A Descriptive Study of Nursing Home Organizational Culture, Work Environment and Culture Change From the Perspectives of Licensed Nurses

Licensed nurses are often identified as a major barrier to the successful implementation of nursing home culture change initiatives, but there is little knowledge of their perceptions of the culture change experience. This study was designed to explore licensed nurses\u27 perceptions of organizational culture and work environment, as well as perceptions of factors that influence the adoption of a specific culture change initiative, the Wellspring Program. All licensed nurses ≥.25 FTE from two nursing homes were invited to complete surveys. Overall response rate was 57% (N=47): 55% from Facility One (n=27) and 61% from Facility Two (n=20). A subset of 13 respondents, targeted for their increased length of tenure in their nursing home, was invited to participate in an interview. Data were triangulated to determine complementarity. Three themes emerged from the data: Confusion over culture change and the role of the licensed nurse, Conflict over the integration of traditional care models with a resident-centered model and Commitment to the resident as an individual and to providing quality nursing care. What is perceived by administrators as nurses\u27 resistance to change may, in fact, be a struggle by licensed nurses to make sense of the motivation and reasoning for changes or to understand the actual changes and their roles in the change process

What's Expected? Anticipation of Education and School and Peer Contexts in a National Longitudinal Study of Youth

This dissertation examines the relationships among school structure, climate, and peer networks and adolescents’ college expectations using the first wave of the American National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). Hierarchical linear models are applied to examine the direct, intervening, and cross-level interaction effects of school context and peer networks. This dissertation applies perspectives of school socialization and peer social capital to explain the relationship between contextual-level characteristics and youths’ intentions to attend college. With controls for individual-level compositional factors, findings indicate that higher school SES and lower percentages of high school dropouts are positively associated with adolescents’ college expectations. Contingencies of gender provide evidence of moderating effects between school context and expectations, particularly for male adolescents. With regard to peer networks, adolescents who expect to attend college are more likely to be involved with prosocial and academically goal-oriented peers. Cross-level interactions between school and peer networks reveal that higher SES schools mediate the potential impact of peers on youths’ college expectations. In contrast to previous studies, this dissertation research indicates that prosocial peer behaviors mediate but do not moderate the effects on adolescents’ own expectations. The findings of this research suggest that future studies and interventions should continue to explore the multiple effects of social contexts to assess fully the impact of schools and peer networks on adolescents’ educational future outcomes.Ph

Introduction: Effects of Global Developments on Gender and the Legal Practice

Women in Legal Practice: Global and Local Perspectives, Symposium, June 5-8, 2012. Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association

Attorneys\u27 Career Dissatisfaction in the New Normal

The 2008 economic recession had a seismic impact on the legal profession. This Article is the first to empirically assess whether the recession has made law an unsatisfying career. Relying on survey data from over 11,000 active members of the State Bar of Texas, we find that only 13.5% of all attorneys and 11.5% of full-time attorneys are dissatisfied with their careers. Newer attorneys report greater career dissatisfaction than more experienced attorneys, yet they too are largely satisfied. We also determine using logistic regression that three factors are highly predictive of lawyers’ career dissatisfaction: 1) comparatively low incomes; 2) working in private practice as opposed to in government or in a non-profit/public interest setting; and 3) law firm employment in a non-partnership role. Law school debt and lower class rank have only minor effects on career dissatisfaction whereas race, gender, years of practice experience, practice area, and firm size have no independent effects

Gender Still Matters: Effects of Workplace Discrimination on Employment Schedules of Young Professionals

The influx of women into the legal profession has significantly changed the landscape of legal practice. Women lawyers today no longer face the challenges to entering the legal profession they encountered thirty years ago. However, despite these advancements, research continues to demonstrate that there are still gender-based issues women have to face in the legal workplace. Among these issues to date are the difficulties in combining responsibilities of work with responsibilities of families and children that underpin women’s employment and earning disadvantages. Using survey data from a national representative U.S. panel study of lawyers, we examine how work schedules, comparing full-time to part-time work, vary by personal disposition and workplace characteristics. Drawing from prominent explanations of gender inequality in the legal profession, we focus on inquiries of commitment to work, performance, ideal worker expectations, practice settings, and job satisfaction among dimensions of workplace characteristics and examine their effects on women and men lawyers’ work schedules. Logistic regression results show that work schedules significantly vary by gender, parental role, and experience of workplace discrimination. We find that, although all parents experience types of discrimination, there are still major differences in work schedules between mothers and fathers. Our study adds to the gender debate of employment and organizations by examining quantitatively experiences of workplace discrimination

Its Not Who You Know, Its How You Know Them: Who Exchanges What With Whom

Reciprocity - doing for others if they have done for you - is a key way people mobilize resources to deal with daily life and seize opportunities. In principle, reciprocity (the Golden Rule) is a universal norm. In practice, it is variable. Personal networks rarely operate as solidarities and as such, people cannot count on all the members of their networks to provide help all the time. Rather, social support comes uncertainly from a variety of ties in networks. This paper uses survey research to understand the variable and contingent nature of reciprocity and inquires about the kinds of resources exchanged between people. We investigate the extent to which interpersonal ties, network characteristics, and people's personal characteristics (e.g., gender) affect the nature of reciprocal relationships. The evidence is extraordinarily clear on one subject - giving support is strongly associated with getting it. Analyses show that getting support from network members is the key to East Yorkers reciprocating - usually in kind but sometimes with other forms of support