When Things Go Wrong: Being an Independent Person under the Children Act 1989 Complaints Procedure

The introduction of market principles into public services in the 1990s meant that British local authorities were required to develop complaints procedures. In the case of services for children and families, the Children Act 1989 required the appointment of an "independent person". This article describes the findings from a research study conducted in 1999. A total of nineteen independent people from a range of London boroughs participated. It was found that young people themselves rarely use this system designed to protect their rights. As "sole traders" in adversarial situations between social services personnel and complainants, the independent people were constantly negotiating their position. Depending upon the issue, they are required to move skilfully between conciliation and formal investigation. The findings will be useful to local authorities using independent people, and to the independent people themselves who are largely unsupported in their roles.     

An approach to stochastic programming for medium term planning

A number of methods of obtaining the distribution of the optimum of the ‘wait and see’ stochastic programming model have been proposed, but computational experience for these is currently limited to the solution of small problems. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the role of the ‘wait and see’ model in planning, and to propose a method of analysis based on the minimax and maximax decision criteria. The approach requires the solution of a special class of non-linear programming problems. Computational results to date suggest that it will be possible to analyse practically sized problems in this way.     

Happiness is not Enough: Cognitive Judgements as Indicators of National Wellbeing

The European Social Survey, on which this issue of the journal focuses, is a 30-nation multi-funded survey series measuring attitude change. Started in 2001, it is characterised by unusually high standards of sampling and data equivalence. Its data are made available on-line with equal access to all, and have already attracted over 20,000 users. Many papers, articles and books based on the ESS have already appeared. But none has yet employed the data—whether alone or with other sources—to derive indicators of citizens’ cognitive judgements of their society. A recent EC grant is enabling the authors to fill this gap, covering topics such as trust in national institutions, tolerance, social cohesion, social trust and fear of crime. The aim is to be able to monitor changes over time in the distance between what citizens believe their society ought to be in these respects and how they actually perceive it to be.

Family comes first or open all hours?: How low paid women working in food retailing manage webs of obligation at home and work

This paper draws on qualitative findings from a study exploring work-life balance issues amongst female employees within food retailing. Whilst female employment is fundamental to this sector, there is limited evidence on employees' experiences of reconciling relatively low-paid work and the particular demands of food retailing with domestic and caring responsibilities. Managing competing discourses and demands at home and work is a feature of many women's lives. For those in low-paid jobs, with fewer material resources to fall back on, such webs of obligation, often stretching over the lifecourse, may be particularly difficult to navigate or escape. In food retail work, as in caring/domestic emergencies, timeframes may be tight and demands made on workers at short notice and outwith the standard working day. The study showed that sustaining their moral identities both as good mothers/daughters/family members ('family comes first') and as good and reliable workers ('the store must be staffed') was, therefore, an everyday practical accomplishment for these food retail employees. We explore women's accounts against the backdrop of particular familial, workplace and socio-cultural expectations and constraints, identifying overlapping sets of values between home and work as well as points of contradiction and tension.     

FATHERS’ USE OF LEAVE IN AUSTRALIA

This paper examines Australian fathers’ use of leave at the time of the birth of a child, drawing on data from The Parental Leave in Australia Survey, conducted in 2005, and a subsequent organizational case study. Our analysis shows that although most Australian fathers take some leave for parental purposes, use of formally designated paternity or parental leave is limited. This is unsurprising given the Australian policy framework, which lacks legislative provision for paid paternity or parental leave, and does not require any of the shared unpaid parental-leave entitlement to be reserved for fathers. Use of leave is shown to be influenced primarily by fathers’ employment characteristics, with those working in small organizations or non-permanent positions least likely to utilize paternity or other forms of leave. Overall, the analysis suggests that improvements in the policy framework would increase Australian fathers’ propensity to take parental leave, but highlights barriers to usage associated with labour market divisions and career pressures that will not be solved solely by the adoption of more progressive leave policies.     

Power‐base Research in Marketing Channels: A Narrative Review

This paper provides a contemporary and comprehensive review of work in the marketing channel field that is based on French and Raven's power‐base theory. It traces the development of theoretic, conceptual and methodological orthodoxies from the 1970s. Mirroring the movement towards the relationship marketing paradigm, the paper considers the theory's empirical contribution to knowledge of power, conflict, trust and commitment in marketing channels. Limitations relating to inconsistency of treatment, contradictory findings and the simplification of complex phenomena are identified. Nevertheless, current work extends power‐base theory to other cultures, other styles of research and to the area of supply chains. The review raises questions about the value of contribution made using this theory and notes the surprising absence within the channels literature of the broader, current debate about power. To illustrate, the paper shows how Clegg's (1989. Frameworks of Power. London: Sage) circuits of power framework, if applied to channel contexts, could address forms of power that are invisible, anonymous and not necessarily negative. Applications and methods are discussed, opening a space wherein a broadened understanding of power is integrated within a focus upon cooperative channels.     

Moments in the Methodology of Meso History

Meso history is that branch of the history of sociology that focuses on social relations, that is, patterns of connection among groups, group members, and group meanings, as explanatory factors in the shaping of sociology. The methodology of meso history consists of strategies for discovering, documenting and patterning connections. This paper explores those strategies in terms of three moments generic to the research process in social science– moments of movement from intellectual curiosity to conceptualization, from research question to data collection and from data to presentation of findings–focusing on the distinctive permutations on this research process that occur in the practice of meso history.