Beyond Cognition: Affective Leadership and Emotional Labor

How do the concepts of emotional labor and artful affect translate into our understanding of leadership? Where would one find affective leadership in practice? To address these questions, the workdays of civil servants are examined. Based on interviews and focus groups, the authors set forth in their own words how social workers, 911 operators, corrections officials, detectives, and child guardians experience their work. These interviews reveal the centrality of emotion work in the service exchange and underscore affective leadership in practice. The authors conclude that the most important challenge facing public administrators is not to make work more efficient but to make it more humane and caring. Affective leadership, and recognition of the centrality of emotional labor therein, are the means by which this approach is championed.     

TRADE‐OFFS IN FORMULATING A CONSISTENT NATIONAL POLICY ON ADOPTION*

Just as the courts must consider the trade‐off between the best interest of the child and parental rights in involuntary termination of parental rights, policy on international adoption must consider the trade‐offs between the best interest of the child and the long‐term interests of the nation. We argue that countries that suspend international adoptions do not maximize social welfare. A consistent national policy to maximize the well‐being of the children and society at large would be to devote resources today to the oversight of international adoption in accord with child protections under the Hague Convention, while at the same time developing a domestic system of care that provides for the physical and developmental needs of orphaned children in the context of permanent families.     

Restructuring mental health policy in Ontario: Deconstructing the evolving welfare state

Abstract: Ontario's mental health sector offers an insightful case study of the welfare state restructuring in which governments have engaged, having recently undergone turbulent reform involving the divestment, closure or amalgamation of nine psychiatric hospitals and a fifty per cent reduction in psychiatric beds. While premised on a shift to community‐based care, investment in the community sector has been slow to occur, increasing the risk of off‐loading vulnerable members of society to the community without appropriate supports, as occurred in previous movements of de‐institutionalization. To understand why community sector reforms have not kept pace with institutional downsizing, we analyse the process of health system restructuring to clarify the obstacles contributing to delay. These include successive arm's‐length governance processes with varying bases of authority, an absence of political will to allocate funds to the community and devolve the coordination of care to local networks, and insufficient engagement of the policy community in policy implementation. Finally, complexity ‐ including the cross‐jurisdictional nature and coordination of services on which community care relies ‐ remains an important challenge. Not only have such obstacles diminished the pace of reform and led to regional disparities in Ontario, they reflect common barriers to effective reform across most provinces. Sommaire: Le secteur de la santé mentale de I'Ontario offre une étude de cas approfondie de la reshucturation de 1'État‐providence a laquelle ont participé les gouvernements, en entreprenant récemment des réformes tumultueuses comportant le dessaisissement, la fermeture ou la fusion de neuf hôpitaux psychiatriques et une réduction de 50 % de lits en psychiatrie. Fondé sur un virage vers les soins communautaires, l'investissement dans le secteur communautaire a été lent à se matérialiser, augmentant le risque de « décharger » la responsabilité des members vulnérables de la société sur la communauté sans que celle‐ci ne dispose d'un soutien approprié, comme cela a été le cas lors des précédents mouvements de désinstitutionnalisation. Pour comprendre les raisons pour laquelles les réformes du secteur communautaire n'ont pas suivi le rythme de la réduction des effectifs dans les établissements, nous analysons le processus de restructuration du système de la santé pour faire la Iumiére sur les obstacles qui ont contribué au délai. Ceux‐ci comprennent des processus du gouvernance successifs et indépendants avec des bases d'autorité variables; une absence de volonté politique d'allouer des fonds à la communauté et de déléguer le contrôle à des autorités régionales; et l'engagement insuffisant du milieu politique en ce qui concerne la mise en Ceuvre des politiques. Enfin, la cornplexité, y compris la nature inter‐organisationnelle et la coordination des services sur lesquels comptent les soins communautaires, demeure un défi important. Non seulement de tels obstacles ont ralenti le rythme de la réformes et conduit à des disparités régionales en Ontario, mais ils reflètent aussi des obstacles communs à une réforme efficace dans la plupart des provinces.     

FaSTR DNA: A new expert system for forensic DNA analysis

The automation of DNA profile analysis of reference and crime samples continues to gain pace driven in part by a realisation by the criminal justice system of the positive impact DNA technology can have in aiding in the solution of crime and the apprehension of suspects. Expert systems to automate the profile analysis component of the process are beginning to be developed. In this paper, we report the validation of a new expert system FaSTR DNA, an expert system suitable for the analysis of DNA profiles from single source reference samples and from crime samples. We compare the performance of FaSTR DNA with that of other equivalent systems, GeneMapper™ ID v3.2 (Applied Biosystems, Foster City, CA) and FSS-i³ v4 (The Forensic Science Service^® DNA expert System Suite FSS-i³, Forensic Science Service, Birmingham, UK) with GeneScan^® Analysis v3.7/Genotyper^® v3.7 software (Applied Biosystems, Foster City, CA, USA) with manual review. We have shown that FaSTR DNA provides an alternative solution to automating DNA profile analysis and is appropriate for implementation into forensic laboratories. The FaSTR DNA system was demonstrated to be comparable in performance to that of GeneMapper™ ID v3.2 and superior to that of FSS-i³ v4 for the analysis of DNA profiles from crime samples.     

Outsourcing Oversight: A Comparison of Monitoring for In-House and Contracted Services

The public sector contracting literature has long argued that outsourced services need to be and, in fact, are subject to a more elevated level of scrutiny compared to internally delivered services. Recently, the performance measurement and management literature has suggested that the twin themes of accountability and results have altered the management landscape at all levels of government. By focusing on performance monitoring, the implication is that monitoring levels for internally provided services should more closely approximate those for contracted services. The analysis provided here yields empirical comparisons of how governments monitor the same service provided in-house and contracted out. We find evidence that services provided internally by a government's own employees are indeed monitored intensively by the contracting government, with levels of monitoring nearly as high as those for services contracted out to for-profit providers. In contrast, however, we find strong evidence that performance monitoring by the contracting government does not extend to nonprofit and other governmental service providers, each of which is monitored much less intensively than when comparable services are provided internally. For such service providers, it appears that monitoring is either outsourced along with services, or simply reduced.     

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder’s Traumatic Stressor Criterion: History, Controversy, and Clinical and Legal Implications

This paper discusses posttraumatic stress disorder’s (PTSD) traumatic stressor criterion (Criterion A) in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV). The history of the stressor criterion is detailed, including how it has changed over time in successive versions of the DSM. We discuss controversy over the stressor criterion, regarding arguments about whether it is too conservative or too liberal. Studies comparing Criterion A and non-Criterion A events in their association with PTSD are discussed, including the finding across studies that non-Criterion A events are just as (or more) likely to result in PTSD. Potential explanations to account for this finding are discussed, including presentation of solutions to Criterion A’s limitations. Finally, legal implications for Criterion A in evaluating individuals presenting with PTSD in civil and criminal cases are discussed.