Managing Racial Diversity: Matching Internal Strategies with Environmental Needs

Although demographic diversity has been of paramount concern to researchers and practitioners in public management, studies exploring managerial strategies to capitalize on and respond to the needs of diverse client populations are scarce. This article examines strategies for managing diversity as a way to buffer environmental challenges in service delivery and performance resulting from heterogeneous client demands. Findings suggest that administrators prioritize diversity efforts when faced with higher levels of regulatory violations (a performance measure). A higher percentage of black residents is associated with lower service quality. However, the effect of managerial strategies for diversity on performance is conditioned by the racial composition of the clients: as the percentage of black nursing home residents increases, diversity management efforts are associated with a lower number of regulatory violations. Similarly, at higher levels of racial heterogeneity, diversity management efforts are associated with fewer regulatory violations.     

Divergent Perspectives: Exploring a Multiple Informant Approach to Cyberbullying Victimization and Perpetration

The present research adopts a multiple informant approach to identify victims and perpetrators of cyberbullying. Similar approaches have been successfully applied in the field of traditional bullying, and they are highly relevant for studying cyberbullying as well. Three informants can provide key perspectives on cyberbullying incidents: victims, perpetrators, and bystanders. To collect data on these actors, all eighth-grade students in 11 secondary schools were invited to participate in a survey. In total 1458 respondents completed peer-nomination questions on cyberbullying involvement. The results indicated that the prevalence of cyberbullying varied depending on the type of informants that was consulted. In addition, limited overlap was observed between the reports of different informants, resulting in different profiles of victims and perpetrators, depending on the informants that identified them. In sum, different informants tended to have divergent views on cyberbullying, which has important implications. It warrants accurate reporting and critical reflection on the sources of data in cyberbullying research. Moreover, it demonstrates the need to study a more diverse set of informants to advance the understanding of cyberbullying and to enhance prevention efforts.     

LEGISLATION AND REPORTS: Copyright and Parody: Taking Backward the Gowers Review?

In 2006 the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property made a series of recommendations for reforming the intellectual property regime to better serve the interests of both consumers and industry. Among the proposed recommendations was that an exception for parody be introduced within the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. In January 2008 the Intellectual Property Office (the IPO) launched the first part of a two‐stage consultation process on exceptions to copyright. As part of that consultation process, the IPO proposed a ‘fair dealing style exception’ for parody, and sought views on whether a new exception should be introduced as well as what form it might take. In December 2009 the IPO launched the second stage of this consultation process. The second consultation document rejected the case for a new parody exception. This article considers the place of parody within the copyright regime and the objections levelled against the introduction of an exception set out within the IPO's second consultation document. It invites the IPO to reconsider its decision not to recommend the introduction of a specific exception for parody within the UK.     

Editorial

The massive influx of Russian-speaking eastern Slav groups (Russians, Belorussians, Ukranians) from the rest of the Soviet Union laid a fundamental basis for the nationality conflict and political power struggle in post-Soviet Estonia. After Estonia re-established its statehood, this conflict evolved more into one between indigenous people and immigrants, citizens and non-citizens. What deserves additional attention is the previous economically defined centre-periphery conflict in the Soviet period (the north-east of Estonia versus Leningrad) which is now transforming into a new kind of ethnic and political cleavage separating the Russian-speaking north-eastern towns from the rest of Estonian-speaking Estonia. Moreover, here ethnicity and class mesh, while ethno-cultural differences also contribute to unemployment in the north-eastern towns. The centre-periphery dichotomy in Estonia provides the preconditions for peripheral political mobilisation aiming at a more equal social participation in economic, cultural and political affairs. However, ethnic mobilisation and autonomist attempts have not yet taken the lead.     

Prerogative legislation as the paradigm of bad law-making: the Chagos Islands

Legislation made by way of the Royal Prerogative is a paradigm of bad law-making. This is examined via the case study of the British Indian Ocean Territory (Constitution) Order 2004. The Order was made without reference to a legislature and without proper scrutiny or legislative drafting. It is unclear, ambiguous and imprecise. It does not use plain language or gender-neutral language. It is deliberately inaccessible, making it extremely hard for the citizen to know its contents. In form and substance, it offends against the rule of law.     

Competency Restoration: An Examination of the Differences Between Defendants Predicted Restorable and Not Restorable to Competency

According to the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Jackson v. Indiana (1972), examiners must determine if a defendant has substantial probability of regaining competency through treatment in the foreseeable future. Previous research has indicated that, given the low base rate of defendants unable to be restored to competency, examiners are relatively poor at predicting which defendants will regain competency. Determining the characteristics of not restorable incompetent defendants and restorable incompetent defendants is a necessary first step toward improving examiners' ability to predict a defendant's likelihood of regaining competency. This study examined the competency evaluation reports of 468 defendants evaluated for competency to stand trial. Incompetent defendants significantly differed from competent defendants with regard to age, employment status, ethnicity, criminal charges, and psychiatric diagnosis. Few significant differences existed between defendants predicted restorable and those predicted not restorable by mental health examiners—the differences that did exist were related mainly to nonpsychiatric variables.     

The Role of Goal Representations,Cultural Identity,and Dispositional Optimism in the Depressive Experiences of American Indian Youth from a Northern Plains Tribe

American Indian researchers and scholars have emphasized the importance of identifying variables that promote resilience and protect against the development of psychopathology in American Indian youth. The present study examined the role of self-regulation, specifically goal characteristics (i.e., goal self-efficacy, goal specificity, intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation, and goal conflict) and dispositional optimism, as well as cultural identity and self-reported academic grades in the depressive experiences of American Indian youth from a North American plains tribe. One hundred and sixty-four participants (53 % female) completed measures of goal representations, cultural identity, dispositional optimism, academic performance, and depressive symptoms. Results supported a model in which higher goal self-efficacy, American Indian cultural identity, grade point average, and dispositional optimism each significantly predicted fewer depressive symptoms. Moreover, grade point average and goal self-efficacy had both direct and indirect (through dispositional optimism) relationships with depressive symptoms. Our findings underscore the importance of cognitive self-regulatory processes and cultural identity in the depressive experiences for these American Indian youth and may have implications for youth interventions attempting to increase resiliency and decrease risk for depressive symptoms.     

Appayyadīkṣita’s Invention of Śrīkaṇṭha’s Vedānta

Apart from his voluminous, immensely learned, and spectacularly successful contributions to the fields of Hermeneutics (Mīmā?sā), non-dualist Metaphysics (Advaita Vedānta), and poetics, the sixteenth century South Indian polymath Appayyadīk?ita is famed for reviving from obscurity the moribund ?aivite Vedānta tradition represented by the (thirteenth century?) Brahmasūtrabhā?ya of ?rīka??ha. Appayya’s voluminous commentary on this work, his ?ivārkama?idīpikā, not only reconstitutes ?rīka??ha’s system, but radically transforms it, making it into a springboard for Appayya’s own highly original critiques of standard views of Mīmā?sā and Vedānta. Appayya addresses long sections of his commentary to matters dealt with glancingly or not at all in the root text, drawing conclusions which ?rīka??ha nowhere endorses. Furthermore, the distinctive positions Appayya develops in the ?ivārkama?idīpikā feed into Appayya’s other works in ways that have so far been largely ignored by modern scholars. For example, most or all the discussions Appayya’s Pūrvottaramīmā?sāvādanak?atramālā, twenty-seven essays on scattered topics in Mīmā?sā and Vedānta, build on arguments first advanced in the ?ivārkama?idīpikā—most notably Appayya’s totally original theory of the signification of adjectives, first developed in the ?ivārkama?idīpikā, the full elaboration and defense of which takes up fully sixteen of the twenty-seven essays that make up the Pūrvottaramīmā?sāvādanak?atramālā.