Compulsive traits and police officer performance

As a general rule, pathologies tend to impair job performance. In a study involving performance criteria and the Personality Assessment Inventory in a sample of Louisiana police officers (N=800), OCD characteristics correlated significantly in a negative direction with several performance criteria, such as involvement in an on-duty or off-duty at fault moving violation, number of on-duty or off-duty at fault moving violations, any citizen complaints regarding unprofessional conduct, number of unprofessional conduct, and accusation in any way of racially offensive conduct, behavior, verbalization, or complaints. It has been found that the traits of obsessive-compulsive disorder, in moderation, may actually improve performance in police officers. This agrees with the Yerkes-Dodson law, which states that peak performance occurs when a person experiences mild to moderate levels of stress. Authors' Note: Emily DeCoster-Martin was an undergraduate psychology major at The University of Evansville at the time this paper was written. William U. Weiss, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Psychology, The University of Evansville, 1800 Lincoln Av., Evansville, IN 47722. Robert D. Davis, Ph.D., is executive vice-president and director of science, research, and development for Matrix, Inc., Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Cary Rostow, Ph.D. is president of Matrix, Inc.     

Account-making and confiding as acts of meaning in response to sexual assault

A study was conducted to compare the interpretive and coping responses of female and male survivors of incest and female survivors of sexual assault by a nonrelative. Twenty-eight persons responded to a questionnaire that asked them to provide an account of the nature of an assault(s), the role of confidants in helping them cope with the assault, how they coped and tried to understand the assault over time, how they felt the assault affected their close relationships, and how they evaluated their current state of recovery. The results for male and female incest groups were similar in revealing great difficulty in coping and in having adult close relationships. These two groups showed more continuing lack of resolution than did the female nonfamilial survivors. The male group of incest survivors showed the greatest overall difficulty. The findings are discussed in terms of the roles of searching for meaning via account-making and confiding as ways of dealing with long-term, major Stressors in people's lives.     

Business Development Capabilities in Information Technology SMEs in a Regional Economy: An Exploratory Study

“Business development” is a corporate entrepreneurial capability (or competence) that has emerged in the Information Technology industry to support that industry’s practice of co-creation of value with customers and complementors. As a set of practices that link the firm’s value creating processes with its external environment, business development capabilities are a key factor in the success of IT SMEs. This article examines business development functions and business developer attributes in SMEs in the Information Technology Industry in Eastern Canada. The principal business development functions are finding profitable opportunities in business networks, developing and maintaining partnerships, providing support for new product development, and recognizing and responding to customer needs. The regional market and export markets require different business development capabilities.     

Gender mainstreaming and the framing of women's rights in Europe: The contribution of the Council of Europe

Drawing on published materials from the Committee of Ministers, Assembly and expert working groups of the Council of Europe, this paper investigates the distinctive contribution made to the framing of women's rights over the last two decades by this regional organisation, which recent studies of the `Europeanisation' of public policies have largely neglected. Elements of congruence are identified between the major mobilising themes of second wave feminism and the Council's emphasis on protecting individual rights, and its sensitivity to the incompleteness and shortcomings of `actually existing' democratic institutions and practices. The relative openness of its agenda-setting processes is also underlined. The Council's flag ship policies for women are shown to have centred since the mid-1980s on a `politics of presence' frame and the (contested) concept of `parity democracy', and the tensions between these and the more recent turn to gender mainstreaming are explored. But the paper also points to the Council's role in diffusing into the E.U. governance arena women's claims to equal participation and presence in the policy process, and notes recent French and U.K. legislation as testifying to the continuing salience of these claims at the national level.     

A Model of Learned Implementation

The majority of the literature concerning the implementation of public policy assumes that public managers can carry out new policy initiatives regardless of the behavioural, cognitive or technical demands that the introduction of such policies may make upon them. There has been a tendency to assume that managers actually have the detailed technical knowledge by which to enact such new policies. The paper proposes that in effect, public managers have to learn a range of often new and detailed techniques in order to implement what are often ambiguous policy directives. Drawing on data gathered from the introduction of capital investment appraisal in the British National Health Service, a model of Learned Implementation is presented that describes one way in which public managers can learn to enact new policy initiatives. Using a mix of six organizational processes and variables, the model demonstrates how learning occurs and is used to solve the problems that are inherent in the introduction of new policy initiatives. The model further describes how the managers routinize these solutions into job tasks and procedures and hence a policy initiative is operationalized. The paper concludes with a discussion about the difficulties of predicting the operational consequences of new policy initiatives and raises questions about knowledge, ability and capability in the implementation of public policy.     

Police psychology: The influence of Daubert and its progeny

In the current legal atmosphere, any practicing professionals, including police psychologists, may expect to have their decisions challenged in court. If such a challenge is not met, it may have a disastrous financial and reputational impact for both the psychologist (and other expert consultant) and the employer or contractor by whom the psychologist has been retained. The rules for expert witness qualification throughout the nation have been very strongly effected by the introduction of the Federal Rules of Evidence in 1975 and subsequent case law, particularly theDaubert, Joiner, andKumho Tire Supreme Court decisions. This article examines the history of the development of theDaubert Standard and proposes principles for potential expert witnesses in order to minimize the likelihood of aversive consequences, such as disqualification or malpractice accusations. Authors' Note: Cary Rostow, Ph.D., is president of Matrix, Inc., Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and is in private practice in Baton Rouge. He holds a Diplomate in Police and Criminal Psychology from the Society for Police and Criminal Psychology. Robert Davis, Ph.D., is executive vicepresident and director of science, research, and development, for Matrix, Inc., and has a private practice in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He holds a Diplomate from the Society for Police and Criminal Psychology. Judith Levy, Ph.D., is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Matrix, Inc.     

Review Symposium: Interdisciplinary Readings of Ari Z. Bryen's Violence in Roman Egypt: A Study in Legal Interpretation—Introduction

Bryen, Ari Z. 2013 . Violence in Roman Egypt: A Study in Legal Interpretation . Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Pp. 376. $75.00 cloth; $75.00 eBook.     

Working at the intersection—a story from Australia

Conceived by nurses in the hospital of a Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut, and inspired by Norwegian People's Aid, the international aid agency of the Australian trade unions was designed to give a genuine material base to solidarity with national liberation struggles. Bridging the difficult division in Australian labour politics between the Catholic right and the social democratic and pro‐Moscow lefts, Australian People for Health, Education and Development Abroad (now Union Aid Abroad APHEDA) was able to channel funds from unions and the Australian government to agriculture, health, and vocational training projects in many countries in the South. Unlike most counterpart organisations in Europe and the USA, its earlier partners were rarely trade unions. Only recently has APHEDA directly supported trade union training in Cambodia, East Timor, and Indonesia, under pressure from Australian unions, who see workers' rights in neighbouring countries as crucial to their own fate. Yet unions in advanced capitalist countries don't spontaneously understand the humanitarian and development needs of countries, such as Papua New Guinea, where waged workers are a small minority of the population. Unionisation is only one part of the solution. The April 2000 Durban congress of the ICFTU called for trade unions to ‘organise the unorganised’, such as informal‐sector workers, and to build alliances with NGOs and civil society around shared values. As a trade union NGO, APHEDA is located in the middle of a challenging intersection. Mandated to educate Australian workers on globalisation issues, APHEDA finds itself often more partisan than other international development NGOs in Australia, sometimes more circumspect. With attacks on union rights and the increasing share of the Australian aid budget delivered through private companies, APHEDA faces decisions about its independence, alliances, direction, and sustainability.