A community paradigm of organized crime

This article reviews the available empirical research on organized crime and suggests that an important dimension of that research is the close symbiosis between organized crime groups and the communities in which they operate. As such, it is hypothesized that the concept of community may be important to explaining the persistence and durability of organized crime. A community model proposed by Roland Warren, which seeks to integrate much of the sociological literature on the community, and which delineates the basic functions of the community is presented as a means of organizing the available date about organized crime and explaining organized crime’s functional and latent aspects.     

Justifications for the sharing of social science data

Starting with the premise that voluntary sharing of social science data is a desirable professional behavior, this article discusses a variety of justifications for data sharing. These justifications are found to be grounded in the scientific process itself—in the need for science that is more accurate, more open, more knowledgeable, and has more resources at its disposal. Although it is evident that the costs and benefits of data sharing are now unevenly distributed, and that primary researchers currently bear most of the burden and risks, it is argued that the adoption of a data-sharing norm in the social sciences would go a long way to remedy the imbalance. In this regard, the author supports the 1985 data-sharing recommendations put forth by the Committee on National Statistics.This article is based on a presentation at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, Washington, D.C., August 23, 1986.U.S. General Accounting Office. The views expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent the opinions or policies of the GAO.     

The Globalization and Re-localization of Material Flows: Four Phases of Food Regulation

Over three phases of regulation, the paper traces a narrow range of regulatory interest in food, focusing largely on food safety and the handling of periodic food crises. We suggest that these crises were early indications of the problems in sustaining increasingly unsustainable modes of food production through global supply chains and that United Kingdom/EU regulation acted in part as a palliative, cloaking the wider systemic disorders. We go on to suggest that, as resource pressures become increasingly apparent in world food systems, a further fourth phase of food regulation will need to pay much greater attention to the resilience, sustainability, and security of food supply.     

The futures of government human resource development

During the next decade, the effectiveness of government agencies will depend on how well they address major demographic, social, political, economic, technological, and managerial trends which affect their workforce. Human resource development can play a major role in helping agencies respond, but to do so it will have to adopt a more proactive, strategic orientation, expand and dramatically alter products and services, and develop the capacity to use new skills, technologies, and work methods. Choosing among various possible futures will demand visionary leadership in government human resource development.