Structured risk assessment procedures: instruments of abuse?

Child protection services in Australia and elsewhere face increasing internal and external demands. As a response to these pressures, in part at least, services are increasingly implementing some form of risk assessment procedures. This article examines the practice implications of the increasing use of risk assessment instruments in child protection services. It highlights the complexity of the concept of risk as the basis for a future‐oriented assessment activity. The authors suggest that this change of time frame (from what has happened to what might happen) may be detrimental to children. Through a critical review of the literature, the authors question whether risk prediction is possible and discuss the limitations of risk assessment instruments which omit some risk factors and may ignore the perspective of the child. The authors challenge the validity of risk assessment instruments in statutory settings and suggest that the protection of the organization may be a major objective in their implementation. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

“See You in Court”: How CEO narcissism increases firms' vulnerability to lawsuits

Although some researchers have suggested that narcissistic CEOs may have a positive influence on organizational performance (e.g., Maccoby, 2007; Patel & Cooper, 2014), a growing body of evidence suggests that organizations led by narcissistic CEOs experience considerable downsides, including evidence of increased risk taking, overpaying for acquisitions, manipulating accounting data, and even fraud. In the current study we show that narcissistic CEO's subject their organizations to undue legal risk because they are overconfident about their ability to win and less sensitive to the costs to their organizations of such litigation. Using a sample of 32 firms, we find that those led by narcissistic CEOs are more likely to be involved in litigation and that these lawsuits are more protracted. In two follow-up experimental studies, we examine the mechanism underlying the relationship between narcissism and lawsuits and find that narcissists are less sensitive to objective assessments of risk when making decisions about whether to settle a lawsuit and less willing to take advice from experts. We discuss the implications of our research for advancing theories of narcissism and CEO influence on organizational performance.     

DETERMINANTS OF SATISFACTION FOR BLACKS AND WHITES

The study analyzes the determinants of satisfaction for blacks and whites with data from the Quality of American Life survey conducted in 1971 and replicated in 1978. A domain satisfaction scale is the dependént variable and a series of demographic, social relationship, SES, and religion variables are used as independent variables. Separate regression analyses by race, and tests for the significance of the interaction of the independent variables with race reveal (1) perceived quality of important relationships (i.e., friends, neighbors, children, parents, and siblings) more strongly affects levels of satisfaction for both blacks and whites than demographic variables. SES, or religion; (2) black females report significantly lower levels of satisfaction than any other gender/race group; (3) blacks living in the East report lower satisfaction than any other region/race group; (4) feeling close to their parents more strongly impacts black than white levels of satisfaction; (5) religion is more important for blacks than for whites in producing satisfaction; and (6) SES is more important for whites than blacks in producing satisfaction. Theoretical interpretations are presented.     

Female marital mobility within Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland: a log-linear analysis

A series of log-linear models predicting the exchange marital experiences of Irish wives are prevented for the Irish Republic. The best explanatory model is one in which the relationship between a husband's occupational status and that of his father-in-law remains homogeneous across age levels, Women show a marked propensity to marry husbands at a similar occupational status as that of their fathers and long-range upward or downward mobility across the manual/nonmanual divide is unlikely. This tendency towards endogamy is particularly pronounced within the two upper non-manual categories and the manual strata generally the same general model of homogeneous association holds for Northern Ireland across age levels and religious affiliation. In the North, however, more short-range mobility occurs, particularly between the two upper non-manual groups. Despite this the norm for both the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland is marital immobility rather than marital mobility with no evidence of a fundamental trend towards increased marital mobility. Furthermore. The mobility through marriage that did occur does not result in an overall net advantage for women.     

Narcissistic CEOs and executive compensation

Narcissism is characterized by traits such as dominance, self-confidence, a sense of entitlement, grandiosity, and low empathy. There is growing evidence that individuals with these characteristics often emerge as leaders, and that narcissistic CEOs may make more impulsive and risky decisions. We suggest that these tendencies may also affect how compensation is allocated among top management teams. Using employee ratings of personality for the CEOs of 32 prominent high-technology firms, we investigate whether more narcissistic CEOs have compensation packages that are systematically different from their less narcissistic peers, and specifically whether these differences increase the longer the CEO stays with the firm. As predicted, we find that more narcissistic CEOs who have been with their firm longer receive more total direct compensation (salary, bonus, and stock options), have more money in their total shareholdings, and have larger discrepancies between their own (higher) compensation and the other members of their team.     

Fixing Gwen

In this project I present a case study of (trans)gender mediation—a discourse analysis of news around the murder of Gwen Araujo, a “transgender teen,” in Newark, California, 2002–2006—and I read that discourse in the context of larger contemporary cultural dynamics and movements around trans and genderqueer politics. News narratives around the Araujo case had some progressive implications, as residual marginalization tropes for gender nonconforming identities were sidelined and a hate crime frame was constructed in news for the murder. However, the discourse also manifested a persistent tendency to contain and restrict gender meanings and to recuperate critical gender challenges back into conventional binary categories. I identify and discuss some of the gender “fixing” strategies mobilized in this discourse, including the mobilization of “wrong body discourse” as an overarching (and problematic) explanation for gender nonconformity. Like Matt Shepard's murder a few years before, the Araujo case represents a critical discourse moment in genderqueer media politics, illuminating, in microcosm, some critical dynamics in the mediation of (trans)gender politics more generally.     

Project Northland in Croatia: results and lessons learned

As part of an international public health partnership formed in 2001 we assessed the impact of Project Northland in Croatia--an adolescent alcohol school-based prevention intervention implemented in Split--on students. The curriculum was implemented in 13 randomly selected schools with another 13 schools serving as controls. The evaluation included quantitative and qualitative methods, using pre/post-tests to compare intervention and controls and follow-up focus groups with parents and teachers. Quantitative data showed the intervention was more successful in changing attitudes in the first two years, but had less impact on older students. Qualitative data suggest benefits from the program overall. Given the intervention was successful in the earlier grades it should be initiated earlier to have a greater impact. Challenges and lessons learned are offered.