Illuminating the Black Box From Within: Stakeholder Perspectives on Family Drug Court Best Practices

This article describes a mixed-methods, concept mapping study in an urban family drug court (FDC) designed to identify keys to FDC success from stakeholders’ perspectives. Participating FDC team members and clients developed a set of items they deemed integral to an FDC, thematically clustered the items, and then rated their relative importance. Using these data, cluster analysis and multidimensional scaling generated 6 themes perceived as contributing to positive outcomes. Resultant concept maps revealed that, compared to team members, clients view relational aspects of the FDC as more important. The findings point to implications for future research and social work practice.     

Cinderella purchasing transformation: linking purchasing status to purchasing practices and business performance

This paper contributes to the on-going debate about the relevance of the purchasing function for the firm value creation. We empirically examine the role of the purchasing function in improving business performance through an international survey based on 653 responses. Results suggest that purchasing practices related to spend rationalisation have a positive impact on the overall business performance, whereas supplier development & integration and sustainable purchasing have not. Moreover, the purchasing recognition by top managers and other organisational units emerge as a powerful antecedent of all purchasing practices. Instead, pure formal authority provided by the position in the organisation chart (i.e. the report level) does not have any influence on purchasing practices adoption.     

Impact of strategic and operational risk management practices on firm performance: An empirical investigation

Increasingly, creating and delivering value through complex supply chain networks involves substantial risks. However, strategy development under business risk conditions is not well-understood. This cross-country research examines how, under conditions of supply chain network risk, firms develop effective risk management practices. Using a literature review and survey research of managers from global firms; we present a research model, and empirically test the hypothesized relationships. The results show that under conditions of uncertainty, management decision-making is more likely to be cautious until visible forms of risks emerge, and prudent response mechanisms are put in place. This study identifies the crucial role of supply chain exploration and exploitation practices, and their influence in development of network risk management practices, leading to competitive financial outcomes.     

Heal,Body, Heal

No abstract available for this article.     

Transnational practices of Albanian families during the Greek crisis: unemployment,de-regularization and return

The outbreak of economic crisis in Greece in 2010 and the austerity measures adopted have dramatically altered the economic and social conditions throughout the country and consequently deeply impacted the migrant families. With Albanian regular migrants losing the legal status and lapsing back into irregularity due to the high unemployment rates, the reverse process of de-regularization and social disintegration has emerged. As a result, many migrants drew on family and social networks to pursue work opportunities either back home or elsewhere, while maintaining their formal ties/residence in Greece. This article explores the impact of the Greek crisis and de-regularization phenomenon on the transnational practices among Albanian families. Our aim is to go beyond the general theories on transnationalism and look at what exactly is the impact of the crisis on the families, as well as individuals' dilemmas of return and negotiations between transnational mobility and staying put, between different levels of belonging and their orientation to the present and future. The empirical analysis is based on in-depth interviews with 70 Albanians of first and second generation living in Greece.     

Making Sense through Touch

ABSTRACT

This article explores the role of touch in the creation of meaning for ethnographic museum collections. It presents a collaborative study conducted at the McCord Museum in which groups of Inuit elders were invited to share their knowledge and memories about objects of everyday life collected in the Canadian Arctic during the first half of the twentieth century. The aim of this research was to gather the elders' interpretations of ancient hunting equipment, sewing paraphernalia, household utensils, and personal ornaments in order to inform archaeological analyses of analogous artifacts from Nunavut. The article focuses on the methodology of the group discussions, in which participants were invited to handle the objects without constraint. These interactions generated various meanings for the objects: their fabrication and uses in the past, their contemporary value for the preservation and promotion of Inuit traditions, and their role in supporting the well-being of Inuit visitors at the museum.     

High-involvement work practices and employee engagement

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships between high involvement work practices (HIWPs) and employee engagement. HIWPs consist of four main attributes: (a) power – employees have the power to make decisions and/or to participate in decision-making; (b) information – information is shared among employees; (c) reward – employees are rewarded for their good performance; and (d) knowledge – employees are provided with the necessary training to do their work. This paper investigates the connections between engagement and each of these practices, and proposes a conceptual model that links these relationships. It starts by providing a brief overview of HIWPs, followed by a discussion on the connections between HIWPs and engagement, and a conclusion and discussion of implications for practice and research.     

Mitigating the effect of risk conditions on supply disruptions: the role of manufacturing postponement enablers

While previous published studies have evaluated the drivers of supply disruptions, only a few have empirically investigated the role of manufacturing postponement enablers as mitigating practices. This work explores the complex interaction between supply disruptions (i.e. supplier failure, purchase unavailability), risk conditions (i.e. antecedents that positively influence the probability and severity of supply disruptions) and manufacturing postponement enablers (i.e. product and process modularity). Specifically, we aim at understanding ‘when’ manufacturing postponement enablers should be adopted the most and ‘if’ their adoption can fully mitigate the effect risk conditions exert on supply disruptions’ probability and severity. To achieve our objective, we developed a conceptual model, and we tested it using survey data from 54 Italian manufacturing companies. The results show that supply market difficulty and technological uncertainty imply a higher probability and severity of disruptions associated with supplier failure and purchase unavailability. Most importantly, we provide evidence of the role played by product and process modularity in fully mitigating the effect of technological uncertainty on supply disruptions.     

高校教师教学质量综合评价方法的研究与实践

开展教师教学质量评价,可以客观地了解学校的教学工作状态,及时发现教学工作中存在的问题,为推进学校的教学改革,加强教学管理提供依据;完善的教学质量综合评价是复杂的系统工程,本文从教学质量影响因素、评价功能分析、评价原则确定、评价指标设定、评价主体选择等视角展开分析,并对高校教学质量综合评价的实践作初步的探索。