This report of the Respectful Relationships Evaluation Project has been prepared by the team from the Institute for Social Science Research (ISSR) at The University of Queensland (UQ) for the Department of Social Services (DSS). The report provides a final summary of the evaluation of projects funded by DSS' Respectful Relationships initiative in three funding rounds. DSS provides leadership in Australian Government policy and project management on issues affecting women and gender equality, family and community safety, and the delivery of women's safety initiatives. DSS, in partnership with State and Territory governments, have been responsible for the implementation of a range of initiatives aimed at reducing violence against women under the National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children 2010-2022. Respectful Relationships is a primary prevention initiative that has sought to reduce sexual assault and domestic and family violence through education.
[Extract] The new discourse of partnership, integration, and networks as new forms of governance is being widely adopted (Edwards 2001). Authors differ on the extent to which there is evidence of truly new ways of working. However there is potential for changed relationships between public sector organisations and non government organisation's (NGOs) as well as relationships between NGOs as a result of new arrangements for service provision. The Australian government's Communities for Children strategy provides an illustration of the challenges for both public sector and NGOs which arise when NGOs become funders for government of other government agencies and of other NGOs.
Information Technology (IT) outsourcing is a common practice, being adopted in many organisations in different industries and sectors of the worldwide market. Much of the research into IT outsourcing has focused on the use of IT outsourcing within private sector organisations, with less attention being paid to the use of IT outsourcing by government and the public sector. Relationships in IT outsourcing are of interest, juxtaposed against the older contracts in IT outsourcing; contracts and relationships are complementary, not substitutes. The purpose of this Study is to understand the differences between government versus private sector IT outsourcing, focusing on relationships. The researcher developed a classification of 'tendencies' in government IT outsourcing, characteristics that are more pronounced in government than in private sector IT outsourcing. Relational Exchange Theory was used to structure IT outsourcing into attributes, inherent characteristics that support the performance of the relationship (Goles and Chin, 2005). The researcher conducted an online survey, completed by government IT outsourcing managers, giving responses converted into tendency-attribute 'combinations' and analysed using statistical tests. The attributes were calculated using differing sample sizes, as some respondents abandoned the survey part-way through. Out of sixty combinations there were eighteen that were statistically significant at the 5% level. Most combinations came from Commitment, Consensus, Flexibility and Trust attributes. There are five tendencies out of ten that were strongly associated with these combinations. Some combinations appeared as if the scores have a bivariate distribution, but no clear evidence of bimodal distribution of the demographic variables was found. The low response rate to the survey was concerning; there was bias and sampling errors, there was inconsistent interpretation of the constructs, and there were respondent concerns about confidentiality. There is a need to investigate the four ...
Attracting and retaining students in science majors and professions in an on-going problem in the United States, particularly within certain demographic groups. Regularly available resources and opportunities are not equipping or motivating students to stay, so the federal government offers special funding for programs to help augment student education. This study reports on the 5-year summative evaluation results of one such program, known as a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU). This REU is an ongoing 10-week summer research internship that provides hands-on research experience and recruits and supports sophomore students who are underrepresented in science majors and professions (i.e., rural and Indigenous students). Data collected before, during, and after the program was analyzed to assess changes over the course of the program and program components that predicted those changes. A within-between-subjects MANOVA showed the program to be successful in significantly increasing knowledge of atmospheric science and intrinsic motivation to major in science while decreasing extrinsic and the absence of motivation to major in science. Unexpectedly, identification with science and self-efficacy for atmospheric science research did not change significantly, and career aspirations in research and self-efficacy for the program decreased significantly. A subsequent path analysis showed elements of the program measured in week 5 predicted changes from before to after the program. Notably, satisfaction with variables related to relationships (e.g., adviser, lab team, and cohort peers) predicted more increases than satisfaction with practical elements of the program (e.g., lodging, meal plan), whether the program was meeting expectations, and satisfaction with the experience overall. In particular, satisfaction with peer relationships demonstrated the most frequent effect. Results are interpreted through social identity theory with recommendations for the prioritization of student-scientist socialization activities within science education.
ABSTRACT: Discrimination in legal employment relationships means that an employer applies differential treatment as a result of the non-recognition of protected criteria established in the applicable legislation, with the effect of restricting or suppressing the use or exercise of employees' rights. The article analyses discrimination on the grounds of religion and belief, with reference to the European and national legal framework, and contains elements of case law on the subject. Discrimination entails imposing differentiations between employees, usually in comparable situations, but also applying the same treatment to employees, even though they have different roles in the work process, with similar effects in terms of denying them their rights. Opinions are included on the right of employers to objectively justify their conduct, the exceptions allowed to certain organizations, and the role of European courts in the evolution of the regulatory framework. KEYWORDS: discrimination, rights, criteria, religion, institutions
'Care' (or 'caring') is one of the contested concepts in the study of gender and social politics. As a concept and activity, care covers a number of different relations, actors, and institutional settings, and crosses conventional boundaries. It can pertain to family analysis, but also to labour market and welfare state analysis, to concepts and practices of work and citizenship, to issues of social inclusion and exclusion, and so forth. The article examines some of the crucial passages in the development of 'care thinking', viewing them not only as steps in a theoret-ical process, but also as the outcome of shifts in contexts. Drawing mainly upon the Western European sociological and social policy discourses, and particularly on feminist literature, the following discusses care as a public and private responsibility, as relationships of labour, love and power, as personal responsibilities and social rights, and returns once more to considering care as a feminine dilemma.
Even in the face of increasing trade wars between the world's great powers, demands for keen cultural understanding in 21st century work-life are already high and only expected to grow. Language barriers, nonverbal communication differences, diverging communication styles, unpredictable behavior, and diverging values can derail the best uni-culturally laid plans. This workshop details some of the organizational, planning, and management challenges -- as well as their emotional expressions -- that occur in cross-cultural work environments. In this workshop, we will discuss contending philosophies and strategies for cross cultural management, covering the positivist, interpretivist, and critical approaches. Participants will conduct a cross-cultural project planning simulation and reflect on lessons learned from their experience.
This Article, which explores the nature of fiduciary relationships, demonstrates that these relationships arise and function in ways that are alien to contractualist thought. While the relationships may, like marriage relationships, be part of the same genus, they are indeed members of a different species. Fiduciary relationships differ both in doctrinal structure and ethical basis. However, some contractualist writing denies one or the other of these two propostitions. This Article, therefore, aims to establish that both are in fact true. The author presents that fiduciary relationships have value and serve purposes that are largely unknown to contractualists. Furthermore, these relationships facilitate the doing of justice, promote virtue, and enhance freedom in a distinctive way.
A key rationale in older adult education is critical educational gerontology [CEG]. CEG is concerned with the centrality of politics and powers in the way that late-life education works, with its ultimate goal being the empowerment of older persons to confront the social system with a view to changing it. However, the coming of "late" and "post" modern social realities means that CEG has entered a profound intellectual and conceptual crisis. Its foundations were constructed during a time of "modern" capitalism when social inequality was structured along strict class lines, and when the principal focus of ageing-related social policy consisted in bridging families" income before and after retirement. Since then industrial societies have become increasingly characterised by more flexible forms of work organisation, an increasing breaking down of the neo-corporatist relations between state and labour, and rising levels of cultural fragmentation. For some educators, the time has come to close the lid over CEG, accept its analytical and practical obsolescence, and embrace other more relevant rationales. On the basis that retirement is far from being a uniform experience, many argue that the key goal of late-life education is to aid older persons respond to a fast changing world due to technological development and changing values. ; non peer-reviewed
The Polish political and media systems changed dramatically after the 2015 parliamentary elections. The Law and Justice Party gained power and started to restructure the conditions for political communication – journalists, press secretaries and politicians. However, despite structural and organisational changes within public service media, journalists keep working and reporting about political events. This chapter presents the relationships between Polish journalists and their political sources – both politicians and press secretaries. The interviews show a mutual dependency between politics and the press, where both sides recognise the need for formal as well as informal relationships. The nature of the relationship varies with the political climate: when the political situation becomes complicated, politicians become less accessible and press secretaries block the information flow. As a result, journalists in Poland prefer direct contact with politicians and/or other complementary sources of information. The respondents further emphasised the need for a professional relationship and adhering to professional norms. ; Go to the full book to find a version of this chapter tagged for accessibility.
Financial intermediation and bank spreads are important elements in the analysis of business cycle transmission and monetary policy. We present a simple framework that introduces lending relationships, a relevant feature of financial intermediation that has been so far neglected in the monetary economics literature, into a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with staggered prices and cost channels. Our main findings are: (i) banking spreads move countercyclically generating amplified output responses, (ii) spread movements are important for monetary policy making even when a standard Taylor rule is employed (iii) modifying the policy rule to include a banking spread adjustment improves stabilization of shocks and increases welfare when compared to rules that only respond to output gap and inflation, and finally (iv) the presence of strong lending relationships in the banking sector can lead to indeterminacy of equilibrium forcing the central bank to react to spread movements.
There's no escape: we are always in relationship. Being aware of this matters. Doing something to build constructive relationships for sustainability, matters even more.This paper considers the connection between good relationships and effective sustainability work in local government. It draws on the collective experiences of four practitioners who have worked over many years in, with or for local government and argues that a good deal of project success is contingent upon the development of positive relationships with stakeholders, contractors, communities, businesses, colleagues, partners and other agencies and agency officers.Relationships can help or hinder project process, progress and outcomes. This paper identifies some approaches for building quality relationships and uses examples to highlight these strategies. These include: recognising that developing and maintaining resilient relationships and high quality communication is a critical foundation for success; designing projects with explicit relationship outcomes; and allocating time, money and other resources to support the development of effective relationships.
In many countries, administrative supervision has grown dramatically in recent years. Administrative supervision is a form of interaction between policy makers and policy executors, aimed at improving political accountability. In this paper, the role of information and information relationships between policy making bodies, executive institutions and administrative supervisors is explored. We identify three roles of administrative supervisors: a classical (cop) role, a modern (coach) role, and a networking (director) role. Each role has requirements with respect to the information relationship, particularly in the relationship between the supervisory authority and the executive institution. In this paper, we analyze the sometimes contradictory roles of administrative supervisors and the implications for information relationships, and we indicate the consequences for practice.
This article engages the claim that narrative is crucial to humans' capacity to imagine and to know other animals. It brings together the concept of political sovereignty from Derrida, with an evaluation of emotion to analyse narratives about interspecies relationships. I begin by mapping Derrida's critique of the relationship between violence and scientific knowledge about animals (Derrida 2009: 276–304) onto recent research into relationships between people and dingoes on K'gari (Fraser Island), to delineate how violent epistemologies may underpin humans' ways of knowing other animals. I then explore the politics of the public education about dingoes on K'gari as they relate to government policies and the way the state exercises power; such state-sanctioned narratives set the discursive tone for the way people know and interact with (this) other species, and disallow other epistemologies. In contrast, creative nonfiction narrators Barry Lopez (Of Wolves and Men, 2004) and Helen Macdonald (H Is for Hawk, 2014) perform their own critiques of inaccurate and controlling narratives about, respectively, wolves and goshawks. I argue that the techniques they use—acknowledging emotion; observing animals' perceptions, relationships and agency; respecting animals' ability to resist human-imposed meanings; recognising the limits of human knowledge; and incorporating other voices—provide a framework for how creative writers may narrate other animals more ethically and more accurately.
Long distance relationships and caring at a distance may be connected with emotional and psychological exhaustion but also gratification, reward and empowerment; above all, they possess important implications in terms of social justice, equality and citizenship. The expression 'world families' (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2014) includes a heterogeneous and tension-filled set of social actors who have in common the potential to bridge traditional distinctions between public and private, centre and periphery, national and international, able-bodied and physically/cognitively impaired, heterosexual and homosexual, bypassing dichotomous ideas of inclusion/exclusion which typically characterise the concept of citizenship. These families represent a group of very different social actors, including couples of mixed cultures and ethnicities, low-paid migrant workers, skilled migrant workers, asylum seekers, refugees, distant families, etc. who challenge our culturally homogenous understanding of family and society and are defined therefore as 'pioneers of cosmopolitanism' and cultural diversity. Drawing on recent work on families, relationships, intimacies and caring for distant others and contextualising it within the specific and still unexplored context of Living Apart Together (LAT) same-sex couples, this article examines the moral, sociological and institutional geographies of these less visible chains of care and affection and their unequally entitled rights and visibility. The literature review is combined with auto-ethnographic work analysing and discussing the case of a married, same-sex, transnational, Living Apart Together (LAT) couple. This article suggests that by looking at what happens at the level of emotion-based, micro-situated interactions we can get some crucial insights into the changing nature of families, intimacies and relationships and their multiple implications in terms of social inclusion, entitlement to rights/citizenship and social change. It is a form of relational, emotion-based and micro-situated social inclusion and entitlement to rights/citizenship which is occurring, on a daily basis, in the interstices of people's interactions even when such change still meets several obstacles at the structural, political and institutional level.
