Flexible Work Options and Mothers' Perceptions of Career Harm

Whether or not mothers, who often struggle with balancing work and parenting responsibilities, perceive that they face career harm in exchange for control over flexible work options at their jobs is an unanswered question. Using 2009 original data from a random‐digit‐dial telephone survey of 441 mothers located across the United States, this study focuses on how control over two latent variables measuring flexibility, flexible work arrangements (such as scheduling and place of work) and time‐off options, influences mothers' career harm perceptions in a total of three work domains: (1) wages/earnings, (2) raises or promotions, and (3) job evaluations. We find perceptions of career harm among only one‐fifth of mothers; in addition, control over time‐off options reduced perceived career damage related to parenting duties. Mothers may have less to fear than previously hypothesized about the potential sacrifices they have to make when they have significant control over certain flexibility options.     

Immigration Policy in Australia,Canada, New Zealand,and the United States: An Overview of Recent Trends

Immigration policies in most host nations of the west have undergone significant changes in recent years. Based on the four country‐specific papers that appear in this section of the journal, and also on our own research, we present an overview of these changes and their context. In all countries, economic considerations play a central role in shaping immigration policy and greater importance is given to scientific research. Several common policy changes are noted in Australia, Canada and New Zealand which include: a shift away from a human capital focus toward more targeted selection based on labor market demand for specific skills, increased emphasis on temporary foreign worker programs, attraction of international students, an overhauling of the refugee system, and regionalization of immigration. In the U.S., while adoption of some of these changes has often surfaced in public policy and academic discussions, legalization of unauthorized migrants remains an important policy debate, with recent arguments focusing on the economic benefits of legalization.     

Schools of Thought: An Analysis of Interest Groups Influential in International Population Policy

This analysis, written in 1993, explores the relationships; among competing schools of thought in the international population policy arena. It offers the following observations: (1) Five interest groups are influential: the population-concerned community, a market-oriented group, people focusing on equitable distribution of resources, women's advocates, and the Vatican; (2) Only one of the five groups wants to draw attention to population growth; the other four all have other priorities and prefer to reduce attention to demography, seeing attention to population growth as interfering with their priorities; (3) Any attempt to base policy on identified common ground in this situation would result in asymmetry, turning policy attention away from population growth.     

The Urge to Merge: A Multiple‐Case Study

The authors undertook a comparative study of three recent mergers of nonprofit organizations in a Midwestern urban center, within the context of political‐economy theory. The research explored the impact of the same environmental factor, managed care, on the initial decisions by organizational leaders and the effects of these early decisions on subsequent actions taken to implement the merger. The study tested the authors' model of the motivations for merging, which proposes that the relationship between the decision‐making style of the leadership and the internal and external resources of the prospective partners determines whether the merger is driven primarily by mission, practicality, stability, or fear. Although the findings provide initial support for the hypotheses derived from the model, a demonstration of the differences in the approach to the merger by each organization indicated that other factors emerged as important driving forces during the various phases of the process.     

Challenging gendered power: How sexual harassment perpetrators respond to victim confrontation

Sexual harassment is a problem that continues to plague mostly women in the American workforce today. One tool that victims can use in these situations is confrontation, either through verbal or physical means. Yet, understudied to this point is how perpetrators respond to confrontation, which is highly salient as to whether this is an effective tool for victims. This study uses grounded theory methods to analyze 31 accounts of sexual harassment from within the fashion industry that recorded perpetrators' responses to victim confrontation to clearly unwanted, abusive behavior. I argue that specific features of the fashion industry, or a “display work culture,” embolden perpetrators to effectively thwart any type of confrontation. Indeed, this study finds that these predominantly male perpetrators of sexual harassment moved to reassert their dominant position over their female victims in the moment of confrontation, immediately after being confronted, and even later, well beyond confrontation, as they aimed to reestablish normal business practices as usual. This research thus dispels a significant sexual harassment myth that victims working within this culture are able to stop perpetrators simply by speaking up and/or fighting back and points to the need for the development of sexual harassment theory to incorporate work culture-related risk factors and remedies.     

‘Taking advantage’ or fleeing persecution? Opposing accounts of asylum seeking

This paper discursively analyses advocates' explanations of asylum seeking in the 2001 Australian parliamentary debates. Previous research has mapped the negative discourses used to present asylum seekers as economic migrants ‘taking advantage’ of soft laws. This paper analyses how advocates oppose this rhetoric, re‐categorising asylum seekers as potential refugees, and establishing Australia as legally and morally responsible for providing protection. This paper examines three influences shaping advocates' arguments: opposing anti‐asylum seeker rhetoric; theories of the formation of anti‐asylum seeker public opinion; and the parliamentary and wider liberal democratic intellectual political framework. It then analyses four extracts taken from political speeches in the parliament, focussing on the rhetorical strategies used to counter a pervasive ‘culture of disbelief’ against asylum seekers.     

“Getting even”: Clinical considerations of adaptive and maladaptive vengeance

This article is intended to acquaint the reader with the concept of vengeance. Conceptualized as the intense, compelling wish or intention to get even, right a wrong, or avenge an injury, vengeance is best understood on a continuum from innocuous retaliatory fantasies/actions on one end of the continuum to meeting out of death and destruction on the other end. This article identifies various manifestations of vengeance, discusses theoretical formulations related to affects in general and vengeance, in particular, and presents a series of case vignettes which highlight the adaptive and maladaptive function of this psychological phenomenon.     

Leadership challenges for human service administrators

This study addresses the challenges that human service administrators face in maintaining and moving their organizations forward. Twelve leadership challenge dimensions are identified, variations in these challenges across agencies and administrators are explored, and the implications of these findings for leadership development programs targeted at human service administrators are discussed.     

Depression and childhood illness

Childhood depression as a component of the impact of childhood illness or developmental impairment on the latency age child is studied in relation to three diagnostic groups: children with asthma, cancer, and psychiatric diagnoses of behavioral disorders. The study revealed a range of coping styles to deal with the anxiety, loss and feelings induced by the specific crises. The special dimensions of stress and coping adaptations affected the child's developing self concept, the separation individuation process and the child-parent relationships. Depressive symptoms were variously present within and between the three groups of children.This study was funded, in part, by grants from the University of Michigan Medical School and the Horace Rackham Graduate School of the University of Michigan.