The changing structure of school segregation: Measurement and evidence of multiracial metropolitan-area school segregation, 1989–1995

In this paper we examine aggregate patterns and trends in segregation among white (non-Hispanic), black, Hispanic, and Asian public school students in 217 metropolitan areas during the period 1989-1995. We first describe a set of methodological tools that enable us both to measure the mutual segregation among multiple racial groups and to partition total metropolitan-area school segregation into geographic and racial components. Then we use these tools to examine patterns and trends in metropolitan-area school segregation. We find that the average levels of multiracial school segregation have been unchanged from 1989 to 1995, but that this stability masks important shifts in the geographic and racial components making up average levels of total metropolitan school segregation. In particular, segregation between non-Hispanic white students and all other students has increased, on average, while segregation among black, Hispanic, and Asian student groups has declined. In addition, the contribution to average levels of total metropolitan segregation due to between-district segregation has grown, whereas the relative contribution of within-district segregation has declined.     

Half Empty? Drinking Water Systems and Regional Resilience in Rural Canada

This paper investigates the extent that new regionalism has been employed in the planning of rural drinking water systems as a strategy to support rural regional resilience. Through a content analysis of policy documents, this paper explores the question of whether current approaches to the planning of rural drinking water systems reflect a transition towards regional resilience. While there is potential for drinking water systems to support or enhance rural regional resilience, this potential is emergent at best. Policy documents reveal the adoption of regionalist practices is challenged by a lack of regional cohesion and barriers from existing institutional structures.     

A precarious hegemony: neo-liberalism,social struggles,and the end of Lulismo in Brazil

ABSTRACT

Analysis of Brazil’s political and economic crisis tends to emphasize the economic ‘errors’ that President Dilma Rousseff’s Workers’ Party (PT) government inherited from her predecessor Luíz Inácio Lula da Silva. It is clear, however, that political regulation is too narrow a focus to understand the current crisis. Such an explanation is unable to reveal the changes in class structure that took place during the Lula era as well as the effects of the international economic crisis. This article identifies the limits of the Brazilian development model and the main features of Lula’s mode of regulation; analyses the conflicts produced by the neo-liberal regime of accumulation and the Lulista mode of regulation, emphasizing the role of precarious work in the current historical cycle of strikes and popular struggles in Brazil; and, finally, interprets the palace coup promoted by the social forces behind the impeachment of President Rousseff.     

An adjusted likelihood ratio test for separability in unbalanced multivariate repeated measures data

We propose an adjusted likelihood ratio test of two-factor separability (Kronecker product structure) for unbalanced multivariate repeated measures data. Here we address the particular case where the within subject correlation is believed to decrease exponentially in both dimensions (e.g., temporal and spatial dimensions). However, the test can be easily generalized to factor specific matrices of any structure. A simulation study is conducted to assess the inference accuracy of the proposed test. Longitudinal medical imaging data concerning schizophrenia and caudate morphology illustrate the methodology.     

Legislative Pay and Legislator Quality

This study extends previous work by Mixon and Wilkinson (1999, Public Finance Review 27: 418–433) and Palia (2000, RAND Journal of Economics 31: 165–179) suggesting that formal human capital attainment is lower in political and managerial roles wherein expected compensation is less. The present study constructs a cumulative probability distribution function for years of education attained for both branches of the 109th US Congress and finds that the distribution of years of education attainment in the US Senate second‐order dominates that in the US House due to differences in the expected compensation levels favoring the former congressional branch. The stochastic dominance test results are supported by findings of significant differences in education attainment (favoring senators) at different quantiles of the joint education attainment distribution. Finally, goodness‐of‐fit tests also indicate that the distribution of education attainment quality in the US Senate, as measured by various academic institution quality indicators, is significantly different from that in the US House, again owing to the differences in expected compensation.     

Invisible Whispering: Restructuring Collaborative Decision Making with Instant Messaging

Organizational decision making is dominated by teams. When an important decision is required, a team is often formed to make it or to advise the individual decision maker, because a team has more resources, knowledge, and political insight than any one individual working alone. As teams have become geographically distributed, collaboration technology has come to play an important role in such collective decision making efforts. Instant messaging (IM) is an increasingly prevalent workplace collaboration technology that enables near‐synchronous text exchanges on a variety of devices. We examined the use of IM during face‐to‐face, telephone, and computer‐mediated team meetings, a practice we call “invisible whispering.” We introduce Goffman's characterization of social interaction as dramatic performance, differentiable into “front stage” and “backstage” exchanges, to analyze how invisible whispering alters the socio‐spatial and temporal boundaries of team decision making. Using IM, workers were able to influence front stage decision making through backstage conversations, often participating in multiple backstage conversations simultaneously. This type of interaction would be either physically impossible or socially constrained without the use of IM. We examine how invisible whispering changes the processes of collaborative decision making and how these new processes may affect the efficiency and effectiveness of collaborative decision making, as well as participation, satisfaction, relationships among team members, and individual attention.     

A framework for examining leadership in extreme contexts

In this review, we develop a framework to guide future research and to examine the execution of leadership in extreme contexts. We start by defining and distinguishing extreme contexts from crisis and other contexts. A five component typology is developed comprised of magnitude of consequences, form of threat, probability of consequences, location in time and physical or psychological–social proximity. We discuss the unique influences these components have on leadership processes in extreme contexts examining the relevance of organization types such as critical action and high reliability organizations. Further, we present a set of factors that may attenuate or intensify the dimensions comprising an extreme context, thus influencing either a team or organization's ability for adaptive leadership response. Ultimately this framework seeks to develop a richer understanding of extreme contexts to advance the future development of contextualized theories of leadership for extreme contexts.