Myspace, Yourspace, But Not Theirspace: The Constitutionality of Banning Sex Offenders From Social Networking Sites

In recent years there has been intense public pressure to enact increasingly restrictive and intrusive sex offender laws. The regulation of sex offenders has now moved online, where a growing amount of protected expression and activity occurs. The latest trend in sex offender policy has been the passage of state laws prohibiting sex offenders from visiting social networking sites, such as Myspace or Facebook. The use of these websites implicates the First Amendment right of expressive association. Broad social-networking-site bans threaten the First Amendment expressive association rights of sex offenders, who do not lose all of their constitutional rights by virtue of their conviction. Although social-networking-site bans are politically attractive on the surface, such prohibitions are fundamentally flawed because they are predicated on a number of widespread misconceptions about sex offenses and sex offender behavior. These misconceptions include the beliefs that all registered sex offenders are violent sexual predators who have extremely high recidivism rates and that Internet predators are increasing the incidence of sex crimes against minors. In fact, there is very little evidence to indicate that this type of legislation will help reduce sexual violence. This Note argues for empirically based and narrowly tailored sex offender policies that will strike the appropriate balance between protecting minors from sexual abuse and respecting sex offenders\u27 constitutional rights. Such an approach is more likely to help rehabilitate offenders and thus protect children and others from sexual predators

Bridging Corporate Culture and Organizational Networking : An introduction of Interorganizational Culturing from an Actor-Network Perspective

Organizational Networking is an eminently modern concept and has been more and more investigated by scholars in recent years. However, little research has focused on the impact of Organizational Culture on Organizational Networking. The reason of this is that there is a duality in the field of culture between culture within organizations and culture within organizational networks. We argue that none of those stances alone can provide a comprehensive view of cultural phenomena within networking organizations and that a new perspective should be taken. In order to investigate the subject, we bring in the concept of Interorganizational Culturing and investigate it from an Actor-Network Theory perspective, which leads us to the following research question: which are the actors of Interorganizational Culturing in a networking organization? To gain insight on the topic, we have searched for theories on cultures within both the scope of organizations and organizational networks to build upon. In order to illustrate our research, we have conducted unstructured interviews in accordance to Actor-Network Theory principles. Our investigation was led through the use of convenience sampling method and was performed with six large Swedish organizations which activities differ and size varies. Our findings suggest that there are both structural and cultural actors to Interorganizational Culturing, the latter being the ones that can be influenced by the organization. The Actor-Network Theory perspective enabled us to show that many of the dynamics are sparked by nonhuman entities such as components or Organizational Culture (values, beliefs, behaviours). Therefore managers should reflect upon the fact that the potential of improving interorganizational collaboration in their organization lies in their very hands and that they should ask themselves the following question: how ready are we to collaborate more in order to compete better

Stress causes and its management at the work place : A qualitative study on the causes of stress and management mechanisms at Volvo Trucks AB, Umeå

Problem: Stress at the workplace has become an increasing phenomenon due to external factors such as technological advancement, changes in the economy of a country which might lead to becoming redundant and so on. Stress can be considered as an inevitable condition at least at one point in time or another; however it can also be minimized to the extent that the productivity and health of the employee is maintained which could lead to a productive organization. Stress is also bound to occur in multinational companies where operation is global and employees have different cultural background.Purpose: Our purpose for this study is to have a clear understanding of the causes of stress at a multinational company such as Volvo Trucks AB Umeå, and how Stress by the employees as well as the company’s management are managed or handled.Methodology: This thesis has been made using qualitative approach, with a descriptive and exploratory case study approach. The data used are collected through conducting semi-structured interviews with 6 different employees from Volvo Trucks AB, Umeå one of whom works as a therapist at the company.Findings: The causes of stress at the work place range from personal problems to work overload, physical working environment, work situation and conflicts among colleagues and managers. Many employees struggle with stress, in worst cases leading to uncertainties and severe impairments on health and performance. The main situations that generate stress are likely uncontrollable, unpredictable, and some are not known. But alternatively there are several resources available like personal awareness in coping skills. For example: time management, assertiveness, ways to higher up self-confidence and so on. Management can also utilize some resources for reducing the stress level of the employees by providing services and facilities such as health facilities at the company, giving easy and on time access to therapist and also having free time activities and entertainment. Stress is related between the employee and the employer as the performance of the employee is affected by his/her stress level which intern affects the company’s productivity. Therefore stress management is Vital for both. The most successful stress management mechanisms found was time management, sharing of feelings and leisure activities