A home from home: the organization as family

The basic unit of human organization has always been the family, although the meaning and composition of “family” has altered over the millennia of human existence. The current view in Western thought is that there is a distinct schism between the family and other social organizations, particularly those organizations associated with work. As a broad distinction, the family is held to be in the private sphere of human interaction and work organizations in the public. Much feminist theory is predicated on this private/public split, and one of the reasons proposed for the social inequality of women is that the private, which is women's “natural” domain, is held to be of lesser social significance.

The paper considers, in a light-hearted (but we hope not lightweight) manner, the metaphor of the organization as family. We provide analogies between the notions of “family” as a private social institution and the work organization, drawing no conclusions, but providing some small insights into affinities and congruences which blur the private/public distinction. If we assert anything at all, it is this: because the work organization is family, we are able to slip from one to the other each day with the minimum of psychic stress.

“Travail, Famille, patrie” (the slogan of the Vichy régime)     

Employment transitions for clubhouse members

Using a longitudinal dataset which followed 2195 individuals employed in 3379 separate job placements over a four-year period, this paper explores movement between the employment supports, [Transitional (TE), Supported (SE), and Independent Employment (IE)], offered by clubhouses. Sixty-four percent of employed members held only one job (N=1395) and 36% held multiple jobs during the study (N=791). Patterns of movement were consistent for transitions between the first and second job and subsequent transitions. Forty-six percent of individuals holding multiple jobs moved from one employment type to another. When movement occurred clubhouse members were significantly more likely to move from employment types offering more supports to those that offer less supports.     

On making “choices”

The article points out the cost to women of the feminist decision to support women’s choice to work only in the home. The author argues that women who work only in the home hurt themselves, their children, and other women. The women who actually drop out may end up living in poverty. Dropping out, job-sharing, and working part-time are not solutions as long as these options are taken almost exclusively by women. The solution is to follow strategies that promote equal responsibility between men and women for childcare and housework, rather than encouraging women to work only in the home or to make their double burden work. Such strategies include marriage agreements that recognize the opportunity costs suffered by women who drop out of the workforce, and legislative changes that remove the tax and other benefits that subsidize married men whose wives work only in the home.     

Ideal liberal subjects and Muslim “Others”: liberal nationalism and the racialization of Muslim youth in a progressive Danish school

Drawing on an ethnographic case study of Muslim youth in a Danish lower secondary school, this article explores teacher talk about Muslim immigrant students and how teachers engaged liberal ideals of respect, individualism, and equality in ways that racialized immigrant students. I consider moments of vacillation in teacher talk to explore tensions between teacher’s desires to assimilate immigrant students to national norms of belonging and their desires to be perceived as inclusive and ‘open.’ In doing so, I ask how visions of liberal schooling impose ideas of what a ‘normal’ citizen should be and how teachers produce ‘ideal’ liberal subjects in their talk and in the everyday practices of schools. I argue that teachers engage the ideals of abstract liberalism to establish a colorblind discourse of non-racism. While educators described the school as an idealized space where students are encouraged to freely express themselves, to develop unique individual outlooks, it was clear that this vision of ‘openness’ did not include Muslim students’ attachments to religious and cultural identities.     

You Can't Expect Rationality from Pregnant Men: Reflections on Multi-disciplinarity in Management Research

The paper attempts to debate and answer two questions: (1) Does multi-disciplinary research in management constitute a distinctive approach? To which the brief answer is `no', because multi-disciplinary research is not one approach among all those others which can also be applied when researching management. Multi-disciplinary research into management is, as it were, the only game in town. (2) Can we rationally choose multi-disciplinary research into management as such at all? To which the response is also `no', because management research and multi-disciplinarity are inseparable, by reason of the fact that management is, in its very essence, multi-disciplinary, rather than mono-disciplinary, in nature.     

Mechanistic Insights Aid the Search for CFC Substitutes: Risk Assessment of HCFC-123 as an Example

An international consensus on the need to reduce the use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other ozone-depleting gases such as the halons led to the adoptions of the 1987 Montreal Protocol and Title VI of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, "Protecting Stratospheric Ozone." These agreements included major provisions for reducing and eventually phasing out production and use of CFCs and halons as well as advancing the development of replacement chemicals. Because of the ubiquitous use and benefits of CFCs and halons, an expeditious search for safe replacements to meet the legislative deadlines is of critical importance. Toxicity testing and health risk assessment programs were established to evaluate the health and environmental impact of these replacement chemicals. Development and implementation of these programs as well as the structural-activity relationships significant for the development of the replacement chemicals are described below. A dose-response evaluation for the health risk assessment of the replacement chemical HCFC-123 (2,2-dichloro-1,1,1-trifluoroethane) is also presented to show an innovative use of physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) modeling. This is based on a parallelogram approach using data on the anesthetic gas halothane, a structural analog to HCFC-123. Halothane and HCFC-123 both form the same metabolite, trifluoroacetic acid (TFA), indicative of the same metabolic oxidative pathway attributed to hepatotoxicity. The parallelogram approach demonstrates the application of template model structures and shows how PBPK modeling, together with judicious experimental design, can be used to improve the accuracy of health risk assessment and to decrease the need for extensive laboratory animal testing.     

Fault Tree Analysis for Exposure to Refrigerants Used for Automotive Air Conditioning in the United States

A fault tree analysis was used to estimate the number of refrigerant exposures of automotive service technicians and vehicle occupants in the United States. Exposures of service technicians can occur when service equipment or automotive air-conditioning systems leak during servicing. The number of refrigerant exposures of service technicians was estimated to be 135,000 per year. Exposures of vehicle occupants can occur when refrigerant enters passenger compartments due to sudden leaks in air-conditioning systems, leaks following servicing, or leaks caused by collisions. The total number of exposures of vehicle occupants was estimated to be 3,600 per year. The largest number of exposures of vehicle occupants was estimated for leaks caused by collisions, and the second largest number of exposures was estimated for leaks following servicing. Estimates used in the fault tree analysis were based on a survey of automotive air-conditioning service shops, the best available data from the literature, and the engineering judgement of the authors and expert reviewers from the Society of Automotive Engineers Interior Climate Control Standards Committee. Exposure concentrations and durations were estimated and compared with toxicity data for refrigerants currently used in automotive air conditioners. Uncertainty was high for the estimated numbers of exposures, exposure concentrations, and exposure durations. Uncertainty could be reduced in the future by conducting more extensive surveys, measurements of refrigerant concentrations, and exposure monitoring. Nevertheless, the analysis indicated that the risk of exposure of service technicians and vehicle occupants is significant, and it is recommended that no refrigerant that is substantially more toxic than currently available substitutes be accepted for use in vehicle air-conditioning systems, absent a means of mitigating exposure.