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The impetus for this paper was the recognition, based on recent surveys and our own experiences, that organizations face special challenges when designing and validating selection procedures for information technology (IT) workers. The history of the IT industry, the nature of IT work, and characteristics of IT workers converge to make the selection of IT workers uniquely challenging. In this paper, we identify these challenges and suggest means of addressing them. We show the advantages offered by the modern view of validation that endorses a wide spectrum of probative information relevant to establishing the job relatedness and business necessity of IT selection procedures. Finally, we identify the implications of these issues for industrial/organizational psychologists, human resource managers, and managers of IT workers.

This chapter sets out a descriptive account of the various legal claims for reparations, including the theories involved and the history of reparations lawsuits. It describes the major reparations cases, the arguments used in these cases, and the court decisions. It also discusses the evolution of legal theories for reparations as well as other attempts to secure compensation.

I examine the case law and the significant court rulings, as well as the discussion within secondary literature regarding these legal claims. I also examine other reparations advocacy approaches, including H.R. 40 and official apologies.

Reparations lawsuits have been brought against both government and private defendants, employing both tort and unjust enrichment theories. However, these suits have failed due to a variety of legal hurdles, including statutes of limitations, standing, and causation. The failure of reparations lawsuits illustrates the limitations of the legal system in addressing mass harms.

This chapter summarizes in relatively brief and generalist-accessible form the history and current status of legal claims for reparations.

Owing to the climate change, the number of flood hazards and communities at risk is expected to rise. The increasing flood risk exposure is paralleled with an understanding that hard flood defense measures should be complemented with soft sociotechnical approaches to flood management. Among other things, this involves development of a dialogue between professionals and flood-prone communities to ensure that the decisions made correspond to the peculiarities of local socioenvironmental contexts. However, in practice, establishment of such a dialogue proves to be challenging. Flood-prone communities are often treated as mere recipients of professional knowledge and their local knowledge remains underrated. Building on an illustrative case study of one rural settlement in North-West Russia, we examine how at-risk communities develop their local knowledge and put it to use as they struggle with adverse impacts of flooding, when the existing flood protection means are insufficient. Our findings showcase that local knowledge of Russian flood-prone communities is axiomatic and tacit, acquired performatively through daily interaction of local residents with their natural and sociotechnical environments. Even if unacknowledged by both the local residents and flood management professionals as a valuable asset for long-term flood management, it is local knowledge that informs local communities' practices and enables their coexistence with the treacherous waters.

Purpose – In this chapter, I present a systematic discussion of the relationship between social work (SW) and library and information science (LIS) and explore how SW can contribute to the education of LIS practitioners so that they become more than information facilitators and grow professionally to be true agents of change.

Design/Methodology/Approach – Using engagement with immigrant communities as a case in point and building on the empirical comparative study of public librarians in the Greater Toronto Area and New York City, I outline the current gaps and deficiencies of LIS curricula that can be rectified through blended education. I also integrate the potential contributions of SW into LIS through the case study of an immigrant member of a library community.

Findings – Building on the case study, I introduce a four-tiered model that can be applied to a wide array of courses in LIS programs and conclude with suggestions for taking steps toward blending SW perspectives into the LIS curriculum.

Originality/Value – I position the potential fusion of SW and LIS as “professional blendedness,” which serves as a catalyst for change, and also examine the concept of the blended professional as a change agent. I introduce the rationale for adopting theoretical, practical, and pedagogical approaches from SW in the field of LIS and focus on four specific contributions that can most benefit LIS:

• the person-in-environment approach;

• the strengths perspective and empowerment;

• the interrelated notions of cultural competence, diversity, and intersectionality; and

• the theory-mindedness approach (including theory and practice models).

the person-in-environment approach;

the strengths perspective and empowerment;

the interrelated notions of cultural competence, diversity, and intersectionality; and

the theory-mindedness approach (including theory and practice models).

Introduction − Covid-19, which first emerged in Wuhan, People’s Republic of China, in January 2020, with an unknown source, spread to all countries of the world very quickly and caused the death of over two million people world-wide. This ever-increasing global need for health care has created a radical transformation in terms of not only in health care, but also in all public services. Transportation services for the transfer of patients to health institutions, education services due to the dangers of face-to-face training, justice services due to the postponement of non-urgent court proceedings, security services in terms of restriction sanctions and all public services in general due to the disruption of access to public services due to flexible working hours applied to public personnel has entered into an unplanned provision.

Purpose: The aim of this chapter is to identify the problems that arise in the provision of public goods and services due to the global epidemic of Covid-19, and to bring a new interpretation to the theoretical discussions about the optimal delivery level of public services when there is a situation of communicable disease.

Methodology: The principles of public goods and service provision of G20 countries, Covid-19 mortality rates, indicators of the well-being of healthcare delivery such as the number of bed and personnel, the type and number of devices used to diagnose the Covid disease, and the public service restrictions taken to eliminate Covid-19, have been evaluated by employing descriptive analysis. In order to prevent income and advanced levels from becoming distinctive features, G20 countries with similar income and development levels were selected for this research.

Findings: Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been a distortion in the preference of provision of almost all public goods, and it has been observed that the delivery level of public services affects each other since all are linked like a chain. Failure to achieve what is expected from international organizations, which should be in a regulatory position in this regard, has increased concerns about the optimal presentation level of all public goods, especially health, in the future. As long as there is a global pandemic and countries do not take effective measures, a bad second best position that is far from optimal results but provides that instant solutions.

For the longest period of its history, the university was the guardian and transmitter – not the producer – of knowledge. This relatively recent change of transmitting canonical knowledge and generating new knowledge is normally associated with Wilhelm von Humboldt. Other highly influential university models were provided by France and Great Britain. The association of certain types of universities with particular countries is a strong indicator of the intricate link between nation-state and education. Hence, the history of tertiary education and its elite institutions, the research universities, must be considered in relation with a sea change in educational history – the gradual emergence of national education systems. Only under the conditions of the by now standard form of organizing modern societies as nation-states did education become a central institution (Meyer, Boli, Thomas, & Ramirez, 1997) collapsing individual perfectibility and national progress. The nationally redefined university was integrated into the education system as its keystone while also being considered the motor of societal development. From a social history perspective, the latter aspect in particular indicates the pragmatic (training professionals, imparting military and technical knowledge, etc.) and symbolic expectations, “myths” of the nation-state that have been so aptly described and analyzed in numerous macro-sociological neo-institutionalist studies (Meyer, Ramirez, & Soysal, 1992; Meyer et al., 1997; Ramirez & Boli, 1987). In a macro-phenomenological perspective, the term “myth” is used to denote a fundamental change in the self-description of European society which since the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries no longer views itself as consisting of separate collectivities divided from each other by social origin – as was the case under feudal conditions – with each collectivity providing itself the necessary education for its members or being provided for by others in the case of neediness. Instead, as a result of a number of material and immaterial changes, society now defines the individual as its key unit, with the nation being consequently the aggregate of individuals and not of collectivities and the state redefined as the guardian of the nation. This conception might be taken as a kind of overlapping area which includes different approaches, such as Michel Foucault's concept of the disciplinary society (Foucault, 1977), Balibar and Wallerstein's (1991) deliberations on the relation between race, class, and nation, and Benedict Anderson's (1991) description of nations as imagined communities. All these studies could be taken as sharing the notion of “constructedness” (cf. Berger & Luckmann, 1972) of modern society with the neo-institutionalist perspective. The concept of a “world polity” which encompasses the “myths” society is based on, the overall notion of a cognitive culture, which takes Max Weber's concept of rationality as a point of departure, is identified as the basis of isomorphic change in the organizational structure of modern education systems (cf. Baker & Wiseman, 2006). However, the strong emphasis on international, world system embeddedness of nation-states and their education systems is not to be taken as a unidirectional dependence on external forces. While modern nation-states originate from and remain tied to international dynamics and developments, they are conceived as unique entities. For most of their history, modern nation-states have been preoccupied with making themselves distinct from each other. Thus, while international competition has always been present, looking abroad traditionally meant reworking, adapting, and reshaping what was imported, or borrowed (Halpin & Troyna, 1995; Steiner-Khamsi, 2004). This is true for education as well as for other areas of society.