Casework Job Design and Client Outcomes in Welfare-to-Work Offices

Differences in performance across different locations of a humanservice program may be driven by client, managerial, organizational,policy, or environmental characteristics. While many of thesefactors are outside the control of local managers, other factorsmay be open to influence by local discretion and may have independenteffects on performance. One issue facing local managers is howto divide job tasks among frontline staff, but little evidenceis available regarding whether job design is related to performance.In this article, I examine the relationships between differentcasework task configurations and welfare-to-work office performance.Controlling for a number of client and office characteristics,I find that clients' average earnings are higher over a two-yearperiod in offices that primarily use unified case managementand in offices with a specialist who develops job opportunities.I find no effects on earnings in offices that use other kindsof specialists and no effects of unified case management orspecialists on welfare benefit receipt in the two-year period.Overall, the findings suggest that local managerial decisionsregarding job design help explain the variation in performanceacross offices and suggest a possible lever through which performancecan be improved.     

Exit Discrimination in the NBA: A Duration Analysis of Career Length

Using a panel study of annual NBA data (1989–99) we do not find evidence of exit discrimination on career length in the NBA. This result is inconsistent with results from data in the 1980s but is consistent with more recent findings that have measured wage discrimination in sports in the 1990s. In our semiparametric duration analysis, we find that performance variables are important in determining career length. These results suggest that team owners in the pursuit of championships keep talented players regardless of race. This is an affirmation of Becker's theoretical implications of market competition on discrimination. (JEL J71 , J23 )     

MILITIAS AT THE MILLENNIUM:

Critically important to Neil Smelser's theory of collective behavior is the idea that people join radical social movements because they experience strain. A social movement arises to reassure participants that something is being done to redress the underlying source of strain. Militia presence and activity on the Internet (especially Usenet) is a phenomenon that can be studied within Smelser's framework. Militia watchers contend that those who join the militias have experienced the kinds of strain to which Smelser refers. The purpose of this article is to analyze the content of Internet traffic of U.S. militias in order to test the thesis outlined above. It uses militia Web sites and militia messages posted to Usenet (N = 1,196) as primary data to test Smelser's theory. Information was gathered on 171 men and women from 28 U.S. militias who posted messages to Usenet from 1998–2001. Based on the militiamen/women studied, Smelser's thesis is generally confirmed. Most experienced some form of social stress or strain prior to or during the time that they were in the militia, and most conditions for social movement development as specified by Smelser were met and confirmed by the data.     

The Effects of Managerial Succession on Organizational Performance

Boyne and Dahya (2002) posit that the means, motives, and opportunitiesavailable to top managers will affect their ability to impactorganizational performance. In this analysis, I test the theoryposited by Boyne and Dahya and expand the model by exploringwhether the performance effects of executive succession differbetween an internal promotion and an external hire. Using Texasschool superintendents as the managers in question, I use pooled,time-series data to test both the immediate and the long-termeffects of managerial succession on performance. The findingsreveal that an immediate, negative effect of executive successionis present only in the case of an externally hired replacementand that the long-term effect of managerial change on organizationalperformance is positive. These findings suggest that publicmanagerial succession does influence organizational performance.     

The hazards of strategic planning for global markets

Global strategic marketing planning has emerged as a key process in managing today's worldwide marketplace. This survey of 90 large American global corporations reveals that most are bottom-up planners. US firms appear to have distinct cost and numbers orientations. Industry and competitive analyses are used in many companies, although managers appear to lack suitable frameworks for SWOT analyses. Economic climate changes tend to be most disruptive to global planning efforts. When faced with non-achievement of goals, most firms reformulate both objectives and strategies.     

INFLUENCE OF THERAPIST SKILLS ON CLIENT PERCEPTIONS OF MARRIAGE AND FAMILY THERAPY OUTCOME: IMPLICATIONS FOR SUPERVISION

Clients seen in two marriage and family therapy training clinics were surveyed regarding treatment outcome. They rated their therapist's skill level on several therapist variables including "experience,""confident,""concerned," how well the treatment used seemed to "fit" their view of the problem and if the therapist seemed to "know how to deal" with their concerns. The variable of "fit" of treatment accounted for 35% of the variance in the client's perception of treatment outcome. "Concerned,""fit," and "knew how to deal" accounted for 36% of the variance in overall rating of the therapist. Suggestions for using these results in supervision of beginning therapists are given.     

Estimating the completeness of under-5 death registration in Egypt

To evaluate the completeness of registration of infant and child deaths in Egypt, reinterviews were conducted with families who had reported a death of a child under age 5 in the five years before the survey for two national surveys recently conducted in Egypt: the United Nations PAPCHILD survey of1990-1991 and the Egyptian Demographic and Health Survey (EDHS) of 1992. The survey instrument included questions regarding notification of the death at the local health bureau. If the family said the death had been notified, separate employees searched the health bureau records for the registration. Overall 57% of infant deaths were reported as notified and 68% of those death reports were found; the corresponding figuresfor child deaths were 89% and 74%. Using the percentage reported as notified as an estimate for completeness of registration, we adjusted upward the national infant and child mortality rates from registration data, giving values of 73 per 1,000 for infant mortality and 99 for ₅q₀ for the period 1987-1990. These values are approximately 20% above the corresponding direct estimates from the PAPCHILD and EDHS surveys.     

On estimating the covariance matrix of robust regression M-estimates

By analyzing a special class of regression problems we point out that previously suggested estimates of the covariance matrix of regression M-cstimatos are inadequate for certain design matrices. These results confirm the conclusions drawn in several Monte Cailo studies.