The frontline delivery of activation: workers’ preferences and their antecedents

This article intends to contribute to the increasing body of academic literature on the frontline delivery of activation policies. In line with the broader literature on frontline work, this literature focuses attention on frontline delivery practices and preferences and how these can be explained. Activation work is an interesting case in this context, because activation workers’ jobs designs vary considerably and workers have a diversity of educational backgrounds (including but not limited to social work) in the many countries that have implemented activation policies. This article looks at workers’ preferences rather than actual delivery practices. It analyses how job design and educational background are related to workers’ preferences concerning servicing clients, managing activation workers and spending time on various activation-related activities. Although the findings of the research that are presented in the article show that educational background and job design play only a modest role as antecedents of workers’ preferences, future research into this issue remains interesting. For it may help to increase our insights into the optimal match between what activation aims to achieve and how the provision of activation is organized on the one hand, and workers’ skills/qualifications and job design on the other hand.     

基于福建自贸区视角的涉外旅游人才培养研究

福建自贸区的建成给福建旅游业带来了新的挑战和机遇。随着福建对外开放程度的逐步提高,福建省对涉外旅游人才的要求将进一步严格,涉外旅游从业人员的素质也随之成为关注的焦点。从福建省高校涉外旅游人才培养的现状来看,存在结构不合理、专业化程度低、无法满足市场需求等问题,应从人才集聚战略、人才培养目标、师资队伍建设等方面采取措施。     

哲学､哲学研究及其与政治的关联——兼论《第179号“科伦日报”社论》的当代意义

《第179号“科伦日报”社论》中,马克思关于哲学的本质是理论与实践的高度统一、哲学研究是求真、哲学必然要介入社会政治等问题的看法,既是马克思在整个《莱茵报》时期的思想基础,是破解马克思当时碰到的“三件难事”的发生及其往后的思想转变的钥匙;也是马克思哲学的本质特点,有助于理解和把握马克思主义的真精神及作为“实证科学”的历史唯物主义的本性.它对于我们当前的马克思主义研究在研究立场和方式上亦有重要启示意义.因此,该社论不能被简单当成马克思思想过渡时期的作品,而应引起学界的应有重视.     

The Subjectivity of Fairness: Managerial Discretion and Work–Life Balance

We use organizational justice theory to examine how perceptions of fairness affect the decision‐making process of line managers. In‐depth interviews were conducted with 35 Irish managers to explore how managers make organizational allocation decisions in cases where it is impractical to offer work–life balance accommodations to all employees. The findings suggest that firstly, managers construct the ‘life’ aspect of work–life balance within a heteronormative framework, where the emphasis is on caregiving and most usually parenting. Secondly, managers actively use their decision‐making powers around both formal and informal work–life balance supports to minimize injustice within their departments. By bringing together ideas about organizational justice and managerial decision‐making, we indicate how managers determine fairness through a decision‐making process narrowed by embedded gender role beliefs. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.     

Age and total and free prostate-specific antigen levels for predicting prostate volume in patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia

Objectives: To investigate the predictive values of free prostate-specific antigen (fPSA), total PSA (tPSA) and age on the prostate volume.

Methods: The data of 2148 patients with lower urinary tract symptoms were analyzed retrospectively. The patients who had transrectal ultrasonography guided 10 core biopsies owing to the findings obtained on digital rectal examination and presence of high PSA levels (PSA?=?2.5–10?ng/dl), and proven to have BPH histopathologically were included in the study. Age, tPSA, fPSA and the prostate volumes (PV) of the patients were noted.

Results: One thousand patients that fulfilled the inclusion criteria were included in the study. The PV of the patients were significantly correlated with age, tPSA and fPSA (p?r?=?0.307, p?r?=?0.382, p?r?=?0.296, respectively). On linear regression model, fPSA was found as a stronger predictive for PV (AUC?=?0.75, p?p?p?=?0.013).

Conclusions: Although tPSA is an important prognostic factor for predicting PV, the predictive value of fPSA is higher. PV can easily be predicted by using age, and serum tPSA and fPSA levels.     

Resources reduction and welfare changes: tensions between social workers and organisations. The Italian case in child protection services

Within the field of studies on professionalism, this paper explores the changes in roles of social workers and the new tensions emerging in the relationship with their organisational contexts, due to the reduction of resources and the introduction of neoliberal and managerial policies in the welfare system. The paper is based on qualitative research carried out through 32 in-depth interviews with frontline social workers engaged in child and family services in Italy. The paper investigates how spending cuts have affected the relationship with the organisation arguing that the ways the cuts are implemented, as well as the room for professional recognition set by the organisation, are relevant. A four-character social worker typology is outlined, drawn from the intersection of two meaningful dimensions: sense of belonging and critical thinking. It is argued that a ‘critically engaged’ type points to a new form of professionalism that may emerge from the current crisis of the relationship between the organisation and social workers.     

‘Street-level bureaucracy,management and the corrupted world of service’

Lipsky's analysis of the implementation gap in welfare policy in ‘Street-level Bureaucracy’ focuses on the problem of front-line discretion but ‘brackets off’ the discretion of senior managers. In this paper I draw on a qualitative study to argue that senior managers can also exercise significant discretion and that their discretion can contribute to the conditions of policy confusion and contradiction, and resource inadequacy that characterise ‘the corrupted world of service’ of front-line discretion. In this context front-line discretion may be used by front-line staff to bridge the policy implementation gap created by senior managers.     

论晚清的小说翻译与翻译小说

晚清文坛早期存在“华夏中心论”的倾向,对西方小说经过一个艰难的认识过程之后才逐渐吸收,大力翻译。与此相联系,晚清的小说翻译经历了从合译到独译、从译述到意译两个阶段。而晚清翻译小说呈现出“翻译中国化”的总体特点,这种特点分为表层文化中国化和深层文化中国化,后者体现在种族存亡意识的突出、中国传统道德的制约、道家出世精神的渗透、绿林精神的移植等方面。     

企业价值评估中自由现金流量分析

自由现金流量是企业价值的基本决定因素,但其定义却随着使用者对现金流量分析目的的不同而有所差异.从企业价值评估的角度对自由现金流量进行分析与定义,给出两种计算自由现金流量的方法,对更好地为企业的现金管理和企业价值评估服务具有重要作用和意义.     

Supplemental home care and topping‐up: A shift from service universalism towards a new and privatised public service model?

How does a public service model based on service universalism react to the introduction of market principles of topping up? In a recent so‐called Free Municipality Scheme (an experimental scheme that allowed for greater operational autonomy locally in an effort to reduce state bureaucracy), a number of Danish municipalities were for the first time ever allowed to compete with for‐profit providers of home care in selling supplemental home care services paid entirely by the user. The take‐home message from this experience is that the introduction of supplemental home care entails challenges and eventually wider implications for the public service model, on an economic, organisational and cultural level. Supplemental services represent a new and potentially powerful combination of market and state logics that eventually redirects away from the universalist welfare state and towards a new and increasingly privatised public service model – a model where the service level is determined by the user's capacity to purchase and pay for services. The introduction of such services therefore implies a change of the potential of the Nordic welfare state to ensure equal access regardless of class and income.