The Determinants of Retail Productivity: A Critical Review of the Evidence

This paper discusses the literature on the established determinants of productivity in the retail sector. It also draws attention to some neglected strands of research which provide useful insights into strategies that could allow productivity enhancements in this area of the economy. To date, very few attempts have been made to integrate different specialisms in order to explain what drives productivity in retail. Here this paper rectifies this omission by putting together studies from economics, geography, knowledge management and employment studies. It is the authors’ view that quantitative studies of retail productivity should focus on total factor productivity in retailing as the result of competition/composition effects, planning regulations, information and communications technology, the multinational operation element and workforce skills. Further, the fact that retail firms possess advantages that are transferable between locations suggests that investment in strategies enhancing the transfer of explicit and tacit knowledge between and within businesses are crucial to achieve productivity gains.     

Contextual assessment of couples therapy: the Clinical Discourse Q-Sets

This article describes a method for creating highly contextual assessments of couples therapy interaction using concepts from Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). According to SFL, talk in interaction serves three primary functions: to mediate social relations, to negotiate representations of reality, and to organize and structure the event as coherent. These concepts are operationalized using observational q-methodology. The Clinical Discourse Q-Sets (CDQS) include three separate q-sets for use by trained observers in rating 12-min segments of couples therapy conversation. Each q-set captures one aspect of the communication process as defined by Systemic Functional theory. Good-to-high reliabilities for the q-set profiles over various (n = 16) couples therapy episodes were found. Preliminary evidence for the conceptual structure and clinical validity of the system was found.     

When informal is normal… On the role of credentials and contacts for the job entry in Serbia

The paper focuses on the roles of human capital and social resources in structuring young people's entries into either the formal or the informal labour market in the Serbian transformation society. Results show that informal labour market in Serbia follows the structure of the secondary labour market and signals vulnerability on part of youths employed there. Education dropouts are largely channelled to the informal sector, whereas favourably educated Serbian graduates are less attracted to it. Job search via social networks facilitates entry to unregistered employment, but slows down entry to registered employment for job seekers. Whereas stratification of labour market entry by education largely follows patterns of primary and secondary labour market attainment in any industrialized society, the effects of contacts might exhibit traces of inefficiencies peculiar to the transformation countries. Analyses are conducted on the basis of the Serbian school-leaver survey (2006) applying event history modelling and binomial regression analysis.     

Patient-Centered Approach to Building Problem Solving Skills Among Older Primary Care Patients: Problems Identified and Resolved

This article describes problems identified by older primary care patients enrolled in Problem Solving Therapy (PST), and explores factors associated with successful problem resolution. PST patients received 1 to 8, 45-min sessions with a social worker. Patients identified problems in their lives and directed the focus of subsequent sessions as consistent with the steps of PST. The 107 patients identified 568 problems, 59% of which were resolved. Most commonly identified problems included health related issues such as need for exercise or weight loss activities, medical care and medical equipment needs, home and garden maintenance, and gathering information on their medical condition. Problems identified by patients were 2.2 times more likely to be solved than those identified by a health care professional. Using PST in primary care may facilitate patients in addressing key health and wellness issues.     

Does the client have a gambling problem?

Representatives from 40 New York City social agencies were interviewed in order to determine the extent to which gambling is a problem among their clients. The findings indicate that (a) agency personnel rarely ask clients about gambling behavior either on intake or with continued agency contact; (b) rarely do clients spontaneously mention gambling as a problem; (c) problem gambling is usually brought to the attention of the agency by the wives of problem gamblers; and (d) gambling is a hidden family problem associated with marital discord and financial disarray. In order to have a better understanding of problem gambling and its vicissitudes it is recommended that agency personnel keep statistics on gambling and gambling related problems.This paper was revised after the untimely death of Leonard S. Kogan, Professor of Psychology and Director of the Center for Social Research, The Graduate School and University Center, The City University of New York.     

Interactive effect of individual factors on nurses' health and sleep

Abstract

There is a tendency in studies concerning individual diferences in shiftwork tolerance to analyse the moderating effect of individual factors separately as if they acted independently. The aim of this study was to examine the interactive effect of individual factors (i.e. morningness, flexibility, languidity, neuroticism, extroversion) on nurses' health and sleep. A hundred female nurses (mean age 25.9 years, SD = 3.7 years) working a 2 × 12-h shift system were chosen from a larger study conducted among Intensive Care Unit staff. All subjects completed the Standard Shiftwork Index. Multiple regression analyses show that interactions of neuroticism and other factors (languidity, morningness) predict the majority of health and sleep complaints rather than neuroticism itself. Correlation analyses revealed that the interaction of neuroticism and languidity correlates higher with some indices of impaired health and sleep disturbances than when these factors are taken separately. The contribution of flexibility together with extroversion in interactions with neuroticism, and with neuroticism and languidity weaken the relations of languidity and neuroticism with health and sleep indices. The results show that some individual features tend to strengthen or counteract one another in relation to symptoms of shiftwork intolerance.