An Examination of the Relationship Between Career Thoughts and Communication Apprehension

This study examined relationships among dysfunctional career thoughts and levels of communication apprehension. Undergraduate students, 88 women and 87 men, completed the Career Thoughts Inventory (CTI; J. P. Sampson, G. W. Peterson, J. G. Lenz, R. C. Reardon, & D. E. Saunders, 1996) and the Personal Report of Communication Apprehension (PRCA‐24; J. C. McCroskey, 1984b). Analysis of correlation coefficients found significant mild‐to‐moderate correlations among scales of the CTI and the PRCA‐24. The results indicated that individuals with average and high levels of communication apprehension had greater decision‐making confusion, commitment anxiety, and external conflict than persons with low levels of communication apprehension. Implications for counseling and further research are discussed in light of these results.     

The Third Way and Social Welfare: The Myth of Post-emotionalism

The “passive” welfare state was accused of promoting a dependency culture. “Active” welfare and the “what works?” approach of Britain's New Labour government is allegedly implicated in an age of post‐emotionalism, in which people are largely indifferent to the needs of others and committed primarily to their personal well‐being. This article, first, seeks to extend recent debates about agency and motivation in social policy and relate them to the notion of post‐emotionalism. Second, it draws on a recent empirical study of popular and welfare provider discourses, which suggests that popular opinion can accommodate an appreciation of human interdependency, while welfare providers remain committed to a public service ethos. None the less, Third Way thinking is associated with a narrowing of solidaristic responsibilities. The problem for the future of health, social care and state welfare policies lies not with the imagined consequences of post‐emotionalism, so much as with an ideological context that perpetuates a distorted ethic of responsibility.     

陈红侠:走吧,去更美的地方

陈红侠,美国内华达州旅游局驻华的首席代表. 在出任内华达州旅游局驻华首席代表前,她为海南航空工作了十年.在海航的这些年里,她经历了2001年中美撞扪事件,还成功开通了从海南到首尔的第一条航线,也完成了在欧洲VBA课程的学习.一次美国旅游的偶然机遇,让她从航空业转到旅游界,出任了内华达州旅游局驻华首席代表,也由此让她过上了典型的"空中习人"生活,每个月在不同的国家和城市穿梭.     

INTRODUCTION

This introductory essay considers how we might forge a critical language to discuss an emerging constellation of cultural production in South Africa: that which focuses on the work of ‘intimate exposure’ in order to shape a public–private sphere, which in turn forges forms of citizenship unavailable, or submerged by, a history of segregation. We ask the two following questions in order to better understand the dynamics of desegregation and re-racialization in twenty-first century South Africa: what is at stake in the dynamics of private exposure, particularly, but not limited to, the work of contemporary artists, be it exposure of the self or exposure of the lives of others – out of aggression or tenderness, as a gesture of ordinariness or excess, in relation to strangeness or love? Moreover, how do new dramas of secrecy, confession and exposure map onto or circumvent the staging of these issues during the apartheid years, which, itself layering over the scars of the colonial period, provide the subterranean foundation across which recent events play out? Addressing these and other questions takes us through a series of debates animating the current global and South African cultural studies.     

Stepfamily Education: Perceived Benefits for Children

This article explores ways in which stepfamily education benefits children. The study is based on interviews with 40 parents and 20 facilitators who were part of a multisite stepfamily program. Three main themes emerged from the interviews. Children were perceived to benefit by their parents' increased empathy, engagement in family time, and enhanced relationship skills. Children benefited from expressing their feelings and developing their own relationship skills. Normalizing and social support from peers and facilitators were also considered beneficial. The findings support educational efforts to strengthen stepfamilies and highlight the value of systemic interventions that involve the entire family.     

An exact small sample theory for post-stratification

A genuine small sample theory for post-stratification is developed in this paper. This includes the definition of a ratio estimator of the population mean ?, the derivation of its bias and its exact variance and a discussion of variance estimation. The estimator has both a within strata component of variance which is comparable with that obtained in proportional allocation stratified sampling and a between strata component of variance which will tend to zero as the overall sample size becomes large. Certain optimality properties of the estimator are obtained. The generalization of post-stratification from the simple random sampling to post-stratification used in conjunction with stratification and multi-stage designs is discussed.     

Changing Public Service Organizations: Current Perspectives and Future Prospects

As governments and public service organizations across the globe engage in strategies of institutional and organizational change, it is timely to examine current developments and a future research agenda for public governance and management. The paper commences with reflections on the state of the field, based on an analysis of papers published in the British Journal of Management over the last decade. While there was some variation apparent across the set, the 'typical' article was found to be influenced by the discipline of organizational behaviour, set within the health-care sector, using case-study methods within field-based studies, and investigating shifts in roles and relationships and the management of change. It has also in the past been UK-centric, though the journal editorial policy and our own article call for a stronger international and comparative focus in the future. The second section of the article summarizes the articles and themes contained in this collection of papers on public service organizations. The third section explores a possible research agenda for the future, arguing for the significance of public sector research for the understanding of management more generally, and for examining the interface between private and public organizations (an increasingly common phenomenon). We suggest the need to set public services research in policy and political contexts, and suggest this may reveal organizational processes of wide interest. We call for a wider set of disciplines to engage in public management research, and to engage in moving the agenda from the study of efficiency to effectiveness as defined by a variety of stakeholders. We address the issue of how far public management researchers should become directly engaged with the world of policy and suggest that whether researchers engage in Mode 1 or Mode 2 research, their work would benefit from a stronger theoretical base.