GETTING IT DONE: DYNAMIC INCENTIVES TO COMPLETE A PROJECT

A principal wants an agent to complete a project. The agent undertakes unobservable effort, which affects in each period the probability that the project is completed. We characterize the contracts that the principal sets, with and without commitment. With full commitment, the contract involves the agent's value and wage declining over time, in order to give the agent incentives to exert effort. The best sequentially rational equilibrium for the principal also involves the agent's wage declining over time, while the worst sequentially rational equilibrium for the principal has a constant wage (and is in fact the unique stationary equilibrium). The best (weakly) renegotiation‐proof equilibrium for the principal is achieved by a constant wage that maximizes the principal's payoff, conditional on wages being constant. We compare these solutions to the efficient outcome.     

Experimenting with Change: An Exercise in Team Consultation

This article introduces a practical contribution to consultancy with teams experiencing difficulties in maintaining group cohesion. Taking the position that options for change are reduced as teams feel more and more en trenched, the author outlines a way in which one particular exercise can help team members experiment with creating different and more useful perspectives.     

Women's experiences of male-perpetrated sexual assault by sexual orientation

This study examined differences in male-perpetrated adult sexual assault experiences among women of various sexual orientations using a large urban convenience sample (N = 1,022). Results showed many similarities in disclosure to others, perceived helpfulness, and attributions of blame, but there were also differences by sexual orientation. Heterosexual women were more likely to experience completed sexual assault than lesbian or bisexual women. Lesbians were more likely to be assaulted by relatives than bisexual or heterosexual women. Finally, bisexual women disclosed the assault to the greatest number of formal support sources, were most likely to tell a romantic partner about the assault, received the fewest positive social reactions overall, and had higher posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptomatology.     

Disclosure of Student Status to Clients

A survey was sent to 163 MSW programs in the United States and Canada that asked directors of fieldwork to respond to questions related to their school’s policies on disclosure of student status in the field. With a response rate of 66.3% (N = 108), most of the schools (68.5%, n = 74) reported policies requiring disclosure and most directors supported this position. The authors review the ethical and legal reasons in favor of disclosure. They strongly suggest that a pro-disclosure policy be written and adopted by social work programs and the discipline’s professional organizations.     

Of Enlightenment and Alaska Early Moderns

This article examines transformations of status-capital in the modern history of the Alaska Native Alutiiq. I redevelop Pierre Bourdieu's forms of capital and habitus to analyze how Alutiiq elites stay on course during massive changes in their social structure. By drawing attention to citizenship statuses of the nineteenth century Russian and American colonial periods, I explore how local structural inequalities emerge in Alaska, yet with leaders of the same Alaska Native kin groups moving into the new privileged positions as Russian Imperial citizen, then later as American citizen. The study identifies citizenship as a key technology of group identification in Alaska and, in particular, how civilizing processes associated with citizenship create marked objective differences among the Alutiiq. Alaska Native society's articulation with the Russian and, later, American cultural-political orders creates new kinds of local structural inequalities. By possessing the requisite cultural capital to comprehend structural shifts in politics and the economy, Alaska Native elites strategically fit into new legal and ideological regimes of belonging. What develops is an example of the durability of an Alaska Native ruling elite by means of the transformation of prestige.