Hydro-politics and hydro-power: the century-long saga of the Inga project

The proposal to build the world’s largest hydro-power project on the Congo River is a century old. This article argues that the Grand Inga project could become the political, diplomatic, and economic driver to deepening integration between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and other African countries. The Inga delays were not without benefits. Twenty-first century sensibilities ensure revision of the proposed mega-project to minimize both ecological and social harm. While colonial-era projects were configured to maximize benefits to imperialist, settler, and corporate interests, independence and democratization are the prerequisites to facilitate the broadest possible distribution of the benefits of electrification. Since some of the countries involved have hybrid regimes, further democratization, and civil society lobbying, will be necessary to mitigate the downside of its ecological and social impacts.     

Knowledge management technology in law firms: stages of growth

A law firm can be understood as a social community specializing in the speed and efficiency of creating and transferring legal knowledge. Knowledge management was first introduced to law firms in order to help them create, share and apply knowledge more effectively: information technology (IT) might well play an important role in the success of such knowledge management initiatives. In this paper, IT support for knowledge management is linked to stages of growth, with a stages‐of‐growth model proposed that consists of four stages. The first stage addresses the end‐user tools made available to knowledge workers (people to technology), while the second involves information about who knows what (people to people). The third stage concerns the information held by knowledge workers (people to documents), with information systems actually solving knowledge problems constituting the fourth and final stage (people to systems). Stages‐of‐growth models have been widely used in both organizational research and IT management research: such models have also been criticized for their lack of empirical validity. This paper develops such a survey instrument in order to test a knowledge management technology stage model empirically.     

The intergenerational transmission of welfare participation: Facts and possible causes

This article explores two methodological issues in measuring intergenerational correlations in welfare participation. First, a method is proposed that controls for differences in eligibility as well as participation. Second, the use of event history analysis allows all available information on mothers' and daughters' welfare histories to be used. The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth is used to measure the intergenerational correlation among whites, blacks, and Hispanics. Three broad conclusions emerge. First, parental participation in Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) is correlated with daughters' AFDC participation for whites and Hispanics—daughters living in households that received assistance have higher probabilities of having a child and receiving assistance in the year of first birth than similar daughters whose parents didn't participate (or participated for shorter periods). Second, parents' participation does not seem to be capturing solely the effects of low income which leads to a correlation in mothers' and daughters' eligibility. Finally, the loss of income if the parent does not participate raises the probability that the daughter will receive assistance. The effect of this income loss offsets nearly half of the participation effect for whites.