Recognizing Social Work

There has been little interest until recently in the questionof whether social work has the characteristics of an academicdiscipline. This article offers a synopsis of issues arisingfrom a review of social work and social care research fundedthrough the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE). Followinga brief scene setting, the first main section of the articlegives a synopsis of the social work and social care community’sexperience and judgements regarding their engagement with theresearch council. In the second part of the article, we reviewrelevant policies, structures and trends from an ESRC and socialscience perspective. We focus on the development of researchprogrammes, followed by an outline of the delivery and implementationof programmes. In the final section, we review the issues, themesand directions that emerged from the project. These includejudgements of research relevance, research users, research utilization,the social work contribution to the development of researchmethods, inter-disciplinary research, the question of whetherthere are distinctive attributes of social work research, researchcapacity, career building, priority setting, and the outcomesof social work funding bids. We also reflect on the developmentand delivery of research programmes, and the implications ofthe invisibility of social work research within the ESRC. Disciplineswithin universities are not fixed and abiding realities. ‘Recognizing’social work is a dynamic, socially negotiated process, shapedby the construction and ordering of knowledge claims withinsocial work and social science communities, and reflecting powerdifferentials that are mediated through structural mechanismsthat tend to exclude new ‘claimants’ such as socialwork. We include a number of recommendations, and suggest waysin which the issues may have relevance beyond the UK.     

Reversing "the inadvertent nationalization of fatherhood": The British Child Support Act 1991 and its consequences for men, women and children

During the 1980s, with the growth in divorce, remarriage and births outside marriage, men's responsibilities for children and their mothers have been reviewed. In Great Britain, the Child Support Act 1991, following a decade in which the number of lone parents increased by 50 per cent and the proportion claiming state benefit increased from one-half to two-thirds, is attempting to shift lone mothers from dependence on the State to dependence on the biological father of their children. This has raised controversial issues concerning women's and children's claims on the State as citizens in their own rights; the balance between a man's private duty to maintain and provide care for children (by maintaining their mother) and his public duty to reimburse the State for doing so; and the legitimacy of trade-offs between claims on family "property" and claims to maintenance previously exercised in the courts. The individualistic system of English family law, in contrast to the law in Scotland and continental Europe, is part of the context within which these changes are taking place. So, too, is the fall in economic activity rates of lone mothers, which are among the lowest in the European Union.     

Can we Lend?: Communicating Interlibrary Loan Rights

At the 22nd Annual North Carolina Serials Conference, focused on “Collaboration, Community, and Connection,” Linda Blake and Hilary Fredette of West Virginia University presented, ““Can we Lend?”: Communicating Interlibrary Loan Rights,” reviewing their experiences collaborating across an academic library to achieve the best possible interlibrary loan e-journal access within the bounds of sometimes inscrutable licenses.     

Decision‐making in drug development using a composite definition of success

Evidence‐based quantitative methodologies have been proposed to inform decision‐making in drug development, such as metrics to make go/no‐go decisions or predictions of success, identified with statistical significance of future clinical trials. While these methodologies appropriately address some critical questions on the potential of a drug, they either consider the past evidence without predicting the outcome of the future trials or focus only on efficacy, failing to account for the multifaceted aspects of a successful drug development. As quantitative benefit‐risk assessments could enhance decision‐making, we propose a more comprehensive approach using a composite definition of success based not only on the statistical significance of the treatment effect on the primary endpoint but also on its clinical relevance and on a favorable benefit‐risk balance in the next pivotal studies. For one drug, we can thus study several development strategies before starting the pivotal trials by comparing their predictive probability of success. The predictions are based on the available evidence from the previous trials, to which new hypotheses on the future development could be added. The resulting predictive probability of composite success provides a useful summary to support the discussions of the decision‐makers. We present a fictive, but realistic, example in major depressive disorder inspired by a real decision‐making case.     

Success and Failure of MRP II Implementation

This paper assesses the reasons for the success or failure of manufacturing resource planning (MRPII) implementation projects. It begins by discussing the literature and research on success and failure of these systems and presents evidence from cases prepared by the authors. The paper is not concerned to prescribe ‘best practice’ for MRP implementation. The first section reviews the relevant literature and concludes that there is a divergence of opinion as to what constitutes success, raising questions on the usefulness of current methods of establishing whether implementation is successful. The latter section of the paper uses results from longitudinal (process) research carried out by the authors. This starts with a discussion of what counts for success. The discussion highlights the importance of understanding the full potential of MRPII in effecting change of organizational structures, cultures and practice. Several factors that contribute towards MRPII failure are next considered. Finally,‘big bang’style implementations, such as those recommended by the Ollie Wight organization, are most likely to be successful if the organization follows a strategic approach to planning. There also needs to be a high degree of fit between organizational structure, culture and the demands of the MRPII system.     

Public health,research and rights: the perspectives of deliberation panels with politically and socially active disabled people

Public health research purports to provide the evidence base for policies, programmes and interventions to improve the health of a population. However, there is increasing awareness that the experiences of disabled people have played little part in informing this evidence base. This paper discusses one aspect of a study commissioned by England’s National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) to review the implications for public health of theories and models of disability. This part of the study focused on the development of a tool or decision aid to promote ethical inclusion of disabled people in public health randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and evaluative research. The tool was introduced at four regional ‘deliberating panels’ involving politically and socially active disabled people. In addition, we held a panel with public health professionals. The deliberation panels debated how the focus of public health was narrowing, why disability was excluded and positive and negative issues with using rights to guide research and evaluative practice. Politically active disabled people argued for a social model of human rights to guide any rights based tools or decision aids in public health and disability research.     

The ACORN story: An analysis of crisis response strategies in a nonprofit organization

In 2009, two political activists published hidden-camera recordings of their visits to the offices of a national, community-based, nonprofit organization. In the videos, the activists posed as a prostitute and a pimp in order to elicit damaging information from the organization's employees. This incident was just the latest in a series of disastrous situations for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). In the year prior to the video controversy, the organization addressed allegations of voter registration fraud in the 2008 presidential election and reacted to the expose of a hidden embezzlement by a family member of ACORN's founder. This study employs the Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) to analyze how ACORN responded to this series of damaging public relations attacks. The study investigated ACORN's crisis response strategies through an analysis of media coverage about the crises.     

Breadth or depth? A content analysis of the use of public relations theory

In a 2003 content analysis of scholarly public relations journal articles, Sallot, Lyon, Acosta-Alzura and Jones stated that, although no dominant paradigms had yet emerged, scholarship and theory building in public relations was well on its way. Entering into this project, the authors expected to see public relations at a stage where the majority of public relations research and scholarly journal articles were focusing on a centralized body of theory as the field entered the first decade of the 21st century. The results of the study presented in this article, however, suggest that this expectation was unduly optimistic. The evidence demonstrates that, after more than three decades of scholarly efforts, it is still not the case that public relations has enough of a central focus in its research and theory building to be deemed a mature discipline.