Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been soliciting “customer service surveys” from its “customers” (those involved in various regulatory actions). Under various FOI requests, Professor Connolly has obtained data from the initial years of this effort, amounting to more than 2,500 reports of customer satisfaction for the period 2002 - 2005, with initial results reported in Connolly, ELR, 2007. These reflect noteworthy numbers of respondents for seventeen of the thirty-eight Corps Districts across the US with some additional responses from other districts. _x000d_We employ multivariate tools to analyze these surveys, generally based on a common form. The surveys represent a relatively small portion of the universe of those involved in all permitting decisions, reporting high levels of satisfaction, confounded by selection issues, and including measures of process perceptions. This analysis will then support an investigation of the value of this survey process for management and policy oversight. This, in turn, leads to some concluding reflections on the nature of the relationship between a regulatory agency and those affected by it (e.g. Jos and Tompkins, PAR, forthcoming).

Publication Type: Proceeding

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: We draw on participant observation and in-depth interviews at branches of �Bank Holding Company� to study the performance of gender (Butler, 1999) in the workplace as a set of systematic pattenrs of interaction between and among workers, managers, and customers. The study is set in the context of a restructuring process through which gendered assumptions about branch level positions were integral to the job of the �Personal Banker,�a position in which workers were mainly responsible for selling financial products and services. The data enable us to investigate the interplay and tensions between gender practices that were associated with the gender-typing of jobs and those that matched workers� own gender identities. For example, among twenty-eight salespeople (16 women and 12 men), nearly all the men used gender practices identified with productive masculinity: aggressive competition, hyper-selling and assertion of authority. Several of the women, in contrast, focused on customer care in their sales strategies, despite official discouragement of this approach. Although gender is done frequently at work, not all actions performed by women and men indicate gender: a number of salespeople used selling styles that relied on neither masculine nor femine gender-specific characteristics. The data suggest that workers� brought a fluid understanding of gender to their work in the bank, providing a set of empirical examples of gender as a social process, while illustrating a range of potential responses to the organizational practices that frame gendered activity in the workplace.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper addresses the benefits and limitations to the use of simulations in the classroom. It offers a typology of simulations and explains the differences between Dilemma of Choice, Process, and Contextual simulations. It examines the functional elements of simulations - actors, environment, mediator role, objectives, and tools and resources - and clarifies how these elements may be adapted to serve the needs of a particular class or lesson. In order to demonstrate the flexibility of simulations, a Dilemma of Choice game-The Crisis Game: Pakistan, India, and Nuclear Escalation is presented and explained. This game allows participants to experience bargaining and negotiation in an attempt to achieve personal objectives. Actors must adhere to their roles and recognize their position within their government's hierarchy, but they are at liberty to use their imagination and innovation to broker deals and satisfy their goals. Context is important for understanding the objectives and orientation of specific roles but does not dominate the simulation. The Crisis Game is also used to discuss the importance of the debriefing session for the educational value of simulations. Through this particular game students develop an appreciation for the choices made in the foreign policy process and the art of diplomacy. Through the paper, lessons are drawn more generally to the extent to which students can understand and analyze real world circumstances through simulations as tools.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper, based on ethnographic research, analyzes how inhabitants of Port Sa�id, Egypt resolve common civil disputes by making the most of spaces in the law and on the margins of law. I demonstrate some of the ways in which lawyers in Port Sa�id draw upon customary law as a distinct source of knowledge and tradition in order to respond pragmatically to the problems their clients face. In particular, I look at the use of muharrar �urfi (customary documents), such as wasuulaat amana (honesty receipts, or promissory notes), and the participation of lawyers in magaalis �urfi (customary sessions) in the resolution of disputes. Customary justice, variously imagined and enacted, falls outside the framework of the kind of legal knowledge attained in law schools. Yet the cases analyzed suggest that the divide between customary law and the positive law is permeable, and that lawyers play a critical role in making the most of the interplay between these traditions. In the process, I posit, these lawyers are redefining what �urf, or custom, means and how it can be used in contemporary urban disputes.