ADAPTIVE AND MALADAPTIVE RESPONSES OF MANAGERS TO CHANGING ENVIRONMENTS: A STUDY OF AUSTRALIAN PUBLIC SECTOR SENIOR EXECUTIVES

This paper examines data collected from senior executives in two Australian government agencies to identify patterns of adaptive and maladaptive responses to change in public sector environments. The conceptual categories of passive maladaptive, active maladaptive and active adaptive responses are all supported by the interview data, with half of the executives expressing predominantly active adaptive responses to external change and uncertainty and half displaying various kinds of passive and active maladaptive responses. The implications of the findings for managers as agents of organizational learning and adaptation in public sector environments are discussed.     

De facto Veto? The Parliamentary Liberal Democrats

The parliamentary party of the Liberal Democrats is a symbol of the third party's growth in recent years. As a result of successful election targeting and an improvement in electoral reach, the party has seen its number of MPs at Westminster more than triple since 1992. It has been claimed that the increase in size of the parliamentary party has been accompanied by an increase in its power, so that the parliamentarians now have a de facto power of veto over policy despite the official policy-making structures as laid out in the Liberal Democrat constitution. This article investigates the make-up of the parliamentary Liberal Democrats and their contemporary influence over policy formation, and the parliamentary party's relationship with the conference and the party leader—and especially the events leading to the change of Liberal Democrat leader in 2006—to establish the veracity of this claim.     

Up for Debate: Consultations,the Constitution and the Communications Allowance

Using the Parliamentary Communications Allowance, MP David Drew recently conducted a large scale research project into public opinion on the British Constitution. There could not have been a better time to do so. Not only are we in the wake of severe economic and political crises, but also a period of unprecedented legislative interest in the constitution. Coordinated by Ed Leighton (an undergraduate at the LSE), the project consisted of a postal survey of 43,000 households, public debates around the constituency and workshops in local schools. The response from the public was incredible, and the results both interesting and unexpected. This article will outline some of those findings and demonstrate that large scale consultations with the public are both readily achievable and warmly welcomed. That this can all be done within the budget of the Parliamentary Communications Allowance also shows that at its best this fund can be used to genuinely engage with the public.     

Legislative Professionalism and Influence on State Agencies: The Effects of Resources and Careerism

Legislative professionalization typically involves two concomitant processes: increasing institutional resources and increasing careerism among state legislators. These processes, we argue, entail different effects for legislative influence on state administrative agencies. Greater legislative resources serve to increase legislative influence, but greater political careerism among state legislators serves to decrease it. Because these two processes are normally intertwined within the process of legislative professionalization, the net effect of professionalism is uncertain, although our analysis suggests that the negative effect of careerism may outweigh the positive effect of institutional resources. These results have significant implications for the democratic responsiveness of executive branch agencies.     

The Jury Persuaded (and Not): Computer Animation in the Courtroom

In two experiments, we examined the persuasiveness of computer animation on juror decision making by comparing animation to diagrams in two mock trials—a plane crash case and a car accident case. The persuasiveness of the animation on verdicts was dependent on the case; in the plane crash case, participants rendered verdicts in favor of the side presenting the animation. In the car accident case, the animation had no effect on verdicts. The role of familiarity with the depicted scenario is discussed as a possible explanation for the differing impact of animation. Additionally, jurors' expectations about the persuasiveness of animations were discrepant with the animations' actual influence on jurors' verdicts.     

Careless with Our Democracy: Group Think and Voting Reform

The Representation of the People Act 2000 introduced what has come to be known as 'voting on demand'. In the process it paved the way for an absentee ballot system in Britain that would, in the words of the judge who heard two extraordinary electoral fraud cases in Birmingham in February and March 2005, disgrace a banana republic. Flaws in the policy making process that preceded the largely uncritical acceptance of universal access to postal votes were also exposed by failures to respond quickly to allegations of fraud and to detailed Electoral Commission recommendations aimed at improving ballot security. These failures raise serious questions about the prevalence of 'group think' in Whitehall and Westminster. The narrowness of Labour's General Election victory in votes, though not in seats, means that doubts about the integrity of Britain's voting arrangements threaten to reinforce a general loss of confidence in British politics.     

Flashpoint: An Innovative Media Literacy Intervention For High‐Risk Adolescents

This paper describes the development and formative evaluation of a media literacy, media based intervention for high‐risk adolescents. The program described, Flashpoint, was developed to (1) moderate the influence of media presentations of violence, substance abuse and prejudice on adolescents; and t (2) teach participants cognitive skills which would enable them to resist impulses to engage in behavior involving violence, substance abuse or prejudice. The evaluation described studied the pilot testing of the program with three groups of adolescents (N=33) involved in the juvenile justice system: adolescents in a diversion program (first time, nonviolent offenders); adolescents on probation; and adolescents in residential custody of the Department of Youth Services. Qualitative findings are reviewed in detail.     

MASCULINITY AND DELINQUENCY

A strong positive association between masculinity and delinquency is on important assumption in theories which explain why (1) males are more delinquent than females and (2) females are becoming increasingly delin-quent. Self-report measures obtained from 1002 junior and senior high school students from a large Southeastern city constitute the data for an examination of the first of these relationships. Factor analytic procedures were used to identify the components of masculinity: leadership, aggressive-ness, competitiveness, ambitiousness, and successfulness. Separate models of masculinity, opportunity, attachment to conventional others, and belief in the moral validity of low are constructed for status, property, and aggressive offenses. For females, masculinity has no direct effects on any type of delinquency. For males, masculinity is directly related only to status offenses. The results are inconsistent with analyses of females' delinquency that emphasize their adoption of masculine characteristics.