Determinants of parental participation in Family‐centered Care in Juvenile Justice Institutions

This study assessed if staff members of two juvenile justice institutions in the Netherlands were able to motivate parents to participate in a programme of Family‐centred Care. For research purposes, parents were considered to participate if they (a) attended the family meeting, (b) visited their son during regular visiting hours, and (c) participated in measurements. Study participants were the parents of 139 short‐term detained male adolescents. The family meeting was attended by 47% of the parents, most adolescents (74.1%) were visited at least once by their parents, and 42% of the parents participated in measurements. Several factors influenced the parental participation rate variables, although effect sizes were small. The more parenting problems parents faced, the less likely they were to attend the family meeting. Parents with a job visited their son more often than unemployed parents. Finally, a longer stay of the adolescent and Dutch ethnicity predicted more parental participation in measurements. Our study showed that parental participation is feasible. However, the participation rates in the two years after the first steps of implementation were eligible for improvement. More implementation experience where staff could fully benefit from training and coaching in family‐centred work could substantially increase parental participation rates.     

New neighbours in a time of change: local pragmatics and the perception of asylum centres in rural Denmark

Asylum centres in rural areas are an increasingly common mode of managing asylum seekers in Denmark. These centres’ arrival occurs in a context of protracted rural crisis, as demographic and economic changes reshape local communities. Yet research on these processes remains scarce, issues concerning asylum and the rural being seldom conceived together. At the same time, majority population attitudes towards refugees are often depicted through the opposed poles of xenophobia and humanitarianism. Based on ethnographic research, this article examines the meanings and consequences of asylum centres for rural Danish communities. Drawing on anthropological theory on the mutuality of social life we argue that asylum centres become embedded in pre-existing relations within local communities and between them and the centralising Danish welfare state. Local communities sometimes were initially sceptical about asylum centres, but they generally developed a collective, pragmatic approach towards them in contrast to the divided, ideological cast of national debates on asylum. By shifting focus from the national to the local, from the urban to the rural, and from the migrants to the neighbouring communities, a less polarising and more everyday mode of relating to the arrival of asylum seekers becomes visible.     

Improving Right Party Contact Rates at Outbound Call Centers

Consumer delinquencies are a major problem for banks and other credit card issuers. These firms have collection centers across the country to collect outstanding balances from delinquent accounts. Their main strategy is to first send reminder notices and, if that does not work, to telephone delinquent customers and request payment. The latter often becomes necessary, resulting in high costs of collection. Automated dialers are used to make the calls, and when the call goes through, it is directed to one of several hundred associates manning computer workstations. In this operation, it is important to contact the account holder in order to discuss payment options. Simply getting someone on the line is not sufficient, because such calls would require follow‐up calls. The objective of efficient collections is to maximize dollars collected while minimizing costs, which generally translates to making a “right party contact (RPC)” in the minimum number of attempts. We developed and tested an algorithm that increased the RPC rates by over 10%. This increase translates to annual savings of several million dollars for an average credit card company. Although the focus of our paper is collections, the methodology developed is equally applicable for improving telemarketing efficiency.     

LOST AND FOUND

This article examines Dovid Bergelson’s modernist writing in relationship to the shifting geography of Yiddish culture after World War I. During the 1920s, a series of debates raged in the Yiddish press about the true centre of Yiddish literature. These discussions about Yiddish literary centres, including Bergelson’s own polemic, “Dray tsentern” (Three centres), were also aesthetic debates regarding the future direction of Yiddish literature in the absence of a national home. In “Three centres” Bergelson envisions the new Jewish writer emerging from the agricultural colonies of the Crimean steppes. Though a surprising vision from a Jewish emigrant writer in Berlin, Bergelson turns to the steppes as a way to break free from Yiddish literature’s attachment to the shtetl. However, a close reading of his interwar fiction illuminates how his modernist aesthetic derives from the irresolvable conflict between the old Jewish landscape of the shtetl and the new spaces of Jewish life in the post‐World War I period.     

权证的杠杆效应研究——基于双对数模型的实证检验分析

利用Black—Scholes期权定价格公式从理论上分析权证的杠杆效应,然后运用双对数模型对我国市场中权证的杠杆效应进行实证性检验分析,得出结论:我国市场中的交易权证的杠杆效应与理论分析基本相符,但是某些权证存在被恶性操纵的情况,这些权证在后市中可能存在较大的风险。     

“革命”与“人道”关系质疑——关于《九三年》评论中的一个问题

《九三年》是雨果一部特殊且重要的小说。小说中关于"在绝对正确的革命之上,还有一个绝对正确的人道主义"的主题在研究、评论中几乎是众口一词的被否定。这一否定在今天看来是应重新讨论的。雨果小说中的这一认识或结论实际是一个深刻的、科学的、正确的、彻底的结论,从作品的分析与历史、现实的思考都可得到证明。应该对往昔的否定性意见或看法做出必要的调整与修正,应该把《九三年》、雨果及众多的作家作品从"资产阶级人道主义"的灰色"帽子"下解放出来。     

付息可赎回可转换债券定价解析式：完全拆解法

本文利用美式二值买权和上敲出买权等奇异期权,在Black-Scholes期权模型假设框架下,依据风险中性定价原理,将付息可赎回可转换债券“完全拆解”为七种相对简单证券的组合,并且通过这些简单证券的定价解析式推导出其定价解析式。同时,还推导出转息有效价值的解析式。这不仅仅为认知其价值组成提供了一个全新视角,而且相对现有的各种数值定价法,该解析式大大提高了定价效率。     

召唤应答 ——谈《宠儿》的叙事策略

美国作家莫里森的第七部小说《宠儿》讲述了南方重建时期,已成为自由人的黑奴重建自我身份的故事。黑人民族特有的艺术形式和重要文化密码——“召唤应答”,作为小说的主要叙事策略,赋予了作品深刻的文化内涵。小说中的人物通过"召唤应答",踏上了一条回归自我,捍卫黑人主体性和尊严的道路;而小说作者则借助于同样的文化密码,开始了她回归非洲传统文化的征程。无论是在语言运用上还是在叙事技巧上,我们都可以从《宠儿》中看到莫里森与黑人本土文化的契合点,而本民族的文化意识更是植入了她灵魂深处。     

Organisational legitimacy beyond ethnicity? Shifting organisational logics in the struggle for immigrant rights in Los Angeles

Immigrant political organisations in the United States have traditionally built political power by claiming to legitimately represent an ethnically defined group. However, the emergence of a number of multi-ethnic, class-based organisations over the last two decades has challenged this assumption, while raising questions about the ability of the institutional context to accommodate organisational change. Building on a neo-institutional theory of legitimacy, I examine the diverging legitimating strategies employed by two long-standing immigrant organisations based in Los Angeles (LA): the Korean Resource Center (KRC) and the Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance (KIWA). Through grant applications, organisational archival data and qualitative interviews, I show how KRC and KIWA, two groups embedded in the same sociopolitical context, have built unique yet equally successful legitimating accounts by adopting different organisational logics, one broadly based on ethnicity and one on class and multi-ethnicity. I suggest that KIWA and KRC's ideological differences, and their reliance on a different core of supporters – ethnic-oriented for KRC, labour-oriented for KIWA – drove the organisations towards distinct, yet partially overlapping subfields. By discursively mobilising those connections, and by actively shaping the surrounding organisational environment, both KRC and KIWA were able to incorporate in the broader non-profit advocacy sector in LA.