Career Techniques and Interventions: Themes From an International Conversation

The need for appropriate, timely, and increasingly comprehensive career development and education programs continues to escalate. It is interesting that despite the differences in cultures, religions, economies, political systems, and education structures, many countries face similar challenges when designing and implementing career development programs. Sharing and adapting career development interventions and techniques cross‐culturally appear to be viable strategies for implementing or enhancing programs, provided the concepts and materials are tailored to the countries' unique requirements.     

Involvement with unions,union belief perspectives,and desires for union membership

This article addresses two theoretical problems associated with models of desires for union membership. First, does union involvement influence desires for membership by (1) locating unions in the routines of everyday life and thus engendering habitual desires for membership or (2) by shaping general beliefs about unions and, thus, creating ideological desires for membership? This study of the working class in Hamilton, Ontario supports both explanations, although the path of influence through beliefs is stronger. Second, why do a number of general union beliefs have net effects on desires for membership? This study finds that different types of beliefs are salient for different groups of workers. Therefore, a wide range of general beliefs must be considered if the desires for union membership of a diverse population are to be adequately predicted.     

Book review

Journal of Labor Research -     

Agricultural policies and development: A socioeconomic investigation applied to Sri Lanka

This paper explores the interrelationship between agricultural policies and development by means of a dynamically recursive, computable general equilibrium model applied to Sri Lanka. The agricultural policies investigated include elimination of the food subsidy, land reform, and technical change in agriculture. The goals considered are the levels and growth rates of GNP and employment, the distribution of income, and the real income level of the lowest income group. The study provides a quantitative assessment of the association between policies and goals and identifies the key economic mechanisms in this association.     

Understanding communities of neglectful parents: child caregiving networks and child neglect

This article focuses on family social networks and the community of caregivers of neglected children. If neglect is part of family functioning, who watches over the children? Using a case study approach, this study researched 12 children and their parents. Several concepts, such as multiple caregiving and kin keepers, revealed that study children were cared for by many people. Social network mapping used in this study indicated that families were not isolated from the larger community, had various forms of negative and positive social support, were low income, and were involved in substance abuse and domestic violence. Understanding the patterns that emerge from the complex web of family, friends, social service agencies, and the larger social community in which neglected children live can result in better community building.     

Eliciting survey cooperation: incentives, self-interest, and norms of cooperation

Given the weaker ties to community as noted by scholars such as Robert Putnam, survey researchers should not be surprised by a decline in survey participation over the past 10 years. This research analyzes the use of incentives coupled with introductory themes emphasizing cooperation and helpfulness--cooperative norms in American society--to understand their effects on survey response. This article analyzes two separate experiments (one phone and one mail) that provide evidence that norms of cooperation matter in the decision to participate in a survey, suggesting that this is particularly true at the refusal conversion stage. These results indicate that survey researchers may use such themes to their advantage, especially when conducting a nonresponse follow-up in a mail survey.     

Merger as a Strategic Response to Government Contracting Pressures

This article describes the planning, decision-making, implementation, and evaluation phases of a recent, successful merger of five small social service agencies in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The merger was undertaken as a conscious strategy to enable the newly formed Arbor Circle Corporation to cope more effectively with environmental uncertainty, especially in regard to government contracting. The successes and the struggles encountered in the merger are instructive for other nonprofits that may be contemplating this kind of organizational restructuring as well as those interested in the impact of contracting on the government-nonprofit relationship.