Decision Making,Risk and Gender: Are Managers Different?

This paper explores differences in the nature of decisions taken by males and females. Women are playing an increasingly important role in business management and managers are ultimately tested and evaluated in terms of their success in making decisions. Consequently any difference in the character and quality of decisions taken by male and female managers will have important implications for organizations. This paper reviews the literature, and reports two pieces of empirical work which investigate the connections between gender and decision making. The decision-making characteristics of males and females in a ‘non-managerial’ population in which the majority of individuals have not undergone formal management education are contrasted with a ‘managerial’ population of potential and actual managers who have undertaken such education. It is argued that women are often excluded from managerial positions of authority and leadership due to stereotypes, which have been constructed by observing ‘non-managerial’ populations at large. The paper concludes, however, that these stereotypes may not apply to managers as in the ‘managerial’ sub-population males and females display similar risk propensity and make decisions of equal quality.     

A Collage of Ethnographies

Ethnography Unbound: Power and Resistance in the Modern Metropolis , by Michael Burawoy, Alice Burton, Ann Arnett Ferguson, Kathryn J. Fox, Joshua Gamson, Nadine Gartrell, Leslie Hurst, Charles Kurzman, Leslie Salzinger, Josepha Shiffman, and Shiori Ui.     

Variations of Sexual Scripts Relating to Concurrency by Race,Class, and Gender in South Africa

It is unclear whether higher rates of sexual partner concurrency in Black South Africans are due to socioeconomic or cultural factors. We used a nationally representative sample of 9,728 individuals aged 16 to 55 from a study conducted in 2009 to examine how the norms pertaining to concurrency and the practice of concurrency vary by race, class, and gender. The percentage of men reporting point concurrency was 14%, 6.5%, and 2.5% in Blacks, coloreds, and Whites, respectively (p < 0.001). These percentages increased to 45.7%, 24.7%, and 11.7%, respectively, for those reporting lifetime concurrency (p < 0.001). In all the racial groups, men exhibited more favorable attitudes toward concurrency than women did. For a range of indicators, White men and women had less favorable attitudes toward concurrency than Black men and women. These differences remained after controlling for a range of confounding variables. In the adjusted logistic regression model, reported concurrency in men was associated with a younger age, Black race, being in the lowest income tertile, not being in a stable relationship, and expressing various positive attitudes toward concurrency.     

Priming Implicit Racism in Television News: Visual and Verbal Limitations on Diversity

We highlight an understudied aspect of racism in television news, implicit racial cues found in the contradictions between visual and verbal messages. We compare three television news broadcasts from the first week after Hurricane Katrina to reexamine race and representation during the disaster. Drawing together insights from interdisciplinary studies of cognition and sociological theories of race and racism, we examine how different combinations of the race of reporters and news sources relate to the priming of implicit racism. We find racial cues that are consistent with stereotypes and myths about African Americans—even in broadcasts featuring black reporters—but which appear only in the context of color‐blind verbal narration. We conclude by drawing attention to the unexpected and seemingly unintended reproduction of racial ideology.     

Off to Plan or Out to Lunch? Relationships between Design Characteristics and Outcomes of Strategy Workshops

Strategy workshops, also known as away days, strategy retreats and strategic ‘off‐sites’, have become widespread in organizations. However, there is a shortage of theory and evidence concerning the outcomes of these events and the factors that contribute to their effectiveness. Adopting a design science approach, in this paper we propose and test a multidimensional model that differentiates the effects of strategy workshops in terms of organizational, interpersonal and cognitive outcomes. Analysing survey data on over 650 workshops, we demonstrate that varying combinations of four basic design characteristics – clarity of goals and purpose, routinization, stakeholder involvement and cognitive effort – predict differentially these three distinct types of outcomes. Calling into question conventional wisdom on the design of workshops, we discuss the implications of our findings for integrating further the strategy process, strategy‐as‐practice and strategic cognition literatures, to enrich understanding of the factors that shape the nature and influence of contemporary strategic planning activities more generally.     

Racial disparity in Minnesota's child protection system

Minnesota has been recognized by several studies as a state with a significant amount of racial disparity in its child protection system. This study, using 2001 data from Minnesota's Social Services Information Service, was conducted to determine at which of the six decision points in Minnesota's child welfare system racial disparities are statistically significant. The authors employ a nested model to examine a child's journey through the Minnesota child protection system. Using binary logistic regression, they are able to determine the odds that a child belonging to a particular racial or ethnic group would progress to the next decision point.     

Culture,place and urban growth in the U.S. South

People’s connection to land is an important contributor to identity in traditional southern society. In small southern communities, to know where someone lives is to know who someone is because place assigns biography. Studies have investigated the physical and economic implications of landscape change in the South, but comparatively little research focuses on the impacts to culture of urban growth. We consider how sense of place (as an indicator of culture) may be impacted, over time, by physical and structural changes in a locale. This point of departure examines the temporal dimension of sense of place, or how place perceptions may vary as familiar places and practices are altered by landscape moderations. We review the literature on sense of place and changing Southern landscapes and also offer a conceptual framework for analyzing sense of place over the long-term.

‘You Just Get Blocked’. Teenage Drinkers: Reckless Rebellion or Responsible Reproduction?

The purpose of this study is to challenge the discourse that underage drinking is inevitably ‘deviant’. Rather than imposing an adultist lens, the article draws upon focus‐group interviews with 14–15 year olds. The meaningful role of drinking is explored, along with the capability of peer cultures to manage some alcohol‐related ‘risks’. The data suggest that the prioritisation of adultist constructs over teenage subject experiences appears somewhat misplaced since teenage norms are not complete subversions of the adult world. Apparent transgression is better understood as alternative socialisation, since teenage peer groups creatively reproduce the wider culture.