Updating the Critical Perspective on Corporate Social Responsibility

This paper argues that Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a key element of the new neo‐liberalism as it searches for both legitimacy and new sources of innovation. Rather than simply being a fraud or a drain on resources as CSR is often portrayed, we argue that it is one of a suite of practices that corporations are deploying as they seek to shift the nature of social regulation away from collective to more individual solutions. While the criticism that CSR is corporate propaganda has purchase, we explore a deeper development. This development is one wherein as the old ways of capitalist regulation were surpassed in the 1970s and 1980s new social practices such as CSR, Human Resource Management, ethical marketing etc. were deployed as a way of engineering new forms of identity, new expectations of individuals and institutions and new sources of legitimacy and social value. Social criticism needs to take this development more seriously (than the propaganda view) since it frames CSR as a predatory facet of this new neo‐liberalist tendency.     

Assessing the effects of a school-based intervention on unscheduled school transfers during elementary school.

Raising Healthy Children is a cluster-randomized study of a school-based intervention aimed at preventing problem behaviors among children recruited into the project in the first or second grade of elementary school. Multilevel analysis was used to compare students in intervention and control schools with respect to whether they transferred out of their original schools. Students in intervention schools were less likely to transfer within the first 5 years of the project. A multilevel discrete-time survival model that included both time-varying and contextual variables revealed that the difference in hazard of transfer was greatest in the earlier years of the project.     

Recognising the agency of people with dementia

People with dementia have been assumed to possess weak or even no agency, so this paper provides a novel contribution to academic debate by examining their actual potential for agency. The author draws on findings from a qualitative study of everyday decision-making by people with dementia that aimed to identify the role of social factors (such as gender) in influencing their involvement in decisions. Whilst decision-making constitutes a form of deliberative agency, the research also identified when agency was alternatively habituated, embodied or emotional. The Economic and Social Research Council-funded research was undertaken in the North of England. Existing theoretical perspectives on agency are critiqued, particularly in relation to rationality, language and individualised agency. The study highlighted that people with dementia who lack deliberative capacity can nonetheless demonstrate creative capacity for agency. A more expansive concept of agency is needed in social science theory that is informed by the experiences of cognitively disabled people.     

The successes and challenges of implementing individualised funding and supports for disabled people: an Irish perspective

‘Individualised funding’, which is rooted in the Independent Living Movement, has formed part of a global paradigm shift in support services for disabled people. Against the backdrop of international experience, a political system aligned with the United Kingdom and emergent critics of individualised funding, this article presents findings from an evaluation of four pilot programmes in Ireland. Exemplified by independent-skills development and community integration, these initiatives have been welcomed as a progressive development beyond traditional service provision, with perceived improvements across a range of organisational, personal, health and social care domains. The article explores the importance of ‘natural supports’ and how overly protective behaviour may unintentionally act as a barrier to full implementation. The findings also indicate that unnecessarily complex systems can lead to individual burn-out. Furthermore, a national resource allocation system working in partnership with existing social care professionals and the wider community is recommended, as is learning from overly simplified, group-based ideologies.     

In the steps of Joan Acker: A journey in researching inequality regimes and intersectional inequalities

Inspired by two of Acker's interconnected concepts, inequality regimes and intersectionality, the authors revisit their intersectional research. By exploring their various studies on inequality regimes and intersectionality, the authors propose some novel insights that have emerged from an aggregate appraisal of some 17 empirically researched papers, all shaped by Joan Acker's sociology. While Acker's work on gender and organizations has provided crucial insights into much of this work, this article concentrates on the overarching concept of inequality regimes and then focuses in on less‐developed aspects of intersectionality in Acker's work. In doing so, it reconsiders the value of inequality regimes in pushing the boundaries of intersectional insights.     

‘Go on,Go on,Go on’: Sexual Consent,Child Sexual Exploitation and Cups of Tea

This novel paper critically addresses a currently popular sex education resource which compares sexual consent to tea drinking. Drawing from a study which considered the meaning of consent through focus groups and interviews with young people and professionals, we argue that the central ‘risk avoidance’ message of such resources individualises the potential risks of non‐consensual sex and ignores the gendered social structures which shape interpersonal relationships. We suggest that simplifying and extrapolating sexual consent from broader cultural understandings is problematic. Conversations with young people are important, but they need to address the complexity of sexual consent, coercion and gendered sexual norms.     

Effects of method on participants and disclosure rates in research on sensitive topics

This study replicates and extends the research of Rosenbaum, Rabenhorst, Reddy, Fleming, and Howells, which also appears in this special issue. Responses from 398 randomly assigned participants regarding differentially sensitive topics were collected via four methods of data collection: written questionnaires, face-to-face interviews, telephone interviews, and an automated telephonic data collection system (ATDC). Several significant differences in data collection methodology and topic area were found, including greater disclosure of sensitive information via the ATDC system than via face-to-face and paper-and-pencil conditions. Participants who were assigned to the ATDC condition felt significantly more comfortable answering questions compared to those in the face-to-face interview condition. Participants in the telephone interview condition reported answering significantly more carefully than participants answering via written questionnaire. Taken together, the results of this study and the previous one it replicates suggest that the ATDC produces disclosure rates that are at least equivalent to, if not greater than, those generated using traditional methods for collecting sensitive data.