Chapter 4: Research on the Integration of Employee Assistance,Work-Life and Wellness Services

SUMMARY

This article will focus on the research exploring the degree to which organizational integration of Employee Assistance, Work/Family and Wellness Programs has evolved since the early 1990s. The first study reviewed is the National Study of EAP and Work/Family Programs conducted in 1994 by Boston University's Center on Work and Family in which 100 of the top family friendly companies were inter viewed. Two major studies conducted under the guidance of the Employee Assistance Professional Association (EAPA) are then reviewed. The Phase I research conducted in 2001 was a large-scale survey of the professionals in fields of EAP and Work-life (N = 950). The Phase II research conducted in 2002 was comprised of two stages: A pilot study surveying vendors in the EAP and Work-life fields (N = 213) and a qualitative study consisting of in-depth interviews with vendors from all three professions (N = 79). The overall theme from this body of research is one of dramatically increasing movement and market demand for some form of collaboration/integration of service delivery. Finally, the chapter offers recommendations for further research regarding integration of services as well as implications for the professional fields.     

Journeying Toward the Nation(al): Cultural Difference at the Crossroads of Old and New Globalisations

The superimposition of new migratory flows linked to post‐Cold War global realignments upon older migratory flows marked by the global alignments of colonialism have profoundly marked contemporary Britain. Alongside policies and practices of security aimed especially at Muslims, struggles over the meaning of the plurality of cultural forms signalled by ‘multiculturalism’ have assumed a central place in government, media and popular discourse as the provenance and scope of Britishness and citizenship are debated in attempts to foster social cohesion. Against this context, and with specific reference to the British Caribbean population, this article explores the shifting subject positions and subjectivities that are constituted in the crucible of cultural difference and multiple forms of border crossing, and the anxieties these produce as they expose the instabilities inherent in the constitution of nation and national belonging.     

组织创新研究的主要流派及发展趋势

组织创新研究主要有两大流派,即内容学派和过程学派。前者着眼于组织创新影响因素的研究,其缺陷在于研究方法的静态性;后者则研究创新过程的性质,但它仍不能准确地表达组织创新实施的过程。目前,资源、能力、核心能力(包括企业家能力)对组织创新的影响日益受到关注。组织创新研究未来的发展趋势应是理论研究与实证研究相结合,广泛吸取相关领域的研究成果,突出资源、能力和企业家对组织创新的影响。     

人民公社失败的制度经济学解理 ——一个分析框架及其应用

本文通过构建一个"产权结构-计量能力-环境特性-经济绩效"的制度分析框架,揭示了人民公社组织制度低效率的根源,并引入"柠檬市场"模型从监督成本的维度解析了败德行为造成人民公社失败的生成机理.     

生产性企业组织学习最优控制模型及其理论分析

运用最优控制理论研究生产性企业组织学习活动的动态最优决策问题.以企业的概念性学习投资率和操作性学习投资率为决策变量,累积知识量、生产率、单位成本和废品率等为状态变量,计划期内的总利润为指标函数,建立了一个最优控制模型,其特点在于规范地描绘概念性学习和操作性学习对企业累积知识量、生产率、单位成本、质量以及企业利润的动态影响.根据生产性企业组织学习和生产经营的实际情况,提出了一些定量化表达的假设和定义.在假设和定义的基础上利用最大值原理分析了所建立的模型,获得了关于动态最优概念性学习投资策略和操作性学习投资策略性质的一些结论,将这些结论与实际问题相结合,指出了在生产性企业组织学习实践上的含义.     

A Corporate Culture Pattern to Manage Business Ethics

Within the general frame of proposals for an adequate management of business ethics, this paper is based on the vision of corporate culture as a pattern to achieve such purpose. If we consider ethics as a specific value of corporate culture, we may resort to the mechanism of cultural change and implementation in order to manage ethics. Despite the difficulties it entails in terms of time and money investment, this procedure is one of the safest ways to reach ethical values which are known, shared and then practiced by all the members of a corporation, whatever the category. From this central standpoint, and basing ourselves on our own proposal for the management of culture, we shall describe which specific steps must be taken in order to achieve a set of ethical values which are both realistic and furthermore shared by all collaborators of an organization. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

关于"民族"定义

文章对建国以来我国学术界对于“民族”的定义、国内有关“民族”译名的讨论、当前西方社会科学研究中的“民族”定义、及我国50年代的民族识别四个方面,对“民族”定义作了科学系统地阐述。     

Understanding the emergence of redistributed manufacturing: an ambidexterity perspective

Abstract

This paper extends operations strategy theory on efficiency and flexibility trade-offs to the emergent phenomenon of redistributed manufacturing (RDM). The study adopts a multiple-case design including five small and five large pharmaceutical firms. We propose that organizations can gain the efficiency benefits of centralized manufacturing and the flexibility advantages of RDM by building an ambidexterity capability. To build such a capability, large firms can structurally partition their manufacturing and supply management functions, with one sub-unit managing centralized production and the other RDM. Smaller enterprises can build an ambidexterity capability by creating the right organizational context, where multi-skilled workers switch between efficient and flexible tasks. This paper contributes to theory by explaining the emergence of RDM using an organizational ambidexterity lens, laying the groundwork for new theory development in the field. We provide managers with a practical example of how to build an ambidexterity capability to realize flexibility and efficiency advantages.     

Old Structures,New Relations: How Community Development Credit Unions Define Organizational Boundaries

Studies of organizational dynamics examine the manner in which an organization's immediate environment defines the rules and requirements to which individual organizations must conform in order to receive legitimacy and support (Scott, 1992:132). In this paper we consider the question of how an organization can achieve legitimacy and support without necessarily compromising its organizational forms or practices to isomorphic pressures. We frame the question in terms of the boundaries between organizations and their environments. Where the population ecology studies show the survival value of adopting known organizational forms and practices, and neoinstitutionalism addresses the need to display compliance with accepted forms, our case study demonstrates the possibility of removing an organization or set of organizations from the familiar interaction by naming it as a subfield of the organizational field, sharing the environment, but out of the way of predefined norms and practices.     

Challenges to the Acceptance of Probabilistic Risk Analysis

This paper discusses a number of the key challenges to the acceptance and application of probabilistic risk analysis (PRA). Those challenges include: (a) the extensive reliance on subjective judgment in PRA, requiring the development of guidance for the use of PRA in risk-informed regulation, and possibly the development of robust or reference prior distributions to minimize the reliance on judgment; and (b) the treatment of human performance in PRA, including not only human error per se but also management and organizational factors more broadly. All of these areas are seen as presenting interesting research challenges at the interface between engineering and other disciplines.