Community distress predicting welfare exits: The under-examined factor for families in the united states

Using a quasi-experimental design, a sample of female welfare clients (N = 91) was followed over 32 months to compare two competing models used to describe welfare dependency. The individual deficit model suggested that clients would not engage in work activities on their own initiative and that legislative sanctions were required to force clients into employment. The ecological/community model suggested that community economic distress, rather than lack of skills or motivation, prevented clients from becoming gainfully employed. Results showed that while both models explained the rate at which clients left the welfare system, the community that one lived in was a stronger predictor of welfare exits than government programs mandating individual effort. Results revealed that many clients were employed regardless of whether or not it was mandated. Furthermore, clients who resided in lower income communities and were required to work to keep receiving welfare benefits under the new legislation, spent an average of nearly twice as much time in the welfare system (22.75 months) as individuals who faced neither stress (11.5 months). The findings highlight the need to incorporate community economic development strategies in the overall program to decrease welfare dependency, rather than focusing solely on individual remediation.     

Reference-dependent valuations of risk: Why willingness-to-accept exceeds willingness-to-pay

The gap between willingness-to-pay (WTP) and willingness-to-accept (WTA) benefit values typifies situations in which reference points—and direction of movement from reference points—are consequential. Why WTA-WTP discrepancies arise is not well understood. We generalize models of reference dependence to identify separate reference dependence effects for increases and decreases in environmental health risk probabilities, for increases and decreases in costs, and reference dependence effects embodying the interaction of two changes. We estimate separate reference dependence effects for the four possible cost and health risk change combinations using data from our choice-based experiment for a nationally representative sample of 4,745 households. The WTA-WTP gap is due largely to the reference dependence effects related to costs. Standard models of reference dependence are not consistent with the results, as there is an interactive effect. Estimated income effects are under a penny and thus cannot account for higher values of WTA relative to WTP.     

The hot hand belief and the gambler’s fallacy in investment decisions under risk

We conduct experiments to analyze investment behavior in decisions under risk. Subjects can bet on the outcomes of a series of coin tosses themselves, rely on randomized ‘experts’, or choose a risk-free alternative. We observe that subjects who rely on the randomized experts pick those who were successful in the past, showing behavior consistent with the hot hand belief. Obviously the term ‘expert’ suffices to attract some subjects. For those who decide on their own, we find behavior consistent with the gambler’s fallacy, as the frequency of betting on heads (tails) decreases after streaks of heads (tails).     

Occupation as refrain: territory and beyond in Occupy London

Emerging with the wider ‘movements of the squares’ of 2011, Occupy London was defined by occupation, and by participants’ negotiation of what occupation meant. Its forms and meanings changed as London’s Occupiers moved between occupied sites, through uprootings by eviction, and into post-eviction attempts to extend Occupy’s territorial politics without the camps. This paper builds on three years of ethnography to consider occupation as an unfolding process, using Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the ‘refrain’. This describes territory in three ‘moments’: the marking of a fragile centre; the stabilization of a bounded ‘home’; and the breaching of boundaries, extending in progressive directions. This rubric is used to analyze London’s occupations, and their defining tension, between an expansive desire to ‘Occupy Everywhere’ – connecting to the wider ‘99 percent’ – and the tendency to become embedded in the protest camp ‘home’. The features of ‘home’ are analyzed using Foucault’s concept of ‘heterotopia’, highlighting an alterity with ambivalent consequences for Occupy’s project. The paper argues that despite a desire to ‘deterritorialize’ occupation, Occupy London stalled in the moment of ‘home’, a consequence of the camp’s status as the ‘common ground’ of an often disparate movement, and the reduction of productive capacities characterizing Occupy’s terminal downswing.     

Comparison of the Effects of Specific and General Performance Standards on Performance Appraisal Decisions*

This study compares specific and general performance standards as managerial decision aids. Sixty-four federal government comptrollers familiar with performance standards as a basis for judging performance evaluated five performance profiles and then assigned performance ratings. These profiles varied in levels of objective performance, prior performance, and the order in which they were evaluated. The results show that the specificity of performance standards moderates the relationship between objective and rated performance, with specific standards resulting in more accurate ratings than general standards. While objective performance was the most important determinant of performance rating, the gender of the rater, the order of evaluation, and prior performance ratings biased judgments in the general but not the specific performance standard condition. Specific performance standards are concluded to be useful decision aids that minimize performance rating bias and have potential as evaluation tools for groups, profit centers, organizations, and technology innovations.     

The United States Agency for International Development and forest loss: A cross-national analysis of environmental aid

Among scholars of international development, there is a debate regarding the effectiveness of bilateral aid to improve the natural environment. Here we focus on evaluating whether United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) aid in the environmental sector reduces forest loss. Little empirical evidence exists on this question, partly because of the challenge of modeling such a relationship, given the problem of endogeneity whereby the same social, political, or economic processes that affect forest loss may also be correlated with a nation receiving aid from international donors. We contribute to this debate by utilizing a two-stage instrumental variable regression model to analyze cross-national data for a sample of 74 low and middle income nations. After controlling for potential endogeneity, we find that higher levels of USAID’s aid for environmental protection correspond with lower rates of forest loss. We also find that a forest’s proximity to infrastructure, agricultural and forestry exports, agricultural land area, and tropical climate are related to increased forest loss.     

Adolescent’s Perceptions of Sexual Relationships Between Students and Teachers

ABSTRACT

Very little is known about how people perceive and respond to sexual relationships between students and teachers, and even less is known about how adolescents view these relationships. In this study, a large sample of high school students (N = 1203; Mean age: 16.83) responded to four scenarios describing a sexual relationship between a student and teacher. We manipulated student and teacher age, and the power differential between the student and teacher and we measured perceptions of wrongness and likelihood of reporting the situation. The data indicated that in situations of older students (18 vs. 14 or 16) and younger teachers (21 vs 30 or 40), they are less likely to be perceived as wrong and less likely to be reported. Likewise, situations were judged as more wrong when the power differential between students and teachers was greater. Further, there were strong gender differences, such that females (vs. males) consistently viewed the situations as more wrong and were more likely to report. Implications for future research and policy are discussed.     

A Critical Plot Twist: Changing Characters and Foreshadowing the Future of Organizational Storytelling

This review explores the evolution of scholarly research about organizational storytelling over the past 40 years in a sample of 165 papers published between 1975 and 2015. The authors contend that organizational storytelling has established a conventional foothold beside the dominant, scientific narrative of organization studies. Meanwhile, the voice of critical storytelling in organizations has emerged, confirming (and extending) five organizational storytelling themes identified by Rhodes and Brown: sensemaking (and subverting); communicating (and manipulating); change, learning (and challenge); power (and dissent); and identity and identification (and alienation). This review reveals the growing influence of critical management studies, emphasizing the role stories play in disrupting conventional narratives, enriching understanding of present and future storytelling in organizations, and of organizations in general.