In today’s complex world multi-tasking (which doesn’t actually exist but …) is the name of the job game. This results in more and more people with limited intellectual ability being left without gainful employment. Teach the boss to type and he doesn’t need a secretary (at least not for sending letters etc), get everyone to dust their own desks and you don’t need a cleaner and so it goes on, apparently.
Now, however, Stockport Council has turned round its recruitment process in order to provide equality of opportunity for people with learning difficulties. Instead of identifying an individual for a job the recruiter is identifying a job for the individual – and this is where the carving comes in. Many complex jobs today have elements of repetitive work within them, if these can be carved out of the main role they could provide a separate role that would suit the talents of someone with learning difficulties.
It seem that it’s taken me a while to catch up with this story. It was reported on the IDeA website in January of this year, in the Equal Opportunities review Number 190 in July and only just in 2009 at all by me.
Thursday, 31 December 2009
Wednesday, 30 December 2009
There must be a better way
I am, as is frequently the case, sitting in a Reading Room at the British Library. I am also muttering, under my breath of course – this is a library and the silence is palpable. On this occasion I am muttering about Children's Services Parliamentary Monitor – such a useful publication if only …. Is that the saddest phrase in the world? Maybe, in another context. In this context it’s just an annoyance.
Why do I have to be sitting here reading about measures agreed by the various legislative bodies in the UK during JULY? It’s December now. A November issue would be reasonable or even October (OK, a bit out of date but might highlight something I'd missed elsewhere) but July?
I'd probably be less annoyed at the tardiness of news that is no longer new six months after the event if this wasn’t by far and away the best commentary on activities in Westminster, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Stormont with regard to Children's Services!
Why do I have to be sitting here reading about measures agreed by the various legislative bodies in the UK during JULY? It’s December now. A November issue would be reasonable or even October (OK, a bit out of date but might highlight something I'd missed elsewhere) but July?
I'd probably be less annoyed at the tardiness of news that is no longer new six months after the event if this wasn’t by far and away the best commentary on activities in Westminster, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Stormont with regard to Children's Services!
Saturday, 26 December 2009
Capitalist Unfree Labour: A Contradiction?
an article by Tom Brass (University of Cambridge) published in Critical Sociology
Abstract
Disputed here is the view that a “fully functioning” accumulation process cannot operate efficiently – let alone profitably – without workers who are free. In non-Marxist political economy which eschews class struggle the idea that unfree labour might be acceptable to capitalists was dismissed on the grounds that such workers would necessarily be inefficient, unskilled, costly, and scarce. Because it was an obstacle both to market formation and expansion, and to the installation of advanced productive forces, they argued, unfree labour-power was incompatible with a dynamic process of accumulation within particular national contexts. In the present global capitalist system none of these objections continues to hold. Analysing a 21st century capitalism though the lens of class struggle confirms that today unfree workers are more profitable to employ but no less efficient than their counterparts who are free. Deskilling combined with a reserve army that is global in scope makes it possible for capitalists to use such production relations.
Abstract
Disputed here is the view that a “fully functioning” accumulation process cannot operate efficiently – let alone profitably – without workers who are free. In non-Marxist political economy which eschews class struggle the idea that unfree labour might be acceptable to capitalists was dismissed on the grounds that such workers would necessarily be inefficient, unskilled, costly, and scarce. Because it was an obstacle both to market formation and expansion, and to the installation of advanced productive forces, they argued, unfree labour-power was incompatible with a dynamic process of accumulation within particular national contexts. In the present global capitalist system none of these objections continues to hold. Analysing a 21st century capitalism though the lens of class struggle confirms that today unfree workers are more profitable to employ but no less efficient than their counterparts who are free. Deskilling combined with a reserve army that is global in scope makes it possible for capitalists to use such production relations.
Wednesday, 23 December 2009
Re-Evaluating Road-Crossing: ...
The Chicken Was Pushed – a short guide to writing a research paper
Writing Research Papers via Stepcase Lifehack by Art Carden
No matter where you are in your intellectual journey, the ability to assemble and analyse large amounts of complex information is a skill that can pay large dividends both in monetary terms and in terms of your overall satisfaction with life.
Abstract
The Abstract is usually 100-150 words long. The abstract tells the reader what you have done and why it is important. Your abstract tells the reader what you do, how you do it, and what it implies. Here, you’re saying the chicken was pushed, that you demonstrate this statistically or anecdotally, and that it implies we have to re-evaluate our understanding of chicken road-crossings.
I. Introduction
The introduction sets the stage for your analysis. You tell the audience what you are doing and why it is important. An introduction here would say that previous generations of scholars believed that the chicken crossed the road to get to the other side. Your paper shows that the chicken was pushed. In the introduction, you give a brief outline of the argument and the evidence used to support it. As much fun as it is to write long, twisting narratives filled with subtlety and nuance, it is important to remember that a research paper on a technical topic is not a mystery novel. Your readers are not reading for leisure. They are reading because they think your ideas are worth considering and factoring into their own research and decisions.
II. Literature Review
The literature review places your research in context. You aren’t the first person to ask why the chicken crossed the road. What questions do previous researchers ask? What questions remain unanswered? How does your idea fit? In this case, previous scholars have also argued that the turtle crossed the road “to get to the Shell station”. Is this relevant for your research? Why or why not? As tempting as it is, don't include too much in the literature review. The literature review is a place to highlight relevant contributions that address the question you are asking and to show how your contribution either fills gaps in our knowledge by answering questions we haven’t answered yet or creates gaps in our knowledge by showing that something we thought we knew is false. What does the reader take from the literature review? Is it a sense of the important questions that others have asked and how your research helps answer them? Or does the reader just come away with the knowledge that you've read a lot of stuff? Revise the latter until it becomes the former.
III. Theory
Your theory lays out the logical reasons for why we might believe your hypothesis to be true. It also explains why other hypotheses are unlikely to be true. Road-crossing is dangerous, and people have never explained what was on the other side that would have made it more attractive to the chicken. We can’t rule out the hypothesis that the chicken was pushed, and there are a lot of plausible conditions under which this might be the best explanation.
IV. Evidence
Here you report and explain the evidence you will use to verify that the chicken was pushed. Evidence can be statistical, anecdotal, narrative, or descriptive. Remember that not all good evidence is statistical, and not all statistical evidence is good. Perhaps you can show that chicken road-crossings are correlated with something, or maybe you find the chicken’s personal papers in which he, in a diary and a series of letters, accuses the cow of pushing him into the road.
V. Conclusion
The conclusion summarises your results and lays out very carefully exactly what needs to be done next. It is likely that your conclusion will be tentative. However, a well-written conclusion will elucidate the next steps that need to be taken before we can be absolutely certain as to whether the chicken crossed the road of his own volition or whether he was pushed.
Art Carden is Assistant Professor of Economics and Business at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee and an Adjunct Fellow with the Oakland, California-based Independent Institute.
His research papers have been published or are forthcoming in Public Choice, Contemporary Economic Policy, the International Journal of Social Economics, the Business and Society Review, the Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, the Review of Austrian Economics, and other outlets, and they can be found on his SSRN Author Page.
His commentaries appear regularly at http://www.mises.org/ and in newspapers around the country, and he is a regular contributor to Division of Labour.
He and his wife, Shannon, had their first child in July, 2008.
Writing Research Papers via Stepcase Lifehack by Art Carden
No matter where you are in your intellectual journey, the ability to assemble and analyse large amounts of complex information is a skill that can pay large dividends both in monetary terms and in terms of your overall satisfaction with life.
Abstract
The Abstract is usually 100-150 words long. The abstract tells the reader what you have done and why it is important. Your abstract tells the reader what you do, how you do it, and what it implies. Here, you’re saying the chicken was pushed, that you demonstrate this statistically or anecdotally, and that it implies we have to re-evaluate our understanding of chicken road-crossings.
I. Introduction
The introduction sets the stage for your analysis. You tell the audience what you are doing and why it is important. An introduction here would say that previous generations of scholars believed that the chicken crossed the road to get to the other side. Your paper shows that the chicken was pushed. In the introduction, you give a brief outline of the argument and the evidence used to support it. As much fun as it is to write long, twisting narratives filled with subtlety and nuance, it is important to remember that a research paper on a technical topic is not a mystery novel. Your readers are not reading for leisure. They are reading because they think your ideas are worth considering and factoring into their own research and decisions.
II. Literature Review
The literature review places your research in context. You aren’t the first person to ask why the chicken crossed the road. What questions do previous researchers ask? What questions remain unanswered? How does your idea fit? In this case, previous scholars have also argued that the turtle crossed the road “to get to the Shell station”. Is this relevant for your research? Why or why not? As tempting as it is, don't include too much in the literature review. The literature review is a place to highlight relevant contributions that address the question you are asking and to show how your contribution either fills gaps in our knowledge by answering questions we haven’t answered yet or creates gaps in our knowledge by showing that something we thought we knew is false. What does the reader take from the literature review? Is it a sense of the important questions that others have asked and how your research helps answer them? Or does the reader just come away with the knowledge that you've read a lot of stuff? Revise the latter until it becomes the former.
III. Theory
Your theory lays out the logical reasons for why we might believe your hypothesis to be true. It also explains why other hypotheses are unlikely to be true. Road-crossing is dangerous, and people have never explained what was on the other side that would have made it more attractive to the chicken. We can’t rule out the hypothesis that the chicken was pushed, and there are a lot of plausible conditions under which this might be the best explanation.
IV. Evidence
Here you report and explain the evidence you will use to verify that the chicken was pushed. Evidence can be statistical, anecdotal, narrative, or descriptive. Remember that not all good evidence is statistical, and not all statistical evidence is good. Perhaps you can show that chicken road-crossings are correlated with something, or maybe you find the chicken’s personal papers in which he, in a diary and a series of letters, accuses the cow of pushing him into the road.
V. Conclusion
The conclusion summarises your results and lays out very carefully exactly what needs to be done next. It is likely that your conclusion will be tentative. However, a well-written conclusion will elucidate the next steps that need to be taken before we can be absolutely certain as to whether the chicken crossed the road of his own volition or whether he was pushed.
Art Carden is Assistant Professor of Economics and Business at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee and an Adjunct Fellow with the Oakland, California-based Independent Institute.
His research papers have been published or are forthcoming in Public Choice, Contemporary Economic Policy, the International Journal of Social Economics, the Business and Society Review, the Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, the Review of Austrian Economics, and other outlets, and they can be found on his SSRN Author Page.
His commentaries appear regularly at http://www.mises.org/ and in newspapers around the country, and he is a regular contributor to Division of Labour.
He and his wife, Shannon, had their first child in July, 2008.
Shocks, Stocks, and Socks: ...
Smoothing Consumption Over a Temporary Income Loss
an article by Martin Browning (University of Oxford, and Institute for Fiscal Studies) and Thomas F Crossley (University of Cambridge, and Institute for Fiscal Studies) published in Journal of the European Economic Association Volume 7 Number 6 (December 2009)
Abstract
We investigate how households in temporarily straitened circumstances due to an unemployment spell cut back on expenditures and how they spend marginal dollars of unemployment insurance (UI) benefit. Our theoretical and empirical analyses emphasise the importance of allowing for the fact that households buy durable as well as non-durable goods. The theoretical analysis shows that in the short-run households can cut back significantly on total expenditures without a significant fall in welfare if they concentrate their budget reductions on durables. We then present an empirical analysis based on a Canadian survey of workers who experienced a job separation. Exploiting changes in the unemployment insurance system over our sample period we show that cuts in UI benefits lead to reductions in total expenditure with a stronger impact on clothing than on food expenditures. Our empirical strategy allows that these expenditures may be non-separable from employment status. The effects we find are particularly strong for households with no liquid assets before the spell started. These qualitative findings are in precise agreement with the theoretical predictions.
Full text PDF 24pp
an article by Martin Browning (University of Oxford, and Institute for Fiscal Studies) and Thomas F Crossley (University of Cambridge, and Institute for Fiscal Studies) published in Journal of the European Economic Association Volume 7 Number 6 (December 2009)
Abstract
We investigate how households in temporarily straitened circumstances due to an unemployment spell cut back on expenditures and how they spend marginal dollars of unemployment insurance (UI) benefit. Our theoretical and empirical analyses emphasise the importance of allowing for the fact that households buy durable as well as non-durable goods. The theoretical analysis shows that in the short-run households can cut back significantly on total expenditures without a significant fall in welfare if they concentrate their budget reductions on durables. We then present an empirical analysis based on a Canadian survey of workers who experienced a job separation. Exploiting changes in the unemployment insurance system over our sample period we show that cuts in UI benefits lead to reductions in total expenditure with a stronger impact on clothing than on food expenditures. Our empirical strategy allows that these expenditures may be non-separable from employment status. The effects we find are particularly strong for households with no liquid assets before the spell started. These qualitative findings are in precise agreement with the theoretical predictions.
Full text PDF 24pp
Interactive visualization for opportunistic exploration of large document collections
an article by Simon Lehmann, Ulrich Schwanecke and Ralf Dörner (RheinMain University of Applied Sciences, Wiesbaden) published in Information Systems Volume 35 Issue 2 (April 2009)
Abstract
Finding relevant information in a large and comprehensive collection of cross-referenced documents like Wikipedia usually requires a quite accurate idea where to look for the pieces of data being sought. A user might not yet have enough domain-specific knowledge to form a precise search query to get the desired result on the first try. Another problem arises from the usually highly cross-referenced structure of such document collections. When researching a subject, users usually follow some references to get additional information not covered by a single document. With each document, more opportunities to navigate are added and the structure and relations of the visited documents gets harder to understand.
This paper describes the interactive visualisation Wivi which enables users to intuitively navigate Wikipedia by visualising the structure of visited articles and emphasising relevant other topics. Combining this visualisation with a view of the current article results in a custom browser specially adapted for exploring large information networks. By visualising the potential paths that could be taken, users are invited to read up on subjects relevant to the current point of focus and thus opportunistically finding relevant information. Results from a user study indicate that this visual navigation can be easily used and understood. A majority of the participants of the study stated that this method of exploration supports them finding information in Wikipedia.
Abstract
Finding relevant information in a large and comprehensive collection of cross-referenced documents like Wikipedia usually requires a quite accurate idea where to look for the pieces of data being sought. A user might not yet have enough domain-specific knowledge to form a precise search query to get the desired result on the first try. Another problem arises from the usually highly cross-referenced structure of such document collections. When researching a subject, users usually follow some references to get additional information not covered by a single document. With each document, more opportunities to navigate are added and the structure and relations of the visited documents gets harder to understand.
This paper describes the interactive visualisation Wivi which enables users to intuitively navigate Wikipedia by visualising the structure of visited articles and emphasising relevant other topics. Combining this visualisation with a view of the current article results in a custom browser specially adapted for exploring large information networks. By visualising the potential paths that could be taken, users are invited to read up on subjects relevant to the current point of focus and thus opportunistically finding relevant information. Results from a user study indicate that this visual navigation can be easily used and understood. A majority of the participants of the study stated that this method of exploration supports them finding information in Wikipedia.
Tuesday, 22 December 2009
Genome Island: A Virtual Science Environment in Second Life
an article by by Mary Anne Clark published in Innovate Volume 5 Issue 6 (August/September 2009)
Abstract
Mary Anne Clark describes the organisation and uses of Genome Island, a virtual laboratory complex constructed in Second Life. Genome Island was created for teaching genetics to university undergraduates but also provides a public space where anyone interested in genetics can spend a few minutes, or a few hours, interacting with genetic objects – from simple experiments with peas to the organisation of whole genomes. Each of the approximately four dozen activities available in the island's various areas includes background information, model objects with data sets, and suggestions for data analysis. The island also has a presentation theatre, an indoor conference setting, and separate meeting spaces suitable for small group conversations. Clark describes some of the activities available on the island, offers advice for their use, and discusses the results of a pilot project that identified some pedagogical and technical challenges arising in this virtual setting.
Abstract
Mary Anne Clark describes the organisation and uses of Genome Island, a virtual laboratory complex constructed in Second Life. Genome Island was created for teaching genetics to university undergraduates but also provides a public space where anyone interested in genetics can spend a few minutes, or a few hours, interacting with genetic objects – from simple experiments with peas to the organisation of whole genomes. Each of the approximately four dozen activities available in the island's various areas includes background information, model objects with data sets, and suggestions for data analysis. The island also has a presentation theatre, an indoor conference setting, and separate meeting spaces suitable for small group conversations. Clark describes some of the activities available on the island, offers advice for their use, and discusses the results of a pilot project that identified some pedagogical and technical challenges arising in this virtual setting.
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