From the Editor: Why Do People Do What They Do?

Sociological Forum -     

How employee involvement affects union commitment

I assess how employee involvement programs affect union commitment attitudes. Analysis of 229 survey responses indicates that participation attitudes have no effect on union commitment levels; previous participation has a positive effect; and organizational commitment has a negative effect. A similar pattern was observed on four subscales of union commitment: union loyalty, responsibility to the union, willingness to work for the union, and belief in unionism. I thank the employees, the unions, and the company at which this study was conducted. Also, I am grateful to suggestions and comments made by participants in the American University Department of Management Research Series. Finally, a word of thanks to Tom Case, Gordon Henry, David Jacobs, and Tom Vonk for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper.     

Comparison of the Cancer Risk of Methylene Chloride Predicted from Animal Bioassay Data with the Epidemiologic Evidence

Methylene chloride has been shown to be a lung and liver carcinogen in the mouse; yet, the current epidemiologic data show no adverse health effects associated with chronic exposure to this compound. Hearne et al. have compared the results of a large mortality study on occupational exposure to methylene chloride to the human risk predictions based on the rodent bioassay to point out the inconsistency between the animal toxicologic and human epidemiologic data. The maximum number of lung and liver cancers predicted due to methylene chloride exposure based on the rodent bioassay data was 24 compared to 14 deaths from these cancers actually observed in the Hearne et al. epidemiology study. We assess the minimum risk detectable by the human study in order to calculate the upperbound potency of methylene chloride and compare it to the potency derived from the bioassay data. Results from the epidemiology study imply an upperbound potency of 1.5 x 10(-2) per ppm, compared to 1.4 x 10(-2) per ppm calculated using the most conservative analysis of the animal data. We conclude that the negative epidemiology study of Hearne et al. is not sufficiently powerful to show that the risk is inconsistent with the human risk estimated by modeling the rodent bioassay data. Specifically, the doses to which the workers were exposed, the population studied, and the latency period were not adequate to determine that the risks are outside the bounds of the risk estimates predicted by low-dose modeling of the animal data.     

Whose Project is it Anyway? Sharing and shaping the research and development agenda

The NHS and Community Care Act 1990 (NHSCCA) requires that local authorities should consult with service users in their review and planning of services. This requirement is open to various levels of interpretation. The exercise becomes more complex when planning and review are based on a funded research project, in which the voice of users can easily be lost or their participation only nominal. This article examines some of the key issues and dilemmas in partnership research, through critical evaluation of a research project in which the authors were involved. Paradoxically, it is issues of power, control, expertise, authority and accountability which emerge as recurrent themes in examination of the practice of partnership.     

Reflexivity,recursion and social life: elements for a postmodern sociology

The paper examines, and seeks to develop, the sociological concept of reflexivity. It identifies two senses of reflexivity, one associated with ethnomethodological accounts of members’practical reasoning, the other with a more philosophical sense of conscious self-referencing, and analyses their relationship. The paper argues that the development of this form of analysis leads to a form of propositional undecidability which makes it typically ‘postmodern’. The development is linked to ideas of recursion, as these are expounded in computer science and mathematics, and to Derrida's interpretation of ‘textual fold’— this also being used to ground the association of reflexivity with postmodernism. The analysis ‘returns to the social’by considering aspects of Niklas Luhmann's explication of social reflexivity. It concludes by examining the understanding that a postmodern sociology might have of a postmodern society in which the grounds for social order have become undecidable.     

Health-related disabilities and matching of spouses: Analysis of Swedish population data

Recent research concerning the incidence of reported work-limiting disabilities in the married population indicates a degree of interdependence between spouses' disabilities. This pattern is consistent with several hypotheses. Spouses tend to share many lifestyle traits that might lead to common health outcomes. Alternatively, their joint reports might reflect a shared preference for income benefits or workplace accommodations available to disabled individuals. Another possibility is that disabled individuals tend to be matched in the process of marital formation. This paper investigates the latter hypothesis. Taking advantage of a unique data set from the Swedish population, we select a sample of recently married couples and trace them back in time to their single years. Our analysis indicates nonrandom matching on the basis of disability status. After controlling for observed traits such as age and education, we find a residual correlation between future spouses that is positive and strongly significant. The magnitude of the correlation is within the range of residual correlations obtained from other studies that address marital matching in the contexts of education and earnings. The authors wish to thank anonymous referees and the editors of this journal for helpful comments and prompt reviews. Responsible editor: Christian Dustmann.     

Prospects for european labour demand

This paper examines the impact of economic and technological trends upon the level and structure of labour demand. It explores briefly the methods used to model the labour market with special reference to demography and technology and reviews the evidence on recent and prospective changes in labour demand for five countries: France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. A distinction is made between the differentforms in which job opportunities arise and the differentareas of economic activity in which they appear. Given the limited horizon of the projections available and the methodological difficulties of long-term forecasting, the focus is on medium-term changes. The findings nonetheless indicate the underlying trends that are likely to continue over the next decade or so.