Worker occupations, 1971-1975: a sociohistorical analysis of the development and spread of sit-ins, work-ins and worker co-operative in Britain

The "work-in" at the Upper Clyde Shipyards, in July 1971, shattered age old traditions of industrial relations in Britain. It Has the first of over two-hundred workplace occupations to occur in the period. up to the This thesis sets out to examine how it. was that such actions occurred and developed. Several factors are focussed on as being associated with these developments, albeit in varying degrees of importance These are the existance of a socio-economic crisis with consequent effects at the micro level; the 'mishandling' of that crisis at both the macro (government) and the micro (company) level; the existance of a numerically strong and "mature" trade union movement containing a growing militant infrastructure in the form of shop stewardships; and the existance of a political (Communist Party/CPGB) and industrial (Engineering Union/ AUEW) leadership ready and able to capitalise on the situation through that infrastructure. Within the context of the development of occupations the advent of the "Workers' Co-operative" is given attention as an important development. It is argued that while these, to some extent, represented the realisation of the challenge inhereent in the workplace occupation their political impact was of limited effect. They grew out of a situation of widespread militancy which included the regular occurrance of workplace occupations, and the winning of office by a Labour Party ready to accede to some of the demands of that militancy

A Better Definition of the Kilogram

This article reviews several recent proposed redefinitions of the kilogram, and compares them with respect to practical realizations, uncertainties (estimated standard deviations), and educational aspects.Comment: 10 pages, no figure

Does the Timing of Money Matter? A Case Study of the Arkansas Academic Challenge Scholarship

This paper examines the effect of a state-financed merit-aid scholarship—the Arkansas Academic Challenge Scholarship (ACS)—on post-secondary outcomes at a large university in Arkansas. Exploiting scholarship eligibility requirements, we implement a fuzzy regression discontinuity design to identify the scholarship’s causal impacts on college outcomes. The analysis focuses on currently enrolled sophomores, juniors, and seniors who receive the scholarship to investigate the broad impacts of receiving money at nontraditional points in an individual’s college trajectory. Findings indicate small, negative impacts of scholarship receipt on short-run outcomes such as GPA and credit accumulation, but large statistically significant declines in the likelihood of graduating within four, five, or six years of matriculation. The youngest cohort, who began receiving funding during their sophomore year of enrollment, primarily drives these findings. However, cohort analysis also reveals that seniors who do not graduate on time are 54 percentage points more likely to graduate within 6 years of matriculation when they receive the scholarship. These results highlight the fact that the timing of receiving money may heavily influence student behavior and postsecondary outcomes

Measures of Student Non-cognitive Skills and Political Tolerance after Two Years of the Louisiana Scholarship Program

This report examines the short-term effects of the Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP) on students’ non-cognitive skills and civic values. While a growing number of studies have evaluated K-12 school voucher programs along academic dimensions, few have focused on the development of non-cognitive skills and civic values. This study aims to address that gap by providing the first analysis of differences in self-reported measures of grit, locus of control, self esteem, and political tolerance associated with the LSP. Using results from a phone survey of applicants to the program, we find little evidence of differences between LSP scholarship recipients and non-recipients. Nevertheless, diagnostics assessing the precision of our instruments to detect differences between subjects indicate that several of the scales measuring non-cognitive skills performed poorly in our sample. Moreover, our relatively low survey response rate of 11 percent raises concerns about the representativeness of our sample. Given these issues, we caution that our results are best understood as descriptive and not necessarily conclusive: they do not represent reliable estimates of the causal impact of the LSP on student non-cognitive skills and political tolerance

Phytophthora root and stem rot of soybean

Phytophthora sojae is a soil borne pathogen that in the past has caused very large economic losses. During the late 1970s, 300,000 soybean acres (approximately 10% of total soybean production in Ohio) were lost due to P. sojae. This disease has since been effectively managed predominately through the incorporation of single-gene mediated resistance but quantitative or partial resistance has been used as well. In fact, today, we can repeat 100% loss by planting soybean cultivars that were popular during earlier epidemics. Without high levels of resistance to this pathogen, many soybean acres would be lost each year to this disease. Phytophthora doesn’t forget and it doesn’t go away

Engaging Acker: toward an understanding of the gendered organization

The purpose of this paper is to explore Joan Acker’s system of gendering processes and to assess the potential of this framework to help researchers better identify those activities in and around organizations that maintain, support, or oppose their gendered nature. It is anticipated that a thorough understanding of these processes will be instrumental in effecting change

A Product of 'His' Time? Exploring the Construct of the Ideal Manager in the Cold War Era

Managers are often measured against an ideal that is treated as a tangible object which is stable across generations. It is the contention of this paper that the ideal manager is, in fact, a social construct that is a product of the political and social context within which it exists. Different periods in time create unique typifications of the construct, and the ideal manager is not independent of its environment. The socially constructed nature of the ideal manager will be illustrated through the analysis of the construct at one specific point in time, the internal Cold War in the years following the Second World War and ending in 1960. While widely studied in most disciplines, the Cold War has been largely ignored in the management literature, and therefore provides us with a unique perspective from which to assess the impact of context on the standard to which managers are held