Organizational perspectives on digital labor market intermediaries

Dramatic changes in organizational forms and employee-employer relationships have coincided with a proliferation of labor market intermediaries. Often digital and internet-based, these new hiring technologies assist organizations in recruiting and screening potential job candidates. We identify three types of digital labor market intermediaries (dLMIs): connectors, curators, and comminglers. We examine the use of dLMIs through the lens of organizational theory, focusing on implications for organizational efficiency, power, and equity. dLMI use is patterned but variable across different organizations and has unintended outcomes that defy efficiency expectations. It poses new constraints for job seekers while allowing organizations and intra-organizational groups to negotiate institutional pressures and power imbalances. Finally, dLMI use appears to reproduce pre-existing inequalities among different types of employees.     

Peer group self-identification in samples of Russian and U.S. adolescents

Most peer group self-identification research has been conducted in the United States. This article examined the generalizability of self-identified group name research among teens in Ufa, a city in the Russian Federation. A cross-sectional, anonymous collection of data on group self-identification, drug use, addiction concern, sensation seeking, and self-rated school performance was collected from 365 10th grade youth in Ufa and 965 10th grade youth in the United States. The results supported the existence of peer group self-identification by youth in both countries and, in general, replicated the findings that youth who self-identify as a High Risk Youth, are relatively likely to use drugs, show greater concern about becoming an addict, report a greater sensation seeking preference, higher levels of depression, and poorer school performance. Implications of these results are discussed.     

Social Work Practice With LGBT Seniors

The Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center began providing services to LGBT seniors in 2008. Since then, the Center’s seniors program has grown to over 3,300 clients. It provides a variety of enrichment and support services with the overarching goal of empowering seniors to successfully age in place. This article outlines the service delivery program of the Center’s Seniors Services Department and describes its successes and challenges in meeting the needs of diverse LGBT seniors. It offers future directions for social work practice, policy, and research with LGBT older adults.     

Disaster preparedness networks in rural Midwest communities: Organizational roles,collaborations, and support for older residents

ABSTRACT

This study investigated the roles and interconnections among community organizations belonging to local disaster coalitions in Midwest in supporting older residents. Representatives from 44 organizations participated in one-time survey. Most were non-profit (68%) or federal/state/local government agencies (23%). The analyses of 761 relationships showed stronger collaborations in assessment (average strength=2.88 on a 5-point scale), emergency response (2.72), and planning (2.61); and weaker collaborations in co-sponsoring programs (1.71) and supporting older residents (2.03). The extent of collaboration (network density) to support older adults was also low. Coalitions may enhance network density and centralization by developing sub-committee structure and strengthening existing collaborations.     

Making better regulation,making regulation better?

Better Regulation is a re-regulatory strategy that has unfolded in Britain (and, of course, beyond, through Europe and the OECD) across the past decade. This article beings by setting out some quantitative indicators of trends in national and local enforcement in three key areas of protective regulation – food hygiene and food safety, workers’ health and safety, and pollution control – from 2003/2004 to 2012/2013. It then goes on, in its main sections, to detail some of the ways Better Regulation under conditions of austerity has worked through at the level of local enforcement via a case study of four Merseyside Local Authorities; in so doing, it draws principally upon qualitative insights from a series of interviews, as well as data gleaned from a further series of Freedom of Information requests. In so doing, it considers how, on the ground, Better Regulation is made. It concludes that Better Regulation appears less about ‘better’ regulation, more about business-friendly regulation with diminishing law enforcement. There is good reason to suggest that regulatory functions will likely be increasingly re-cast as part of growth initiatives.     

Production Teams and Producing Racial Diversity in Workplace Relationships

Production teams have become a dominant form of work organization as labor markets have become increasingly diverse. This transition likely affects coworker networks—possibly undermining entrenched patterns of workplace segregation. Contact theory suggests that teams can foster network diversity when workers cooperate and share values emphasizing mutual respect. Yet variants of conflict theory, including the critical teams literature, contend that the benefits of teamwork may be eroded by associated factors, including peer discipline, work intensification, and job insecurity. This study uses 2006 General Social Survey data to assess whether and how teamwork affects the racial diversity of worker acquaintance networks, contrasting worker‐ and manager‐directed teams. We find a positive relationship between teams and diversity, but only when teams are worker directed. Despite countervailing tendencies highlighted in the literature, teams foster greater cooperation between workers, which in turn promotes cross‐racial friendships. African Americans tend to receive the greatest diversity payoffs from teams. These findings suggest that teamwork can undermine segregation, though only with certain implementations and with variation across groups.     

Gender,Culture and Intervention: Exploring Differences between Aboriginal and Non‐Aboriginal Children’s Responses to an Early Intervention Programme

Evaluation of a group parenting programme in the Northern Territory of Australia showed significant differences in benefits for Aboriginal and non‐Aboriginal boys and girls. The analysis considers whether boys and girls from different cultural backgrounds present with different problems; whether parental expectations for boys and girls differ and whether the intervention activates different responses in different settings. Conclusions suggest that there is a need to closely examine the ‘cultural logic’ of interventions, the appropriateness of their assumptions about child development and hypothesised mechanisms of change in different settings.     

Faculty in the Middle

This study was designed to explore how organizational life in university-affiliated graduate social work education programs in the United States is affected by the stress of heightened caregiving roles. Analysis of data from 69 schools demonstrated deleterious effects of caregiving stress on organizational effectiveness, including missed obligations, feeling overwhelmed, and distracting others by seeking social support for specific problems. The authors identify two variables that provided partial amelioration of caregiver stress and appeared to contribute to increased organizational effectiveness: larger faculty size and on-site child care.     

Childhood Sexual Abuse Severity Reconsidered: A Factor Structure of CSA Characteristics

To address the lack of empirically grounded measures of childhood sexual abuse severity, a survey of self-report items was developed following a thorough review of the childhood sexual abuse literature. An exploratory factor analysis was conducted using data collected from a convenience sample of college students that included 275 females and males with a history of childhood sexual abuse. The solution produced seven factors interpreted as the following: (a) less intrusive forms of childhood sexual abuse (e.g., sexual invitations, kissing), (b) more intrusive forms of childhood sexual abuse (e.g., oral sex, intercourse), (c) humiliation/fear, (d) childhood sexual abuse involving photography, (e) familiarity with the perpetrator, (f) physical force/rape, and (g) active digital penetration. Correlations among these factors further suggested the existence of two relatively independent second-order factors, one based on the levels of physical intrusiveness and the other composed of the psychological/emotional factors. While arguably the most common measurement of severity, physical intrusiveness had little association with critical factors such as humiliation, fear, and association with the perpetrator. Consequently, physical intrusiveness appears to be an inadequate stand-alone measure of childhood sexual abuse severity. These results are proposed to lay the groundwork for an improved, more comprehensive measure of childhood sexual abuse severity.