Child Welfare Workers’ Perceptions of the Influence of the Organizational Environment on Permanency Decisions for Families

The findings of this study suggest that while child welfare workers are consistently distracted by competing priorities from unexpected events, most are committed, and to understand perspectives is more inclusive and may improve retention rates. Notably, while it is recognized that permanency decisions are not made in an intellectual, legal or clinical vacuum and certain traditional aspects of the bureaucratic structure do not impact decision making, this study advances the body of knowledge on child welfare decision making. Examined in this study are child welfare case workers’ perceptions of the extent to which the organizational environment influences the permanency decisions they make to reunify or terminate parental rights of children placed out-of-home. This study includes a sample of 95 child welfare social workers employed in three public child welfare agencies in the Baltimore and Washington, DC metropolitan area. It used a cross-sectional research design, employing a survey instrument to examine bureaucratic distraction, role conflict, and supervisory adequacy as contextual factors in the organizational environment's influence on permanency outcome decisions. Implications are made for child welfare policy, practice, and research.

Organizational Capability of Local Societies in Rural Development: A Comparative Study of Microfinance Organizations in Thailand and the Philippines

The importance of organizing local people for development work is widely recognized. Both governmental and non-governmental agencies have implemented various projects that have needed and encouraged collective action by people. Often, however, such projects malfunction after the outside agencies retreat from the project site, suggesting that making organizations is not the same as making a system of making organizations. The latter is essential to make rural organizations self-reliant and sustainable. This paper assumes that such a system exists in local societies and focuses on the capacity of local societies for creating and managing organizations for development. It reveals that (1) such capability differs according to the locality, (2) the difference depends on the structure of the organizations that coordinate people's social relations, and (3) the local administrative bodies define, at least partly, the organizational capability of local societies. We compare two rural societies, one in Thailand and the other in the Philippines, which show clear contrasts in both the form of microfinance organizations and the way of making these organizations.

Chapter 5 Industrial Policy, Structure, and Locations during the Transition toward a Market-oriented Economy in Myanmar

This paper examines Myanmar's industrial policy, structure, and locations during the transition from a centrally planned economy to a market-oriented one throughout the 1990s and up to the present. After the military government assumed power in 1988, it abandoned the socialist centrally planned economic system and began instituting a market-oriented one through a series of liberalization and deregulation measures, although most of which have stalled since 1997 and remain half-way implemented. Against this background, it is rather surprising that the impact of these new policies of international trade, finance, regulations, licensing and ownership requirements on industrial structure and location in Myanmar has been poorly documented and examined to date. Some key issues to understanding the impact and effectiveness of the market-oriented policies during the last two decades in Myanmar remain to be answered: Have the new trade and industrial policies changed the industrial structure and organizational behavior in Myanmar? Have they improved the performance of Myanmar's industrial sector? Have they had any impact on industry location in Myanmar? This paper reviews the series of liberalization programs implemented under the military government?the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) and the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC)?and assesses their impact on industrial structure and its spatial distribution.

Structure, tissue distribution, and chromosomal localization of the prepronociceptin gene.

Nociceptin (orphanin FQ), the newly discovered natural agonist of opioid receptor-like (ORL1) receptor, is a neuropeptide that is endowed with pronociceptive activity in vivo. Nociceptin is derived from a larger precursor, prepronociceptin (PPNOC), whose human, mouse, and rat genes we have now isolated. The PPNOC gene is highly conserved in the three species and displays organizational features that are strikingly similar to those of the genes of preproenkephalin, preprodynorphin, and preproopiomelanocortin, the precursors to endogenous opioid peptides, suggesting the four genes belong to the same family-i.e., have a common evolutionary origin. The PPNOC gene encodes a single copy of nociceptin as well as of other peptides whose sequence is strictly conserved across murine and human species; hence it is likely to be neurophysiologically significant. Northern blot analysis shows that the PPNOC gene is predominantly transcribed in the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) and, albeit weakly, in the ovary, the sole peripheral organ expressing the gene. By using a radiation hybrid cell line panel, the PPNOC gene was mapped to the short arm of human chromosome 8 (8p21), between sequence-tagged site markers WI-5833 and WI-1172, in close proximity of the locus encoding the neurofilament light chain NEFL. Analysis of yeast artificial chromosome clones belonging to the WC8.4 contig covering the 8p21 region did not allow to detect the presence of the gene on these yeast artificial chromosomes, suggesting a gap in the coverage within this contig.

The Organizational Tasks of High-Performance Gymnastic Coaches

The purpose of this study was to report the knowledge used by expert high performance gymnastic coaches in the organization of training and competition. In-depth interviews were conducted with 9 coaches who worked with male gymnasts and 8 coaches who worked with female gymnasts. Qualitative analyses showed that coaches of males and coaches of females planned training similarly, except that coaches of females appeared to emphasize esthetic and nutritional issues to a greater extent. Coaches of males revealed more concerns about the organization of gymnasts' physical conditioning. Analysis indicated that expert gymnastic coaches of males and females are constantly involved in dynamic social interactions with gymnasts, parents, and assistant coaches. Many areas of coaches' organizational work, such as dealing with the athletes' personal concerns and working with parents, are not part of the structure of coaches' training programs and emerged as crucial tasks of expert gymnastic coaches for developing elite gymnasts.

Organizational maintenance repair parts and special tools lists : truck, lift, fork, diesel engine, pneumatic-tired wheels, rough terrain, 10,000 lb. capacity, 24 in. load center, Army model MHE 199, NSN 3930-00-903-0899, Pettibone-Mulliken model RTL10 ...

Includes index.

The Relationship between Adolescent Social Network Structure and Perceptions of School Climate

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-06

The network structure of a regional tourism organization: Application of he social network theory in one region of Queensland

Regional tourism organizations (RTOs) plays a central role in planning, coordinating and marketing tourism in many areas, including Queensland, Australia. RTOs rely on interaction with a network of other organizations for their efficient functioning. This paper describes an exploratory case study that develops a method for use of social network analysis techniques to analyse the inter-organizational network in one RTO region in Queensland. Results indicate that differences exist in the structure of inter-organizational links between commercial tourism organizations and planning organizations, between tourism organizations and other sectoral clusters, and between organizations at local, regional and state levels. The results highlight areas or improvement in the role and responsibilities of RTOs in Queensland.

Organizational citizenship behavior and organizational commitment in Nepal

The present study examines the structure of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and its relation to organizational commitment in Nepal. Four-hundred and fifty employees of five Nepalese organizations filled out standardized questionnaires. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses revealed two factors of OCB, altruism and compliance, replicating Western models of extra-role behavior. Structural equation analysis showed a positive relation between affective and normative commitment on the one hand and both citizenship factors on the other. Continuance commitment was negatively related to compliance and unrelated to altruism. The findings thus confirmed the structure and usefulness of the concepts in an under-researched geographical area. Findings of the research are discussed within the Nepalese sociocultural context. © Blackwell Publishing Ltd with the Asian Association of Social Psychology and the Japanese Group Dynamics Association 2005.

Building team-based working:a practical guide to organizational transformation

Building Team-based Working is designed for use by managers and consultants who are introducing team-based working into organizations. The book synthesizes knowledge about how to build team-based organizations, focusing particularly on the psychological and social processes that can facilitate or obstruct successful teamwork. Rather than advise managers on how to build effective teams, as most books in this area tend to do, this book instead focuses on how to build organizations structured around teams. The text is divided into six sections describing the six main stages of developing team-based working in an organization. The chapters follow a common structure. Each one opens with a summary of the aims and activities relevant to that stage and concludes with a selection of appropriate support materials and tools. These materials can also be downloaded from the CD accompanying the text. The advice given is based on evidence gathered by the authors over 20 years of practical management experience, research work in organizations, and consultancy across the public, manufacturing and service sectors.

Implicit leadership theories in applied settings:factor structure, generalizability, and stability over time

The present empirical investigation had a 3-fold purpose: (a) to cross-validate L. R. Offermann, J. K. Kennedy, and P. W. Wirtz's (1994) scale of Implicit Leadership Theories (ILTs) in several organizational settings and to further provide a shorter scale of ILTs in organizations; (b) to assess the generalizability of ILTs across different employee groups, and (c) to evaluate ILTs' change over time. Two independent samples were used for the scale validation (N 1 = 500 and N 2 = 439). A 6-factor structure (Sensitivity, Intelligence, Dedication, Dynamism, Tyranny, and Masculinity) was found to most accurately represent ILTs in organizational settings. Regarding the generalizability of ILTs, although the 6-factor structure was consistent across different employee groups, there was only partial support for total factorial invariance. Finally, evaluation of gamma, beta, and alpha change provided support for ILTs' stability over time.

Organizational and textual structuring of radio news discourse in English and Arabic.

The present work studies the overall structuring of radio news discourse via investigating three metatextual/interactive functions: (1) Discourse Organizing Elements (DOEs), (2) Attribution and (3) Sentential and Nominal Background Information (SBI & NBI). An extended corpus of about 73,000 words from BBC and Radio Damascus news is used to study DOEs and a restricted corpus of 38,000 words for Attribution and S & NBI. A situational approach is adopted to assess the influence of factors such as medium and audience on these functions and their frequence. It is found that: (1) DOEs are organizational and their frequency is determined by length of text; (2) Attribution Function in accordance with the editor's strategy and its frequency is audience sensitive; and (3) BI provides background information and is determined by audience and news topics. Secondly, the salient grammatical elements in DOEs are discourse deictic demonstratives, address pronouns and nouns referring to `the news'. Attribution is realized in reporting/reported clauses, and BI in a sentence, a clause or a nominal group. Thirdly, DOEs establish a hierarchy of (1) news, (2) summary/expansion and (3) item: including topic introduction and details. While Attribution is generally, and SBI solely, a function of detailing, NBI and proper names are generally a function of summary and topic introduction. Being primarily addressed to audience and referring metatextually, the functions investigated support Sinclair's interactive and autonomous planes of discourse. They also shed light on the part(s) of the linguistic system which realize the metatextual/interactive function. Strictly, `discourse structure' inevitably involves a rank-scale; but news discourse also shows a convention of item `listing'. Hence only within the boundary of variety (ultimately interpreted across language and in its situation) can textual functions and discourse structure be studied. Finally, interlingual variety study provides invaluable insights into a level of translation that goes beyond matching grammatical systems or situational factors, an interpretive level which has to be described in linguistic analysis of translation data.

Organizational weaknesses of the Greek Manufacturing industry: a case study of footwear

This thesis is concerned with those factors influencing the present performance of Greek manufacturing industry and the ways in which improvements could be realized after Greece joins European Communities..Detailed examination is made of the Greek footwear industry and its problems as the country emerges from a semi developed state to a position approaching parity with Western European countries. Particular attention is paid to the technology employed, capital deployment, industrial structure and managerial performance. In order to illustrate the path of development of the Greek footwear industry a comparison is undertaken with the British footwear industry which has a longer history and has employed larger scale methods since the 19th century. This comparison illustrates the opportunities and pitfalls likely to face the Greek industry in coming years. One section of the thesis is also concerned with trading relationships between the U.K. and Greece and identifies the market opportunities available to Greek industrialists. A detailed analysis is undertaken of the available secondary sources of information particularly official statistical data relating to production, capital expenditure, imports and exports, employment and consumption. Use is also made of various surveys of trade and production in footwear undertaken by trade associations and other bodies. The field research study has been largely directed towards practicing managers in companies of various size and is concerned with exposing standards of management and of relating efficiency to organization structure. The thesis is also concerned with the many wide issues affecting the development of manufacturing industry in Greece including the influence of social structure and social institutions, the values of modern Greek society and the complex organizational problems which Greece needs to overcome in order to take its place amongst the more established states of Europe.

Schizophrenic Public Administration Reform in Hungary. Tension between anti-NPM systemic and pro-NPM organizational reforms

The aim of this paper is to shed the light on the relationship between New Public Management and Hungary’s Zoltán Magyary Public Administration Development Programme. As will be shown, the Magyary Programme has a dual structure. The systemic reforms run counter to the NPM philosophy because the main goal is the centralization of public administration, while NPM clearly advocates decentralization. At the same time, reform proposals on the organizational level conform to NPM. The inconsistencies in the Magyary Programme itself and the probable political and organizational resistance towards its proposals could delay the introduction of reforms on the organizational level.