African Americans and municipal employment: A test of two perspectives

A survey of the extant literature addressing the factors that drive African American municipal employment offers two broad types of explanations: (1) Black political power and (2) institutional. A comparative assessment of the performance of each of these explanations fills a gap in the literature by illuminating the differences of these distinct perspectives when it comes to employment of Blacks in the public sector. Focusing on six Florida cities from 1960 to 2000, this study tests the predictive power of each of these explanations comparatively for four city departments. The findings indicate that the Black political power explanation performs better than the institutional explanation as a predictor of Black employment.     

Information systems and managerial decision making

The role of an information system is to support managerial decision processes. Some of these processes can be completely specified in advance and, as long as the specification remains acceptable to management, resolution can be done automatically, within the framework of the information system. However, in other cases, managers are involved in all stages of the decision process, which cannot be completely specified in advance. The task of the information system in these cases is to provide information to the managers engaged in making the decisions. This paper considers these problems from the point of view of the information system designer and makes recommendations about design and implementation.     

Some initial specifications for a strategic information system

Much of the discussion and published literature on information systems to date has been about systems concerned with the internal administration and operations of an organization. Considerably less attention has been given to the information requirements of the more strategic managerial activities of planning and policy making, in which the future directions and objectives of the organization are decided. Internal information systems in many organizations have now grown to maturity. At the same time, managers have become aware of the need for an additional component of the overall information system to support their more strategic activities. This paper considers the broad characteristics of a strategic component of an organizational information system and derives some initial specifications from which a more comprehensive design can be developed.     

Operating the production calculus: ordering a production system in the print industry

The topic of shop-floor work has been extensively examined within sociology. However, the organizational structures within which this work takes place have, in the most part, been taken as unexamined givens. Yet, their operation is also the shop-floor work of some people. This paper examines the way in which the stable organizational structures within which shop-floor work takes place are achieved. It is based upon a fieldwork investigation of a large commercial printer and focuses upon the collaborative work of those who are involved in scheduling the production of a job and their use of 'the production calculus' in planning the work of the site. The print industry is undergoing considerable technological change and scheduling technologies have been developed to automate this work. However, there has been little take up of these technologies and the paper also considers how the characteristics of operating the production calculus in practice may account for this.     

Parental involvement in reading: the influence of socio-economic status and supportive home visiting

SUMMARY: This paper describes the deployment of the technique for non-professional tutoring of reading known as ‘paired reading’ on a large scale in the Kirklees Local Education Authority. From the very large amount of data generated in multi-site field trials, particular attention is focused on the relationship between supportive home visiting (if any), an index of the socioeconomic disadvantage of the catchment area of each participating school, and outcomes in term of gains on norm-referenced tests of reading. Some surprising conclusions emerge.     

An LP model for assessing congeneration strategies

A linear programming model is described which is designed to assist in the assessment of optimum operational strategies for industrial plants with cogeneration facilities. A concise format is provided for linking together basic elements such as boilers, valves, turbines and processes with steam and electricity demands with steam, fuel and electricity balance equations. The model should prove particularly useful for assessment when electricity tariffs have time-of-use energy or demand charges or when tariffs have conditions which require consideration of strategies over an extended period. The model has been applied to a paper mill which utilises pass-out turbines for cogeneration of electricity and process steam. Results indicate that savings in fuel costs of the order of 400,000 dollars per year could be obtained by implementing optimal strategies for operating the present turbines. Savings of the order of one million dollars per year could be obtained by converting the turbines to give high pressure pass-out steam and then operating optimally.     

Simulating involvement in complex situations

A model for the process of resolution of complex issues involving many participants with differing preferences for outcomes has recently been proposed [3]. This paper describes the use of a simulation procedure based on this model as a means of preparing those involved in a complex issue for their part in its resolution. Details of the simulation procedure are given first. Practical experience with the use of the procedure is described in the latter part of the paper.     

Mothers' Representations of Relationships with their Children: Relations with Parenting Behavior, Mother Characteristics, and Child Disability Status

Representational models of mother-child relationships were assessed through interview for 112 mothers of children ages 14 to 52 months. Fifty-eight (51.8%) children had a diagnosis of cerebral palsy, 19 (17%) were diagnosed with epilepsy, while the remaining 35 (31.3%) had no diagnosis. Relations were examined between dimensions of representations (compliance, achievement, secure base, enmeshment, worry, pain) and maternal age, education and stress; diagnostic group and child developmental status; and mother's behavior with the child in a problem-solving task. Mothers for whom boundary violations were represented were also less focused with child achievement and experienced more worry and pain in the relationship. More severe disability status was associated with less compliance and more pain in representations. Longer time since diagnosis was positively correlated with painful representations. Representations were unrelated to child gender, child age, maternal education or age, or parenting stress. With educational level controlled, mothers' support for the child and positive affect in a problem-solving task were negatively related to representations of worry about the child's future. Boundary concerns were predictive of mothers' pressuring behavior in the problem-solving task. Findings suggest representations are related to caregiving behavior apart from other maternal characteristics, and that mothers' representations reflect variability in their children.     

Experienced crawlers avoid real and water drop-offs,even when they are walking

Crawling experience was recently linked to crawling and walking infants’ avoidance of falling on real and water cliffs, whereas walking experience had no effect on walkers’ avoidance behavior (Burnay et al., 2021). In the current study, the behavior of 25 infants was analyzed on the Real Cliff/Water Cliff apparatus using a longitudinal study design. Infants were tested as experienced crawlers (M_crawling = 2.93 months, SD = 1.07), novice walkers (M_walking = 0.68 months, SD = 0.29), and experienced walkers (M_walking = 4.90 months, SD = 0.92). Infants avoided falling on both cliffs when tested as experienced crawlers and their behavior was not different when tested as novice or experienced walkers. These findings confirmed the effect of crawling experience on crawling and walking infants’ avoidance of falls from heights and into water and the transfer of perceptual learning from crawling to walking postures.