Alliance supervision to enhance client outcomes

Clinical supervision has traditionally been considered an important part of training and the professional development of therapists, being rated highly in the experience of trainees as well as practitioners in the field (Orlinsky, Botermans, & Ronnestad, 2001; Steven, Goodyear, & Robertson, 1998). However, the evidence base for any supervision approach improving outcomes with clients is lacking (Bambling, & King, 2000). In this chapter an alternate non‐approach bound model of supervision is presented that has preliminary evidence for enhancing client outcomes in brief psychological treatment. The focus of this Three‐Stage Alliance Supervision (TSAS) prioritises the interpersonal process of counselling as an independent factor as well as the core construct through which all technical interventions should be given. Below is a basic introduction to the supervision model used in the first empirical investigation of supervision and client outcome (Bambling, King, Raue, Schweitzer, & Lambert 2006). While this chapter does not constitute the supervision manual it should provide the reader with sufficient knowledge to adopt an alliance focus in their supervision practice.

Exploration and exploitation : the interplay between knowledge and continuous innovation

In rapidly changing environments, organisations require dynamic capabilities to integrate, build and reconfigure resources and competencies to achieve continuous innovation. Although tangible resources are important to promoting the firm’s ability to act, capabilities fundamentally rest in the knowledge created and accumulated by the firm through human capital, organisational routines, processes, practices and norms. The exploration for new ideas, technologies and knowledge – to one side – and – on the other one – the exploitation of existing and new knowledge is essential for continuous innovation. Firms need to decide how best to allocate their scarce resources for both activities and at the same time build dynamic capabilities to keep up with changing market conditions. This in turn, is influenced by the absorptive capacity of the firm to assimilate knowledge. This paper presents a case study that investigates the sources of knowledge in an engineering firm in Australia, and how it is organised and processed. As information pervades the firm from both internal and external sources, individuals integrate knowledge using both exploration and exploitation approaches. The findings illustrate that absorptive capacity can encourage greater leverage for exploration potential leading to radical innovation; and reconfiguring exploitable knowledge for incremental improvements. This study provides an insight for managers in quest of improving knowledge strategies and continuous innovation. It also makes significant theoretical contributions to the literature through extending the concepts of

Curtains and carnality : processural seductions in eighteenth century text and space

Libertine erotic novellas included a number of seductive descriptions of unfolding spaces often seen through the eyes of a narrator. Instructional volumes such as Point de lendermain by Vivant Denon (1777) aimed at the sexual education of young women and the titillation of men also followed suit. Similarly architectural theory such as Le Camus de Mézières’, The Genius of Architecture (1780) also promoted the sensuous and seductive aspects of surfaces and spatial arrangements. In the erotic settings of the cabinet, descriptions of curtains generate as much arousal as the outline of a naked body, and for some players it is the space that is desired above their lover.

Why do poor people perceive poor neighbourhoods? : the role of objective neighbourhood features and psychosocial factors

Compared to people with a high socioeconomic status, those with a lower socioeconomic status are more likely to perceive their neighbourhood as unattractive and unsafe, which is associated with their lower levels of physical activity. Agreement between objective and perceived environmental factors is often found to be moderate or low, so it is questionable to what extent ‘creating supportive neighbourhoods’ would change neighbourhood perceptions. This study among residents (N=814) of fourteen neighbourhoods in the city of Eindhoven (the Netherlands), investigated to what extent socioeconomic differences in perceived neighbourhood safety and perceived neighbourhood attractiveness can be explained by five domains of objective neighbourhood features (i.e. design, traffic safety, social safety, aesthetics, and destinations), and to what extent other factors may play a role. Unfavourable neighbourhood perceptions of low socioeconomic groups partly reflected their actual less aesthetic and less safe neighbourhoods, and partly their perceptions of low social neighbourhood cohesion and adverse psychosocial circumstances.