Complex home care: Part 2- family annual income, insurance premium, and out-of-pocket expenses

Annual costs paid by families for intravenous infusion of home parenteral nutrition (HPN) health insurance premiums, deductibles, co-payments for health services, and the wide range of out-of-pocket home health care expenses are significant. The costs of managing complex chronic care at home cannot be completely understood until all out-of-pocket costs have been defined, described, and tabulated. Non-reimbursed and out-of-pocket costs paid by families over years for complex chronic care negatively impact the financial stability of families. National health care reform must take into account the long-term financial burdens of families caring for those with complex home care. Any changes that may increase the out-of-pocket costs or health insurance costs to these families can also have a negative long-term impact on society when greater numbers of patients declare bankruptcy or qualify for medical disability.     

Social policy and women in accounting: A cross-cultural comparison

Unless "family-friendly" policies are developed, women will continue to leave public accounting in larger numbers than men. Affirmative action, family leave, and child care policies in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the U.S. are compared. The greater strength and duration of U.S. affirmative action policy may partially explain the superior progress of women in the labor force as compared to the other nations. In contrast, maternity leave and child care policies in Australia and Canada surpass those in the U.K. and the U.S. The weaker government provisions for family leave and child care in the latter two nations increase the importance of policies in the private sector for persons attempting to balance employment and family commitment.     

Situational Moral Disengagement: Can the Effects of Self-Interest be Mitigated?

Self-interest has long been recognized as a powerful human motive. Yet, much remains to be understood about the thinking behind self-interested pursuits. Drawing from multiple literatures, we propose that situations high in opportunity for self-interested gain trigger a type of moral cognition called moral disengagement that allows the individual to more easily disengage internalized moral standards. We also theorize two countervailing forces—situational harm to others and dispositional conscientiousness—that may weaken the effects of personal gain on morally disengaged reasoning. We test our hypotheses in two studies using qualitative and quantitative data and complementary research methods and design. We demonstrate that when personal gain incentives are relatively moderate, reminders of harm to others can reduce the likelihood that employees will morally disengage. Furthermore, when strong personal gain incentives are present in a situation, highly conscientious individuals are less apt than their counterparts to engage in morally disengaged reasoning.     

Going solo: lifelong nonparticipation amongst the NCDS cohort

Some Western societies, it has been claimed, are experiencing an unparalleled downward trend in participation with manifold grave consequences predicted. In the UK, for instance, politicians and commentators, arguably influenced by Robert Putnam’s warnings of a collapse in community, have spoken of Britain’s broken society and disintegrating social ties with opting out, or nonparticipation, presented as a pressing social problem. Set against this background, and engaging directly with Putnam’s thesis, we explore the scale, characteristics and causes of an ‘extreme’ variant of nonparticipation – lifelong nonparticipation – amongst members of a national birth cohort, the UK’s National Child Development Study (NCDS) (1958). Joining structured survey data collected over the lifecourse, with biographical interview data collected from cohort members at age 50, we identify lifelong nonparticipation as a minority disposition associated with distinctive demographic traits being, for example, highly gendered and related to lower educational attainment. In terms of causes, time pressures arising from work and caring duties or, more precisely, the feeling of being ‘pressed for time’, appeared critical. The implications for policy and practice are considered.     

Playing with class: Middle‐class intensive mothering and the consumption of children's toys in Vietnam

This article explores the way in which Vietnamese mothers purchase, gift and share toys with their children. The study utilises a qualitative design comprising semi‐structured interviews with 10 Vietnamese middle‐class professional working mothers of children aged between 5 and 9. This research highlights the way in which toys defined as “good” by mothers need to fulfil a number of important practical and social functions: they act as an investment in the child's future, as a reward, and as a means for mothers to buy time for themselves. The findings illustrate how these functions are influenced by Confucian and Western discourses of intensive mothering, generating a localized style of middle‐class intensive mothering, characterized by what we have called the ideal of the triple excellent and intensive mother.     

Choice in Computer-Mediated Environments

In the last several years, the increased diffusion of computer andtelecommunications technologies in businesses and homes has produced newways for organizations to connect with their customers. These computermediated environments (CMEs) such as the World Wide Web raise new researchquestions. In this paper, we examine the potential research issuesassociated with CMEs in five areas: (1) decision processes, (2) advertisingand communications, (3) brand choice, (4) brand communities, and (5)pricing.     

The power of incrementalism: environmental regulation and technological change in pulp and paper bleaching in the US

This article explores environmental regulation as a driver of technological change through a case study ofthe US pulp and paper industry. It analyses two sets of variables that influence the pace and direction of environmentally oriented technological change: industry structure and regulatory design. As would be expecded from a mature productive unit, when confronted with environmental challenges, the US pull, and paper industry demonstrates a strong preference for incremental technological change. The case suggests that the traditional approaches to standard-setting in the US have not challenged this preference. For the pulp and paper industry, there is considerable uncertainty regarding the strategic advantages of alternative technologies, due to uncertainly in further environmental regulation and the relatively small difference in cost between incremental and radical innovations for may mills. This case suggests that an alternative approach for promoting the diffusion of environmental enhancing radical innovations in mature productive units is to long-term goals for environmental improvement.     

Economic freedom and social capital

This article brings together two growing literatures, social capital and economic freedom, to examine whether economic freedom contributes to social capital. More specifically, using US state-level data from 1986 to 2004 and both OLS and System GMM dynamic panel estimation, we find that there is no clear trade-off between economic freedom and either the level or growth of social capital.     

Teaching the nature of technology: determining and supporting student learning of the philosophy of technology

This paper reports on findings related to the Nature of Technology from Stage Two of the Technological Knowledge and Nature of Technology: Implications for teaching and learning (TKNoT: Imps) research project undertaken in 2009. A key focus in Stage Two was the trialing of different teaching strategies to determine how learning related to the components Characteristics of Technology (CoT) and Characteristics of Technological Outcomes (COTO) could be supported. These components fall within the Nature of Technology (NoT) strand of technology in the New Zealand Curriculum (NZC) (Ministry of Education, 2007) and as such, reflect a philosophical understanding of technology as a discipline. During this stage of the research further exploration was undertaken to determine how student understanding of these two components of technology education progressed from level 1 to level 8 of the NZC (Ministry of Education, 2007). Common misconceptions and partial understandings related to these components are identified and explained and four case studies are presented to illustrate strategies employed by teachers and their impact on student learning related to these two components. The Stage Two outcomes resulted in the revision of the Indicators of Progression for CoT and CoTO in order to clarify the progression expected of students in each component and provide increased teacher guidance to support such progression.     

The power of incrementalism: environmental regulation and technological change in pulp and paper bleaching in the US

This article explores environmental regulation as a driver of technological change through a case study ofthe US pulp and paper industry. It analyses two sets of variables that influence the pace and direction of environmentally oriented technological change: industry structure and regulatory design. As would be expecded from a mature productive unit, when confronted with environmental challenges, the US pull, and paper industry demonstrates a strong preference for incremental technological change. The case suggests that the traditional approaches to standard-setting in the US have not challenged this preference. For the pulp and paper industry, there is considerable uncertainty regarding the strategic advantages of alternative technologies, due to uncertainly in further environmental regulation and the relatively small difference in cost between incremental and radical innovations for may mills. This case suggests that an alternative approach for promoting the diffusion of environmental enhancing radical innovations in mature productive units is to long-term goals for environmental improvement.