Parenthood and Commitment to the Legal Profession: Are Mothers Less Committed than Fathers?

This research examined the relationship between parenthood and career commitment. Karasek’s (Administrative Science Quarterly 24:285–308, 1979) Job Demand-Job Control Model was used as a theoretic framework for hypothesizing the relationships between work and family demands, job control and social support and parents’ career commitment. Questionnaire data from a sample of practicing lawyers with children were used to test this model. The results show fathers generally reported more work demands than mothers; whereas, mothers reported more family demands than fathers. Job control and social support did not moderate relationships between work and family demands and parents’ career commitment. Perhaps the most surprising finding of this study, contrary to assumptions in the literature and the workplace, was that mothers practicing law are significantly more committed to their careers than fathers. This paper closes by discussing possible explanations for these findings.

Helpless in Finance: The Cost of Helping Effort Among Bank Employees

Theory suggests that individual performance pay increases effort but may reduce the incentive to help co-workers. In an original survey of finance industry employees subject to individual performance pay, we demonstrate that those workers who report they do not help co-workers earn significantly more. This result is particularly strong for those workers with the strongest individual performance pay incentives. Moreover, when those workers report that their coworkers help them, they also earn significantly more. These dual results are consistent with a strong incentive to free-ride on the helping effort of others in the face of individual performance pay.

Online Peer Support Programs for Young People with a Parent Who has a Mental Illness: Service Providers’ Perspectives

Young people with a parent or parents who have mental illness are at a higher-than-average risk of experiencing emotional and behavioural difficulties. Notwithstanding the difficulties experienced by these young people, opportunities to interact with and obtain support from peers living in similar families can be beneficial. While young people face several barriers to participating in face-to-face peer support programs, online approaches potentially provide a different way of obtaining peer support. This paper aims to explore service providers’ perspectives on current Victorian peer support programs, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of online approaches to peer support. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 17 mental health professionals who work with families affected by parental mental illness. Participants recognised that many young people miss out on face-to-face peer support programs, and were highly supportive of the idea of online programs. This study suggests that online peer support programs for young people could occupy an important position in the evolving suite of services for Australian families affected by mental illness.     

The relationship between: occupational status,biological condition and androgen hormone level among Polish adult men: the Wroclaw Male Study

Population health and its determinants are one of the major challenges to social and economic policy. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between occupational activity and biological condition in adult working Polish men. The participants of the study were 300 men (30–65 years), healthy inhabitants of the city of Wroclaw, Poland. Seventeen measures of biological condition were examined. The subjects were divided into three different occupational groups: professionals, soldiers and skilled workers. A comparison of biological age profiles of three occupational groups showed that in the majority of characteristics, professionals had the youngest biological age, whereas skilled workers had the highest biological age. The results for soldiers were not as unambiguous, but biological parameters were generally closer to those for professionals. Inborn biological predispositions and long-term impact of the working environment can influence on the biological condition of various professional groups. Knowledge of the determinants of biological condition might result in efficient use of predisposition to work or may be of help in extending their time of work ability.     

建设“专志结合”的高素质居家养老服务队伍的思考

随着我国人口老龄化加剧,老年人长期照护和服务的需求越来越大,养老服务专业人才匮乏与养老需求巨大的矛盾日趋突出,加强养老服务人才队伍建设已是我国目前应对人口老龄化亟待解决的问题。本文从培养具备现代养老服务理念、知识与技能的专业化队伍和打造制度化、规范化、常态化的志愿者队伍两个方面,阐述了建设＂专志结合＂的高素质居家养老服务队伍问题。     

Teamwork among midwives during neonatal resuscitation at a maternity hospital in Nepal

Problem

The ability of health care providers to work together is essential for favourable outcomes in neonatal resuscitation, but perceptions of such teamwork have rarely been studied in low-income settings.

As others see us: Differing perceptions of public relations in Nigeria among practitioners and the general public

This study investigates the extent to which there exists a relationship between the perception of professionals and members of the general public regarding image of public relations (PR) profession in Nigeria. Four operational hypotheses were tested using Chi-square cross tabulation. The result shows that members of the general public and professionals perceived PR messages as credible. However, members of the general public, unlike professionals, perceived the loyalty of PR professionals to be more on the side of employers and clients; the role of PR was perceived as basically oriented towards media relations; and PR profession was perceived more as a tool for repairing damaged organisational image. Appropriate recommendations are offered.     

Development Mobilities: Identity and Authority in an Angolan Development Programme

This ethnographic essay considers how international non-governmental organisations are able to make claims to authoritative knowledge about development work by offering the transnational mobilities of their staff members as evidence. I examine how one professional's biography—his trajectory from Angola to Britain and back again—was differentially presented to external donors and internal staff members as befitting the institutional needs of an international good governance intervention in Angola. These presentations reflect a commoditisation of the cosmopolitanism of professionals' histories in the service of development as a regime of mobility. I argue that, in this development regime, a global hierarchy prevents some individual professionals, particularly those from developing nations, from realising the same benefits of their cosmopolitan mobility as professionals from industrialised nations. While one of mobility studies' many strengths is that it highlights global interconnectedness, social scientists should not read equality in these interconnections but examine how patterns of transnational mobility may produce and reproduce global structures of inequality.     

宗教发展及其社会救助模式

社会慈善或社会救助,是中国宗教发展和进入社会的唯一路径;而中国宗教最能实践的,就是灾难时期的社会救助及其公益慈善事业。在此路径之中,中国宗教亦获得了它们应有的变迁与发展,同时也相应地构成了中国宗教进入社会服务社会的基本特征和若干模式：救助式社会救助、指令式社会救助、交换式社会救助和特殊式社会救助。这就极大地制约了中国宗教的社会救助功能。所以,中国宗教虽然能够适时地进入社会,以其独特地意义系统、服务方式和民间组织,进而为当前中国经济社会的发展提供社会自我服务,发挥出它们应有的社会协调功能。但是,如何把当代中国宗教的社会服务模式,建构为一种＂社会建设的行动单位＂,而不把中国宗教的社会救助与社会公益服务,局限于精神和心灵的安慰与咨询,或者是局限于一些财物的捐助。就此而言,中国宗教的社会服务功能,应当是把财物的捐助行动与社会的重建整合起来,最终建构一种新的慈善理念——＂社会慈善＂,以真实服务于当代中国的社会建设。     

Perceived inequity, communal orientation and burnout: The role of helping models

A large amount of empirical evidence has shown that professional helpers who perceive inequity in their relationships with their clients experience burnout. However, in such a situation, communal orientation (a desire to give benefits in response to the perceived needs of others), has been found to buffer burnout. In the present study, this buffering effect was investigated from the perspective of helping models. French nurses ( n =60) and social workers ( n =68) completed a questionnaire designed to evaluate perceived inequity, communal orientation and burnout. The results showed that, as expected, the buffering effect of communal orientation greatly depends on the helping model. Among professionals who endorsed a medical model of helping (wherein recipients are expected to be relatively passive to get better), those high on communal orientation experienced a low level of burnout when they perceived inequity. However, among professionals with a compensatory helping model (wherein recipients are expected to be active to get better), not only had perceived imbalance no buffering effect but also it reduced personal accomplishment. It was speculated that with a medical model, a perceived imbalance in the relationships does not hinder the desire to respond to the perceived needs of others. However, within a compensatory model, a perceived imbalance probably impedes the self efficacy of professionals high in communal orientation, that is who desire to respond to the perceived needs of others.