Minimal treatments and problem gamblers: A preliminary investigation

In view of the increasing popularity of minimal intervention treatments for problem drinking, a self-help manual for people who wish to reduce or stop gambling was prepared. Twenty-nine (ACT residents) who responded to advertisements for help with problem gambling were allocated to either of two minimal treatments, Manual (only) and Manual & Interview. On average, clients from both groups reduced the frequency of their gambling sessions, frequency of overspending, and amount spent per week in the first three months and next three months after first contact, but expenditure per session increased from three to six months, after an initial improvement. There was no evidence that a single in-depth interview added to the effectiveness of the manual.This project was funded by a grant from the Australian National University Faculties Research Fund.     

Going to Pieces: Paul Monette and the Fragments of the Tribe

Author of the highly acclaimed Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir (1988) and winner of the 1992 National Book Award for his autobiography Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story, Paul Monette died of complications from AIDS in Los Angeles on February 12, 1995. His most recent work, Last Watch of the Night: Essays Too Personal and Otherwise (1994), is his third volume in a trilogy of autobiographical writing on growing up gay, coming-out, and living with AIDS. A graduate of Phillips Academy and Yale University, Monette received a number of awards for his writing and his work as an outspoken voice in the battle against AIDS, including the National Book Award, three Lambda Literary awards, the PEN Center West Freedom to Write Award, and three honorary doctorate degrees, from Wesleyan University, the City University of New York, and the State University of New York at Oswego. A memorial service was held for Monette on Sunday, February 19, 1995, at the Directors Guild of America on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. Paul Monette was 49.     

Disciplines of Organizational Learning: Contributions and Critiques

The paper argues against attempts to create asingle framework for understanding organizationallearning. Relevant literature is reviewed from sixdisciplinary perspectives: psychology and OD; management science; sociology and organizational theory;strategy; production management; and culturalanthropology. It is argued that each discipline providesdistinct contributions and conceptions of problems.Furthermore, a basic distinction between organizationallearning and the new idea of the learning organizationis noted. Whereas the former is discipline based andanalytic,the latter is multidisciplinary and emphasizes action and the creation of anideal-type of organization. Due to thediversity of purpose and perspective, it is suggestedthat it is better to consider organizational learning asa multidisciplinary field containing complementary contributions andresearch agendas.     

Why China failed to create an endogenous industrial capitalism

Conclusion Weber almost anticipated the idea of the high-level equilibrium trap. Speaking about bureaucracy, he observed that as always in the area of'techniques' ... advance proceeded most slowly wherever older structural forms were in their own way technically highly developed and functionally particularly well-developed to the requirements at hand. It is a pity that he did not utilize this insight to analyze what he called the increasing stability of the economic situation under conditions of the economically self-sufficient and socially homogenously composed world-empire of China. Instead he pursued the idea that the absence of self-generated capitalism in China was due basically to the lack of a particular mentality. This inappropriate mentality had several aspects. One was the personalist principle. Others are listed in a catalog of alleged traits of personality taken largely from Arthur Smith's Chinese Characteristics. They include stolidity, patience, dislike of novelty, absence of curiosity, credulity, and a general distrust of and dishonesty towards all. Having acknowledged China's considerable technical endowments and inventions (Weber's own quotation marks), he argued that the magic stereotyping of technology and economics... completely precluded the advent of indigenous modern enterprises in communication and industry. The Chinese world, in a famous phrase, was a magic garden in which the ethical rationality of the miracle [was] out of the question. Certain points of detail may be disputed. Thus the miracles attributed to the piety of sons and the fidelity of widows were entirely ethically rational. But the crucial fact is that this conception of the problem led Weber in practice to place an excessive faith in the explanatory power of an analysis of ideas considered in relative isolation from their socioeconomic context. It probably also weakened his sense of the need to sort out more systematically the somewhat internally contradictory opinions that he held on the more specifically economic aspects of Chinese society.

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The transition to marriage

Cohabitation has often been viewed as easing the transition to marriage. The question is therefore asked, what characterizes relationships in which couples live together for an extended period of time prior to marriage, then decide to marry, and within two to three years are divorced? Four groups were interviewed (cohabitated/married; cohabitated/married/divorced; dated/married; dated/married/divorced) with the hope of analyzing the differences or similarities in the marital transitions made by individuals within these groups. The total sample consisted of 40 respondents who were given an in-depth, face-to-face interview. It was found that the degree of congruence between dyad members regarding perceptions and expectations surrounding marriage and marital life was an important factor in the success with which couples were able to make the marital transition.