Social Enterprises as Hybrid Organizations: A Review and Research Agenda

The impacts of the global economic crisis of 2008, the intractable problems of persistent poverty and environmental change have focused attention on organizations that combine enterprise with an embedded social purpose. Scholarly interest in social enterprise (SE) has progressed beyond the early focus on definitions and context to investigate their management and performance. From a review of the SE literature, the authors identify hybridity, the pursuit of the dual mission of financial sustainability and social purpose, as the defining characteristic of SEs. They assess the impact of hybridity on the management of the SE mission, financial resource acquisition and human resource mobilization, and present a framework for understanding the tensions and trade‐offs resulting from hybridity. By examining the influence of dual mission and conflicting institutional logics on SE management the authors suggest future research directions for theory development for SE and hybrid organizations more generally.     

Efficacy of a web-based, tailored, alcohol prevention/intervention program for college students: 3-month follow-up

This study presents the results of an efficacy evaluation of a web-based brief motivational alcohol prevention/intervention program called Michigan Prevention and Alcohol Safety for Students (M-PASS). Four on-line sessions providing individually-tailored feedback were delivered to first-year college students over 9 weeks. Non- and low-risk drinking participants received risk prevention, while high-risk drinking participants received a risk-reduction intervention. Both intervention and control groups were surveyed at baseline and at a 3-month follow-up. Analysis showed positive effects for both men and women on stage of change, drinking behavior, drinking motivation and attitudes, and use of risk-reduction strategies. These results provided evidence of efficacy and found that M-PASS had both intervention and prevention effects, making it unique among currently developed brief alcohol interventions for college students.     

From Public Housing to Welfare Housing

This paper examines the shift in housing policy from public housing to welfare housing during the 1970's and the period of the Fraser government in particular. The period saw a series of new Commonwealth State Housing Agreements directed toward market pricing of public rental stock; at the same time Federal funds were declining, with marked effects on the public housing sector. The paper reflects on these trends and highlights certain contradictions in public housing policy.     

The politics of gendered emotions: disrupting men's emotional investment in privilege

This paper explores the implications of the neglect of emotions in critical masculinity studies and profeminist masculinity politics. This neglect in part results from feminist and profeminist critiques of the literature on emotional inexpressiveness as a tragedy for men that ignores male privilege and men's social power. To focus on men's emotions is seen by some profeminist commentators as psychologising men at the expense of sociological understandings of men's social power. However, in neglecting the place of emotions in men's lives, critical masculinity studies has overlooked the ways in which men's emotional attachment to privilege can perpetuate oppressive gender relations and male violence against women. By exploring men's emotional investment in unequal gender relations, the article outlines ways in which emotions can also be used as a catalyst to disrupt men's attachment to male privilege.     

Validating a Behavioral Health Instrument for Adults: Exploratory Factor Analysis

ABSTRACT

Increasingly, social workers and behavioral health practitioners use assessment instruments to support service planning and to monitor progress. Following statewide implementation of the Adult Needs and Strengths Assessment (ANSA) to identify behavioral health symptoms, related functional challenges, risks, and strengths, this validation study explored the underlying structure of the instrument. An exploratory factor analysis used routinely collected information for Midwestern adults with diagnosed behavioral health disorders who participated in community-based services (N = 46,013). Five factors with adequate to good internal consistency (α = 0.733?0.880) emerged: personal recovery, trauma and stress related problems, substance use risks, self-sufficiency, and cultural-linguistic considerations. Validation of the ANSA supports use of the instrument to engage individuals and families, to plan services, to monitor progress, and to conduct research. Implications for social work education, supervision, and practice include the importance of understanding culture, holistic assessment, and services supporting personal recovery for individuals living with mental illness or substance use disorders. Confirmation of findings requires additional research.     

Finding the Signal by Adding Noise: The Role of Noncontrastive Phonetic Variability in Early Word Learning

It is well attested that 14‐month‐olds have difficulty learning similar sounding words (e.g., bih/dih), despite their excellent phonetic discrimination abilities. By contrast, Rost and McMurray (2009) recently demonstrated that 14‐month‐olds’ minimal‐pair learning can be improved by the presentation of words by multiple talkers. This study investigates which components of the variability found in multitalker input improved infants’ processing, assessing both the phonologically contrastive aspects of the speech stream and phonologically irrelevant indexical and suprasegmental aspects. In the first two experiments, speaker was held constant while cues to word‐initial voicing were systematically manipulated. Infants failed in both cases. The third experiment introduced variability in speaker, but voicing cues were invariant within each category. Infants in this condition learned the words. We conclude that aspects of the speech signal that have been typically thought of as noise are in fact valuable information—signal—for the young word learner.     

Rethinking the Significance of Attitudes in Preventing Men's Violence Against Women

The concept of attitudes has been an important component of campaigns to address men's violence against women. Attitudes have been examined in relation to men's perpetration of violence, women's experience of violence and community and institutional responses. In this article we argue that there has not been sufficient interrogation of the limitations of attitudes in understanding and addressing men's violence. We propose a social constructionist approach to attitudes and emphasise the need to locate attitudes within the context of familial, organisational, community and social norms which support violence against women. Furthermore, we argue that to prevent violence against women, we must develop interventions beyond cultural and attitudinal change to encompass changes in structural relations and social practices.