Two earner family migration A search theoretic approach

This paper represents the first attempt to model the two earner family decision to migrate using a joint search theoretic approach. In so doing, the paradox of a couple whose members would both migrate if single but decide not to migrate because they are married to each other is discovered and explained. Furthermore the impact of the rising number of working women and reentry of wives into the labor force on the extent and regional pattern of migration is discussed. Extensions to the model are addressed, as well as future avenues of research, both theoretical and empirical. It is suggested that the search theoretic approach, not previously applied to models of family migration, is the most appropriate.     

1990 census round: meeting users' needs is seen as key to successful dissemination

"Dissemination and marketing of census products were...major topics at the Thirteenth Population Census Conference of census directors from the Asian-Pacific region, held in Honolulu in December 1990. Drawing upon papers presented at the conference,...this article describes technological developments and marketing techniques being used in the region to increase the demand for census information."     

Minimal treatments and problem gamblers: A preliminary investigation

In view of the increasing popularity of minimal intervention treatments for problem drinking, a self-help manual for people who wish to reduce or stop gambling was prepared. Twenty-nine (ACT residents) who responded to advertisements for help with problem gambling were allocated to either of two minimal treatments, Manual (only) and Manual & Interview. On average, clients from both groups reduced the frequency of their gambling sessions, frequency of overspending, and amount spent per week in the first three months and next three months after first contact, but expenditure per session increased from three to six months, after an initial improvement. There was no evidence that a single in-depth interview added to the effectiveness of the manual.This project was funded by a grant from the Australian National University Faculties Research Fund.     

Disciplines of Organizational Learning: Contributions and Critiques

The paper argues against attempts to create asingle framework for understanding organizationallearning. Relevant literature is reviewed from sixdisciplinary perspectives: psychology and OD; management science; sociology and organizational theory;strategy; production management; and culturalanthropology. It is argued that each discipline providesdistinct contributions and conceptions of problems.Furthermore, a basic distinction between organizationallearning and the new idea of the learning organizationis noted. Whereas the former is discipline based andanalytic,the latter is multidisciplinary and emphasizes action and the creation of anideal-type of organization. Due to thediversity of purpose and perspective, it is suggestedthat it is better to consider organizational learning asa multidisciplinary field containing complementary contributions andresearch agendas.     

Why China failed to create an endogenous industrial capitalism

Conclusion Weber almost anticipated the idea of the high-level equilibrium trap. Speaking about bureaucracy, he observed that as always in the area of'techniques' ... advance proceeded most slowly wherever older structural forms were in their own way technically highly developed and functionally particularly well-developed to the requirements at hand. It is a pity that he did not utilize this insight to analyze what he called the increasing stability of the economic situation under conditions of the economically self-sufficient and socially homogenously composed world-empire of China. Instead he pursued the idea that the absence of self-generated capitalism in China was due basically to the lack of a particular mentality. This inappropriate mentality had several aspects. One was the personalist principle. Others are listed in a catalog of alleged traits of personality taken largely from Arthur Smith's Chinese Characteristics. They include stolidity, patience, dislike of novelty, absence of curiosity, credulity, and a general distrust of and dishonesty towards all. Having acknowledged China's considerable technical endowments and inventions (Weber's own quotation marks), he argued that the magic stereotyping of technology and economics... completely precluded the advent of indigenous modern enterprises in communication and industry. The Chinese world, in a famous phrase, was a magic garden in which the ethical rationality of the miracle [was] out of the question. Certain points of detail may be disputed. Thus the miracles attributed to the piety of sons and the fidelity of widows were entirely ethically rational. But the crucial fact is that this conception of the problem led Weber in practice to place an excessive faith in the explanatory power of an analysis of ideas considered in relative isolation from their socioeconomic context. It probably also weakened his sense of the need to sort out more systematically the somewhat internally contradictory opinions that he held on the more specifically economic aspects of Chinese society.

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