Key success factors when implementing a green-manufacturing system

This study proposes a three-layer assessment model to evaluate the performance of a green-manufacturing system (GMS) and identify the key success factors of its real-world implementation. The top layer of the model includes three dimensions – green design, green-manufacturing process and green packaging. The second and third layers include ten strategic subjects and 74 assessment factors, respectively. The weights in each layer are collected via a questionnaire and calculated using the analytical network process (ANP). Based on the ANP, the five key success factors for implementing the GMS in a company are proportion of non-toxic materials, compliance with eco-ordinances, proportion of biodegradable materials, environmental pollution per product and extent of process pollution. The practicality of the proposed model is demonstrated by evaluating three companies that produce similar products and share similar business models. The proposed model provides a valuable reference for real-world implementation of the GMS.     

罗蕙锡与凌淑华小说的女性意识比较研究

罗蕙锡和凌淑华分别是20世纪20年代韩中两国颇具影响力的女作家及画家.她们通过小说表现了对封建思想和男权社会制度的批判,对自由恋爱和婚姻自主的追求,对女性独立的自我意识等共同的女性意识.但罗蕙锡着重从启蒙性质的女性主义立场出发暴露女性受到的社会压迫,而凌淑华则从进步的资产阶级知识分子立场出发,揭示了男权社会制度下资产阶级女性生活以及她们的病态和渴求.在创作手法上,她们分别以中国传统绘画的余白之美和写意手法及西方绘画中的光线和色彩搭配描绘环境和背景,使作品审美价值倍增.     

Eastern Sociological Society Presidential Address: Globalizing Gender Issues: Many Voices,Different Choices1

Why are the important gender inequality issues different in various countries around the world? This question is answered using a comparative perspective on extant research about gender inequalities in the regions of the world. Just as there is diversity among individual women, based on their intersecting axes of age, race, ethnicity, class, marital status, sexual orientation, religion, or other characteristics, I argue that there is diversity across countries in their gender inequalities based on intersecting axes of transnational, regional, cross‐cutting, and unique national issues that structure gendered or feminist concerns within any country. Global and regional dynamics are the interrelated foundations on which broad gender inequalities are built. Major transnational dynamics include neoliberal economics, migration, and violence, while regional patterns include nation building and gendered inequalities in education and property ownership. On the other hand, unique national trajectories and cross‐cutting themes, found in a few nations in each region, add much greater variation to those basic inequalities. Some of those cross‐cutting themes are problems generated by health status and health services, the relationship of religion to the state, and war or militarism.     

Turning Over Turnover

Abstract

Human service programs often have major problems ensuring that all direct-care staff positions are filled and keeping staff members after they are hired. Work schedules may have an effect on maintaining the longevity of staff. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of a revised direct-care staff-scheduling system in community homes serving adults with developmental disabilities. The revised direct-care staffing system, which used shift-style schedules, was compared on a variety of measures to existing staffing systems and to a staffing model using married couples and adaptations of the Teaching-Family Model (called Family-Teaching homes). The revised staff-scheduling system was evaluated before and after its implementation and then compared to the Family-Teaching homes using direct-care employee measures of: (1) turnover; (2) position vacancies; (3) number of different employees paid within a pay period; (4) average hourly wages; (5) number of hours worked; (6) average cost for employees per person served; and (7) employee satisfaction. The various staffing approaches were also compared on measures of parent/legal guardian satisfaction and overall program quality. The revised staff-scheduling system was superior when compared to the previous staff-scheduling system on measures of turnover (43% less), vacancies (57% fewer), number of direct-care employees involved in the care of the persons served (13% fewer), and hourly wages (8% more). All of this was achieved without affecting staff-to-client ratios. While these changes were positive, the Family-Teaching homes were associated with significantly better direct-care staff stability and lower costs.     

Employees Amidst Welfare Reform

SUMMARY

The impact of welfare reform on organizational functioning at the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS) is measured between 1999 and 2000 using a longitudinal survey method, a large sample of employees, and multiple regression analysis. During this one year period the agency experienced a change in leadership as well as had to contend with the evolving requirements associated with the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA). The findings indicate that a trusted leadership and an organizational climate that is receptive to and fosters effective communication can improve the chances of successfully implementing large-scale organizational change like that created by the PRWORA.     

Book Reviews

Critical appraisal of research studies forms a central role within the application and uptake of evidence‐based approaches within health and social care. While there are established checklists for evaluating quantitative research, this is not the case for qualitative research. This article outlines the process of developing an evaluative tool for qualitative studies, reflecting the uniqueness of the associated paradigm, and illustrates its use by reference to three qualitative research papers appraised within a systematic review of community‐based rehabilitation services. At its centre are concerns with the context of the study and the way the data are collected and analysed. Use of such an evaluative template opens the way for the quality of qualitative research to be judged in a systematic manner and for qualitative research to take its rightful place within debates over what works, where, when and how within health and social care policy and practice.     

African American and White Managers:

Research points to differences in the experiences and response of African Americans and whites to organizational situations. This paper presents the results of a study which investigated differences in the management styles in eight local social service agency offices managed by African Americans and eight managed by whites. When the environment was turbulent, white managers responded by becoming more supportive of staff, while African American managers increased problem-solving communications. Staff in African American offices in turbulent environments had higher levels of job satisfation than either white offices of African Americans in nonturbulent environments.     

Paradigm lost: Reinvigorating the study of organizational culture

In spite of the importance of organizational culture, scholarly advances in our understanding of the construct appear to have stagnated. We review the state of culture research and argue that the ongoing academic debates about what culture is and how to study it have resulted in a lack of unity and precision in defining and measuring culture. This ambiguity has constrained progress in both developing a coherent theory of organizational culture and accreting replicable and valid findings. To make progress we argue that future research should focus on conceptualizing and assessing organizational culture as the norms that characterize a group or organization that if widely shared and strongly held, act as a social control system to shape members’ attitudes and behaviors. We further argue that to accomplish this, researchers need to recognize that norms can be parsed into three distinct dimensions: (1) the content or what is deemed important (e.g., teamwork, accountability, innovation), (2) the consensus or how widely shared norms are held across people, and (3) the intensity of feelings about the importance of the norm (e.g., are people willing to sanction others). From this perspective we suggest how future research might be able to clarify some of the current conflicts and confusion that characterize the current state of the field.     

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.     

“Difficult,Messy, Nasty,and Sensational”

Feminist publishing played an important role in the feminist art movement of the 1970s and into the 1980s, and Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics was a key journal in this landscape. This paper argues that Heresies is important not only because it was a forum for some of the most influential feminist art women of the period, but because it experimented with an editorial structure that required participants to reckon with the discomforts of difference. Editors of the periodical took seriously the feminist critique of hierarchically structured organizational cultures and both promoted and practiced collective publishing. Moreover, through an emphasis on editorial statements, I consider how Heresies gives expression to the affective entanglements of the women involved in Heresies' specific form of collaboration and collective feminist politics. An examination of the editorials as sites of affective intensity helps to come to an understanding not of what women were thinking, writing, and making, but how they may have felt about their work and their relationships with women with whom they worked.