The quest for sustainable employment: Challenges faced by young people during the job‐search process

Young people who are unable to find and sustain employment are at risk for long‐term social and economic exclusion. Active labour market policies (ALMPs) addressing the problem of youth unemployment have focused on building the employability skills of young job seekers to expand their employment opportunities. Yet research exploring how young people navigate the job‐search process is limited. Drawing on interviews with young Australian job seekers and their employment consultants, this article addresses the questions of how young people navigate entry into employment through the job‐search process and what challenges they face. The study revealed three common frustrations experienced by the young people during their job‐search: employers' expectations of relevant work experience in the young person's preferred occupation, being required to apply for jobs not aligned with their career aspirations, and the impact of personal factors on their ability to confidently present themselves to prospective employers. The findings highlight the need for ALMPs and employers to facilitate positive employability support mechanisms that will build a stable platform from which young people can build a trajectory towards sustainable employment to reduce long‐term youth unemployment.     

A Prototype Expert Decision Support System for the Market Appraisal of the Single Family Residence

The assessment of the current market value of residential property is a potential source of anxiety for the typical homeowner. Common criticisms of the existing appraisal process include excessive subjectivity and inconsistency across properties and through time. This paper examines the nature of decision support required for valuation decisions and the appropriateness of applying expert system technologies to evaluate the recoverable value of the single-family residence. The expert system approach allows for the integration of the qualitative and quantitative aspects of appraisal, while introducing the beneficial dimensions of increased objectivity, comprehensiveness, and consistency. A prototype expert system is offered that enables the end user to conduct a market analysis of a subject property. Unlike most expert system applications that seek a diagnostic or classification response, this study explores a numerical intent for the system, in a decision-making environment that is traditionally viewed as highly judgmental. The system's early validation results show promise of proving effective as such an evaluation aid.     

Do Arbitrators Use Just Cause Standards in Deciding Discharge and Discipline Cases? A Test

This study used a rule induction, as a form of “machine learning” for pattern recognition to examine an alleged common law put forward by Arbitrator Carroll Daugherty regarding key factors used by labor arbitrators in the United States to decide discipline and discharge cases. Control variables for public sector or private sector origin of the case and characteristics of the aggrieved employee(s) or of the arbitrator were not found to influence arbitral thought. However, the alleged common law identified by Carroll Daugherty provided a set of rules which had a hit ratio of nearly 90% indicating strong support for there actually being a common law developed over the period examined. This scientific evidence supports the hypothesized common law of just cause for discipline being applied by labor arbitrators. Further, the existence of such common law should provide greater predictability and consistency to disciplinary proceedings and may be useful in examining similarly situated decision-making activities in arbitration, law, and other professions.

Home-Making: Supports and Barriers to the Process of Home

The process of home-making changes over a lifetime. For many, including newly resettled homeless people, the home-making process is difficult, challenging, and sometimes unsuccessful. This paper draws on research concerning the experiences of homeless individuals and families in New York and studies of single homeless adults in London and Dublin. It argues that there are supports and barriers to the home process, which include social, physical, environmental, financial, and practical factors. Central conclusions are that home does not arrive with a roof over a person's head, but rather that home-making is a complex social psychological process. Developing supports to home-making may offer tangible ways to enable this process to flourish.     

Perceptions of Equal Opportunity among Women and Minority Army Personnel

Equal opportunity (EO) is recognized by the Department of Defense (DoD) as being crucial to maintaining a high state of military readiness. In the last two and a half decades, a number of EO initiatives have been employed by the DoD and each of the military services in an effort to promote fair treatment of minorities and women. Social science literature suggests that the integration of racial minorities, particularly African American males, is a military success story. Some social scientists argue convincingly that the military has far surpassed civilian organizations in integrating African Americans. While the U.S. military has had a long history of addressing racial issues, problems concerning gender have only recently been addressed on a large scale. Some scholars assert that the military is the last male bastion in the United States. It lags behind the civilian sector in integrating women. This study examines the perceptions of active‐duty men and women in the U.S. Army to determine whether minority men are more satisfied with the equal opportunity climate than women and whether minority women are less satisfied with the equal opportunity climate than non‐minority (White) women. The purpose of this study is twofold: One objective is to examine differences within the gender category, i.e., African American, Hispanic, and White women. The other objective is to explore differences across gender. Degree of satisfaction is measured by responses to items on the Military Equal Opportunity Climate Survey (MEOCS). The data were stratified by rank level, officer and enlisted, and a General Linear Model (GLM) was performed with race, gender, and the interaction of race and gender as independent variables. In the final analysis, the data were stratified by paygrade, and a GLM was performed on each part separately. Among the findings, race is a more powerful predictor of the attitudes of active‐duty men and women toward the EO climate in their units than either gender or the interaction of race and gender. While gender is significant in most of the statistical models, and the interaction of gender and race is sometimes significant, these variables explain less than one percent of the variance. Although African American men are generally more satisfied with the EO climate than African American women, they are less satisfied than White and, in some cases, Hispanic men and women.     

Doing Disability Research: activist lives and the academy

The relationship between the academy and the disability movement is a problematic one. Disability researchers based in the academic world who align themselves with the social model of disability face contradictory aims and values in attempting to challenge dominant modes of research production in ways that signify the importance of the agendas of disabled people. It could be argued that research that involves people with the label of 'learning difficulties' [1] creates further points of contention. In this paper we do two things. First, we re-present a paper given at a conference on the performing arts of people with 'learning difficulties', where the audience was made up of performers, workers, providers and researchers. This paper attempted to be accessible, theoretical, political and practical. Secondly, we reflect upon this paper in relation to seven points of analysis that emerge at the boundaries of disability politics and disability research. We argue throughout that real efforts must be made to bridge these boundaries in ways that augment disability theory and politics together.     

MIXING OF MARKOV PROCESSES*

This paper considers a Markov process in which there are rewards associated with state transitions. Two or more actions are available to the decision maker, and the transition probabilitities and the rewards are influenced by the actions selected. A key assumption is that control cannot be a function of the current state of the process. In other words, the decision maker is assumed to have no knowledge of the current state of the process (or to ignore such knowledge if it exists). Within this context the problem of determining the best randomized policy, the best in the sense of maximizing the expected reward per transition in the steady state, is discussed. Analytic results are developed for the simplest case of a two state process with two possible actions.     

Child safety in policy: Who is being kept safe and from what?

Keeping children safe from harm is a national policy priority in Australia. Extensive inquiries and reviews have highlighted institutions' persistent failures to respond ethically and appropriately to child abuse and its life-long impacts on survivors. Policy efforts now reflect considerable emphasis on safeguarding children, including through the development of ‘child safe’ organisations. The realisation of these policy aspirations requires close attention to how ‘child safe’ is conceptualised and operationalised in different organisational contexts. Drawing on an analysis of policy in Australia and other international jurisdictions, namely New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Ireland, this article engages critically with the notion of ‘child safe’ in policy, to explore who is to be safe, from what and how, in organisational settings. The findings suggest emergent discourses of ‘child safe’ are bound up with particular constructions of both children and safety, reflect current social and political understandings and agendas, and have implications for organisations' approaches to safety. Ensuring the safety of children in Australia and other jurisdictions requires continuing scrutiny of policy implementation to make sure current policy efforts are not reduced to compliance-based imperatives that protect organisations, but fail to create the cultural conditions that enhance children's wellbeing and safety.