Sexual Politics in the Workplace: The Interactional World of Policewomen

This paper examines the dynamics of male-female interaction in one work setting—the backstage region of a police department—and explores the variety of ways that policewomen are pressured to “stay in their place” by male coworkers. Policewomen face interpersonal dilemmas because as police officers they are expected to behave like colleagues (i.e. as status equals); as women they are expected to behave as status subordinates. This paper investigates a number of the techniques by which female officers' gender is made salient and male officers assert dominance over female officers. The verbal techniques employed include the use of euphemisms, affectionate terms of address, cursing, joking and putdowns, and gossip. Non-verbal messages are transmitted by the use of personal space, touch, and chivalrous ceremonies. In addition the problems posed by sexuality and sexual harassment in the workplace are discussed. Data are based on nine months of participant observation and 55 interviews with officers in one police district in Washington, D.C.     

Weber's Concept of Causality and the Modern Critique

Weber's concept of causality established a middle ground between the extremes of the causality debate in his day by developing a concept that was unique in two respects: it was tailored to the needs of the distinctive subject matter of the social sciences, meaningful human action, and it utilized the legal model of causal analysis. Interpreted in this light, Weber's concept meets several of the criticisms of the use of causal analysis in the social sciences recently advanced by Peters and Winch.     

Dynamic Assignment of Flexible Service Resources

Resource flexibility is an important tool for firms to better match capacity with demand so as to increase revenues and improve service levels. However, in service contexts that require dynamically deciding whether to accept incoming jobs and what resource to assign to each accepted job, harnessing the benefits of flexibility requires using effective methods for making these operational decisions. Motivated by the resource deployment decisions facing a professional service firm in the workplace training industry, we address the dynamic job acceptance and resource assignment problem for systems with general resource flexibility structure, i.e., with multiple resource types that can each perform different overlapping subsets of job types. We first show that, for systems containing specialized resources for individual job types and a versatile resource type that can perform all job types, the exact policy uses a threshold rule. With more general flexibility structures, since the associated stochastic dynamic program is intractable, we develop and test three optimization‐based approximate policies. Our extensive computational tests show that one of the methods, which we call the Bottleneck Capacity Reservation policy, is remarkably effective in generating near‐optimal solutions over a wide range of problem scenarios. We also consider a model variant that requires dynamic job acceptance decisions but permits deferring resource assignment decisions until the end of the horizon. For this model, we discuss an adaptation of our approximate policy, establish the effectiveness of this policy, and assess the value of postponing assignment decisions.     

Patterns of child maltreatment referrals among Asian and Pacific Islander families

Much of the available data on Asian American families who become involved with the child welfare system relies on global ethnic categories, such as the category Asian/Pacific Islander. To explore the diversity of experience that is hidden by such categories, this article analyzes two years of child maltreatment referrals for Asian and Pacific Island families in Washington state. The study findings show that considerable variation exists within the Asian and Pacific Islander population with regard to child protection referrals. Although Asian Americans as a whole were less likely to be referred to child protective services than other groups, the within group picture that these data capture is considerably more complex. Some Asian/Pacific Islander ethnic groups, particularly those which have experienced higher levels of social and economic stress, were more at risk of child welfare involvement than other groups. Such findings underscore the need for child welfare policies and practice that are sensitive to the considerable variability within the Asian/Pacific Islander community.     

Framing youth issues for public support

The insights from one state illustrate the challenges of working to shape public will to favor support for out-of-school learning opportunities for youth ages nine to fifteen. With the leadership of the Frameworks Institute, local and national research and refraining concepts were used to develop a strategy to help advocates communicate the value of these learning opportunities in ways the public is less likely to dismiss out of hand. Messages reinforcing the developmental need to practice skills using the illustration of brain architecture and emphasizing the important role of community contribution on future leadership proved to be important aspects of the communication strategy.     

Clinical social work education in palliative and end-of-life care: relational approaches for advanced practitioners

This paper describes the first post-Master's program in the US in end-of-life care for social workers. Developed at the Smith College School for Social Work, this program used innovative relational methods in student recruitment, curricular design, supervision, and leadership development, based upon input from the faculty, students, and field supervisors. Collaborations emerged with funders, agencies, and programs nationally. The program was based on a pedagogical stance that clinical work with dying people requires the capacity to be fully present- in individual, group, and family work; in interdisciplinary meetings; and in advocating for quality and equity of care-while attending to diverse and at-risk populations. Students deepened their clinical skills and took leadership in the field of end-of-life care.     

The Social Work Assessment Tool (SWAT)

This paper reports on the last of three National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization initiatives to move hospice and palliative care social workers into the patient/family outcomes arena: the development of the Social Work Assessment Tool. The experience of a team of practitioners and researchers is described, including results of two pilot studies and subsequent SWAT revisions. The major focus is on the current model performance improvement project, in which 19 social workers from 14 hospice and palliative care programs used the SWAT with 101 patients and 81 primary caregivers for a median of 44 days. Quantitative analysis indicated significant improvement in SWAT scores for patients from the first to the second social work visit (t = -2.60, df = 47, p .01). Qualitative interviewing of the social workers indicated some lack of readiness in the field to conduct quantitative outcomes measurement. Additional measures are needed in addition to the SWAT, including qualitative measures, and measures of mezzo and macro practice. Participants indicated that the SWAT was appropriate for use with economically and culturally diverse clients.     

Shaping the future of social work in end-of-life and palliative care

The second Social Work Summit on End-of-Life and Palliative Care was held from June 1 to June 3, 2005. Sixty representatives of more than 35 social work and other professional organizations with a commitment to improve care for the terminally ill, dying, and bereaved, attended and formulated key priority directions and initiatives that will further the field.