INCENTIVE DESIGN UNDER LOSS AVERSION

Compensation schemes often reward success but do not penalize failure. Fixed salaries with stock options or bonuses have this feature. Yet the standard principal‐agent model implies that pay is normally monotonically increasing in performance. This paper shows that, under loss aversion, there will be intervals over which pay is insensitive to performance, with the use of carrots but not sticks frequently optimal, especially when risk aversion is low and reference income is endogenous. A further benefit of capping losses, for example through options, is to discourage reckless behavior by executives seeking to resurrect their fortunes. (JEL: F3, F4)     

Gender differences in predictors of late-life health insurance knowledge

For many older adults having access to affordable health care is a major concern. The present study's goal was to examine what factors were related to individuals' knowledge of late-life health insurance. A total of 131 women and 116 men (all aged 55-71) answered questions about private, Medicare, Medigap, and long-term care insurances. In addition, they answered demographic, personality, and health status questions. Results revealed that different factors are related to men's and women's knowledge of late-life health insurance options implying genderspecific educational interventions would be more effective than current educational interventions.     

The Women’s Empowerment in Livestock Index

Social Indicators Research - The empowerment of women in the livestock sector is fundamental to achieve gender equality. It also is instrumental for increased household productivity and improved...     

‘Look at What We Made’: communicating subcultural value on London’s Southbank

ABSTRACT

This article sets out key findings of an interdisciplinary Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded project that uses Long Live Southbank’s (LLSB) successful campaign to retain London’s Southbank Undercroft for subcultural use – skateboarding, BMXing, graffiti art, etc. – as a case study to generate discussions about young people’s experiences and engagements with (sub)cultural heritage and political activism. At the heart of this inquiry is the perceived contradiction between the communicative practices of subcultures and social protest movements: the former typically understood to be internally oriented and marked by strong boundary maintenance, and the latter, to be successful, to be externally oriented to a diverse range of publics. In explaining the skaters/campaigner’s negotiation of this contradiction, we look to the inclusive and everyday concepts of ‘inhabitant knowledge’ [Ingold, T., 2000 Ingold, T., 2007. Lines: a brief history. London: Routledge.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]. The perception of the environment: essays in livelihood, dwelling and skill. London: Routledge], ‘vernacular creativity’ [Burgess, J., 2009. Remediating vernacular creativity: photography and cultural citizenship in the Flickr photosharing network. In: T. Edensor, D. Leslie, S. Millington, and N. Rantisi, eds. Spaces of vernacular creativity: rethinking the cultural economy. London: Routledge, 116–126] and ‘affective intelligence’ [Van Zoonen, L., 2004. Imagining the fan democracy. European journal of communication, 19 (1), 39–52]. In eschewing the exclusionary and contestatory language of (post)subcultural and spatial theories, this article proposes new frameworks for thinking about the political nature of young people’s bodily knowledge and experiences, and the implications of this for the communication of (sub)cultural value.     

Some considerations on the validity of evidence-based practice in social work

Summary This paper considers the validity of evidence-based practicein social work. It critically examines various underlying presuppositionsand assumptions entailed in evidence-based practice and drawsout their implications for social work. The paper is dividedinto three main parts. Following a consideration of the backgroundto the development of evidence-based practice and a discussionof its key organizing concepts, the paper goes on to examineits underlying scientific assumptions. It shows that evidence-basedpractice proposes a particular deterministic version of rationalitywhich is unsatisfactory. Evidence-based practice is derivedfrom ideas based on optimal behavior in a planned and systematicallyorganized environment. By concentrating on 'epistemic processes'involved in planning and psychological inference it is claimedthat cognitive heuristic devices are the determinants of decisionmaking and not evidence. The heuristic model suggests that decisionmaking is indeterminate, reflexive, locally optimal at bestand based on a limited rationality. It is argued that socialworkers engage in a reflexive understanding and not a determinateor certainty based decision-making process based on objectiveevidence. Complex phenomena such as decision making are notrationally determined or subject to 'control'. The paper goeson to suggest that the tendency to separate processes into 'facts'and 'values' implicit in evidence-based procedures underminesprofessional judgement and discretion in social work. The thirdpart of the paper focuses on the connection between method andideology in evidence-based practice. It examines how the evidence-basedpreoccupation with positivistic methods and determinate judgemententraps social workers within a mechanistic for of technicalrationality. This framework restricts social work to a narrowends-means rationality such that only certain forms of actionare considered legitimate. This feeds into the rhetoric of newmanagerialist strategies aimed at developing a performance cultureby further regulating and controlling individual practitioners.In the conclusion a number of critical indicators are givenwhich should be addressed by the proponents of evidence-basedpractice. It is suggested that unless these are adequately dealtwith, social work is not greatly advanced by adherence to anevidence-based approach. Moreover, the problematic epistemologicaland ideological base associated with it are to be regarded asinherently insuperable.     

The comfort of strangers: social work,modernity and late Victorian England—Part II

This is the second of two related articles on the history of social work in late Victorian England. In the previous article I showed that the emergence of social work was best understood by aligning it with the complex cultural system of modernity. In this paper the influence of modernity on the formation of social work is taken further by focusing on the way that regimes of practice were shaped by material, physical and visual elements. A distinctive set of spatio-temporal elements are identified that have hitherto been overlooked in ‘histories of social work’. The paper shows how the power of place, and the power over place in early social work, relates directly to the modern experience of Victorian England while shaping the remit of contemporary social work. Home visits, for example, meant that social workers could for the first time attempt to ‘regulate at a distance’, and involved what is referred to as the ‘domestication of stranger relations’. The paper further explores the way in which the history of social work can benefit from exploring the experience-content of early social workers and how organizational imperatives for charity relief were often formed from the bottom-up during this period. At the end of the paper there are some considerations about the way in which a European approach to the history of social work can be instructive and beneficial.     

BOURDIEU'S CONCEPT OF REFLEXIVITY AS METALITERACY

For Bourdieu, the extent to which agents can attain knowledge of, and negotiate, various cultural fields is dependent upon, and explicable in terms of, two epistemological types. The first is a practical sense (the ‘logic of practice’), while the second involves a sort of conscious comprehension that he names ‘reflexivity’. Bourdieu defines reflexivity as an interrogation of the three types of limitations (of social position, of field and of the scholastic point of view) that are constitutive of knowledge itself. But the reflexive relation to the habitus, the demands and influences exerted by cultural fields, and one's own practices within those fields, cannot be understood simply as something that is obtained by the subject; rather, any reflexive relation to the doxa and illusio of the field must be a constitutive part of that field. This paper identifies a number of principles taken from Bourdieu's work that clarify how, where and why the reflexive ‘surpassing’ of literacy might occur. But we also suggest, contra Bourdieu, that only fields that are informed or characterized by the scholastic point of view are likely to be characterized by the set of conditions constitutive of reflexive knowledge; and that the scholastic point of view is therefore, simultaneously, both a potential impediment to, and a condition (almost necessary) of the production of reflexive knowledge.     

Shifting Contexts and Shifting Identities: Campus Race-Related Experiences,Racial Identity,and Academic Motivation Among Black Students During the Transition to College

This study examined Black college students’ (N = 309, 70% women) racial identity beliefs over their freshman year. Using latent class cluster analysis, we identified clusters reflecting patterns of change and stability in students’ racial centrality (importance of race to overall self-concept), private regard (group pride), and public regard (perceptions of others’ views of Blacks). Racial identity change clusters were distinguished by campus experiences (racial discrimination, interracial friendships, and campus racial climate). Racial identity change clusters predicted end-of-year academic motivation (competence, affect, interest/curiosity, and persistence). Findings suggest the importance of examining critical transitions in identity development and highlight the deleterious effects of stigmatizing campus experiences on identity. Findings also highlight ways students’ racial identity beliefs may help promote academic motivation.     

After the wave-the Centrelink Social Work response offshore

Communities worldwide were affected by the tsunamis that struck a dozen Indian Ocean nations on 26 December 2004. More than 300,000 people were killed or left missing as a result of the tragedy. The Australian Government played a key role in the disaster response overseas and in Australia. As part of a whole-of-government response to the crisis, eight Centrelink Social Workers were deployed to tsunami-affected areas for two weeks after the initial disaster to provide personal support to Australian victims and their families. This paper presents the service delivery framework adopted offshore and delineates the role undertaken by the social workers. Drawing on their practice experience, the paper examines some of the challenges, dilemmas, learnings and implications for future service delivery.     

Virtue Ethics and Social Work: Being Lucky, Realistic, and not Doing ones Duty

Correspondence to Graham McBeath, Department of Sociology and Politics, University College, Northampton, Northants. NN2 7AL, UK. E-mail: graham{at}spooner.demon.co.uk; Stephen Webb, Centre for Social Policy and Social Work, University of Sussex, Falmer, Nr Brighton, Sussex, UK. E-mail: s.a.webb{at}sussex.ac.uk Summary This article argues that in a complex socio-political world,social work ethics needs to re-cast the moral identity of thesocial worker in terms of virtue ethics. We review virtue theory'sAristotelian foundations and criticisms of Kantian and utilitariantheory and show how they apply to social work. Subsequentlywe offer an account of a virtue-based social work that questionsthe validity of several models of practice currently fashionable.Virtue theory emphasizes the priority of the individual moralagent who has acquired virtues commensurate with the pursuitof a revisable conception of the good life—the well-beingof all in a defined community. The virtues are the acquiredinner qualities of humans—character—the possessionof which, if applied in due measure, will typically contributeto the realization of the good life or ‘eudaimonia’.The role of the virtuous social worker is shown to be one thatnecessitates appropriate application of intellectual and practicalvirtues such as justice, reflection, perception, judgement,bravery, prudence, liberality and temperance. This ‘self-flourishing’worker, in bringing together the capacity for theoretical andpractical action makes possible a hermeneutic or interpretivepraxis best appraised in dialogue with fellow-practitionersand clients. With a social work remit increasingly routinizedby accountability, quality control and risk management thereis an emphasis on regulation and duties. This has produced aculture of following approved or typical processes resultingin defensive forms of social work wholly uncongenial to thedevelopment of human qualities likely to promote social workers'engagement in critique and revision of what counts as best practice.In sum, our core proposition is that social work practice andeducation, to fit an unpredictable, non-linear world, shoulddevelop means by which professionals nurture the virtues. Thiswould reflexively enhance social work itself.