Massacre at Waco: Biker Violence and Police Overreaction

The research is a qualitative content analyis of articles identified through Google alerts and Proquest searches one year before and two years after the deadliest biker violence in US history. The police biker shootout left 9 dead--four by police--and 18 wounded. The arrest of 177 persons--173 male and 4 females--from a variety of motorcycle clubs appears to be an overeacten by the police. The research examines the public policy issue: Law enforcement authorities made a Type 1 error during the mass arrests thereby misclassifying many of those arrested, causing severe consequences to innocent persons and committing numerous civil rights violations.     

Peasant essentialism and the Agrarian question in the Colombian Andes

Our Daily Bread: The Peasant Question and Family Farming in the Colombian Andes, by Nola Reinhardt. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1988. Pp.xv + 308. US$35.

This review article considers a number of problems which arise from an incorrect theorisation of the agrarian question. Instead of a transformation in which some peasants become small capitalists and others de facto workers, rural change is said to involve an absolute opposition: in economic terms the whole peasantry either dissolves or persists. Since the former is clearly not the case, the continued existence of peasants in Colombia is attributed by the book under review to their economic efficiency. Its essentialist framework therefore conceptualises all peasants as a uniform body of commodity producers, rather than as internally differentiated strata incorporating disparate class elements. In contrast to this neo‐populist approach, it is suggested here that capitalist peasants and de facto proletarians are indeed present — but not recognised as such ‐ in the context studied.     

The Progression from Tetra-Ethyl Lead to MTBE to Ethanol: Hidden Dangers and Unforeseen Risk

This article describes the progression of gasoline additives and the environmental and health effects of the preferred gasoline additives. It discusses the need for gasoline additives, the circumstances leading to tetra-ethyl lead becoming the first gasoline additive instead of ethanol, the regulation of automobile emissions leading to the phase-out of leaded gasoline, the introduction of oxygenates such as methyl tert-butyl ether to reduce ozone concentrations in urban areas, and the reasons for banning methyl tert-butyl ether, which resulted in ethanol becoming the preferred additive today.     

The role of authentic leadership on healthcare Street-Level Bureaucrats’ well-being during the pandemic

This study uses Conservation of Resources Theory, to explain Street-Level Bureaucrats’ (SLBs) workplace behavioural responses to threats to their well-being. We examine whether authentic leadership within street-level organisations positively impacts employee well-being by increasing SLBs’ perception of personal resources, and reducing their perceptions of work harassment. The research design comprises a survey that solicited quantitative and qualitative data from 163 healthcare SLBs working in Australian hospitals during the pandemic in April 2020. Analysis of the means indicates low levels of satisfaction with leadership and low levels of well-being for SLBs. The structural equation modelling findings show that poor leadership is associated with higher levels of work harassment and lower levels of employee well-being. Qualitative data support these findings. As healthcare workers were already listed as over-represented in the stress-related workers compensation statistics, one strategy may be to improve the level of organisational support by upskilling managers in authentic leadership behaviours with the aim of increasing their perception of support so as to increase employee well-being. This will benefit employees and their families, and the community they service.

Points for practitioners

• Street-Level Bureaucrats (SLBs) have been increasingly experiencing the public sector gap (demand outstripping supply of resources) because of the dominance of the austerity-driven managerialist paradigm.
• The recent COVID-19 crisis amplified the severity and impact of the public sector gap causing increased perceptions of work harassment and reductions in SLBs’ well-being.
• However, SLBs with high levels of Psychological Capital had a natural buffer in place to protect their well-being, and as such, they perceived less work harassment and erosion of their well-being.
• The way forward is to complement the austerity-driven managerialist paradigm in management decision-making with authentic leadership behaviours focused on maximising the well-being of SLBs and the public.