Do Australian public sector employees have the type of culture they want in the era of new public management?

New public management theory proposes that public sector organisations should be managed more like private sector organisations. It is therefore expected that public sector managers will have preferences for an organisational culture that will reflect the culture of private sector organisations, with an external rather than internal orientation. The current research investigated the idea that managers' perceptions of ideal organisational culture would be different to the bureaucratic model of culture (internally oriented), which has traditionally been associated with public sector organisations. Responses to a competing values culture inventory were received from 925 public sector employees. Results indicated that the bureaucratic model is still pervasive; however, managers prefer a culture that is more external, and less control focussed, as expected. Lower level employees expressed a desire for a culture that emphasised human relations values.     

The Perils of Pregnancy Ferguson v. City of Charleston

The United States Supreme Court, in its decision Ferguson v. City of Charleston,ruled that to conduct drug tests on pregnant women in public hospitals and to share that information with the police without obtaining a search warrant amounted to a violation of the women's constitutional rights under the Fourth Amendment. Set within the political context of public policy designed to monitor the activities of pregnant women and the ongoing incidence of prosecutions for ‘foetal abuse’,this note shows how the Supreme Court’s decision, while on the one hand vindicating the rights of pregnant women to be free from unlawful searches upon their person, does not definitively determine the important question of the extent to which the state may regulate women’s behaviour during pregnancy. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Social support and self-esteem in adolescence

This study assessed contingencies in the effect of social support from parents and friends on adolescent self-esteem. Questionnaires were administered to 76 Israeli adolescents regarding self-esteem, stressful life events, and perceived level of support from mother, father, and friends. Maternal support had a strong effect on self-esteem. Aid from friends was influential primarily when that of mothers was absent. Paternal support had little effect, once other support sources were controlled. Despite the negative influence of stress on self-esteem, support and stress had no interactive effects. These findings, consistent with attachment theory and social provision theories, were contrary to cross-pressure or separate world models of peer/parent influence.He received his doctorate in Educational Psychology from University of California at Los Angeles. His current research interests involve stress, coping, and social support in childhood and adolescence, as well as factors bearing on interethnic relations in the Israeli classroom.where she is working on her doctorate in social psychology from Bar Ilan. Her research addresses resilience in early and middle adulthood.Received her doctorate in Clinical Psychology from The Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She studies ego development and identity across the life span, the transition to parenthood, and stress and coping.     

A ‘Life-Style Choice’ or a Philosophical Belief?: The Argument for Veganism and Vegetarianism to be a Protected Philosophical Belief and the Position in England and Wales

Liverpool Law Review - The recent judgment in Casamitjana Costa v The League Against Cruel Sports in England and Wales held that ethical veganism was a protected philosophical belief under...     

Transactional Associations between Children’s Socioemotional Difficulties and Parental Aggression toward the Child over a Ten-Year Period in a Lower-Income Population

This study examined the transactional effects of parental physical and verbal aggression and children’s externalizing (EP) and internalizing problems (IP) from early school age to adolescence in lower-income community sample using a multi-informant perspective. Mother-child dyads (n?=?175) from urban low socioeconomic backgrounds that are part of the Concordia Longitudinal Research Project, a prospective intergenerational study, participated. Children’s EP and IP were assessed by mothers and teachers at ages 6–8, 9–11, and 13–17-years-old (Child Behavior Checklist). Mothers also self-reported physical and verbal aggression toward their child (Conflict Tactics Scales Parent-Child). Results from cross-lagged analyses with mothers’ reports of EP and IP revealed a transactional process with EP and physical aggression, and a child-driven effect with IP and verbal aggression. EP at 6–8-years-old were associated with increased physical aggression at 9–11 years of age, that in turn were associated with increased EP in adolescence. IP at 6–8 years old were associated with increased verbal aggression at 9–11 years. Some effects were identified when using teachers’ reports of socioemotional difficulties, including a transactional process from verbal aggression at 6–8 years old, to increased EP at 9–11 years, to increased physical aggression at 13–17 years. Overall, parent-driven and child-driven effects were present, but results differed across informants and behaviour problem types. These results have important implications for research and intervention that are discussed in light of the developmental psychopathology and transactional models of development.

     

Driving Development from Below: The Advantages and Limitations of Vernacular Politics in the Bolivian Altiplano

Anthropologists studying the Andean community politics have increasingly emphasised the role of pragmatic, informal ‘vernacular’ political strategies in achieving material and political empowerment of the poor. However, while the concept of vernacular politics marks an advancement over binary and often polarised discussions of the role of local communities in development processes, studies have not fully explored the full range of implications of vernacular strategies on development processes. While researchers have demonstrated the substantial agency that local community actors have to influence development processes, the extent to which this influence effectively resists or reinforces the logic of public policy implementation has not been studied. This article explores the techniques used by rural communities in their interactions with public institutions in rural Bolivia. It shows that community organisations' vernacular political strategies have mixed outcomes: on the one hand, they allow the rural poor to assert their own agendas vis‐à‐vis the state so that they can benefit from public spending, while on the other hand, their tactics have the potential to entrench the influence of local power brokers and perpetuate inefficient uses of public funds. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Transformative Women,Problem‐Solving Men? Not Quite: Gender and Mediators' Perceptions of Mediation

A large field study examined female and male mediators' perceptions of their jobs, looking in particular at their attitudes toward mediation styles lying on the continuum between instrumental and transformative. Based on scholarship on gender and negotiation literature that has portrayed women as more interpersonal and somewhat less task oriented than men, we expected female mediators to be more transformative and less instrumental in their practice than their male peers. Our study was both qualitative and quantitative: we formulated the content of twenty in‐depth interviews into an extensive questionnaire, answered by a representative sample of 189 Israeli mediators. Compared with their male counterparts, we found female mediators to be more transformative, but no less instrumental, in their view of mediation's goals and orientation. They were also somewhat more facilitative in preferred style, while male mediators were somewhat more directive. We also found additional intriguing gender differences, including that women mediators reported higher job satisfaction than did male mediators, but they also displayed a greater readiness to perceive failure in mediation.     

Adults Usually Believe Young Children: The Influence of Eliciting Questions and Suggestibility Presentations on Perceptions of Children’s Disclosures

Do people realize the danger of asking misinformed children yes–no questions? Study 1 confirmed that disclosures children made during free recall in an earlier suggestibility study were more accurate than disclosures following “yes” responses to yes–no questions, which in turn were more accurate than disclosures following “no” responses. In Studies 2 and 3, college students watched interviews of children and judged the veracity of these three disclosure patterns. Participants generally believed false reports representing the first two patterns, although watching expert testimony that included a videotaped example of a false report reduced trust in prompted disclosures. Results document the need to inform forensic decision-makers about the circumstances associated with erroneous responses to yes–no questions.     

The lives and crimes of African-American women on death row: a case study

Few criminal justice topics have garnered as much attention as capital punishment. This voluminous literature ranges from constitutional and procedural issues to race issues and gender issues. While the intellectual and legal community has paid a great deal of attention to the role of race in capital punishment, as well as the role of gender in capital punishment, the extant literature is lacking with regard to African-American women and the death penalty. To be clear, the lack of literature is not because there are no African-American women on death row. This article attempts to fill a void in the capital punishment literature through a qualitative analysis that explores the lives and crimes of African-American women on death row.

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