Understanding Accountability: Theoretical Models and their Implications for Social Service Organizations

This article examines the concept of accountability and its implications for social service organizations. Accountability, it is argued, is a theoretically embedded concept, with each theory producing various conflicting models of accountability. The article seeks to map and structure the various models of accountability, highlighting the differences between the models and their implications for social service organizations. The models chosen are relevant to the Aotearoa/New Zealand context and also to countries in western Europe as they include the systems of political economy present within recent history: social democratic and neo-liberal, and also a coherent alternative, the communitarian model.     

Social Security Options for Informal Sector Workers in Emergent Economies and the Asia and Pacific Region

Does any form of social security make sense in emergent economies, such as those in Asia and the Pacific, where most of the labour force is involved in the informal sector? This article explores various options. Though there are structural obstacles, such as the increasing casualization of labour, the inability of low paid employees to save for the future and widespread corruption, the state is not devoid of policy opportunities. A bottom‐up approach engaging local community organizations to provide suitable security measures is one important option. However, this needs to be achieved in the context of a multifaceted approach to create an environment of decent work and training that increases individuals’ employability.     

Parents’ Decision Making and Their Information Needs Concerning Treatments for Child Anxiety: Implications for Family-Centered Practice

Collaborative decision making is a central feature of family-centered practice and is important to families in treatment planning. This study explored parents’ preferences for decision making involvement and their information needs regarding treatment for child anxiety. Qualitative interviews conducted with 19 parents revealed four main themes: (1) parents regard themselves as protectors, (2) parents desire involvement in decision making, (3) information is key in decision making, and (4) not all treatments are perceived as equal. Parents reported a strong desire to maintain control over the final treatment decision. They preferred a wide range of information about treatment and the health-care provider. Implications for implementing family-centered practice are discussed.     

Evolutionary Theory and Neuroscience: An Explanatory Theory for Social Work

Evolutionary theory and neuroscience are recommended as a foundational theory for social work. Advantages of evolutionary theory include explanatory power, suggestion of interventions to beginning social work practitioners, and accommodation of more specific theories of human behavior. The explanatory power of neuroscience is also discussed, along with its evidence base and compatibility with the strengths perspective and destigmatization work of the profession. Connections between evolutionary theory, neuroscience, and social work values are also discussed.     

Commemorating or celebrating? Reflections on the centenary of the Natives Land Act of 1913

While no policymaker would claim to be celebrating the centenary of the Natives Land Act, the form and content of the commemoration of this significant event on the website of the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform has some unsettling parallels with the celebratory countdown to the Soccer World Cup of 2010. Rather than using the centenary to acknowledge the significant changes in relations to land of the past century, the state is treating it as an opportunity for political theatre that deflects attention from serious weaknesses in its land reform programme. If the centenary of the 1913 Land Act is to be an opportunity for meaningful reflection, then a more thoughtful engagement is required with major processes of social change and regional differentiation over the past 100 years.     

Serials Digest

Abstract

A collection manager and an acquisition librarian discuss difficult decisions to be made regarding electronic resources and associated value-added services. Balancing budget constraints with patron demands for easy access to information requires librarians to reevaluate assumptions about the electronic products and associated services that have quickly become staples of library life, even as these staples become increasingly untenable. The authors scrutinize the cost/benefit of continuing value-added services, such as providing access to abstracting and indexing tools and full MARC cataloging records of journal titles, as well as considering the adoption of new services such as federated search engines and link resolvers.     

Organizational theory in political sociology

Organizational theory and research has been enormously generative for political sociologists, if not always as fully centered as it might be, relative to broader notions of political power, economic resources, culture, and their interplay. This review both calls attention to the ways that organizational theory continues to inform political sociology and sets an agenda for how this interchange can be productively extended in various ways in scholarship on states, political parties, advocacy organizations, and business influences in politics. I highlight the genealogy of the new institutionalism and its variants (World Polity and institutional logics), population ecology (and the growing interest in both categories and audiences, alongside studies of the “ecology of ideology”), and research that follows in the broad tradition of resource dependence theory (and the link to more management-oriented approaches such as “non-market strategy” and stakeholder theories of organizational political activities). I also emphasize how novel theories of social movements and fields have offered innovative insights that incorporate organizational and political processes. I conclude by elaborating an agenda for how political sociologists can go further in maintaining and extending their highly productive and rewarding engagements with organizational theory.     

A brief research note: helplessness, hopelessness, and haplessness as predictors of suicidal ideation: a cross-cultural study

Scales to measure helplessness and hopelessness were found to have good reliability and were significantly correlated with suicidal ideation in both Turkish and American respondents.     

Bayesian consistency for regression models under a supremum distance

This paper studies the consistency of Bayesian nonparametric regression models. We concentrate on the use of the sup metric and dealing with non-stochastic, i.e. designed, covariate values. We illustrate our results on a normal mean regression function and demonstrate the usefulness of a model based on piecewise constant functions.