Project management - a growing profession. The Romanian case.

The paper analyses the status of professionalization of project management in Romania and worldwide. The relevance of the topic is grasped in the context in which project management has been confronted with various shifts: from a technical/ engineering function to a macro-economic organizational concern, from a tools-and-techniques view to an innovation-driven approach, from widespread adoption by the industrialized world to an accelerated growth in developing nations, too. The explosion of practice has raised the issue of theoretical foundations and professionalization. The current status of professionalization of project management is discussed against a series of standards found in the sociology of professions literature, with a special focus on the issue of education in project management - education models, trends, global reach. The paper also assesses the Romanian educational offer in the field of project management in relation to the larger issue of professionalization, with a view to signalling possible areas of growth and improvement: ensuring accuracy of term usage, refining the educational curricula, initiating large-scale research programs on Romanian realities, publishing research results, building awareness around the benefits of the profession, increasing strength and visibility of professional associations, lobbying to require certification for key project management positions.

Public Opinion Poll: Executive Summary

Outlines survey findings on Americans' views on college sports, including commercialization, professionalization, coaches' salaries, athletes' welfare, effects on other departments, and links between athletics success, expenses, and alumni donations

Professionalization of College Sports: The Case of College Basketball

This study examines how major college basketball programs have become professionalized, and follow a professional model in terms of their revenues, expenses, and profits. “Professionalized” is defined as having a fundamental focus on profits and revenues. Revenue and expense data for the 2006-2007 season was selected from the six major conferences: Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, ACC, PAC 10, and SEC. Data was collected from the Office of Postsecondary Education, where revenues and expenses are reported for each school. These data were examined and used to gauge whether these programs or conferences are following a professional model. In addition, the study examined the marginal revenue product of acquiring one more premium player (a player that has been drafted into the NBA or WNBA). Data were collected from NBAdraft.net, where NBA and WNBA draft classes were be used to determine the number of premium players on each college team. OLS regression analysis was be used to indicate relationships between the data. These relationships indicate that men’s basketball programs follow a professional model and that the marginal revenue product of acquiring one more premium player is greater than their compensation through scholarship. Women’s basketball programs do not appear to follow a professional model, or acquire players that generate significant revenues greater than their compensation through scholarship

Does Money Matter? The Impact of State Political Context on the Relationship between Race/Ethnicity and Campaign Finance

Despite increasing campaign-finance legislation aimed at equalizing barriers in political campaigns, a fundraising gap persists across racial/ethnic lines. In the era of modern campaigning, with the expenses of advertising and polling, among others, ample funds are necessary but not accessible to all candidates. This study addresses the relationship between candidate race/ethnicity and campaign fundraising, and the possible moderating effect of three dimensions of the state political context: state legislative professionalism, state Republican party strength, and state culture (South vs. non-South). I evaluate fundraising totals across 15 states for more than 3,000 candidates in the 2006 state legislative elections. Ultimately, the findings suggest that after controlling for other candidate characteristics, as well as for district and state context, there is a negative statistically significant relationship between candidate race/ethnicity and fundraising. In addition, the effect of race/ethnicity is moderated by two features of the state context: legislative professionalization and state culture. This study finds that nonwhite candidates continue to fundraise less than their white counterparts and that state context is important in understanding the race/ethnicity gap in campaign finance

Professionalization, Tutor Training, and Service Learning in the Writing Center

In “The Professionalization of Tutor Training,” Judy Gill defines professionalization as “introducing prospective tutors to the professional conversation” (1), which includes instruction in writing center theory featured in the surveyed courses in the form of collections of essays that introduce students to “the larger institutional, theoretical, and historical context in which [the practice of] tutoring takes place” (3). In this article, we discuss two important components of tutor training that seemingly do not fall within the scope of professionalization Gill mentions in her article: 1) the use of tutors’ field-specific expertise during their training and 2) tutors’ preparation for administrative positions and responsibilities. In our experience with one of the undergraduate tutoring practicum courses offered by The Writing Lab at Purdue, these two components helped our tutors-in-training professionalize as both professional writing (PW) majors and prospective tutors entering the writing center field. Hence, in our attempt to reconcile our experience at Purdue with the definition Gill provides, we pose this question: Is there more than one form of professionalization that students develop in our tutor-training courses?University Writing Cente

The future of homegrown teaching artists? Negotiating contradictions of professionalization in the youth arts and humanities fields

Youth arts and humanities programs are providing invaluable learning opportunities for youth participants to become what we term “homegrown teaching artists.” After several years of artistic and pedagogic development, these alumni teach youth in the same programs where they were once participants. This phenomenon has emerged at the same time that the teaching artist field has become professionalized with new credentialed pathways through higher education. This simultaneity presents a paradox. Professionalization introduces formal standards and barriers to entry into the teaching artist field at the same time that teaching artists train youth who are racialized and low-income to become teaching artists through informal pathways in youth arts and humanities programs. In other words, the professionalization of the field is at odds with its aspiration to expand and sustain youth’s right to cultural self-determination. We address this contradiction by investigating the pathways and practices of three homegrown teaching artists before turning to implications for policy and practice

Capturing the competence of management consulting work

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to assess whether the effort of consulting firms and branch organizations to establish a shared and standardized methodology as a means to professionalize consulting and as a standard for training is possible and sensible. - \ud \ud Design/methodology/approach: A survey was conducted among Dutch management consultants, which explored their ways of working and their ways of learning. - \ud \ud Findings: The study shows that efforts to develop a shared and standardized phase-model methodology do not seem to be effective. Instead of following phase-models, consultants appear to be improvising bricoleurs, tailoring their ways of working to specific situations, and using broad, heterogeneous and partly implicit repertoires, which are built through mainly through action-learning. This requires another kind of methodology and another kind of training. - \ud \ud Research limitations/implications: The article gives a general direction for the development of a consulting methodology and the education of consultants. Further research on consulting practices and repertoires is necessary to explore this direction. - \ud \ud Practical implications: The paper concludes that the value of phase-models as a standard is limited. Therefore, branch organizations, consulting firms and corporate universities should not focus their professionalization and training activities on these standardized methods. - \ud \ud Originality/value: Little work has been done yet on the relation between professionalization, methods, and training in management consulting, and no earlier publication has studied this topic quantitatively

The teaching profession in Europe : historical and sociological analysis

A possible effect of direct CP violation in D -> K-S(0)pi(+)pi(-) decay on the gamma measurement from B-+/- -> DK +/-, D -> K-S(0)pi(+)pi(-) Dalitz plot analysis is considered. Systematic uncertainty of gamma coming from the current limits on direct CP violation in D -> K-S(0)pi(+)pi(-) is estimated, and a modified model-independent procedure of B-+/- -> DK +/-, D -> K-S(0)pi(+)pi(-) Dalitz plot analysis is proposed that gives an unbiased gamma measurement even in presence of direct CP violation in charm decays. The technique is applicable to other threebody D decays such as D-0 -> (KSK+K-)-K-0, D-0 -> pi(+)pi(-)pi(0), etc

Testing a global city hypothesis : an assessment of polarization across US cities

Social polarization is perhaps most evident within the world's large cities where we can easily observe stark contrasts between wealth and poverty. A world city theoretical perspective has emerged that associates large cities importance in a global network of cities to the degree of internal polarization within these cities. The research reported here locates 57 large US cities within this world city hierarchy and then empirically examines the hypothesized positive association between global centrality and social polarization using a multivariate, cross-city analysis. The findings are mixed, with some evidence that global centrality increases income polarization, but only in the context of higher levels of immigration. There is no evidence that a city's centrality affects occupational polarization. We conclude by suggesting implications for the world city literature and future research