The Family Movement,Bowen Theory,and Theoretical Medicine: A View from the 21st Century

Important changes have occurred in the family movement in the United States since it emerged in the mid‐1950s. Psychiatry supported the movement in its early years, but that changed as psychiatry abandoned the biopsychosocial model and adopted the biological paradigm through the 1970s. This development pushed family and other therapies to the periphery of the discipline. Medicine is dominated by the biological paradigm and cause‐and‐effect thinking. The roots of the medical model go back to Pasteur. In contrast, psychiatry in the United States had been dominated through the 20^th century by psychoanalytic thinking, which rendered the discipline a step‐child to medicine. This and other factors pushed psychiatry to get biological. The change generated a ‘failure of nerve’ in the family movement, abandoning the role of the family in schizophrenia in the face of psychiatry's assertion that all serious mental illnesses had nothing to do with the family. Other important changes separating the family movement from psychiatry occurred as well. Bowen theory is anchored in biology and evolution, but it is not a biological paradigm. Maintaining solid connections to the scientific disciplines are important for keeping the theory an open system. The recent emergence of systems biology and systems medicine could challenge psychiatry's allegiance to the biological paradigm and bring family systems theory centre stage in the discipline. These new disciplines may also arrive at a systems theory of the individual that can be integrated with family theory, powering a paradigm shift in medicine as a whole.     

Effects of Changing Economic Conditions on Managerial Job Changes and Careers

Career theories and popular beliefs support the view that careers are series of job changes which are normatively linked to common themes, are continuous, are hierarchically progressive, and are under the control of the career-making person. This study reports an age-controlled analysis of the job changes, from 1980 to 1992, of a sample of 832 UK managers, randomly sampled from the membership of the Institute of Management. Following the methodology developed by Alban-Metcalfe and Nicholson (1984), sample members completed a questionnaire in which they provided details of every job change they had experienced in the relevant period, including nature of change and reasons for change. The results suggested that during the recession of 1989–92 British managers moved from a situation of predominantly proactive, career-oriented upward moves, to one of predominantly reactive, organizationally induced sideways and downward moves, including redundancies. Implications for career theory and for the career development and orientations of managers and others are discussed. The continuing usefulness of the concept ‘career’ is questioned. This paper was first presented at the Academy of Management Annual Convention in Atlanta, Georgia, August 1993.     

Informal Labor and Social Relations in Northern Malawi: The Theoretical Challenges and Implications of Ganyu Labor for Food Security*

Abstract Food insecurity is a problem faced by smallholder farmers in Malawi. In any given year between 70 and 85 percent of households run out of food stocks several months prior to the next harvest. Once food stocks are depleted many households obtain food by doing ganyu, a type of piecework labor. Limited research has been carried out on ganyu. This paper uses qualitative data to examine ganyu in relation to food security in one area of northern Malawi. Using the livelihoods framework, I argue that the most common form of ganyu is both a livelihood strategy and a measure of vulnerability, rather than a type of social capital as suggested by other authors. High reliance on ganyu points to increased social stratification related to a rise in smallholder tobacco production. Women in female‐headed households appear to rely more on ganyu than in married households. Policy implications of these findings are considered.     

Coming out of the dark: content analysis of articles pertaining to gay, lesbian, and bisexual issues in couple and family therapy journals

The present study seeks to extend previous research regarding literature related to gay, lesbian, and bisexual (GLB) issues published in couple and family therapy (CFT)-related journals by presenting the results from a content analysis of GLB studies in CFT-related journals from 1996 to 2010. Results of the analysis revealed a 238.8% increase in total GLB content published since the original review. Articles pertaining to therapy with GLB clients continue to represent the largest area of publication. With one exception, all surveyed journals showed an increase in the percentage of GLB content since the first study. Emerging areas of research include studies related to supervision and training, GLB mental health and substance use, and sexual minority adolescents. A movement away from deficit-based perspectives could open a new lens on family life.     

Crossing borders in initial teacher education: mapping dispositions to diversity and inequity

In this article, we share a study focused on engaging teacher candidates with multiple forms of diversity and inequity to study emerging patterns of dispositions. Our primary concern is in understanding the processes through which societal inequity becomes reconstituted through teacher education. Our study attempts to deepen discourses of ‘equality’ and ‘equity’ in education, to consider the ways teacher candidates relate to broader systems of power and global and local inequities through their role as educators. Inspired by both decolonial and Western critical theories, we frame this as research that seeks ‘otherwise’ as we invite teacher candidates to ‘cross borders’ to what is ‘other’ to themselves. In this article, we share our study’s priorities, methods, methodological/theoretical framework, data analysis and findings. Our findings identify a significant gap between the priorities of social equity to which teacher candidates state they commit and the educational practices that would affirm those commitments.     

Formation and Constitution of Effectual Networks: A Systematic Review and Synthesis

The co‐creational processes of effectuation represent an important development in understanding of entrepreneurial action. They also manifest in networks that are themselves important artefactual outcomes of effectual processes. To synthesize research connecting effectuation to the networks involved, this paper offers a systematic literature review. Following recent theorizing, the authors organize the literature around two general themes: (1) why and how network development occurs; and (2) what network develops. The resultant thematic model offers a comprehensive perspective on network development under effectuation logic. The analysis identifies that understanding of effectual networking and effectual networks is fragmented, incomplete and constrained by a lack of construct and contextual clarity. The authors present alternative perspectives on constructs and assumptions surrounding networks in effectuation, integrate network theory into effectuation, and generate important trajectories for future research.     

Watershed Pollution and Preservation: The Awareness–Appraisal Model of Environmentally Positive Intentions and Behaviors

A two-factor awareness-appraisal model suggests that individuals' reactions to threatening circumstances are shaped by their awareness of the threat and their appraisal of the degree of threat the circumstances pose to them. This approach, applied to watershed conservation, predicts that individuals will be willing to clean up the rivers and streams of their watershed if they are familiar with local water features (rivers, streams, ponds, lakes) and if they consider these features of the watershed to be degraded. We tested the model by measuring watershed knowledge, appraisal of watershed quality, value assigned to protecting the watershed, and behavioral intentions regarding watershed preservation in a survey of 1,128 residents of two urban watersheds. The results supported the awareness-appraisal model: Those residents who were aware of their watershed and considered it polluted expressed the strongest pro-preservation behavioral intentions. These relationships were held in both watersheds, but were stronger for those who resided in the more degraded watershed .     

Self-reported mood and running under natural conditions

This paper reports the results of two field studies which examined possible changes in self-reported psychological mood with running. The participants in both studies were regularly exercising male and female university students. In the first study, mood was monitored pre- and post-running sessions during a 7-week course designed to improve individual levels of physical fitness. In a follow-up study, mood was measured pre- and post-running and subjects also made a number of colour choices as an indication of arousal preference, as they ran. In addition, subjects' times over a fixed distance were recorded and in both studies subjects were further subdivided into two groups: 'fast' and 'slow' runners. The results from the first study indicated that, in spite of the increasing demands ofthe running programme, subjects' mood experience was generally pleasant, characterized by high arousal and low stress. In both studies, significant increases in male and female self-reported arousal scores pre- to post-running were obtained, along with non-significant increases in preferred arousal levels. When the mood response of fast runners was compared with that of slow runners, some significant findings with respect to self-reported arousal were observed. Indicators of stress and arousal discrepancy pre- to post-running were low and mostly did not change significantly. Where significant changes did occur, scores decreased significantly with running. The implications of the findings for modulating arousal levels at work are discussed.     

Achieving world class performance step by step

Bridgestone of Japan acquired Firestone, a United States corporation, in early 1988. This article describes the integration process of the two organizations' cultures. There are many lessons in the approach that should apply to a variety of organizations. The Strategic Improvement Process, a rather highly structured approach, harnesses the strengths of both the Japanese and American organizations and starts the manufacturing and technical departments on the road to excellence.