Childbearing Across Partnerships in Australia,the United States,Norway, and Sweden

This article compares mothers’ experience of having children with more than one partner in two liberal welfare regimes (the United States and Australia) and two social democratic regimes (Sweden and Norway). We use survey-based union and birth histories in Australia and the United States and data from national population registers in Norway and Sweden to estimate the likelihood of experiencing childbearing across partnerships at any point in the childbearing career. We find that births with new partners constitute a substantial proportion of all births in each country we study. Despite quite different arrangements for social welfare, the determinants of childbearing across partnerships are very similar. Women who had their first birth at a very young age or who are less well-educated are most likely to have children with different partners. The educational gradient in childbearing across partnerships is also consistently negative across countries, particularly in contrast to educational gradients in childbearing with the same partner. The risk of childbearing across partnerships increased dramatically in all countries from the 1980s to the 2000s, and educational differences also increased, again, in both liberal and social democratic welfare regimes.     

Leveraging the common and outsourcing the distinct: institutional difference and multinational company identity in emerging economies

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the challenges of outsidership faced by multinational companies (MNCs) accessing emerging economies. The paper departs from popular conceptualisations of culture drawing instead on social identity theory as part of an institutions-based view, to explain how employing a singularities approach can allow the identification of commonalities of Indianness and Australianness that can be leveraged to ameliorate negative socially embedded business norms that pose a challenge to MNC success in emerging economies. This study shows that despite recognised formal (regulatory) and informal (cultural) differences, managers of Australian MNCs operating in India were able to innovatively identify and exploit cultural commonalties/singularities to ease cultural adjustment and mitigate intergroup conflict, allowing them to achieve an innovative institutional fit. The paper discusses how, using this approach, sole-venture MNCs can access many of the benefits provided by collaborative entry modes while preserving MNC identity. We further propose that the singularities approach can provide a valuable starting point to develop culturally appropriate competence training initiatives.     

Benefits of Hybrid Lateral Transshipments in Multi‐Item Inventory Systems under Periodic Replenishment

Lateral transshipments are a method of responding to shortages of stock in a network of inventory‐holding locations. Conventional reactive approaches only seek to meet immediate shortages. The study proposes hybrid transshipments which exploit economies of scale by moving additional stock between locations to prevent future shortages in addition to meeting immediate ones. The setting considered is motivated by retailers who operate networks of outlets supplying car parts via a system of periodic replenishment. It is novel in allowing non‐stationary stochastic demand and general patterns of dependence between multiple item types. The generality of our work makes it widely applicable. We develop an easy‐to‐compute quasi‐myopic heuristic for determining how hybrid transshipments should be made. We obtain simple characterizations of the heuristic and demonstrate its strong cost performance in both small and large networks in an extensive numerical study.     

Managing Quality in a Heterogeneous Contract Manufacturing Environment

The outsourcing of production is a prominent strategy across industries. While the strategy can have many benefits, the popular press reports numerous examples of quality issues originating with contract manufacturers (CMs). Observing these quality issues, multiple scholars call for the quality management (QM) literature to be extended to explicitly address the challenges of managing quality in an inter‐organizational context. Additionally, QM researchers recognize the need to consider contextual contingencies for the effectiveness of specific QM practices. Responding to these calls, we focus on the potential contingent factor of CM heterogeneity (i.e. the degree of product and process diversity at the CM plant). We first test the direct relationship between CM manufacturing heterogeneity and CM quality conformance performance, as reported by the CM's customers, brand‐owning firms. Next, we evaluate the effectiveness of multiple practices that these brand‐owning firms can employ to mitigate the anticipated negative effect of heterogeneity on their CM's conformance quality. We utilize paired dyadic data on 106 contract manufacturing relationships in the food, drug, and medical device industries to test our hypothesized model. The results of our analysis reveal a negative association between heterogeneity at CM facilities and their conformance quality performance. Our results also identify cooperative relationships, contractual coordination provisions, and formal performance assessment programs as practices that brand‐owning firms can employ to largely eliminate the negative impact of heterogeneity on CMs’ conformance quality performance.     

Analysis of strategic plans to assess planning for sustainability of comprehensive community initiatives

In order to achieve the intended impact on a community, comprehensive community initiatives must sustain programs once they have been implemented. However, planning for sustainability is challenging and is rarely incorporated in the planning process of an initiative. The current study examined 19 5-year plans developed during the planning phase of the Comprehensive Strategy for Serious, Violent and Chronic Juvenile Offenders. Quantitative and qualitative methods were employed to assess the extent to which the construct of sustainability was incorporated. The plan analysis was supplemented with results from other components of the complex evaluation design implemented as part of the process evaluation of Comprehensive Strategy. Results suggested that sustainability was not accounted for during the planning phase of this initiative. The implications of these findings, including the importance of planning for sustainability in order to achieve sustainability, are discussed.     

Troubling Discourses of Poverty in Early Childhood in the UK

Poverty in early childhood is pervasive, affecting every aspect of children’s lives. Under current government policies child poverty in the UK is predicted to rise to 40 per cent by 2022. Dominant discourses of poverty have historically focussed on an over‐arching discourse of moral responsibility, essentially relating to notions of deserving and underserving poor. This paper examines how government policy continues to significantly impact on young children and families on low incomes in early childhood and how stigmatised discourses about welfare, work are pervasive. It is argued that discourses of redistribution and children’s rights deserve greater recognition if poverty is to be addressed.     

Open Dialogue: Frequently Asked Questions

Open Dialogue is an approach to working with people and their families experiencing psychosocial distress. Interest in Open Dialogue in Australia has been growing recently, raising questions about its adaption and implementation to local contexts. This article is an attempt to answer some of the frequently asked questions we have encountered in training and discussions about Open Dialogue. We attempt to provide responses to questions of how Open Dialogue is different to what is done already, how it fits with current approaches, how you know if you are doing it, whether it is passive or just about doing reflections, issues about including the social network, and concerns about the evidence base. This article aims to present a variety of viewpoints in relation to these questions and to hopefully further discussions on how Open Dialogue can be implemented and adapted to Australian health care and social care contexts.     

Characterizing the systems of support for families of children with disabilities: A review of the literature

ABSTRACT

During early childhood, children require major support that is tailored toward their specific needs. For children with disabilities, families play a crucial part in providing the needed services. However, families often lack the knowledge, resources, and skills that would help them in overcoming challenges that arise while raising a child with disability. Although much research has focused on defining the needs of families with children with disabilities and the impact of disability on the family system, many questions remain. A comprehensive perspective is needed to identify the types of support families provide to the child with a disability, the impact of providing that support on family members, the support systems that are available to families, and the impact of support on society. This review consolidates the empirical research to date on family support during early childhood and outlines areas of research that need further exploration.     

Ageing Population: Identifying the Determinants of Ageing in the Least Developed Countries

Population Research and Policy Review - The issue of population ageing is no longer exclusively centred on developed countries. Empirical studies have proven that the rise in the proportion of the...