Santé au travail en Thaïlande: le processus de transition

La Thaïlande a connu une transition économique rapide, de l'agriculture aux secteurs manufacturier et tertiaire, puis vers l'emploi plus formel. Toutefois, la réglementation du marché du travail et la représentation des salariés sont moins affirmées que dans les pays développés, où cette transition s'est effectuée graduellement et plus lentement, il y a plusieurs décennies. Les auteurs examinent le renforcement des politiques et de la législation thaïlandaise sur la sécurité et la santé au travail en réponse aux normes internationales du travail, à l'adoption d'une nouvelle constitution démocratique, à la crainte d'embargos commerciaux étrangers et aux accidents mortels du travail. Ils concluent en identifiant les principaux défis auxquels sont confrontés les décideurs politiques, y compris l'application de la législation et les méthodes pour mesurer les nouveaux risques professionnels sur la santé mentale et physique des travailleurs.     

Talent,the Staying Power of Racism,and Transformation: Trans-Atlantic Observations

Abstract

This paper argues that the transformation of universities will not happen until the central issue of racial discrimination is consciously addressed at Predominantly White Universities (PWUs) in South Africa. The paper makes a concerted effort to address issues that reveal why Black faculty members in North American and South African academies have had to struggle to make their presence felt as far back as the beginning of the twentieth century. It does this by looking initially at the history of intelligence testing the early pioneering South African Black faculty members, and by comparing the current contemporary scenes of both societies insofar as what African American and Black South African faculty members undergo. The paper concludes by positing that only in the event of a strong anti-racist agenda will genuine transformation of the PWUs be possible without alienating Black talent.     

Discovering the knowledge creation process of an expert group in women-friendly policy: The policy case of Seoul City

ABSTRACT

This research explores how expert knowledge is created in the process of women-friendly policy making, based on actor network theory (ANT). To address this purpose, this study uses the “Women’s Happiness in the City of Seoul” policy initiated by the local government of Seoul as one example of policy development. Research findings demonstrate that knowledge creation in expert groups followed the four stages suggested by ANT. In addition, this study found that various types of knowledge emerged from individual experts. This research elucidates the process of knowledge creation and its meanings for women-friendly policy.     

Understanding the effects of outsourcing: unpacking the total factor productivity variable

Research on why firms should outsource and how they should do it has proliferated in the past two decades, but few consistent findings have emerged concerning the benefits of outsourcing. We argue that this is in part due to the lack of an adequate framework for measuring the effects of outsourcing. To address this, we present such a framework based upon the Cobb–Douglas productivity function. We explain how our framework can be used to unpack one component of the Cobb–Douglas productivity function, the ‘total factor productivity’, which represents the other numerous sub-variables that affect outsourcing productivity, beyond the capital and labour expenditures. We also demonstrate the framework using a simple illustrative example.     

Stress and stereotypes: children's reactions to the outbreak of foot and mouth disease in the UK in 2001

In 2001 foot and mouth disease broke out in the UK and millions of farm animals were slaughtered in order to eradicate it. This affected farmers, town dwellers, adults and children. Based on a small sample of 56 e‐mails to a children's BBC (CBBC) message board and using an ethnomethodological approach, this article explores the way in which children in rural and urban areas responded to the effects of this epidemic and how they structured their understandings of one another through the use of rural and urban stereotypes. It shows that the stress felt by some of the children who lived on or near infected farms during the outbreak was exacerbated by the fact that they felt misunderstood by other children living in surroundings not directly affected by foot and mouth disease.     

Agency policy and the participation of children and young people in the child protection process

This article explores agency policy in relation to children's participation in the child protection process. This was done by examining policy documents and conference minutes and by interviewing social workers and conference chairs working in child protection in Wales. Issues and dilemmas surrounding the participation of children and young people in the child protection process are identified and examined. The lack of children's more direct participation was noted, but many agencies were taking action to inform themselves of children's views indirectly. Advocacy was being more frequently used, and highly valued where it was available, but did raise some role dilemmas. The essentially child‐unfriendly nature of child protection processes (particularly the conferences) was identified as a significant barrier to promoting children's voices. The contradiction of trying to promote children's direct participation in a process that is inherently not geared towards their direct involvement was noted. The total lack of children's input into service planning for child protection services was seen as significant. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Frame Changes and Social Movement Contraction: U.S. Peace Movement Framing After the Cold War*

This study analyzes framing processes and their relationships with ongoing social movement change. We examine peace frames found among U.S. peace movement organizations (PMOS) in its period of contraction at the end of the Cold War. On the basis of analysis of a unique two-wave survey of US. peace movement organizations in 1988 and 1992, we assess the extent to which organizational framing of the peace problematic changed. We found an overall shift in emphases from more bilateral frames like the nuclear weapons freeze to frames emphasizing multilateralism and global interdependence. PMO frame transformations that took place between 1988 and 1992 represent a trend towards broader, more radical (or structural) and less exclusive peace movement frames. We describe the frame transformations observed here as the emergence of “retention frames.” Retention frames embody several dimensions of movement abeyance structures and serve to sustain organizational continuity across episodes of movement surges and contraction.