Book reviews

Franco Ferrarotti The Myth of Inevitable Progress, Greenwood Press, 1985, pp.VIII,208.

Peter Grootings, Bjorn Gustavsen, and Lajos Héthy (eds.) New Forms of Work Organization and Their Social and Economic Development, Budapest, Statistical Publishing House, 1986, pp. VIII, 297.

Janusz Lewandowski and Jan Szomberg Samorzad w dobie “Solidarnosci”. Wspolpraca samorzadow pracowniczych Pomorza Gdanskiego na tle sytuacji w kraju w latach 1980/81 (Self‐government in the time of Solidarity. Cooperation of the self‐governmental bodies in the Baltic region and its general background during the period 1980/81), London, Odnowa, 1985, pp. 109.     

Global supplier development considering risk factors using fuzzy extended AHP-based approach

Global supplier development is a multi-criterion decision problem which includes both qualitative and quantitative factors. The global supplier selection problem is more complex than domestic one and it needs more critical analysis. The aim of this paper is to identify and discuss some of the important and critical decision criteria including risk factors for the development of an efficient system for global supplier selection. Fuzzy extended analytic hierarchy process (FEAHP) based methodology will be discussed to tackle the different decision criteria like cost, quality, service performance and supplier's profile including the risk factors involved in the selection of global supplier in the current business scenario. FEAHP is an efficient tool to handle the fuzziness of the data involved in deciding the preferences of different decision variables. The linguistic level of comparisons produced by the customers and experts for each comparison are tapped in the form triangular fuzzy numbers to construct fuzzy pair-wise comparison matrices. The implementation of the system is demonstrated by a problem having four stages of hierarchy which contains different criteria and attributes at wider perspective. The proposed model can provide not only a framework for the organization to select the global supplier but also has the capability to deploy the organization's strategy to its supplier.     

Associations Between Past Bullying Experiences and Psychosocial and Academic Functioning Among College Students

Abstract. Objectives: This study examined whether childhood bullying victimization was associated with psychosocial and academic functioning at college. Participants: The sample consisted of 413 first-year students from a large northeastern university. Methods: Students completed an online survey in February 2012 that included items assessing past bullying involvement, current psychosocial and academic functioning, and victimization experiences since arriving at college. Results: Regression analyses indicated that reports of past bullying and other peer victimization were associated with lower mental health functioning and perceptions of physical and mental health, but were not associated with perceptions of social life at college, overall college experience, or academic performance. Conclusions: Childhood bullying victimization is associated with poorer mental and physical health among first-year college students. Colleges should consider assessing histories of bullying victimization, along with other past victimization exposures, in their service provision to students.     

Parents’ Experiences of Reporting Child Sexual Abuse in Urban Tanzania

This article reports parental experiences of legally reporting child sexual abuse in Tanzania. Based on in-depth interviews, four types of sexual abuse incidents are portrayed. Each evokes different reactions from parents and the community. An incident characterized as the innocent child was associated with a determination to seek justice. The forced-sex youth elicited feelings of parental betrayal of their child. The consenting curious youth resulted in uncertainty of how to proceed, while the transactional-sex youth evoked a sense of parental powerlessness to control the child because of low economic status. Differentiating between types of sexual abuse incidents may increase awareness of the complexities of child sexual abuse reporting. Education on laws regulating sexual offenses and a functional national child protection system are needed to address child sexual abuse complexities and safeguard the rights of children in Tanzania.     

The legacy of disadvantage: multigenerational neighborhood effects on cognitive ability

This study examines how the neighborhood environments experienced over multiple generations of a family influence children's cognitive ability. Building on recent research showing strong continuity in neighborhood environments across generations of family members, the authors argue for a revised perspective on "neighborhood effects" that considers the ways in which the neighborhood environment in one generation may have a lingering impact on the next generation. To analyze multigenerational effects, the authors use newly developed methods designed to estimate unbiased treatment effects when treatments and confounders vary over time. The results confirm a powerful link between neighborhoods and cognitive ability that extends across generations. A family's exposure to neighborhood poverty across two consecutive generations reduces child cognitive ability by more than half a standard deviation. A formal sensitivity analysis suggests that results are robust to unobserved selection bias.     

Social Capital, Satisfaction and Quality of Life in the Workplace

This article is an empirical analysis of the relationship between social capital and satisfaction and quality of life in the workplace in Spain. Social capital has been defined as the set of cooperative relationships between social actors that facilitate collective action. This concept has been measured based on five dimensions: trust, social relations, commitment, communication and influence. An analysis has been carried out applying regression and causal models to determine the influence on satisfaction and quality of life at work of social capital dimensions and of characteristics of the worker, work environment and company or organization. The data is based on Spain's 2001 Quality of Life at Work Survey. The results of the analysis indicate that the models applied are significant, which confirms the examined propositions. Higher levels of social capital imply greater levels of satisfaction and quality of life at work. Social capital is a better predictor of quality of life at work and job satisfaction than the characteristics of the worker, the company or organization, and the work environment.