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The advent of the Internet and social medial presents major challenges to contemporary social work involving young people and their families particularly in the sphere of fostering.

This discussion paper begins an exploration of how risk and vulnerability, associated with the use of social networking, are usually managed using a traditional model that is rooted in psychologically informed social work.

The discussion then moves to viewing an alternative model of social work that is informed by the sociology of childhood. An argument is made that this model can be effectively used to meet the challenges of safeguarding in a technological age.

Historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) possess an advantage in preparing students of color for the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce (Gasman & Nguyen, 2014; Upton & Tannenbaum, 2014). It has been suggested that implementing additional strategies to increase the availability, dissemination, and quality of information related to successful HBCU outcomes will allow HBCUs to sustain themselves into the future (Gasman & Nguyen, 2016). We discuss the use and benefits of a novel framework THRIVE Index tool (Byrd & Mason, 2020). THRIVE uses seven dimensions (e.g., Type, History, Research, Inclusion, Identity, Voice, and Expectation) to illustrate best practices of academic pipeline programs and increase the availability of HBCU success outcomes in a comparable format. Academic pipeline programs come in several varieties, but their goal is to propel individuals from one level of the academy to another and into the workforce. Using a common framework like THRIVE also allows for the creation of a clearinghouse of what successfully works for us at HBCUs from the perspective of HBCU pipeline program directors. We describe strategies for how this option for knowledge transfer to stakeholders (e.g. parents, corporations, educational institutions, etc.) can aid in long-term sustainability efforts like recruitment strategies and partnership efforts.

This report investigates attitude towards complaining, societal benefits and probability of complaint success, with emphasis on complaint intentions and actions, in applying the theory of planned behaviour to complaint behaviour in Malaysia. On the basis of a sample of 834 respondents at the National Consumer Complaint Centre, the Tribunal for Consumer Claims Malaysia, and three shopping malls, the research findings suggest that complainers with a more positive attitude towards those three factors have a stronger tendency to make a complaint. However, consumers with positive perceptions of societal benefits and a higher probability of success are less likely to take action for seeking redress. Moreover, the influence of attitude, benefits, and probability of success on complaint actions is mediated by intention.

The study here responds to the view that the crucial problem in strategic management (research) is firm heterogeneity – why firms adopt different strategies and structures, why heterogeneity persists, and why competitors perform differently. The present study applies complexity theory tenets and a “neo-configurational perspective” of Misangyi et al. (2016) in proposing complex antecedent conditions affecting complex outcome conditions. Rather than examining variable directional relationships using null hypotheses statistical tests, the study examines case-based conditions using somewhat precise outcome tests (SPOT). The complex outcome conditions include firms with high financial performances in declining markets and firms with low financial performances in growing markets – the study focuses on seemingly paradoxical outcomes. The study here examines firm strategies and outcomes for separate samples of cross-sectional data of manufacturing firms with headquarters in one of two nations: Finland (n = 820) and Hungary (n = 300). The study includes examining the predictive validities of the models. The study contributes conceptual advances of complex firm orientation configurations and complex firm performance capabilities configurations as mediating conditions between firmographics, firm resources, and the two final complex outcome conditions (high performance in declining markets and low performance in growing markets). The study contributes by showing how fuzzy-logic computing with words (Zadeh, 1966) advances strategic management research toward achieving requisite variety to overcome the theory-analytic mismatch pervasive currently in the discipline (Fiss, 2007, 2011) – thus, this study is a useful step toward solving the crucial problem of how to explain firm heterogeneity.

Purpose: We critically examine the idea of neurodiversity, or the uniqueness of all brains, as the foundation for the neurodiversity movement, which began as an autism rights movement. We explore the neurodiversity movement's potential to support cross-disability alliances that can transform cultures.

Methods/Approach: A neurodiverse team reviewed literature about the history of the neurodiversity movement and associated participatory research methodologies and drew from our experiences guiding programs led, to varying degrees, by neurodivergent people. We highlight two programs for autistic university students, one started by and for autistics and one developed in collaboration with autistic and nonautistic students. These programs are contrasted with a national self-help group started by and for stutterers that is inclusive of “neurotypicals.”

Findings: Neurodiversity-aligned practices have emerged in diverse communities. Similar benefits and challenges of alliance building within versus across neurotypes were apparent in communities that had not been in close contact. Neurodiversity provides a framework that people with diverse conditions can use to identify and work together to challenge shared forms of oppression. However, people interpret the neurodiversity movement in diverse ways. By honing in on core aspects of the neurodiversity paradigm, we can foster alliances across diverse perspectives.

Implications/ Values: Becoming aware of power imbalances and working to rectify them is essential for building effective alliances across neurotypes. Sufficient space and time are needed to create healthy alliances. Participatory approaches, and approaches solely led by neurodivergent people, can begin to address concerns about power and representation within the neurodiversity movement while shifting public understanding.

Evidence for adverse impact in applied, organizational settings can often depend on application of the “four-fifths rule.” We analyze the arithmetic four-fifths rule, its operationalization, and related statistical tests. We note that the rule has intuitive appeal and has arithmetic directness. On the other hand, the four-fifths rule contains many ambiguities because of the manner in which it is defined, as well as its use in practice. One purpose of this article is to discuss the arithmetic and statistical facets of the definition. A related purpose of this article is to demonstrate where the ambiguities (and possibly unintended consequences) with the four-fifths rule might arise when numerical interpretations are invoked. Implications for future research and academic dialogues are then noted.

This study engages an understudied presupposition that values are relatively impervious to situational pressures. We do this within a key sociological context, incorporating social status as a meso-level structure, by measuring values before and after a competition situation with an experimentally controlled outcome to determine the situational robustness of values.

We incorporate measures of values into a standard competition experiment, looking at how winning or losing and the status of the perceived competition influence peoples’ values.

Drawing on the well-established expectation states literature, we demonstrate that perceptions of gaining or losing a competition influence core values. Overall, positive, related situational feedback seemed to heighten all of the values-measures, while receiving (manipulated) negative, specific feedback dampened the rating of all values.

This is an initial exploration of the received wisdom; future work should involve different manipulations, wider arrays of values-measurement, and more diverse samples.

We hope that our interpretations of these results suggest how perceived status influences core internal experiences. The processes described have implications for the experiences of groups that win or lose political competitions, and other social interactions whereby people feel more or less affirmed in terms of their core beliefs.

This suggests that individuals and groups who perceive themselves as winning competitions, elections, or challenges will feel affirmed in their core beliefs, and be more motivated to pursue those valued ends. People who perceive themselves as being situationally unsuccessful will feel a general dampening of these core beliefs.

This chapter is the first to link the internal study of values with the general expectation states tradition. It is exploratory, and results suggest this is a fertile area for future inquiry.

A long line of research has addressed whether there are sex differences in cooperation and other forms of prosocial behavior. Studies of social dilemmas (situations that pose a conflict between individual and collective interests) have yielded particularly contradictory conclusions about whether males or females are more cooperative. We present an evolutionary framework that synthesizes previous results and generates new insights into the sex and cooperation question. The framework addresses two general bases of sex differences in cooperation. First, we show how variation in the motivational structure of social dilemmas generates sex differences in cooperation. We then address two aspects of social structure, that, according to evolutionary reasoning, generate sex differences in cooperation: the sex composition of the group, and the interpersonal versus intergroup nature of the dilemma. After presenting new hypotheses and reviewing existing research relevant to each hypothesis, we conclude by making suggestions for future research.