Accounting for Disability: Customer feedback or citizen complaints?

This paper has two aims. First, it will summarise the findings of a study of the views and experiences of adults with acquired physical impairments. This entailed taking open-ended accounts from respondents in order to elicit their concerns and experiences. The paper will focus on two aspects of data from the study: views about health and social services; and those about citizenship. The second aim of the paper is to situate the role and status of personal accounts of disability within the health and social policy context of recent years, which has been characterised by both consumerism and an intensification in the activities of the disability movement. In the run up to the 1990 NHS and Community Care Act, it became clear that the purchasers (now 'commissioners') of health and social services would be encouraged to elicit users' views of services, to engender a needs-led not provider-led approach. Later in the paper we will discuss the relationship between this officially endorsed consumerism and the concerns of disabled people when voicing their views. It will be argued that personal accounts of disability have gained a cultural currency because of the convergence of processes linked to consumerism within recent British health and social policy on one side and new social movements on the other.     

The extent of family and school social capital promoting positive subjective well-being among primary school children in Shenzhen, China

This study aimed to examine, first, the extent to which variations in family and school social capital can be explained by child's differing socioeconomic and demographic background and school characteristics; and second, the extent to which family and school social capital in combination might be associated with variations in child subjective well-being in Shenzhen, China. This study was a cross-sectional survey design, using stratified random sampling. A total of 1306 sixth-grade primary school children and their parents were drawn from 16 schools, and a self-administered questionnaire was used. The results suggested that gender difference, the only child status at home and hukou status had impacts on family and school social capital accrued among primary school children in Shenzhen. There were also links between child's perception of connectedness to their parents, peers, and teachers, and their positive child subjective well-being.     

Play as a Resource for Children Facing Adversity: An Exploration of Indicative Case Studies

In this paper, we suggest that the ability and opportunity to play affords children a natural resource to meet intellectual and emotional challenge. Analysis of case studies focusing on interventions with children caught in the bombing of Beirut, children abandoned to the state system in Romania, and the street children in Rio de Janeiro and Cali is used to support this view. When resources are in deficit, challenge is more likely to become adversity. The impact of adversity is particular to context, but comparison across contexts also shows connections between children’s disparate experiences. Analysis confirms that given the opportunity, children interact with and influence their environment through play and that this process provides a resource to meet the challenge of adversity.     

The vexed link between social capital and social mobility for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people

Overcoming the socio‐economic disparity between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non‐Indigenous Australians is a long‐standing social policy objective: one largely shared by Indigenous people. Achievement will require Indigenous individuals and households to be socially mobile, a process integrally involved with social capital, existing and requisite. The lack of research on Indigenous social mobility or its attendant social capital connections is addressed in this paper through an exploratory analysis of this interaction across three dimensions: distinctive patterns of Indigenous social capital; the transferability of Indigenous social capital; and traversing the social capital divide. The implications drawn, while tentative, indicate that for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people the intersection of the processes of social mobility and social capital is vexed, and contains hazards and costs not fully shared by socially mobile non‐Indigenous households. The Indigenous‐specific factors of a gendered professional class, the identity–social capital link, and Indigenous labour market circumstances all indicate that more research and a more nuanced understanding of Indigenous social mobility is necessary. Social policy recommendations include broadening the concept of cultural leave to include bonding social capital obligations, especially for women, and re‐evaluation of how to support Indigenous career trajectories and transferable skill sets.     

Resilient product and production adaptation in a large-scale disaster: Does it pay off?

Pandemic outbreaks can disrupt firms’ normal operations, so they demand a resilient response. Firms can combine social responsibility initiatives with resilient responses by reconfiguring their production resources for pandemic relief. It remains unclear, however, whether pandemic-relieving product adaptation (in short, PRPA) improves financial performance. We draw on stakeholder theory to analyze the effect of a PRPA strategy on the stock returns of US-listed manufacturing firms during the COVID-19 pandemic—the most enduring and large-scale pandemic in recent history. The results reveal that the stock market reacts more positively to PRPA under severe pandemic circumstances and for firms with low political connectedness, low media coverage, and/or more unique production technology. The findings offer important implications for operations theory and practice.