Professional blinders? The novel as an eye-opener in organizational analysis

ABSTRACT

Scholarly textbooks often follow a logic where suitable empirical cases are selected to illustrate the theoretical and analytical points that we as scholars want to make. But what would happen if we would do the opposite: build a textbook on a novel written by a novelist for such purpose and let the theories explain the actions and emotions of fictional characters? In this article, we share and reflect upon our experiences of co-authoring a textbook in organization theory together with a professional novelist. We argue that the novel can function as an eye-opener in organizational analysis, forcing us to look beyond more static and rationalistic perspectives on organizations as well as the stereotypes of such. We build and relate our experiences to the growing literature about using fiction in scholarly work and discuss the potential of such genre-bending work when we bring in flesh and blood into the analyses.     

Life Experiences and Vulnerabilities of Homeless Women: A Comparison of Women Unaccompanied Versus Accompanied by Minor Children, and Correlates with Children's Emotional Distress

The histories and service needs of 2 groups of homeless women, those unaccompanied by minor children (n = 46) and those accompanied by minor children (n = 22), were compared, on the basis of their responses to a biennial survey of homeless people in a midsize city in the southeast United States. Mothers of children aged 2–10 also completed a measure of stress symptoms for their children (n = 20). Irrespective of family status group, problems such as substance abuse, history of mental illness, health problems, chronicity of homelessness, and crime victimization tended to cluster together. The findings also suggest that declining and/or inadequate levels of public benefits, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, and Medicaid-funded health care in particular, have adversely affected the 2 groups, particularly families with children. The young children in this sample experienced elevated levels of stress, and significant associations were found between children's stress levels and certain risk factors of their mothers. Implications for service delivery are discussed.     

Statistical Distributions of Daily Breathing Rates for Narrow Age Groups of Infants and Children

Children may be more susceptible to toxicity from some environmental chemicals than adults. This susceptibility may occur during narrow age periods (windows), which can last from days to years depending on the toxicant. Breathing rates specific to narrow age periods are useful to assess inhalation dose during suspected windows of susceptibility. Because existing breathing rates used in risk assessment are typically for broad age ranges or are based on data not representative of the population, we derived daily breathing rates for narrow age ranges of children designed to be more representative of the current U.S. children's population. These rates were derived using the metabolic conversion method of Layton (1993) and energy intake data adjusted to represent the U.S. population from a relatively recent dietary survey (CSFII 1994–1996, 1998). We calculated conversion factors more specific to children than those previously used. Both nonnormalized (L/day) and normalized (L/kg-day) breathing rates were derived and found comparable to rates derived using energy estimates that are accurate for the individuals sampled but not representative of the population. Estimates of breathing rate variability within a population can be used with stochastic techniques to characterize the range of risk in the population from inhalation exposures. For each age and age-gender group, we present the mean, standard error of the mean, percentiles (50th, 90th, and 95th), geometric mean, standard deviation, 95th percentile, and best-fit parametric models of the breathing rate distributions. The standard errors characterize uncertainty in the parameter estimate, while the percentiles describe the combined interindividual and intra-individual variability of the sampled population. These breathing rates can be used for risk assessment of subchronic and chronic inhalation exposures of narrow age groups of children.     

Consumption Patterns of Chinese Children

In the ten-year period from 1990 to 1999, children's consumption has increased dramatically in proportion to family income. In 85% of urban families, children's average consumption is equal to one third or more of the family's income. Resources are being directed to children's food and dietary supplements, toys, travel, computers and other electronic equipment, and educational resources. Children perceive that they have a significant influence on the family's financial decision-making. Problems related to children's consumption include indulgence in unnecessary or harmful purchases, and conspicuous consumption that cannot be sustained by the family's income. While some child-focused spending is viewed as enriching development, other expenditures may harm the family's economic well-being and foster an overly materialistic outlook among children.     

Les transformations de l'intégration par l'emploi: Regards croisés : France métropolitaine - île de La Réunion

Against a background of mass unemployment and the increasing precariousness of employment, the current changes in the labour market demand that we examine the previously central role of paid employment in social integration. If the individual now deprived of employment or having a temporary contract is by dint of this fact less included in society or is less secure by not having a permanent salary, is it to say that he embodies the face of the de-affiliated, of those who miss out on social benefits? Taking the example of the Reunion Island which has the highest level of unemployment and population covered by the minimum income (RMI: Revenu Minimum d'Insertion) in the country, this article endeavours to explain and understand how, in the context of a protective society and increasingly flexible employment market, new methods of social integration without and resulting from paid employment are being formed.     

Les agriculteurs dans la fabrique d'une nouvelle agriculture

The model of development that has governed the modernization of farming in France is increasingly coming under attack. Given this, analysing the “work” that farming performs to “translate” the criticisms with which it must cope in formulating new definitions of roles is important in order to understand changes under way in this sector. The changes undergone by farming over the past eighty years are briefly presented and then the procedures and results of a survey, conducted during the mad cow disease among beef-farmers in Burgundy, are described. Light is thus shed on the diversity of the positions that farmers have adopted with regard to the future of their occupation. An interpretation is proposed of how the distribution (and interplay between) these positions might affect agriculture. - Special issue on Agriculture and food.     

Valuation of childhood risk reduction: the importance of age, risk preferences, and perspective.

This article explores two problems analysts face in determining how to estimate values for children's health and safety risk reductions. The first addresses the question: Do willingness‐to‐pay estimates for health risk changes differ across children and adults and, if so, how? To answer this question, the article first examines the potential effects of age and risk preferences on willingness to pay. A summary of the literature reporting empirical evidence of differences between willingness to pay for adult health and safety risk reductions and willingness to pay for health and safety risk reductions in children is also provided. The second dimension of the problem is a more fundamental issue: Whose perspective is relevant when valuing children's health effects—society's, children's, adults‐as‐children, or parents'? Each perspective is considered, followed ultimately by the conclusion that adopting a parental perspective through an intrahousehold allocation model seems closest to meeting the needs of the estimation problem at hand. A policy example in which the choice of perspective affects the outcome of a regulatory benefit‐cost analysis rounds out the article and emphasizes the importance of perspective.     

Creating Stepfamilies: Integrating Children Into the Study of Union Formation

As a result of the growth in out‐of‐wedlock childbearing and union instability, adults contemplating forming a new union are often already parents. This article examines the role of children in stepfamily formation, both coresident and not, using the 2,594 respondents in the National Survey of Families and Households who were not living with a partner in 1987/1988. We consider children of the respondent and of the partner, which allows us to examine the determinants of entering a stepfamily. We found that being a coresident father dramatically increases forming a union with a woman with children. Women’s coresidential children reduce women’s odds of forming unions with men who do not have children and increase them for unions with men who do.     

Threshold decisions: how social workers prioritize referrals of child concern

This paper examines local authority social workers' decision‐making when considering referrals of children, where the concerns are on the margin of child protection procedures. In doing so, it describes the findings of a qualitative research study undertaken in the policy context of attempts to ‘refocus’ social work practice in the late 1990s and early twenty‐first century. Data collection involved interviews with social workers and parents in 23 cases. Conclusions are that referrals were evaluated on the basis of five key factors, specificity, severity, risk, parental accountability and corroboration, the use of which determined whether an initial assessment or an investigation of alleged abuse took place. The analysis builds on previous work in the child protection field, but demonstrates how the application of these factors differs between cases of child concern and cases of child protection. Policy implications concern the complexity of decision‐making in the uncertain context of limited referral information and it is proposed that the simplistic notion of a continuum of abuse is now outdated. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Marital Conflict,Ineffective Parenting,and Children's and Adolescents' Maladjustment

Data from the 1988 National Survey on Families and Households were analyzed to examine the associations among marital conflict, ineffective parenting, and children's and adolescents' maladjustment. Parents' use of harsh discipline and low parental involvement helped explain the connection between marital conflict and children's maladjustment in children aged 2 through 11. Parent‐child conflict was measured only in families with a target teenager and also was a significant mediator. Although ineffective parenting explained part of the association between marital conflict and children's maladjustment, independent effects of marital conflict remained in families with target children aged 2 through 11 (but not for families with a teenager). With a few exceptions, this pattern of findings was consistent for mothers' and fathers' reports, for daughters and sons, for families with various ethnic backgrounds, and for families living in and out of poverty.