Impact of an Overt Response System on Staff Performance and Maintenance of Computer-Based Instruction

Interactive Computer Based Instruction (CBI) systems involve teaching strategies to facilitate greater response opportunities during training in an effort to improve learner performance. The current study investigated the effect of online staff training videos with and without overt response requirements on posttest and maintenance test scores across six block-randomized instructional modules for four employees of a university located in the southeastern region of the United States. The overt response consisted of multiple-choice questions administered throughout select teaching modules using an alternating treatment design. Findings suggest that learning occurred as a result of the CBI training; however, the effectiveness of the overt response system varied across individuals, with no discernible differentiation between learning gains associated with response requirements. Other areas of research for expanding the efficacy of CBI and overt response systems are highlighted.     

Assessing the local need for family and child care services: a small area utilization analysis

This article reports the findings of a study to develop a new method for allocating resources to family and child care services within Northern Ireland. Downloads from financial and client databases, together with a survey of social worker case activity, were used to estimate utilization costs across 500 local areas. Regression techniques were then used to account for variations in these costs in terms of local socioeconomic conditions. The resultant needs index represents a fair and equitable means of allocating central family and child care budgets to local units of management and service delivery.     

THE JOYS OF GARDENING: COLLECTIVIST AND BUREAUCRATIC CULTURES IN CONFLICT

Collectives and bureaucracies differ not only in structure and values, but interpret the social world and engage in actions based on quite different themes, symbols, and meanings. These diverse patterns of symbolic discourse, or organizational cultures, are assessed in the case of the recent urban gardening movement. Although government agencies assisted the movement by providing resources to movement collectives and by establishing thousands of urban gardening projects, collectives and bureaucracies had different meanings for what appeared to be the same experience. A comparison of how each described the benefits of urban gardening and structured the gardening experience for participants show serious underlying differences between these organizational cultures and a source of potential bureaucratic/collectivist conflict. Implications for understanding apparent official opposition to collectivist movements are also assessed.     

Complexity and Adaptivity in Supply Networks: Building Supply Network Theory Using a Complex Adaptive Systems Perspective*

Supply networks are composed of large numbers of firms from multiple interrelated industries. Such networks are subject to shifting strategies and objectives within a dynamic environment. In recent years, when faced with a dynamic environment, several disciplines have adopted the Complex Adaptive System (CAS) perspective to gain insights into important issues within their domains of study. Research investigations in the field of supply networks have also begun examining the merits of complexity theory and the CAS perspective. In this article, we bring the applicability of complexity theory and CAS into sharper focus, highlighting its potential for integrating existing supply chain management (SCM) research into a structured body of knowledge while also providing a framework for generating, validating, and refining new theories relevant to real‐world supply networks. We suggest several potential research questions to emphasize how a CAS perspective can help in enriching the SCM discipline. We propose that the SCM research community adopt such a dynamic and systems‐level orientation that brings to the fore the adaptivity of firms and the complexity of their interrelations that are often inherent in supply networks.     

Patterns of Stepchild–Stepparent Relationship Development

Thirty‐two stepdaughters and 17 stepsons participated in this grounded theory study of emerging adult stepchildren's perceptions about how relationships with their stepparents developed. The theory created from this study proposes that the degree to which stepchildren engage in relationship‐building and ‐maintaining behaviors with stepparents is a function of stepchildren's evaluative judgments about the stepparents' positive contributions. Stepchildren's judgments about stepparents are made with inputs from biological parents and other kin. Stepchildren's ages when relationships began, gender of stepchildren and stepparents, and time spent together because of custody arrangements provided the context within which relationships developed. The outcomes in this grounded theory were six patterns of step‐relationship development: accepting as a parent, liking from the start, accepting with ambivalence, changing trajectory, rejecting, and coexisting. These patterns of development were distinct trajectories that related closely to qualitatively different stepparent–stepchild relationships. Only 30% of stepchildren with multiple stepparents evaluated them similarly.     

Cohabitation Transitions Among Low-income Parents: A Qualitative Investigation of Economic and Relational Motivations

At the intersection of the cohabitation and residential mobility literatures is an opportunity to better understand the factors that shape cohabitation choices for low-income couples. By investigating push and pull factors associated with cohabitation, this study aimed to identify linkages between cohabitation transitions and the broader socioeconomic context within which they occur. Collecting data from both members of low-income couples and carefully tracking all residential and cohabitation transitions made it possible to identify a wide range of push and pull factors that motivate couples to move. The findings suggest that cohabitation transitions were often motivated by economic necessity. Romantic partnerships, while important, were less frequently mentioned than other factors (i.e., interpersonal negotiations, finances, housing quality) in determining a couple’s living arrangements. These findings have important implications for understanding the complex relationship between economic and non-economic factors that shape romantic relationships.