Employer preferences for long-term union contracts

In recent years, the American industrial relations system has undergone considerable stress. One byproduct of a stressful period is that old ways of conducting industrial relations are being increasingly questioned. The fact that questions are raised, however, does not necessarily mean that the climate for change is receptive to all suggestions. In this paper we provide evidence that the management community would strongly oppose recent suggestions for the abandonment of long-term collective bargaining contracts.     

A Review of The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and The Institute of Social Research

Theory and Society -     

Book Review: Zhao LiQing and Carolyn Iyoya Irving (eds.), The Non-Profit Sector and Development,Hong Kong Press for Social Sciences,Hong Kong, 2001, 368 pp.

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations -     

Evaluating the products of alternative sampling methods

While theoretical work in survey sampling has offered the promise that selection procedures based on probabilities proportional to size would produce subgroups for surveys as efficiently as oversampling, there were fewer expectations that the two methods would produce comparable products. This research reports the results of an experiment conducted within the 1982 General Social Survey (GSS), which compares two subsamples of blacks (N=510). The multivariate normal distributions of the oversample and the black probability sample are demonstrated to be statistically similar. This similarity extends to subsets of demographic and substantive variables, and to most individual variables as well. For survey directors, these results imply that the choice between oversampling and pps methodologies used for locating population subgroups should depend more on the relative costs/efficiencies involved, than on concerns over product quality. More generally, these results mean that all of the blacks in the 1982 GSS may be combined and treated as a single, national probability sample of the American black population.     

Simulating the Impacts of Cash Transfers on Poverty and School Attendance: The Case of Cambodia

Using the Cambodia Socioeconomic Survey 2004 and employing micro-static simulation techniques, we measure the potential impacts of cash transfer programs for children to identify targeted groups that will have the most effect on poverty and school attendance. We conclude that the largest impacts occur by targeting poor children. If this proves to be too administratively costly, then targeting children in rural areas or targeting all children living in the ten poorest provinces will also yield significant poverty reduction. With regard to improving school attendance, the same targeted groups generally provide the biggest impacts as well, although the impacts on school attendance tend to be smaller than on poverty reduction.     

Social unrest and community oriented policing services

Since 2014, there have been several, high-profile police-involved shootings that have captured the nation as a whole. The misunderstandings between culture, legal knowledge, and human behavior all come together to create an environment of social unrest that may lead to violence in the United States. Because we have a decentralized structure for policing services in the United States, the need for the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) educational initiatives could help close the divide of knowledge in our country. With grant assistance from the COPS office, law enforcement and community members could make an impactful change in our schools to educate children on concepts related to police operations and the perceptions of police misconduct by community members. By having a proper source of information to offset misunderstandings about police and minorities perpetuated by news media and social media, our youth and community members can critically evaluate the best way for communities to be served by law enforcement.     

An investigation into a new class of vehicle routing problem with backhauls

A new version of the vehicle routing problem with backhauls is presented. In this new problem backhauls are not restricted to be visited once all linehaul customers have been served, neither are backhaul customers fully mixed with linehaul customers. In this problem the user based on his or her experience, the vehicle capacity, the type of products and the type of vehicle used, can define the position along a route from which the first backhaul customer may be visited. An insertion-type heuristic is put forward for this class of problems. An analysis of the improvement in route cost obtained by allowing a relaxation in the restriction of the mix of linehaul and backhaul customers is reported.