Principal‐agent relationships on the stewardship‐agency axis

This article provides an overview of the literature on nonprofit principal‐agent relationships. It depicts the nature of agency theory and stewardship theory, analyzes the origin of their struggle within the nonprofit structure, and marks directions for a conciliatory approach. We open with an introduction to agency theory and discuss the two main components of its mathematical branch. We thereby contrast it with stewardship theory and elaborate on the arguments that can affect the position of nonprofit principal‐agent relationships on the stewardship‐agency axis. Analysis of the existing literature points to a lack of consensus as to which theory should be applied. We argue that the division of nonprofit principalagent relationships into board‐manager and manageremployee interactions may help to clarify the balance between agency theory and stewardship theory and may lead to the establishment of a strongly founded theory on nonprofit principal‐agent relationships. We close with a discussion of how this article may prove valuable to nonprofit policymakers and other empirical researchers.     

Attitudes Toward Control in Uncontrollable Situations: The Multidimensional Impact of Health Locus of Control on the Well-Being of Mothers of Children with Disabilities

This study examines the additive and interactive impact of four dimensions of health locus of control (internality, desire for information, powerful others, and chance) on two measures of well-being (perceived social support and subjective caregiver burden) among 81 mothers of children with disabilities. Narrative accounts and interactive interviews with such mothers are used to interpret and contextualize the quantitative results. Findings clearly support the multidimensionality of health locus of control. Among these mothers, internality is uncorrelated with both of the dimensions of externality often treated as its polar opposite. It is also uncorrelated with desire for information—often used as its indicator. Complex individual, additive and interactive affects on the measures of well-being were found for dimensions of health locus of control. Desire for information is negatively correlated with subjective burden. Mothers who do not want information about health feel greater burden of care. Internality and chance interact in their relationships to both aspects of well-being. Mothers who believe that both their own actions and chance affect health outcomes report the highest levels of social support. Where internality is low, the belief in chance increases perceived social support. Conversely, where chance is low, internality increases support. For highly internal mothers, belief in chance serves to reduce perceived subjective burden. Mothers high in chance but low in internality, on the other hand, feel more burdened by their parenting task. Implications for research and policy are discussed.     

Repositioning mothers: mothers,disabled children and disability studies

In this article we set out to review the ways in which mothers of disabled children have been portrayed within disability studies and the more broader academic literature. We argue that within disability studies mothers of disabled children occupy a liminal position because they are often not disabled and yet they can experience forms of disablism. Their experiences can differ markedly from the experiences of mothers of non‐disabled children and yet the consequences and outcomes of these experiences, such as developing a ‘special competence’ is largely overlooked. Mothers can work to effect change on behalf of their children and, in some cases, for disabled people more generally, however, this role of activist mother is largely undervalued. The review of literature presented here leads us to conclude that further research needs to be undertaken exploring and highlighting the ways in which mothers of disabled children negotiate, manage and approach their daily lives, operating within what are described by feminist scholars as oppressive mothering ideologies and disabling environments.     

Gender,Pubertal Development,and Peer Sexual Harassment Predict Objectified Body Consciousness in Early Adolescence

Objectified body consciousness (OBC)—the tendency to view one's body as an object for others to look at and evaluate—is theorized to emerge during sexual maturation as adolescents, particularly adolescent girls, experience sexual objectification. Although OBC generally is discussed in developmental terms, research so far has examined primarily the experiences of undergraduates and adults. Our goal in this study was to examine early adolescent experiences with OBC and to explicitly test the idea that OBC is linked to experiences of sexual objectification, such as peer sexual harassment, that early adolescents face as their bodies reach maturity. We tested several structural models of OBC and its relation to puberty, peer sexual harassment, and negative body experience. The prevailing model supported OBC theory's premise that pubertal development and peer sexual harassment increase adolescent girls' tendency toward self-surveillance, which in turn leads to greater body shame. Several pathways in the model were not significant for boys.     

Work-related reproductive health: a review

This paper reviews the literature concerning the impact of work on reproductive health. In doing so, it offers a framework model for guiding future research and practice. Contemporary models of occupational health usually identify at least two pathways linking exposure to workplace hazards to their effects on health. The study of work-related reproductive health has been largely restricted to the effects of the more tangible and physical hazards of work mediated by a largely physico-chemical pathway. However, the growth of research into the psycho-physiological influence of stress on reproductive health provides a new direction for research in this domain with the exploration of a complementary pathway. The extension of this new approach into the investigation of the effects of work design and management on reproductive health represents a potentially important and further development.     

CONTESTED PORTRAYALS: Medical and Legal Social Control of Juvenile Sex Offenders

While juvenile courts were originally designed to respond to troubled youth by providing treatment appropriate to the needs of individual offenders, advocates of a system that "gets tough" on young criminals by meting out punishments based on offense characteristics (both present offense and past offense history) have become increasingly influential in recent years. In this article, I examine a special case, that of juvenile sex offenders in a Washington State county. for whom a 1990 law reintroduced treatment as a central goal. While Washington has been a forerunner in the shift toward a juvenile justice system in which offending behavior is the central factor in decision making, I argue that, largely as a result of this law, juvenile sex offending has been "medicalized" and that, in this process, distinctions based on offense characteristics have noticeably diminished. This case study provides both empirical support for established theoretical arguments regarding medicalization and a detailed explication of the differences between medical and legal assumptions about social problems.     

To Share or Not to Share: When Do Toddlers Respond to Another's Needs?

The developmental origins of sharing remain little understood. Using procedures adapted from research on prosocial behavior in chimpanzees, we presented 18- and 25-month-old children with a sharing task in which they could choose to deliver food to themselves only, or to both themselves and another person, thereby making it possible for them to share without personal sacrifice. The potential recipient, a friendly adult, was either silent about her needs and wants or made them explicit. Both younger and older toddlers chose randomly when the recipient was silent. However, when the recipient vocalized her desires 25-month-olds shared whereas younger children did not. Thus, we demonstrate that children voluntarily share valued resources with others by the end of the second year of life, but that this depends on explicit communicative cues about another's need or desire.