Ecosocial change and community resilience: The case of “Bönan” in glocal transition

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article was to identify and discuss ecosocial changes and community resilience mechanisms in a coastal fishing community of Sweden – Bönan. Data were collected through eight semi-structured interviews and field observations. An abductive thematic analysis was used to analyze data and background literature. The findings showed that Bönan has been exposed to a combination of ecosocial changes that have transformed the community, and therefore required community resilience interventions. This article concludes that social workers need to take an active part in ecosocial work for enhancing community resilience.     

Family Structure,Gender, and Adolescent Emotional Well-Being

This article focuses on gender differences in emotional well-being of adolescents in five different family settings. It analyzes two main mediators—economic deprivation and parental socialization—and is based on unusually rich survey data combining parental and child reports as well as information from administrative registers. The results show lower well-being of children in single-mother families and stepfamilies. These associations are mainly mediated through parental socialization rather than economic deprivation, except for girls in their early to midteens living with a single mother. Different patterns of lower well-being levels for boys and girls in different family settings are found.     

Ambiguous position of the child in supervised meetings

The paper addresses the ambiguous nature of supervised meetings between children and their non‐residential parent(s) which, according to the current legal idea, should serve the best interest of the child. In Finland the meetings between the child and the non‐residential parent can be ordered supervised if there are justified grounds for assuming that they constitute a risk for the child's safety. In many parts of Europe the need for such kinds of meetings controlled by outsiders has increased. The aim of the paper is to consider the child's position and the closely related issue of the child's interest in supervised meetings, based on the daily experiences of the supervisors. Data are gathered by focus group interviews and analysed qualitatively in terms of categorization analysis. As a result, the child's position is an ambiguous phenomenon with multiple interests. Obviously the child's interests will be met in some cases, although paradoxically it is mostly the interests of the parents and most often the fathers, which seem to demand more attention. Thus adult‐centredness, meanings of gender, time together with both the positive and possible detrimental outcomes for the child need further reflection.     

Ideology in Management Studies

Ideology is a core and contested concept in the social sciences, but also long deployed in management research to highlight the political, embedded and/or obscuring nature of ideas. Indeed, many would argue that management itself is inherently ideological in legitimating or privileging managerial interests and concealing other groups and ways of organizing. In the first systematic review of how ideology has been conceptualized in management studies, this paper explores its diverse and changing meanings in order to develop and sustain the concept. It is based on a heuristic review of 175 articles and 41 books published between 1956 and 2018. Further developing categories used in the social sciences around its role, we found views of ideology as: (1) domination; (2) legitimation; (3) interpretation; (4) integration; and (5) normative logic. In addition, emerging perspectives were identified where ideology was (6) an object of critique or (7) fantasy structuring social reality. We describe, illustrate and evaluate these often internally diverse and interrelated perspectives, as well as comparing them with sometimes competing notions within the management field, such as discourse, culture and legitimation. We also bring together the different approaches and argue for a pluralist, but not infinitely flexible, approach to the concept. In doing so, we identify research agendas for ideology within management and organization studies.     

The organisational environment’s impact on the servitization of manufacturers

The transformation of product-centric businesses towards service provision is claimed to be a viable strategy for manufacturers across industries and sectors. However, previous research on servitization has not paid sufficient attention to explicitly investigating its suitability for manufacturers operating in different organizational environments. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to establish propositions on the contingency factors in the organizational environment that affect the servitization of manufacturers at the industry level. Drawing on the theory of organisational ecology, the propositions include the effects of population density, competing populations, resource dependency, institutional linkages, technology, and political forces. Our study suggests that the operating environment explains at least part of the difficulties in the servitization process, which have been identified in previous studies, but whose causes have remained without full explanation. The study adds to the current understanding of the contingencies of transformation toward service provision and contributes to the managerial decision-making processes related to servitization.     

College Based Placement Co-ordinators in the United Kingdom: Their Perceptions of Stress

Placement co-ordinators on college-based social work courseshave a demanding task, liaising with students, tutors and agencytraining sections in order to provide appropriate practice learningopportunities. They cope with long established limitations onthe quantity and quality of placements. Therefore, the rolewould appear to be a stressful one. This research examines jobsatisfaction, pressure and constraints, psychological well-being,the impact of the host institution, and some changes that mightalleviate stress. A postal questionnaire was sent to all placementco-ordinators on college-based social work courses in the UK.The findings indicated that small numbers of placement co-ordinatorsexperienced high levels of stress to the point of sufferingfrom ‘borderline’ anxiety and depression. Stressscores for placement co-ordinators as a whole, however, werelower than those of the general UK population. The co-ordinatorsenjoyed considerable autonomy and a reasonable amount of support.Generally, they had positive attitudes towards the institutionswhere they worked. Males tended to emphasize the importanceof the institutional context rather than females. However, aroundhalf of the placement co-ordinators had considered giving uptheir posts; only about a quarter liked their work. Respondentsenjoyed only limited job satisfaction, felt pressurized, subjectto excessive demands and were ambivalent in attitudes aboutmanagers, colleagues, students and practice teachers.     

Voices in discourses: Dialogism, Critical Discourse Analysis and ethnic identity

In this article we attempt to combine the Bakhtinian, dialogical philosophy of language and critical discourse analysis (CDA) with our analysis of ethnic identity. The data we discuss are an interview with a Sami journalist who works in the Sami media. We analyse the interview from the points of view of dialogism and CDA to illustrate how identity must be understood as something which is both individual and social in nature. We reject the earlier essentialist interpretations of identity which see it as purely individual and psychological in nature. At the same time, we argue that those views of identity that see it as exclusively socially constructed can be misleading as well. We aim to illustrate our individual‐cum‐social viewpoint by discussing how identity is represented through a variety of voices and a variety of discourses. We discuss ethnic identity as related both to social level discourses that our subject drew on – such as the discourses of the journalistic profession or ethnicity and to 'voices' that bear witness to his experiences as an individual and his individual life course.     

Adolescent Educational Outcomes in Blended Families: Evidence from Swedish Register Data

Using Swedish register data, this article examines the association between having experienced the birth of a younger half-sibling and two educational outcome measures among Swedish 9th graders from 1998 to 2007. The data set, with the full population of 9th graders (N = 874,812), enables us to differentiate between adolescents with maternal as well as paternal half-siblings. The results show that adolescents in postseparation families with half-siblings have lower overall grades and are less likely to be eligible for school continuation after 9th grade than those without half-siblings. The results point to interesting gender patterns both by the sex of the child and whether the half-sibling is maternal or paternal.     

Health promotional education: differences between school nurses' health counselling and teachers' health instruction in the finnish ENHPS

The purpose of the study was to describe school nurses' (N=24) and teachers' (N=25) opinions of how the health‐related goals in their counselling and instruction were attained and to find out the possible differences between the two groups in the Finnish European Network of Health Promoting Schools. The data were collected by a questionnaire and analysed statistically. Some significant differences existed. School nurses ranked non‐intoxicant use, human growth and development and life control highest in their health counselling, whereas teachers underlined health maintenance and well‐being, respect for other people and non‐intoxicant use. School nurses' health counselling covered disease prevention and treatment better compared to teachers' health instruction, whereas health maintenance and well‐being, environmental health, first aid and safety and respect for other people were covered better in teachers' health instruction. Teachers were more promotional and community‐oriented, while school nurses emphasised a more preventive and individually oriented approach.     

An eco-social approach to tackling social exclusion in European cities: A new comparative research project in progress

In this article we would like to introduce a three-year Research Project called 'New Local Policies against Social Exclusion in European Cities', financed by the Targeted Socio-Economic Research Program (TSER) of the European Union. We will briefly highlight the entire research project that aims to make a contribution to European debate about social exclusion within social work (see also Washington and Paylor 1998), as well as social work's theoretical knowledge and field projects. The specific emphasis is on analysing the significance of the eco-social environment and citizen participation in disadvantaged residential areas, but related work aims to develop new kinds of action models and research methods. The project started in January 1998 in Finland, Germany, and Great Britain, and it will be completed by the end of 2000. Our research is a unique kind of cross-national comparative case-context research, based on classic ideas of action research and comparative research. Overall, the project aims through a European exchange to develop innovative models of local policies, particularly within community-based social work.