Who ‘dominates’ whom? Social class,conjugal households and political identification

The existence of cross-class families, where the wife's occupation is taken to be superior to that of the husband, has been seen as a challenge to conventional ways of allocating class positions to partners in the conjugal household. Data from the Social Change and Economic Life Initiative survey conducted in 1986 are used to estimate the numerical importance of such families. Three approaches to the class allocation of men and women in conjugal households are outlined: individual, conventional and dominance. The predictive validity of these approaches is then assessed with the dependent variable drawn from the domain of political party identification. The outcomes of the exercise suggest that the conventional approach may require some slight finessing with respect to female respondents in cross-class families who are active full-time in the labour market, but in the main still gives acceptable results.     

Validation of Multimedia Models Assessing Exposure to PAHs—The SOLEX Study

Polluted soils have become a public health problem. While population exposure to soil pollutants is generally quantified using multimedia models, their estimations have not been validated, and studies that attempted to do so are scarce. The objective of the SOLEX study was to compare the predictions of pyrene exposure levels (converted into 1 hydroxypyrene) computed by several models with the results of urinary 1-hydropyrene (1-HOP) assays among 110 employees working at three sites polluted during their past use as manufactured gas plants. Four models were used: AERIS (Canada), CalTOX (California, USA), CLEA (UK), and HESP (The Netherlands). Three occupational exposure scenarios--with office, mixed, and outdoor workers--were constructed, based upon job activities during two measurement campaigns, one in winter and one in summer. The exposure levels estimated by the four models could differ markedly (from 7 up to 80 times) according to the exposure scenario. Also, the predominant exposure routes differed according to the model (direct soil ingestion for HESP and CalTOX, inhalation for AERIS, and dermal absorption for CLEA). The predictions of CalTOX are consistent with the 1-HOP measurements for all the scenarios. For HESP, the consistency is observed for the scenarios, office and mixed, for which the pyrene level in the soil is low. AERIS and CLEA yield results that are systematically above the 1-HOP measurements. This study confirms that validation of the models is crucial and points out to the need to proceed to assess components of the models that are the most influential using appropriate statistical analysis in combination with true field data.     

The political participation of social workers: a comparative study

This article reports on a comparative study that examined the political participation of social workers in KwaZulu-Natal province in South Africa, the state of New South Wales (excluding the Hunter region) in Australia, and New Zealand. Each of these contexts had roughly the same number of social workers, that is, approximately 1,200. It was found that social workers in New Zealand tended to be more politically active than their counterparts in New South Wales and KwaZulu-Natal, and the reasons for this are examined. In the process, New Zealand is presented as a case study of the way in which social work has responded to its political context. Finally, conclusions are drawn as to the engagement of social workers in the policy cycle and of the need for them to become more active politically.     

Organizational Variety in Regulatory Governance: An Agenda for a Comparative Investigation of OECD Countries

An analysis of organizational variety in regulatory governance must recognize that, contrary to the classical agency model, regulatory functions are commonly diffused among a number of public and sometimes private bodies. A regimes approach assists in understanding the ways in which diffuse regulatory power is exercised and in identifying central issues for analysis. In this article, six parameters for classifying organizations in regulatory regimes are addressed: ownership, legal form, funding, functions, powers, and governance level. An exploration of these parameters is suggestive of novel approaches to questions of independence and accountability. With wide diffusion of regulatory power, interdependence is as much a hallmark of the regulatory state as the application of any strong independence doctrine. Accountability may be better conceived as consisting both of formal judicial and political mechanisms and of informal day-to-day ways in which those exercising regulatory power have to account to others co-located within the space of a particular regulatory regime.     

A Framework for Practising Knowledge Management

The management of an intangible asset such as knowledge is beset with complex and theoretical concepts. This paper sets out a matrix that describes four approaches to Knowledge Management based on whether it is in an organisational or an individual context, and whether knowledge management is imposed or empowered by managerial approaches. It explores the validity of the framework through an analysis of ongoing management projects at seven organisations.