Risk,responsibility and roles redefined: is counterterrorism a corporate responsibility?

This article discusses the role of the private company in the fight against terrorism. It argues that the private company has become politically important to counterterrorism efforts, but the economic logic guiding the risk thinking of private companies is hardly compatible with the aim of providing national security. By examining whether and in what manner the risk of terrorism is considered a corporate responsibility, the article seeks to answer whether and how the political role ascribed to the company finds any resonance in the risk practice of private companies. The article approaches this question by examining how Danish food and infrastructural companies conceptualize the relationship between terrorism risks and corporate responsibility. It demonstrates that a distinction between safety and security discursively facilitates an exclusion of national security concerns from the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and thereby works to deresponsibilitize the company in the fight against terrorism.     

Measuring the Effectiveness of New Approaches to Housing Support Policy for Persons with Disabilities

Housing support policy for persons with disabilities who require access to 24‐hour formal or informal support is changing throughout Australia. This is consistent with international trends including: independent living in generic housing; facilitating choices about where and with whom people live; individualised home‐based support; and community integration. Are these trends leading to policies that are effective in the Australian context? This article presents a framework for analysing the effectiveness of new approaches to housing support using a rights perspective. The framework consists of four domains: client outcomes; administrative systems; service viability; and coordination between formal and informal carers. Applying the framework to six case studies found that they all aim to foster independence, while providing effective individualised, holistic housing support.     

Pragmatic internationalism: public opinion on South Africa's role in the world

This report of a public opinion survey on South Africa’s foreign policy did not attempt to gauge South Africans’ knowledge about specific issues in international politics, but rather their underlying attitudes, specifically their foreign policy postures. After providing a brief overview of the scholarly debates about the role of public opinion in foreign policy analysis, we contextualise the nature and methodological approach of the survey. Thereafter we organise the article according to three key themes that illuminate ‘ordinary’ South Africans’ foreign policy postures and how South Africans view their country’s international identity. These themes include, first, debates about what the purpose of our foreign policy should be; second, the country’s international role; and third, who South Africans consider to be our allies and role models. Finally, we distil possible patterns emerging from the survey into a posture that we relate to two concepts: ‘pragmatic internationalism’, and a ‘middle power role’.     

Macro versus micro remedies for alienation in the workplace

Manifestations of alienation are ubiquitous in modern society and are not limited to the workplace. The paradigm of alienation as delineated by Karl Marx is a valuable tool for understanding this phenomenon at societal and organizational levels. In addition, comprehension of this model can assist decision-makers in formulating better diagnoses and more effective solutions.

A review of the major points of Marx's three forms of alienation is described as a basis for examining the manifestations of alienation in society and the workplace. Subsequently, the author indicates societal solutions offered by selected scholars.

In examining the problem of estrangement in the workplace, it is clear that managers could identify the forces causing alienation more precisely through an understanding of Marx's paradigm. This knowledge would enable managers to select appropriate remedies to ameliorate the condition.

What the workers want most, as more than 100 studies in the past 20 years show, is to become masters of their immediate environments and to feel that their work and they themselves are important--the twin ingredients of self-esteem. Workers recognize that some of the dirty jobs can be transformed only into the merely tolerable, but the most oppressive features of work are felt to be avoidable: constant supervision and coercion, lack of variety, monotony, meaningless tasks, and isolation. An increasing number of workers want more autonomy in tackling their tasks, greater opportunity for increasing their skills, rewards that are directly connected to the intrinsic aspects of work, and greater participation in the design of work and the formulation of their tasks.

--Work in America