Grant monitoring by charities: The process of grant-making and evaluation

This article presents the results of a survey of grant monitoring in 170 UK charities. The monitoring and evaluation process is modelled and the extent to which donors follow this is explored. Although over 70 per cent of donors monitored grants, a much smaller percentage proceeded to evaluate results. Reasons for this and an indication of how the processes are carried out are presented.     

Persistent militants and quiescent comrades: intra-industry strike activity on the docks, 1947-89⊃

Although dockers have figured prominently as a critical case in many standard theories of industrial conflict, they have often behaved in ways which these theories cannot grasp. This is perhaps most clearly evident when strike action at the port rather than the industry level is the subject of attention. Most notably, industry level theories cannot explain the persistent militancy of dockers employed in the major ports and the relative quiescence of their comrades employed at the smaller ports. To be sure, industry level variables can be used to understand the general character of workplace relations and the processes involved in strike action, but to fully explain the actual incidence and intensity of strike action over both time and place also requires analysis of the particular patterns of labour regulation at different ports and the consequent patterns of conflict and accommodation at the workplace level.     

Less Partnering,Less Children,or Both? Analysis of the Drivers of First Birth Decline in Finland Since 2010

European Journal of Population - In the 2010s, fertility has declined in the Nordic countries, most strikingly in Finland, and first births drive the decline. It remains unclear whether this...     

Will the Truth Set Us Free? An Exploration of CSR Motive and Commitment

This article examines why firms engage in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Specifically, it investigates the relationship between a firm's motivation to engage in CSR and the depth of its commitment. I propose that the enduring debate over CSR and financial performance is misaligned, and that scholars should instead focus on the underlying components of CSR engagement. This research sheds light on the motivational antecedents of a firm's engagement in CSR and their effect on CSR commitment. Despite calls for scientific investigation of this linkage, it has received scant attention in the literature. Pursuing this area of research requires the construction of measures of CSR motivation and CSR commitment, as prior work generally lacks objective analysis. I present measures and a research methodology that test hypotheses about how CSR motivation relates to different levels of CSR commitment. The results of this research both validate and challenge current theory. This refined understanding of CSR engagement may enhance firm transparency and accountability to stakeholders. It may reduce the uncertainty in both internal and external assessments of firm CSR and the potential for social and financial impact.     

Three Lenses on Occupations and Professions in Organizations: Becoming,Doing, and Relating

Management and organizational scholarship is overdue for a reappraisal of occupations and professions as well as a critical review of past and current work on the topic. Indeed, the field has largely failed to keep pace with the rising salience of occupational and professional (as opposed to organizational) dynamics in work life. Moreover, not only is there a dearth of studies that explicitly take occupational or professional categories into account, but there is also an absence of a shared analytical framework for understanding what occupations and professions entail. Our goal is therefore two-fold: first, to offer guidance to scholars less familiar with this terrain who encounter occupational or professional dynamics in their own inquiries and, second, to introduce a three-part framework for conceptualizing occupations and professions to help guide future inquiries. We suggest that occupations and professions can be understood through lenses of “becoming”, “doing”, and “relating”. We develop this framework as we review past literature and discuss the implications of each approach for future research and, more broadly, for the field of management and organizational theory.     

Organization–public relationships: An exploration of the Sundre Petroleum Operators Group

This study explored the organization–public relationship (OPR) within the context of the Sundre Petroleum Operators Group (SPOG) and the local community in Sundre, Alberta, Canada. A qualitative orientation was adopted because of the case study's focus on the individual experience of the relationship and the interest was to explore how the relationship was perceived by the people involved. Key relational elements such as trust, transparency, dialogue, control mutuality, commitment and satisfaction were examined in relation to the importance for relationship building and maintenance. In-depth interviews were conducted with both SPOG industry and community members (N = 18). The results indicated that after a crisis transparency was critical for rebuilding trust which was the foundation for the development of the industry–community relationship. Other relational elements were also considered important for maintaining healthy OPRs, but were considered secondary in relation to trust.     

Post-migratory milieu and the wellbeing of adolescent immigrants

Viewed from a psychoanalytic-developmental perspective, migration recaptures separation individuation conflicts and therefore may hinder or facilitate the personal development of adolescents. One of the factors that determine the outcome of migration in adolescents is the post-migratory milieu. The focus of this study is on an educational-residential program for unaccompanied adolescent immigrants from the former Soviet Union in Israel that provides a structured and supportive post-migratory milieu. The respondents were 573 students in the program, aged 14–18. They reported a lower level of psychological distress than that previously found among their peers who immigrated with their parents and were living in the community. Group support and positive relationships with surrogate parental figures were among the strongest predictors of psychological wellbeing. These results and implications of the study, beyond the specific program and setting, are discussed.     

International students' experiences of living temporarily abroad: Sense of belonging toward community well-being

This article unveils the voices of the international students of the Universiti Sains Malaysia by exploring their belongingness and community well-being in Malaysia. This study was conducted with 14 international students (seven males and seven females) studying at the Universiti Sains Malaysia for at least a year. A qualitative approach was employed using in-depth case interviews to examine the socio-cultural challenges they experienced while studying abroad. The specific challenges reported among the international students are their well-being in distinct aspects such as physical, mental, and emotional. This study seeks to explore the international students' reliability on conational communities for social support. When achieving belongingness with their conational friends, international students can flourish well in their current community in Malaysia, thus achieving social community well-being although they are far away. Besides maintaining established close friendships, the international students develop a sense of comfort and familiarity by forming new friendships with conational and other international students. Sharing similar backgrounds and nationalities, as well as experiences and struggles, are significant for international students in maintaining close friendships and situational harmony. This study highlighted the meaning behind physical and emotional distance, as well as the situation of “being temporarily abroad” and its relations to intimacy practices and belongingness in close friendships. The results presented in this article contribute to an increasing understanding of international students' challenges and the future of social harmony and community well-being while temporarily living in Malaysia. Correspondingly, as a result of this study, students will be more deferential of cultural differences and cross-cultural sensitivity, which will also help to decrease prejudice and discrimination.     

Reordering Spatial and Social Relations: A Case Study of Professional and Managerial Flexworkers

Research on flexible work practices has focused primarily on social relationships, individual identity, work/work–life balance experience and performance. This paper aims to add another dimension by focusing on space and, specifically, the performance of space by professional flexworkers as they reorder their home and work lives through the process of becoming flexworkers. Drawing on Law's ‘modes of ordering’ and Latourian actor network theory, as well as on Beyes and Steyaert's recent contribution on ‘performing space’, the paper considers how flexworkers themselves reorganize space(s) as an ongoing accomplishment. The purpose and contribution is to offer an alternative to the view that the home and work are rigid containers fixed in social structure, to one that views them as self‐referential space(s), reordered by flexworkers as they seek to ‘keep the social moving’. The paper is based on an empirical study of employees in a Canadian subsidiary of a large hi‐tech multinational corporation. It examines organizational policy documents and interviews with managerial and non‐managerial flexworkers to identify how social and spatial relations are reordered and performed.     

The practice of systemic reflexivity

What does it mean to practise systemic reflexivity? Much has been written on reflective practice but less is known of the practice of systemic reflexivity. This paper is a contribution towards expanding on what is known of the practice of systemic reflexivity. In this endeavour, a contextualising narrative of how ideas of the practice of systemic reflexivity merged within the systemic field is followed by an exploration of reflective practice and systemic reflexivity, using McGilchrist’s approach of interpersonal neuroscience. The purpose is to demonstrate how the two concepts of reflective practice and systemic reflexivity combined could enhance social work practice. However, this is not to deny the current literature that we have on reflection and reflexivity, but there is a need to continue creating space to widen dialogue in this area as a way of keeping the ideas alive and generating alternative ways of working with the two concepts.