Two faces of union voice in the public sector

Summary and Concluding Observations Employee voice through unions is manifest in various ways in the public sector including unionization itself, strikes, political activity, and challenging managerial prerogatives. In each of these areas there are two faces to voice just as there are two faces to unions. Voice can be used in a more influence-peddling and muscle-flexing bargaining fashion to enhance rent seeking and noncooperative behavior with negative effects on productivity, competitiveness, and resource allocation. Voice can also be used more positively by articulating preferences and trade-offs, improving communications, and involving employees and enhancing their commitment to the organization. In all likelihood both faces of voice apply to unions in the public sector just as they do in the private sector. In the private sector, however, the negative monopoly face of unions has been increasingly constrained by competitive market forces such as globalization and trade liberalization as well as by the industrial restructuring to services and the information economy. Rents are obviously harder to obtain when there are fewer rents on the bargaining table. There is little survival value to pricing yourself out of the market now that market forces are more prominent. In such a private sector environment, unions have generally declined, strikes have dissipated, and managerial prerogatives have been enhanced.     

Spirituality,Religion, and Career Development: Current Status and Future Directions

The growing interest in the role that spirituality and religion play in mental health has spawned research investigating the relationships between spirituality, religion, and career development. To date, only a limited number of studies have explored these variables in tandem, but generally these investigations have found aspects of spirituality and religion to relate positively to career decision self‐efficacy, career values, and job satisfaction. Theoretical models that explore the connection between these variables are outlined, and future research directions and counseling implications are suggested.     

People and Pixels 20 years later: the current data landscape and research trends blending population and environmental data

Population and Environment - In 1998, the National Research Council published People and Pixels: Linking Remote Sensing and Social Science. The volume focused on emerging research linking changes...     

Career Maturity of Students in Accelerated Versus Traditional Programs

The authors assessed the career maturity of students in accelerated versus traditional academic programs. Students in traditional programs were hypothesized to be more advanced regarding their career decision making and development when compared with students in accelerated programs. The Medical Career Development Inventory (see M. L. Savickas, 1984) was administered to 441 medical students. Results showed that students in traditional programs had significantly greater career crystallization and career specification. Interventions are needed to further the career maturity and developmental tasks of students in accelerated programs.     

White women and affirmative action in employment in six southern cities

The purpose of this research is to examine data from 167 randomly selected businesses on the impact of affirmative action and white female employment in six representative Florida cities. OLS regression analysis was used to explore the independent effects of affirmative action among other employment-related predictors. While white women are doing relatively well in the job market, employer support for affirmative action has no significant influence on their employment, even at higher job levels.     

Conservatism, institutionalism, and the social control of intergroup conflict

This research investigates the state social control of intergroup conflict by assessing the sociopolitical determinants of hate crime prosecutions. Consistent with insights from the political sociology of punishment, group-threat accounts of intergroup relations and the state, and neoinstitutional theory, the findings suggest that hate crime prosecutions are fewer where political conservatism, Christian fundamentalism, and black population size are higher, although this last effect is nonlinear. Linkages between district attorneys' offices and communities, on the other hand, increase hate crime prosecutions and the likelihood of offices' creating hate crime policies. Yet these policies are sometimes decoupled from actual enforcement, and such decoupling is more likely in politically conservative districts. The results indicate that common correlates of criminal punishment have very different effects on types of state social control that are protective of minority groups, and also suggest conditions under which policy and practice become decoupled in organizational settings.