A new approach in vocational rehabilitation in Iceland: preliminary report

The lack of vocational rehabilitation in Iceland inspired the Janus Rehabilitation initiative in the year 2000. The team currently consists of two occupational therapists, a social worker, a physiotherapist, a psychologist, and a physician. Janus uses resources from local education establishments and is located at the Reykjavík Technical School. A client-centred approach is used, enabling a flexible rehabilitation timeframe. The aim is to help the client back to employment/education. Advantage is taken of the facilities of the school where integration between education and rehabilitation takes place. Forty individuals have been admitted, with a mean time from work of 2.9 years, (range: 0-11 years). Seventeen (43%) have returned to employment/education. Twenty-three of those entering the programme are still on invalidity pension. The Canadian Occupational Performance Measurement (COPM) shows improvement in occupational performance and satisfaction. The Icelandic Quality of Life measurement also shows improvement. The results have been promising. However, a larger group is needed in order to draw clear unequivocal conclusions.     

Evaluating the administrative efficiency of courts

In addition to being held accountable for judicial decision, courts, like other public agencies, can and should be evaluated in terms of their administrative efficiency. This paper illustrates how courts can be evaluated in terms of their relative administrative efficiency, using a new approach—data envelopment analysis (DEA)—first proposed by Charnes et al. [1]. The DEA is based upon the economic notion of Pareto optimality which states that a given decision making unit (DMU) is inefficient if some other DMU, or some combination of other DMUs, can produce at least the same amounts of all outputs with less of some resource input and not more of any other resource. Conversely a DMU is said to be efficient if the above is not possible. Charnes et al. [1] generalized the usual input/output ratio measure of efficiency for a given unit in terms of a fractional linear program with fractional constraints. In the case of courts, the efficiency of any particular court is calculated by forming the ratio of a weighted sum of outputs to a weighted sum of inputs, where the weights for both outputs and inputs are to be selected in a manner that calculates the Pareto-Koopmans efficiency of the court. This paper reviews the DEA method and illustrates its application to a data base for 100 criminal superior courts in North Carolina.     

Role of workplace safety: a revisit of the relationship between job satisfaction and employment status

This study evaluated the relationship between employment status (i.e., part- and full-time) and job satisfaction, with the focus on the moderating roles of perceived injury risk and injury incidence. The results found that the level of job satisfaction for full-time workers was about the same regardless of the level of injury risk they perceived. In contrast, job satisfaction of part-time workers was significantly higher when they perceived low injury risk rather than high injury risk. The findings also supported the potential adverse impact of injury incidence and injury risk on job satisfaction for both part- and full-time workers. This study highlighted the importance of understanding both workplace safety and job satisfaction when attempting to understand the differences between part-time and full-time workers.     

Emotional closeness with perpetrators and amnesia for child sexual abuse

Over the past decade, a contentious debate regarding delayed memories of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) has existed. In order to address this debate, 240 female participants completed questions about CSA, the Dissociative Experience Scale (Bernstein & Putnam, 1986), Perceived Emotional Closeness with Perpetrator Scale (Schultz, Passmore, & Yoder, 2000), and the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale 2 (GSS 2) (Gudjonsson, 1987). Eighty-two (36%) reported CSA and 37% of these indicated memory disturbances for the CSA. Participants reporting memory disturbances also reported significantly higher numbers of perpetrators, chemical abuse in their families, and closer relationships with the perpetrator(s) than participants reporting no memory disturbances. Implications for clinicians working with clients reporting CSA are discussed.     

Taking risks in investing in the equity market: racial and ethnic differences

Some policy makers and policy analysts have proposed that Social Security should be privatized to enable participants to achieve higher returns through investment in the stock market. How well individual retirees would fare financially under a privatized system largely depends on their decision to invest in the equity market, rather than in other types of investment vehicles. For that reason, it is important to investigate the degree to which minority people are currently investing in this market. This article presents the findings of a study that compared the investment behavior of black and Hispanic people aged 51 to 61 with the investment behavior of their white counterparts. The major findings indicate that black and Hispanic people: (a) are less likely to invest in the equity market than are white people, and (b) tend to invest smaller percentages of their assets in the equity market. Implications for policy are discussed.     

The power and limits of ethnonationalism: Palestinians and Eastern Jews in Israel, 1974-1991

The relative standings of four ethnic groups - Muslim Palestinians, Christian Palestinians, Asian-African Jews, European Jews -were compared, using mobility data from 1974 and 1991. The findings show that despite the lack of government support and the prevalence of inexorable discrimination against Israeli Palestinians, they have narrowed the gap with Asian-African Jews in both education and occupational prestige. This finding demonstrates that ideological and political hegemony is not always effective in improving the socio-economic standing of preferred minorities (Asian-African Jews), and that social and economic structures may counterbalance the anti-Palestinian nationalist ideology. The analysis suggests that residential and educational segregation of Palestinians protects them from direct competition with European Jews, whereas Asian-African Jews have to compete with this dominant group in schools, as well as in the labour market.     

Just-in-time purchasing: an empirical investigation

The just-in-time (JIT) literature suggests that, for JIT to be successful, a manufacturing firm has to make changes in its purchasing operations. However, empirical examination of the JIT purchasing related issues is limited. For example, a literature search identified 49 JIT purchasing articles. Of these, only 14 are empirical studies; two dealing with statistical testing of a few JIT purchasing issues. This comprehensive empirical study is undertaken to investigate (a) changes in the purchasing attributes since JIT implementation, (b) supplier evaluation cri-teria, and (c) problems with JIT purchasing implementation. Statistically significant changes are observed in 28 out of 32 attributes identified in the literature, suggesting that the manufacturing firms are successfully implementing JIT purchasing programmes. Of the 14 supplier evaluation criteria, the empirical investigation shows nine of them being important. Erratic demand for the product and customized product are found to be problematic (but not very problematic as suggested in the JIT literature( in JIT purchasing implementation.     

The effects of learning and forgetting on the optimal lot size quantity of intermittent production runs

This paper studies the effects of learning and forgetting on the production lot size problem with infinite and finite planning horizons. It is assumed that the determination of the economic manufactured quantity (EMQ) in the succeeding production run is dependent on: (1) the maximum inventory accumulated prior to interruption; (2) the length of the interruption period which incurs total forgetting; and (3) the level of experience in equivalent units remembered at the start-up of the next production run. The optimum operating inventory doctrines is obtained by trading off procurement cost per unit time and the inventory carrying cost per unit time, so that their sum will be a minimum. A numerical example is presented to demonstrate the application of learning and forgetting to the determination of the EMQ.