Transition Shock and the Relocation of People from Mental Handicap Hospitals and Hostels

The process of deinstitutionalisation has been gathering momentum in Britain and the United States since the mid-1970s. A discussion of these trends provides the background to an examination of “transition shock” as it affects people relocated from mental handicap institutions. The paper explores the theoretical underpinnings of the concept of transition shock and links them to the findings of a follow-up study of the behavioural consequences of relocation.     

Issues Related to Sports Gambling

This paper looks at various issues that are of interest to the sports gambler. First, an expression is obtained for the distribution of the final bankroll using fixed wagers with a specified initial bankroll. Second, fixed percentage wagers are considered where the Kelly method is extended to the case of simultaneous bets placed at various odds; a computational algorithm is presented to obtain the Kelly fractions. Finally, the paper considers the problem of determining whether a gambling system is profitable based on the historical results of bets placed at various odds.     

The Statistics and Registration Service Act

"When we first saw the draft act, we were dismayed." The new Act for the independence of official statistics has now passed into law. Is the Royal Statistical Society (RSS) still dismayed? Tim Holt , President of the RSS, explains the Act, its workings, how parts of it have been changed for the better and what concerns still remain.     

Representations of Labour: Visual Sociology and Work

This paper explores the potential that visual methods, approaches, and resources offer to the sociologist of work. It looks at the way work is represented in a range of publications and asks questions about what the visual can add to our understanding of the workplace, workers, and work processes. It argues that we need to develop and expand a sociological language of the visual in order to better understand cultural and other aspects of work and employment.     

Transformative power: a study in a human service organization

This article focuses upon the relationship between power and organizational change. It specifically considers the question of under what conditions and utilising what tactics can people be induced to see their organizational existence in new ways. At the same time it focuses upon the basis of resistance to the methods employed within the organization and in so doing delineates the limits of such transformative power. For these purposes, it draws upon a three-year study conducted in the probation service and employs Callon's concept of a sociology of translation alongside the ideas of Weber and Foucault. The argument then extends beyond the probation service to note that the form and methods of these tactics are currently being employed throughout the public sector.     

University Administrators as Information Tacticians: Understanding Transparency as Selective Concealment and Instrumental Disclosure

Despite its burgeoning popularity, the concept of administrative transparency has received little attention from interpretivist sociologists. Symbolic interactionism offers a theoretical and methodological agenda for understanding administrative transparency that departs from the more common quantitative‐ and factor‐based approaches. With an emphasis on educational administration, this article defines and examines how university administrators accomplish transparency in their everyday activities. Data from in‐depth semistructured interviews identify administrative transparency as a reflexive act of concealment and disclosure. These activities are further described by what are identified as silent budgetary bargaining and opportunistic budgeting.     

Union survival strategies for the twenty-first century

Clearly, the necessary changes in the law and culture will not come easily or quickly. But, transcending all forms of these labor market segments is a set of concerns that arguably should spur a search for common ground between labor and management. The proliferation of automated technologies, together with the continuing impact of foreign competition with cheap labor markets, has led some to predict that, over the next quarter century, we will witness the elimination of the blue-collar, mass assembly-line worker from the production process.¹⁴ Moreover, the theory that those losing jobs in the manufacturing sector will be generally absorbed into the service sector is losing currency as it is becoming clear that service jobs are, themselves, not invulnerable either to offshore outsourcing (e.g., telephone operators, data processors) or to automated technology (e.g., bank tellers, office secretaries). Nor is it realistic to expect the new “knowledge sector” to absorb more than a fraction of the unemployed and underemployed casualties of this transformation. As a result, the widening gap between the haves and have nots will only continue to grow. As the trend accelerates, certain possibilities for a labor-management accommodation emerge. For one thing, although corporations may be enjoying short-term gains from present wage stagnation, downsizing, outsourcing, and casting off of permanent employees, the longer term effects include a work force with considerably diminished consumer purchasing power. In some industries, corporations are already acknowledging the adverse effects of this trend. Furthermore, as employers are contributing into pension funds on behalf of fewer and fewer “employees,” the forced savings pool that has for many years constituted a primary financing source of capital investments in our economy, will gradually be depleted.¹⁵ At the same time as employers are coming face to face with the disadvantages of the union-free environment they have so long sought, employers are also rediscovering the contributions to productivity, quality, and efficiency that can be gained from a truly empowered work force with an independent voice in the workplace. All of this should lead an enlightened management to place less currency on resisting unionization and other legitimate forms of independent employee representation, and to join labor in advocating strong labor standards and effective labor law for all four of the labor market segments that exist today and will exist tomorrow. The authors wish to convey their deep appreciation for the invaluable contributions to this paper made by David Silberman of Bredhoff & Kaiser and Craig Becker, Associate General Counsel, Service Employees International Union. Another version of this paper was published in Labor Lawyer.     

Authors’ response: on the role of data,statistics and decisions in a pandemic

AStA Advances in Statistical Analysis -