Public relations and business responses to the civil rights movement

During the 1950s and 1960s, U.S. civil rights protesters targeted businesses with demands for service, jobs, and equality. Employing historical method, this study considers the role of public relations by examining magazine, newspaper, and public relations trade press coverage of business responses to the civil rights movement. The analysis shows that, although all five motivations for the adoption of the formal public relations function—profit, legitimacy, recruitment, agitation, and advocacy—were present, business was slow to respond; that riots and concerns about corporate image drove business to take a public stand; and that professional public relations participation appeared to be minimal even as it was cited in press stories as a reason for the failure of many business initiatives. In addition, the analysis demonstrates the existence of a sixth motivation: fear.     

A Probabilistic Framework for the Reference Dose (Probabilistic RfD)

Determining the probabilistic limits for the uncertainty factors used in the derivation of the Reference Dose (RfD) is an important step toward the goal of characterizing the risk of noncarcinogenic effects from exposure to environmental pollutants. If uncertainty factors are seen, individually, as "upper bounds" on the dose-scaling factor for sources of uncertainty, then determining comparable upper bounds for combinations of uncertainty factors can be accomplished by treating uncertainty factors as distributions, which can be combined by probabilistic techniques. This paper presents a conceptual approach to probabilistic uncertainty factors based on the definition and use of RfDs by the US. EPA. The approach does not attempt to distinguish one uncertainty factor from another based on empirical data or biological mechanisms but rather uses a simple displaced lognormal distribution as a generic representation of all uncertainty factors. Monte Carlo analyses show that the upper bounds for combinations of this distribution can vary by factors of two to four when compared to the fixed-value uncertainty factor approach. The probabilistic approach is demonstrated in the comparison of Hazard Quotients based on RfDs with differing number of uncertainty factors.     

The Meaning of Good Parent–Child Relationships for Mexican American Adolescents

Perceptions of good parent–adolescent relationships were explored among 19 Mexican American high school students aged 14–17 who participated in focus group interviews on what it means for Mexican American teenagers to have good relationships with parents. Using a grounded theory approach, five general themes emerged in the responses, corresponding to open communication, instrumental and emotional support, indirect expressions of caring, parental control, and valued relationship qualities. Both genders described distinct relationships with mothers and fathers. Relationships with mothers were closer and more open than relationships with fathers, and mothers were seen as being more affectionate, lenient, and emotionally supportive, whereas fathers tended to express caring indirectly by providing instrumental and financial support and by just being there. Parental upbringing, culture, gender, and parental role expectations emerged as explanations for parents' behavior. Theoretical, methodological, and practical implications are discussed.     

‘Access and achievement or social exclusion?’ are the government's policies working for disabled children and their families?

The past decade has seen significant developments in policy and practice for disabled children and their families. In particular there is a new focus upon access and inclusion, with increasing awareness of the need to see disabled children and families as active partners within policy development and implementation. There is growing awareness of the implications of disability discrimination legislation across children's services and of the importance of improving arrangements for early identification and intervention to maximise disabled children's participation within mainstream services. The National Service Framework, the advent of Children's Trusts and a new Special Education Needs (SEN) Action Programme, together with the introduction of direct payments, give encouraging messages about multi‐agency working and a strategic and ‘joined up’ approach to childhood disability. However, many disabled children and their families continue to experience discrimination, poverty and social exclusion. The challenge for the Government is to ensure that disabled children are ‘mainstreamed’ across all policy initiatives and to recognise the talents and ambitions of disabled children and their families in service design and implementation. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Not all leader–member exchanges are created equal: Importance of leader relational identity

Recent research by leadership scholars has emphasized the important role of follower self-identity. For example, leaders influence subordinate attitudes and behaviors by activating a collective identity level among their subordinates. We extend existing identity-based approaches by examining the relational identity level of leaders. Previous work has focused predominantly on followers (vs. leaders) and on collective (vs. relational) identity. Using data from two samples, we supported our hypothesis that leader relational identity moderates relationships of leader–member exchange (LMX) with subordinate task performance and citizenship behaviors. The nature of the interaction was such that the negative relationships of low-quality LMX with performance are mitigated when subordinates had supervisors with strong relational identities. These findings highlight the need to consider not only the identities of followers but those of leaders as well.     

Knowing One’s Lot in Life Versus Climbing the Social Ladder: The Formation of Redistributive Preferences in Urban China

This paper examines, how individual preferences for redistribution in general and redistribution to improve access to education, improve social protection for the poor, reduce income inequality and reduce unemployment depend on beliefs about what determines one’s lot in life and self-assessed prospects for climbing the social ladder in urban China. We find that beliefs about what determine one’s lot in life and subjective perceptions of future mobility are correlated with preferences for redistribution. We find that those who believe one’s lot in life is outside their control are generally more likely to favour redistribution. We show that this result is consistent with the existence of an altruism effect among the rich and entitlement effect among the poor. These findings are robust to the inclusion of control variables for the respondent’s personal characteristics and the location in which he or she lives.     

Robust splines

We consider the problem of fitting a cubic spline to data using robust regression techniques. Some important properties of splines are discussed, showing that their use as a regression model is related in principle to the concept of robustness. Methods for fitting splines and interpreting the results are outlined, and an illustrative example is given.