survey showed that kin nominations still form a significant proportion of all friends but increasingly so with age and over time as people age. Life events, such as divorce or death of a partner, have large effects on the likelihood of changes in friendship choices as did gender, age, marital status and social class. We frame these results in a discussion of the saliency and nature of friendship at stages of the life course and conclude that the case for a general secular shift to choosing non-kin friendships rather than kin-based friendship is not demonstrated.     

Resource allocation for restoration of compromised systems

Computer systems are constantly under the threats of being attacked and in many cases these attacks succeed. Today’s networked systems are thus built to be intrusion tolerant. In a large scale, the progresses of compromising the networked system and recovering the damage will carry on in parallel, allowing services to be continued (at a degraded level). One of the key problems in the restoration procedure regards to the resource allocation strategies and the cost associated with, specifically, a minimal cost is desired. In this paper we model the cost as a sum of service loss and resource expense that incur during the restoration procedure. We investigate the achievable minimal total cost and corresponding resource allocation strategy for different situations. The situations include both constant rates and time-variant rates in terms of the speed of compromising and recovering. We also consider the fact that the restoration rate is constrained by the resource allocated. The relationship can be either linear or obeying the law of diminishing marginal utility. We present both analytical and numerical results in the paper. The results show the impact from various system parameters on the critical conditions for a successful system restoration and on the minimal cost. Dr. Ray is currently with Google Inc., 604 Arizona Avenue, Santa Monica, CA 90401, USA. His e-mail contact is sibu@google.com, siburay@gmail.com     

Physical quality of life index: Some international and Indian applications

In this paper, an attempt has been made to construct the physical quality of life index (PQLI) for some countries and for the Indian States as well. Three important indicators, viz. literacy rate, infant mortality rate and life expectancy at birth, reflecting the quality of life have been chosen and combined with equal weights to obtain PQLI. The rationale of equal weights, apart from any subjective judgement, may also be found in a mathematical model presented here. It is observed that PQLI rises sharply with per capita GNP but after a certain stage, an increase of per capita GNP is not accompanied by an increase of PQLI.