Psychological factors in consumer debt: Money management, economic socialization, and credit use

A postal survey study of factors correlated with consumer debt investigated several psychological variables which have been suggested as causes or effects of debt. The survey was conducted with the help of a public utility company, and questionnaires were sent to three groups with different debt histories over the preceding two years: Non-Debtors (no debt to the company), Mild Debtors (late payment to the company), and Serious Debtors (sued for debt recovery by the company). Economic and demographic factors predicted debt category well, supporting previous results. Further variance between groups was accounted for by people's money management skills and facilities, by measures of their time horizons, and by aspects of their consumer behaviour. Non-debtors had more money management facilities (e.g. bank accounts) than debtors, and rated their abilities at money management more highly. Debtors had shorter time horizons than non-debtors. Debtors were more likely to buy cigarettes and Christmas presents for children than non-debtors. No group differences were found for attitudes to debt or locus of control. There were significant group differences for measures of economic socialization, social comparisons, use of credit, and other aspects of consumer behaviour, but these differences were not independently significant on multivariate analysis. Conclusions must be qualified because of low return rates, but the results suggest that a complex of psychological and behavioural variables affect debt and are affected by it. It is argued that these variables are linked to the psychology of poverty.     

Using panel methods to model waiting times for National Health Service surgery

Summary. Long waiting times for non-emergency (elective) procedures are a central feature of the UK's National Health Service, with about 1 million people waiting for surgery at any one time. This paper develops empirical models of the demand for and supply of elective surgery which simultaneously determine waiting times. The models are tested by using a panel of annual data for 5499 small areas from 1991 to 1998. Supply and demand functions are estimated for all specialties combined and for seven individual specialties, using panel data methods that incorporate simultaneously determined variables. The elasticity of demand with respect to waiting time varies between specialties but is always quite small. The results are discussed in the light of UK Government policy initiatives designed to reduce waiting times substantially. The analysis suggests that these initiatives will not stimulate demand markedly and therefore stand a good chance of succeeding provided that adequate additional resources are made available.     

The use of the psychosocial maturity inventory in evaluations of youth conservation corps programs

Although work experience has been widely recommended as beneficial to adolescent development, there is little empirical support for this recommendation. The Youth Conservation Corps (YCC), combining as it does some of the best features of both paid work and unpaid community service, offers an opportunity to explore the developmental impact of work experience. However, the need to pay as much attention to the problems of measurement as to the programs themselves dictates simultaneous evaluation of both programs and measures.     

The Quaker Ethic and the Fixed Price Policy: Max Weber and Beyond*

Max Weber undertook his research on the Quakers and their fixed price policy as part of his attempt to understand the role of the Puritan sects in the rise of early modern capitalism. Although his comments on the group were sympathetic and penetrating, they suffered from inattention to the historical context. He failed to see, for instance, that the Quakers’economic policies in large part reflected their resentful frustration over the Puritans’failure to institute popular political, economic, and religious proposals. This paper corrects Weber's portrait of the Quakers and their unique fixed price policy by paying close attention to the social climate in which they formulated this economic innovation. In doing so the research establishes an important relationship between religious doctrines and social frustrations that Weber himself did not see, but that existed in Nietzsche's theory of “resentment,” and in Eduard Bernstein's analysis of the earliest Quakers.     

Thomas Szasz' “critical reflections on child psychiatry”: An alternative view through a systemic lens

In “Critical Reflections on Child Psychiatry,” Thomas Szasz (1979) argues that children are without the rights afforded adults, that children are often coerced into therapy, and that most children do not appear to benefit from psychotherapy. Szasz raises many pertinent questions for mental health professionals working with children. However, his arguments appear to be based on literature limited to traditional psychodynamic approaches. His position also neglects to consider literature in the developmental psychology and legal fields. This paper, written from the cognitive developmental and the family systems perspective, provides another examination of the important issues raised by Thomas Szasz.     

Tailor-made planning: Making planning fit the firm

This selective and limited application of the contingency approach to planning is intended to show that the process is a highly flexible set of activities which can be adapted and tailored to the organization's requirements. At each stage of the planning process the manager has a set of choices which enable him to make the best possible fit between the process and the organization. He is not a passive recipient of a pre-ordained sequence of rigidly invariable activities. He is in the position of being able to select specific solutions to specific problems so that the planning process and structure form the best possible fit for the organization in its environment.     

Professional authority and state power

Conclusion The relation between professional authority and state power is not to be found in the political clout of the A.M.A. or the A.B.A. nor in the fact that lawyers work at every level of government and doctors often occupy key policy making positions. The relation between state power and professional authority that I have tried to underline is more diffuse and embedded in the very work doctors and lawyers do. But even this claim can be misleading, because what's at issue here is not how doctors and lawyers use their expert authority to extract consent from and normalize patients and clients. In fact, it is the erosion or deconstitution, as I have called it, of this authority by the commodification of legal and medical services that has brought out more subtle problems and more revealing ties to state power.The HMO doctor who has to advise a patient about emergency service coverage is a good example of the way in which medical service, state administrative power, and economic interests are visibly intertwined in the actual provision of medical care at the ground level. When we take this one step further, the role of the state in the crisis of the professions begins to emerge. State licensing laws and insurance regulations are restructuring the already fragile relations among patient, doctor, HMO, and insurer. The patient in this example, outraged by pseudo-medical advice on emergency coverage, may soon recognize that it is not only the doctor who is incapable of assessing his or her medical needs. The political domain itself is becoming a maze of tort laws and tort reform proposals.What difference does all of this make? Right now, for the professions it may mean slightly more competition among practitioners and, for some, a loss of status. For the state it means a new kind of oversight and intervention. Instead of licensing professional autonomy, state power is now being used to stabilize the process of commodification by encouraging backsliders and disciplining those who would go too far. One reason unethical behavior is drawing closer state scrutiny is its high economic costs. Although these are obviously important consequences, I have tried to emphasize a more theoretical one. At the same time the state is being drawn into the commodification of professional services, the professions are losing their ability to interpret persuasively the origins and scope of human needs. This means that the repoliticization Habermas and Offe anticipate makes even more sense. Not only is the state's role in previously private matters subject to criticism, it seems unable to provide a forum for critical needs interpretation of the pragmatic sort at a time in which the professions are seen as derelict in their traditional duty of needs interpretation.This point can be made more precise by distinguishing two ways in which my analysis of professional authority is related to Habermas's and Offe's work. I have not analyzed professional authority in general, but medical and legal professional authority in the United States in particular. One implication of this study is that the prospects for democratic social movements in the United States along the lines Habermas and Offe sketch may depend upon the commodification of professional services more than simply the general intervention of the state into private economic, educational, and family affairs. This peculiar feature of a strong American social movement would be the result of the traditional popular dichotomy between authority and power, the historical role of the professions in needs interpretation in the United States, and the current radical deconstitution of medical and legal authority. Habermas and Offe seem more concerned with the more mature European social movements than with events in the United States. My analysis applies and amends their legitimation crisis thesis, and the repoliticization hypothesis especially, in the U.S. case.But, like a good case study, it also suggests a way in which the general theoretical framework that guided it in turn can be revised. In my analysis it is the concept of needs interpretation that has general theoretical significance for the legitimation crisis thesis. One problem critics have noted in the legitimation crisis thesis is its inadequate account of what motivates or will motivate such as crisis. Habermas's own treatment of the difference between a legitimation crisis and a motivational crisis is notably weak. The case of the deconstitution of professional authority suggests that the motivational basis for a legitimation crisis cannot be deduced from greater state intervention in private domains but that it nonetheless may have its roots in basic changes in the political economy. The commodification of medical and legal services is part of a larger transformation in capitalist political economies that I have not been able to describe here. Although I have called this commodification an internal process, it most certainly reflects larger trends and changes, both domestically and internationally. What the deconstitution of professional authority suggests is that 1) it may be possible to gain greater clarity about the motivational basis of a potential legitimation crisis through the concept of needs interpretation, 2) this motivational basis is not a simple function of the macroeconomy, but still 3) how effective professional and political needs interpretation are will depend upon the pace and range of commodification.

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