Peter Bishop, Rebecca Tamarchak, Christine Williams and Laszlo Radvanyi
This study aims to investigate into the future of cancer and cancer research in preparation for a strategic plan for a cancer research centre.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate into the future of cancer and cancer research in preparation for a strategic plan for a cancer research centre.
Design/methodology/approach
The study used framework foresight, a method for creating scenarios and their implications developed by the MS program in Foresight at the University of Houston.
Findings
The study identified four scenarios: a continuation scenario in which progress in detecting and treating cancer progressed as it has over the past few decades, a collapse scenario in which attention was diverted from medical research due to a climate crisis, a new equilibrium scenario in which cost became the overriding concern for cancer treatment, and a transformation scenario in which individuals took control of their treatment through Do-It-Yourself remedies. Those scenarios suggested four strategic issues for the planning exercise: the growing volume of genomic and clinical data and the means to learn from it, the increased involvement and influence of patients in diagnosis and treatment, the ability to conduct research in a time of fiscal austerity and declining levels of trust in all professions, including medicine.
Research limitations/implications
The paper not only provides guidance for cancer centers but also for medical practice in general.
Practical implications
The client used the scenarios and their implications as part of its considerations in strategic planning.
Originality/value
This paper represents the first time that Framework Foresight has been applied to a medical topic.
Details
Keywords
This article focuses on one court case concerning the regulation of Anti-Abortion protesting and asks: (1) Do the various actors involved in this case recognize a tension between…
Abstract
This article focuses on one court case concerning the regulation of Anti-Abortion protesting and asks: (1) Do the various actors involved in this case recognize a tension between their actions and their broader beliefs concerning the regulation of political protests? (2) If this tension is recognized, how do the actors resolve it, and if it is not recognized, why is it not? While concerned with legal consciousness and cognitive dissonance, the article is framed by broader questions concerning tolerance and the interaction of law and political passions.
Christine L. Williams and Kirsten Dellinger
The chapters in this volume are the fruit of a feminist revolution in sociology that transformed conventional ways of thinking about work in the 1990s. Prior to the feminist…
Abstract
The chapters in this volume are the fruit of a feminist revolution in sociology that transformed conventional ways of thinking about work in the 1990s. Prior to the feminist revolution, the most important sociological theories that accounted for gender inequality in the workplace were human capital theories and socialization theories, both of which blamed women workers for their lower status and pay in the workplace (Schilt, 2010; Williams, 1995). Human capital theories argue that men and women receive different pay-offs from employment because they invest differently in their careers (Padavic & Reskin, 2002; Blau, Ferber, & Winkler, 1998; Polachek, 1981). Men seek higher education, skills training, and overtime at work because they are family breadwinners whose major responsibility is to support their wives and dependent children. Meanwhile, women invest less in the human capital valued by workplaces because their primary commitment is to their families. This theory assumes the heterosexual nuclear family, which is no longer the typical family form (Coontz, 1997). This rational choice perspective also fails to explain recent trends in women's educational attainment and labor force participation rates, now estimated to be equal to if not greater than men's (England, 2010).
Professional careers have become more precarious in recent decades. Corporations today engage in downsizing even during profitable times, a practice that impacts workers…
Abstract
Professional careers have become more precarious in recent decades. Corporations today engage in downsizing even during profitable times, a practice that impacts workers throughout the labor force, including those with advanced degrees. Using a case study of women geoscientists in the oil and gas industry, I investigate how the increasing precariousness of professional careers reinforces gender inequality. The compressed cycle of booms and busts in the oil and gas industry permits an investigation into how women fare in precarious professional jobs. Extending gendered organization theory, I argue that three mechanisms are built into professional careers today that enhance women’s vulnerability to layoffs: teamwork, career maps, and networking. I illustrate how these mechanisms disadvantage women with in-depth portraits of three geoscientists who lost their jobs during the recent downturn in oil prices. Their personal narratives, collected over a 3-year period of boom and bust, reveal how a particular multinational corporation is structured in ways that favor the white men who dominate their industry. The rhetoric of diversity obscures the workings of gendered organizations during good times, but when times get tough, management’s decisions about whom to lay off belies the routine practices the reproduce men’s advantages within the industry.
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Linda E. Morris and Christine R. Williams
This paper aims to provide a deeper understanding of behaviors effective technical managers and executives use to lead complex projects, programs and organizations.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to provide a deeper understanding of behaviors effective technical managers and executives use to lead complex projects, programs and organizations.
Design/methodology/approach
Described is a qualitative study to identify and document behaviors and attributes of effective technical executives at NASA. Methods included observation, shadowing and interviews with 14 NASA executives, who possessed a technical background and a systems orientation, and whom agency leadership identified as highly effective in their roles. Included also is a review of related theoretical and empirical scholarship on leadership and managerial effectiveness, focusing on research describing leaders' behaviors and competencies and approaches to deal with project and organizational complexity.
Findings
The study surfaced 225 observable behaviors clustered into 54 elements, within six broad themes: leadership, attitudes and attributes (including executive presence), communication, problem solving and systems thinking, political savvy and strategic thinking.
Research limitations/implications
Limitations include the small number of executives interviewed for 60‐90 minutes and observed for a brief period. Future studies might include more executives, from a variety of organizations, and/or employ a quantitative approach based on or incorporating these findings.
Practical implications
The study's rich data will serve as a framework to help develop technical executives where complexity and technology drive the need for systems‐oriented leaders with technical backgrounds.
Originality/value
The study and literature review provide a context for a deeper understanding of technical leaders' behaviors and use of systems thinking within complex situations.
Details
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Based on in-depth interviews with 64 women in 5 Japanese firms, this chapter examines how women workers interpret workplace sexual behaviors and interactions in different…
Abstract
Based on in-depth interviews with 64 women in 5 Japanese firms, this chapter examines how women workers interpret workplace sexual behaviors and interactions in different organizational contexts. The chapter explores the processes by which workplace sexual interactions, including harmful behaviors, are normalized and tolerated. It discusses three types of sexual workplace interactions in Japanese firms: (1) taking clients to hostess clubs, which women workers often see as “a part of their job”; (2) playing the hostess role at after-work drinking meetings, where a certain amount of touching and groping by men is seen as “joking around” or simply as behavior that is to be expected from men; and (3) repetitive or threatening sexual advances occurring during normal working hours, which are seen as harassment and cause women to take corrective action. The chapter confirms previous studies that have shown that women's interpretations of sexual behaviors can vary from enjoyable to harmful, depending on the organizational contexts. The chapter also argues that Japanese organizational culture, through its normalization of male dominance and female subordination, fosters and obscures harmful behaviors. Eradicating harmful sexual behaviors will require firms to reevaluate sexualized workplace customs and mitigate the large gender gap in the organizational hierarchy in Japanese firms.
Christine Williams and Ann Walker
Reports the award, to the University of Reading, of an endowment in accordance with the wishes of the late Dr Hugh Sinclair for a unit devoted to the research and teaching of…
Abstract
Reports the award, to the University of Reading, of an endowment in accordance with the wishes of the late Dr Hugh Sinclair for a unit devoted to the research and teaching of human nutrition. Outlines the work currently taking place within the unit and its plans for the future. Describes the life, work and legacy of Dr Hugh Sinclair.
Men maintain advantages in “women's” professions in large part because masculinity retains higher status than femininity even in feminized jobs mostly filled by women. Thus, men…
Abstract
Men maintain advantages in “women's” professions in large part because masculinity retains higher status than femininity even in feminized jobs mostly filled by women. Thus, men in these jobs tend to perform masculinity in very traditional ways, and are generally rewarded with increased access to higher-status positions, often with the cooperation and approval of their women coworkers. Yet much of the research in this area has neglected to explore how race intersects with gender to shape the ways men perform masculinity when they are employed in professions where they do “women's work.” How do men of color perform masculinity in female-dominated jobs? Are they able to engage in the expressions of masculinity documented among their white counterparts? Based on semi-structured interviews with black men nurses, I argue that these men encounter gendered racism from colleagues, supervisors, and customers that impacts the ways they construct and perform masculinity.