Organizational and Occupational Embeddedness of Federal Law Enforcement Personnel

Purpose The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships among identification, embeddedness, and turnover intentions at the organizational and occupational levels. Design/methodology/approach—Over 1,100 members of the United States Air Force Office of Special Investigations completed an on-line survey. The sample included Agents and staff who were officers, enlisted, and civilians. Findings Measures of fit, sacrifice, and links were positively related to organizational embeddedness. Organizational and occupational embeddedness were negatively related to turnover intentions. Organizational and occupational identification were negatively related to turnover intentions. Embeddedness fully mediated the relationship between identification and turnover intentions at the organizational level and partially mediated the relationship between identification and turnover intentions at the occupational level. Implications Turnover can be expensive in organizations where training costs are high. Understanding embeddedness may help practitioners reduce turnover costs. Combining models of embeddedness and identification can help researchers understand the mechanisms by which employees are rooted in organizations, and organizations are rooted in employees. Originality/value This paper is one of very few papers that have examined job embeddedness in law enforcement organizations, or occupational embeddedness in any organization. This is one of the first studies to examine the relationships among identification, embeddedness and turnover intentions. The paper demonstrated the value of adding identification to the job embeddedness model.     

Recommendations for an Effective 2008 Transition

In response to Martha Joynt Kumar's essay on maximizing presidential transitions while minimizing hazards, this essay presents additional practical recommendations, framed within the context of the upcoming presidential transition.     

Trade Liberalisation and the Australian Labor Party

The three most substantial decisions to reduce Australia's trade barriers — in 1973, 1988 and 1991 — were made by Labor Governments. Labor's policy shift preceded the conversion of social democratic parties in other countries to trade liberalisation. To understand why this was so, it is necessary to consider trade policy as being shaped by more than interest groups and political institutions. Drawing on interviews with the main political figures, including Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and John Button, this article explores why the intellectual arguments for free trade had such a powerful impact on Labor's leadership, and how those leaders managed to implement major tariff cuts, while largely maintaining party unity.     

Gender impact assessment in microfinance and microenterprise: why and how

This article discusses the reasons for conducting gender impact assessment in microfinance and microenterprise. Although women are increasingly being targeted in microfinance and microenterprise projects, this does not necessarily mean that gender relations are being taken into account. Rather, targeting women raises a host of questions about the context in which women are operating their businesses or handling finance. Assessing gender impact in microfinance and microenterprise can help answer the questions in order to understand whether women are able to use the services and make the anticipated improvements in their livelihoods. Moreover, several approaches are suggested: 1) establish a gender baseline; 2) consider the potential impacts of the project on gender relations; 3) establish the information and indicators required; and 4) collect and analyze the data using tools and techniques appropriate to the task. However, in the context of gender relations there remains much ground, which often cannot be openly discussed. The discussion of how people organize their financial and economic affairs inside the household is usually a delicate area. Hence, it is suggested that such matters should be handled very carefully and to consider the composition and dynamics of the research team itself.     

Jail drug and alcohol treatment program reduces recidivism in nonviolent offenders: a longitudinal study of Monroe County, New York's, Jail Treatment Drug and Alcohol Program

Substance abuse treatment has become the new fashion for reducing recidivism among inmates. But the question is, does this work? Various studies have been done tracking the same cohort of inmates over time to assess the validity of treatment. This study assesses one treatment program's success over 5 years to determine if drug and alcohol treatment reduces recidivism among nonviolent, short-term (sentence of less than a year) inmates. Monroe County's drug treatment program demonstrates that for 1 year after receiving the treatment, three different cohorts of nonviolent, short-term inmates (1995, 1998, and 2000) were found to be substantially less likely to be recidivists than control group inmates.     

Ethanol formation in unadulterated postmortem tissues

During the investigation of aviation accidents, postmortem samples obtained from fatal accident victims are submitted to the FAA's Civil Aerospace Medical Institute (CAMI) for toxicological analysis. During toxicological evaluations, ethanol analysis is performed on all cases. Many species of bacteria, yeast, and fungi have the ability to produce ethanol and other volatile organic compounds in postmortem specimens. The potential for postmortem ethanol formation complicates the interpretation of ethanol-positive results from accident victims. Therefore, the prevention of ethanol formation at all steps following specimen collection is a priority. Sodium fluoride is the most commonly used preservative for postmortem specimens. Several studies have been published detailing the effectiveness of sodium fluoride for the prevention of ethanol formation in blood and urine specimens; however, our laboratory receives blood or urine in approximately 70% of cases. Thus, we frequently rely on tissue specimens for ethanol analysis. The postmortem tissue specimens received by our laboratory have generally been subjected to severe trauma and may have been exposed to numerous microbial species capable of ethanol production. With this in mind, we designed an experiment utilizing unadulterated tissue specimens obtained from aviation accident victims to determine the effectiveness of sodium fluoride at various storage temperatures for the prevention of microbial ethanol formation. We found that without preservative, specimens stored at 4 degrees C for 96 h showed an increase in ethanol concentration ranging from 22 to 75 mg/hg (average 42 +/- 15 mg/hg). At 25 degrees C, these same specimens showed an increase ranging from 19 to 84 mg/hg (average 45 +/- 22 mg/hg). With the addition of 1.00% sodium fluoride, there was no significant increase in ethanol concentration at either temperature.