Bringing Japanese Continuous Improvement Approaches to U.S. Manufacturing: The Roles of Process Orientation and Communications*

Continuous improvement (CI) has played a key role in Japan's quality management. U.S. companies have begun to adopt CI in recent years. This paper studies the implementation of CI in seven U.S. manufacturing companies. We view values as the core concept of culture that impacts CI effectiveness. Using both qualitative and quantitative data with a sample of seven companies, we observe empirically a relationship between process-oriented values and CI effectiveness. We also find that communications involving workers is strongly associated with CI effectiveness. Finally, we find an association between process orientation and communication frequency, and argue that communications act as an intervening variable between process orientation and effectiveness.     

Factors That Impact a Social Worker's Capacity to Supervise a Student

With sector constraints and higher education economic imperatives increasingly impacting the provision of social work field education, university programs lack an understanding of the factors that enable or prohibit field educators’ capacity to provide placements. Despite the significance of field education in the curriculum, it remains unclear what the experiences and motivations of field educators are to provide universities with student placements. This research addresses this gap through surveying 101 field educators that attended statewide Victorian field education training. Results indicated that although field educators recognised the benefits of supervising students, workload relief, additional training, and further student placement preparation by the university were emphasised as the primary factors that would enable them to respond positively to placement requests. Payments for placements did not necessarily ameliorate these issues nor guarantee the provision of more placements. The implications of these findings for universities and the field are discussed.     

Women Who Work: The limits of the neoliberal feminist paradigm

This article examines Ivanka Trump's Women Who Work, arguing that it represents the newest permutation of the neoliberal feminist subject. After providing an overview of the recent emergence of neoliberal feminism, I explain why the book should be considered part of the wider cultural landscape in which this variant of feminism has increasingly become commonsensical. I then turn to demonstrate how Women Who Work construes the ideal female subject not only as generic human capital but also incites her to invest in herself constantly, where activities ranging from professional workshops through hobbies to friendships are understood as practices that appreciate the value of the self. The conversion of women into generic rather than gendered human capital remains, however, incomplete, since the ideal of a happy work–family balance continues to serve as a push back to the wholesale erasure of traditional notions of sexual difference. Finally, I highlight that neoliberal feminism is erasing other long‐standing divisions and political differences. Not only does the private–public divide collapse, but so, too, does the distinction between one's private self and one's public enterprise as the self itself becomes an enterprise. This dual process of collapse and reconfiguration shapes the newest neoliberal feminist subject, the main protagonist of Trump's Women Who Work.     

Secondary school dropout and work outcomes in ten developing countries

This paper analyzes the impact of secondary school dropout on the work outcomes of young people in ten developing countries. Understanding such a phenomenon is important because it may affect work prospects, exacerbate income inequality and determine macroeconomic lasting effects given that the formation of a skilled workforce is a key element of economic development and growth.When accounting for endogeneity, we find that secondary school dropout decreases the probability of being employed in non-elementary occupations, suggesting that unskilled workers fail to meet the increasing demand for a skilled workforce. Secondary school dropout, indeed, hinders the accumulation of adequate levels of human capital and anticipates entry into the unskilled labor market.Thus, policy-makers should aim at the extension and efficacy of compulsory education to the secondary level to avoid future under-education problems to promote a skilled workforce and encourage economic development and growth in the long run.     

低碳视角下的可再生能源政策——激励机制与模式选择

利用可再生能源是实现碳减排和能源安全的主要手段,是实现中国可持续发展的主要途径。然而,由于缺乏对可再生能源外部性的合理评估,现实的和潜在的风险阻碍了可再生能源技术的大规模应用。有效的激励政策是,通过价格、补贴和强制消费等手段刺激企业投资可再生能源,促进经济向低碳方向发展。纵观世界各国,不同的可再生能源政策模式在控制成本、创造需求、降低风险及稳定性等各方面存在差异性,而政策的激励效果是以上因素综合作用的结果。因此,政策制定者必须根据现实的能源要素禀赋和技术发展水平进行合理的政策模式选择。中国可再生能源开发潜力大,近年来利用增速快,但也存在着整体利用率低、地域和技术发展不平衡等问题。在现阶段,中国可再生能源激励政策应以固定上网电价制模式为主,将可再生能源利用数量作为基本目标,促进技术创新,建立合理的定价机制。这对中国建设低碳社会、加快转变经济发展方式具有关键性作用。     

公共责任:社会工作机构的价值选择

社会工作机构的出现是中国社会工作职业化的一个发展,它为社会提供专业社会服务,也为多数的社会工作者提供就业岗位、工作机会、成长空间。社会工作机构独特的公益性质、伦理使命和伦理精神使得公共责任成为社会工作机构中的一个核心问题。社会工作机构公共责任的实现,是一个以制度规范为保障的内外部监督机制完成的他律过程,更是一个由他律走向由内在伦理精神驱动的自律过程。所以,需要建构多元共治的社会工作机构的责任体系。     

社会服务项目化运作对基层社区社会工作发展的意义探究——以上海市Z区为例

"社区公益创投大赛"和"社区公益项目招投标"是上海市民政局推出的两项社会服务项目化运作的典型工程,文章以上海市Z区为例,探讨了社会服务项目化运作对基层社区社会工作发展的意义。包括居民需求的真正满足、社会组织的破土新生、社会工作的专业推广和民政工作的专业化发展。     

Quality_Family Deployment: A New Perspective in Determining Priority Importance for Improving Work Performance in Organization

Determining priority importance is a matter of concerns among the organization to improve their performance. One of the important aspects that should be considered by the organization is management of human resources, comprising of members who have their own family life. In this paper, we deliver a new perspective for organization to provide priority importance for their members with respect to family matters in order to inculcate the sense of belonging in the organization. To be effective in considering family matters in the organizational policy making, closer look of family characteristics are required. The idea of translating several family characteristics as quality variables and applying the quality function deployment (QFD) method to these variables could present a new way of improving the decision making in the organization by considering the process of decision in the family. Quality function deployment for family (QFDF) produces a friendly interpretation of a highly complex and intangible matters around family life; thus, making the assessment of a family easier. QFD is applied on the data gathered from a questionnaire survey based on 1,213 families in West Malaysia, Malaysia. Twelve variables are identified as voice of family, where seven of them are found to have the highest priority of importance. These variables could also be translated into quality variables in the context of organization, the strategy of improvement for the family could be interpreted as strategy for improvement in the organization. Furthermore, the results of this study provide suggestion to improve actions for managing human resource. In the discussion, three most high ranked variables from both perspectives of family and organization are considered.     

论我国公司治理结构的完善——以国美之争为例

以国美之争为例,分析了公司治理结构中存在的问题,即经理人制度不完善,监事会和独立董事的规定不足,对中小股东利益的保护缺位等,进而给出了完善公司治理结构的几点建议,即完善经理人制度、监事会制度和独立董事制度以及积极保护中小股东的利益。     

“融和型”社区青少年社会工作服务模式探究

社区青少年社会工作服务体现了多元优势融合、和谐发展的特征.本人在对上海社区青少年服务目标、服务原则、服务内容、服务方法和策略经验研究的基础上提出"融和型"社区青少年社会工作服务模式的概念."融和型"社区青少年社会工作服务模式的形成,反映了中国社会工作实践的本土性特点.