The Features of Development in the Pacific Countries of the African,Caribbean and Pacific Group

In this article we present a new proposal for the measurement of development, applied to the Pacific Countries of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group (ACP), conditional on their insularity, and with privileged relations with the European Union. Our index has been constructed attending to the criteria defined in the Goals of the Millennium Declaration. For this purpose we will use the P₂ distance method for the year 2007, the last year for which data are available. This index integrates socio-economic variables that permit a territorial ordering of the Pacific ACPs, in terms of those partial indicators.     

Adaptive and Generative Learning: Implications from Complexity Theories

One of the most important classical typologies within the organizational learning literature is the distinction between adaptive and generative learning. However, the processes of these types of learning, particularly the latter, have not been widely analyzed and incorporated into the organizational learning process. This paper puts forward a new understanding of adaptive and generative learning within organizations, grounded in some ideas from complexity theories: mainly self‐organization and implicate order. Adaptive learning involves any improvement or development of the explicate order through a process of self‐organization. Self‐organization is a self‐referential process characterized by logical deductive reasoning, concentration, discussion and improvement. Generative learning involves any approach to the implicate order through a process of self‐transcendence. Self‐transcendence is a holo‐organizational process characterized by intuition, attention, dialogue and inquiry. The main implications of the two types of learning for organizational learning are discussed.     

Analysis of the Car Accident Indexes in Spain: A Multiple Time Series Approach

The main objective of this article is to specify and estimate a model for the car accident rates in Spain to improve input for the decision-making process for insurance companies and provide useful information for traffic authorities. The prediction performance of the model is also analyzed in an attempt to verify the improvement in prediction that takes place when more elaborate models are used.     

The Role of Supervision in Professional Development of Social Work Specialists

The professionals use social services supervision as an educational and administrative process, meant to support. Supervision is a relatively new field introduced in the Romanian social welfare institutions. The article approaches the role of supervision in the process of professional development of social workers, following a research based on Grounded theory. We conducted this research into an elite NGO, in the North-Eastern Romania, in the domain of child protection. Supervision is a social practice based on the relationship between a person with extensive professional experience and a professional effectively involved in case management. Supervision is seen as a prerequisite to quality social services organization. Effectiveness of the supervision process may be an indicator of the quality of social work practice in an organization. The data were collected through interviews of participants in the research. The interviewed subjects operate with a definition of the supervision as being a practice based on individual or group interview, formal or informal, consisting in a series of specific phases (initial, development, end). Supervision involves the establishment of professional relationships between the participants and the quality of services and training received. This definition is partially different from those in the literature.     

Philanthropy by Decree

This article investigates the relationship among nonprofit foundations’ choice of philanthropic strategy (expressive, receptive, proactive, and collaborative) and sound governance, as measured by board capital (competencies and networks), board processes (planning, control, evaluation, and so on), and chairman power (entrenchment and tenure). Using a sample of fifty‐one Italian foundations of banking origins, this article shows that high levels of board capital, complete board processes, and chairman long tenure are positively associated with proactive and collaborative philanthropic strategies.     

Multitudinous identities: a qualitative and network analysis of the 15M collective identity

The emergence of network-movements since 2011 has opened the debate around the way in which social media and networked practices make possible innovative forms of collective identity. We briefly review the literature on social movements and ‘collective identity’, and show the tension between different positions stressing either organization or culture, the personal or the collective, aggregative or networking logics. We argue that the 15M (indignados) network-movement in Spain demands conceptual and methodological innovations. Its rapid emergence, endurance, diversity, multifaceted development and adaptive capacity, posit numerous theoretical and methodological challenges. We show how the use of structural and dynamic analysis of interaction networks (in combination with qualitative data) is a valuable tool to track the shape and change of what we term the ‘systemic dimension’ of collective identities in network-movements. In particular, we introduce a novel method for synchrony detection in Facebook activity to identify the distributed, yet integrated, coordinated activity behind collective identities. Applying this analytical strategy to the 15M movement, we show how it displays a specific form of systemic collective identity we call ‘multitudinous identity’, characterized by social transversality and internal heterogeneity, as well as a transient and distributed leadership driven by action initiatives. Our approach attends to the role of distributed interaction and transient leadership at a mesoscale level of organizational dynamics, which may contribute to contemporary discussions of collective identity in network-movements.     

Racialisation and racial formation in urban spaces*

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I try to clarify the notions of racialisation and racial formation and how they operate in the framework of nation states like Brazil. My main argument is that these processes are always constrained by the formation of social classes and national cultural repertoires even if transnational forces are important in nurturing them. I conclude by making a preliminary effort to unravel mechanisms and institutions which allow these processes of racialisation and racial formation to form part of the daily lives of black Brazilians in the context of class-structured urban spaces.     

Estimation of the mean quality-adjusted survival using a multistate model for the sojourn times

In clinical trials, it may be of interest taking into account physical and emotional well-being in addition to survival when comparing treatments. Quality-adjusted survival time has the advantage of incorporating information about both survival time and quality-of-life. In this paper, we discuss the estimation of the expected value of the quality-adjusted survival, based on multistate models for the sojourn times in health states. Semiparametric and parametric (with exponential distribution) approaches are considered. A simulation study is presented to evaluate the performance of the proposed estimator and the jackknife resampling method is used to compute bias and variance of the estimator.