Accounting for the transition from inpatient to outpatient surgery

This article reports on some of the factors that have advanced and impeded hospital progress in moving from inpatient to outpatient surgery. Early on, patients, physicians, and hospital administrators all agreed that outpatient surgery had an intuitive appeal. Patients liked it because they didn't have to go in the hospital. Physicians liked it because they could get in and out of the outpatient surgery center more easily than the main hospital operating room. Administrators recognized the inherent appeal of outpatient procedures but were unable or unwilling to switch services from inpatient to outpatient for a variety of reasons. First, empty hospital beds and diminished scope of inpatient operations are a threat to the power of administrators. Moving surgery from inpatient to outpatient settings reduces inhouse operations. Second, reimbursement incentives were definitely in favor of continued inpatient care long after technology was in place for outpatient care. The third and most critical reason was that cost data on outpatient operations were just not available for making decisions on when to move into the outpatient setting. This review of the literature was intended to document the lack of relevant cost-based accounting. Instead, many other factors that more directly slowed progress were encountered. More than anything, this illustrates the erratic course of progress in health care reform.     

Coherent decision analysis with inseparable probabilities and utilities

This article explores the extent to which a decision maker's probabilities can be measured separately from his/her utilities by observing his/her acceptance of small monetary gambles. Only a partial separation is achieved: the acceptable gambles are partitioned into a set of belief gambles, which reveals probabilities distorted by marginal utilities for money, and a set of preference gambles, which reveals utilities reciprocally distorted by marginal utilities for money. However, the information in these gambles still enables us to solve the decision maker's problem: his/her utility-maximizing decision is the one that avoids arbitrage (i.e., incoherence or Dutch books).     

"SECRET BALLOTS" AND SELF-REPORTS IN AN EXIT-POLL EXPERIMENT

A controlled exit-poll experiment on Election Day (November3, 1992) shows that refusals to answer questions and other evasiveforms of responding were significantly lower when respondentswere given a self-administered "secret-ballot" questionnairethan when they were interviewed face-to-face. While there weresome suggestive interactions of this mode-of-data collectioneffect with age and sex, and with the partisan atmosphere ofthe precinct in which the interviews were conducted, they wereborderline in significance, inconsistent in pattern, or difficuitto interpret. More important, comparisons with official electionreturns (the truth) indicated that the secret-ballot techniquewas more accurate than were face-to-face interviews in estimatingthe final outcome on the most socially sensitive of three self-reportedvotes: a vote for or against a tax levy for elderly services.Using a genuine secret ballot in the tradition of the olderGallup preelection polls can thus increase the validity of self-reportsin exit polls today.     

A cultural economy perspective on service sector migration in the global city: the case of Hong Kong

This article argues that in order to fully understand the geography of labour migration to global cities, it is necessary to consider economic forces in conjunction with mediating socio-cultural influences. Support for this argument is based on an examination of the pattern of migration to Hong Kong, a city which plays a significant role in the world economy.
Reported here are the results of an analysis of recently released 1996 by-census data, and the authors' interviews with foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong. These findings have shown that highly skilled immigrant workers were drawn largely from developed countries, the main sources of inward investment in this city, while less skilled immigrants were drawn from less developed neighbouring labour markets.
While the geographical pattern of immigration followed broadly that predicted from Hong Kong's position in the world economy, the results have revealed that cultural influences such as language and social networks are also important in shaping the economic roles of migrant workers.     

Lifestyle Options and Economic Strategies: Subsistence Activities in the Mississippi Delta1

Abstract "Subsistence" and "informal economy" are contrasted in their utility as sociological concepts and their ability to explain a variety of activities in two rural Mississippi Delta communities. Literature on subsistence stresses that the desired outcome of participation is not an increase in income but the social rewards of participation itself. Two underlying dimensions of participation in these activities are documented through the literature and through a confirmatory factor analysis of empirical data: life-style choice and economic strategy. These were constructed into indexes and examined individually and in combination as dependent variables using regressors at the community, household, and individual levels. Community ties were weakly associated with participation in such activities. Whites and those with higher incomes participated more in lifestyle choice oriented activities. Participation in general was statistically related to households needing less weekly income and being of larger size. Potential connections with persistent rural poverty are discussed.     

Cockpits,Hangars, Boys and Galleys: Corporate Masculinities and the Development of British Airways

This article sets out to examine the role of masculinity in the development of a gendered organizational culture over time. The development of images of masculinity within one company — British Airways — is examined through content analysis of company newsletters, advertising copy, annual reports, internal memoranda, and written rules and regulations. Exploring the notion of ‘multiple masculinities’, the article traces the prominent forms of masculinity that emerged in British Airways and assesses their impact on the ways that organizational practices were developed, maintained and understood. Four key corporate images of masculinity are examined — the pilot, the steward, the engineer and the ‘native boy’— and it is argued that those images contributed to the exclusion of women and people of colour from those occupations by laying down cultural rules about the ideal typical characteristics of the job holder. The article concludes by raising questions about the value of a multiple masculinities focus in explaining changing and contradictory practices of discrimination; the primacy of extra-organizational over organizational practices; and the relationship between multiple masculinities and hegemonic masculinity. Further research is suggested into the extent to which hegemonic masculinity is undermined, over time, by changing and contradictory forms of masculinity within definite sites of gender construction.     

A case study of the labour market status of recent mainland Chinese immigrants,metropolitan Toronto

"This article focuses on an analysis of the labour market status of recent MCIs [mainland Chinese immigrants to Canada], taking into account such factors as gender, educational attainment, language proficiency and period of arrival (or length of residence in Canada), and uses Metropolitan Toronto as a case study. The effect of each factor on MCIs' labour market status will be analysed separately, followed by two logit models examining the simultaneous effects of the factors and their relative importance." (SUMMARY IN FRE AND SPA)