Ethical discontinuities in public—private sector negotiation

One problem in dispute settlement negotiations between public and private sector agents is a lack of congruence in the behavioral norms the parties consider appropriate. This normative dissonance may be seen as a problem of professional ethical discontinuity. The implementation and enforcement of Superfund, in which public sector engineers negotiated with private sector lawyers, illustrates this problem. Suggested remedies include addressing the negotiation process in professional codes of ethics, avoiding professional mismatches, better training for negotiators about the ethical discontinuity problem and, in the public health setting, improving alternatives to negotiated agreements.     

The measure of wife abuse: Steps toward the development of a comprehensive assessment technique

The lack of an adequate assessment tool for wife abuse has hindered empirical research. The Measure of Wife Abuse (MWA) was developed to improve on previously developed instruments, mainly by using empirical methods of construction, which has enabled the MWA to assess a broader range of wife abuse behaviors. The purpose of this study was to determine the factor structure of the MWA items, and to assess its reliability and validity. Confirmatory multiple group factor analyses of the MWA responses of 164 abused women yielded four factors: Physical, Sexual, Psychological, and Verbal Abuse. The MWA was found to possess adequate levels of both reliability, estimated from its internal consistency, and concurrent validity, with the Conflict Tactics Scales as the criterion measure.     

The Role of Employment Equity Units in the Public Sector and in Universities

The location of equity units remains a matter of contention in some agencies. Are equity goals best served by a central placement, or is mainstreaming a more efficient method? This article argues that issues such as active intervention, culture and management commitment are important prerequisites to questions of organisational design.     

Canadian cities and the American example: a prologue to urban policy analysis

Abstract: The developmental pattern that characterizes metropolitan areas in the United States often serves as a basis for evaluating the condition of Canadian cities and attributing a distinctive thrust to Canadian urban policy. To be meaningful, however, comparative evaluations have to take account of the way government activities have helped to shape U.S. metropolitan areas over an extended period of time. A criticism implicit in much US. urban analysis is that government activities have persistently contributed to large inequalities in the social and economic condition of metropolitan area municipalities. In Canada, by comparison, interjurisdictional equalization has played a larger role in federal-provincial relations than it has in federal-state relations in the United States. It also seems to have influenced the way provincial governments dealt with municipalities during the 1960s and 1970s. At the present time, however, provincial governments are allowing the governmental systems of metropolitan areas to become more fragmented. They are also under pressure to reduce or abandon their efforts to equalize services and property tax burdens among municipalities. How they respond to that pressure will help to determine how closely the development of Canada's metropolitan areas conforms to the pattern of urban development characteristic of the United States.     

The experience of stress for correction officers: A double-bind theory of correctional stress

This study investigated the experience of stress for 143 mostly male New Jersey correction officers, including officers from both state and county, of all ranks, and with varying lengths of service. Each filled in a questionnaire eliciting information regarding perceptions of stress in themselves and others, situational and temporal experience of correctional stress, consequences in terms of physical health, emotional and interpersonal relations, and job performance, perceptions of sources of correctional stress, and coping techniques utilized. While objective indicators such as physical illnesses and high divorce rates suggested that the job was indeed a stressful one, the correction officers presented a tough, “macho” image, denying their stress and its consequences, although they were more willing to report stress-related problems in their fellow workers. While they identified officer-inmate interaction as their major situation of stress, they attributed their problems in this area to administrative malfunctions which place them in a classic double-bind predicament in relation to rule enforcement. Their powerlessness in this situation is rendered especially stressful by the macho working personality which the job requires of them.