Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper presents findings from an ethnographic project on staff decision-making practices in a juvenile drug court in southern California. Based on 12 months of participant observation of staff meetings, court hearings, and staff field-based work as they check on youth in their schools, homes and drug treatment programs, the project traces how staff gathers information and makes decisions about youth participants and how youth and their parents try to influence and shape that decision-making process. In short, the objective of the project is to discern variations in a drug court client’s institutional career and to show how the different actors (e.g. staff, youth, parents) all have a role in creating and shaping those variations.

This paper will focus on one aspect of the project: staff strategies in decision-making. The paper specifically discusses how staff presents and discusses information about youth during their pre-court hearing meetings. In these meetings, the staff must decide by consensus whether the youth is compliant with the program and if not, what corresponding sanction should be imposed. This paper will trace how staff members try to transform a specific “bad” action committed by the youth into a significant or irrelevant event that merits a court response (or not).

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper asks two questions:
1) What are state legislative enterprises doing? 2) Is there a
difference in the amount and types of work performed by personal staffs
in citizen-professional and professional legislatures? I look at the
personal staff of state legislators because they have become more
important to the legislative process. In the congressional literature,
scholars have begun stressing the importance of conceiving of
representation in terms of a collective legislative office, instead of
focusing on the individual member. Staffers that are assigned to the
member are engaged in a coordinated effort that allows the member to be
in more than one place at a time. At any given time, these legislative
“enterprises” may be working on casework, oversight, communication,
information gathering, research, and drafting legislation. In effect,
representation is occurring through the many individuals of a member’s
office, all in the member’s name. This project extends the “enterprise”
concept to state legislatures. The data is from a mail survey (59 percent
response rate) of state senate offices in four states. The results show
the percentage of the total amount of work that “enterprises” in this
sample perform can be broken down into the following categories: 36 percent is
constituency service; 14 percent is on committee work; 13 percent is on
administrative work; 12 percent is dedicated to preparing and assisting their
senator on the floor; 11 percent is working with interest groups and
lobbyists; 8 percent with the press and public relations; and 5 percent working with
the executive branch. Interestingly, this suggests that between 60-70 percent
of the work that these “enterprises” perform is not constituency
service. In addition, enterprises in professional and
citizen-professional legislatures prioritize their workloads
differently. Because of their extra staff and resources, enterprises in
professional legislatures are able to spend more time on constituency
service. Whereas, enterprises in citizen-professional legislatures,
because of fewer staff and resources, must spend more time preparing
and assisting their senator on the floor, working with the executive
branch, and on administrative tasks at the expense of constituency
service. There appears to be no differences in the legislative
“enterprises” of Republicans and Democrats; of leaders and non-leaders,
and term limited and non-term limited states.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript

Publication Type: Symposium Paper
Abstract: Distribution of leadership tasks, often described as distributed leadership, has emerged as an innovative concept for describing the deployment of leadership within schools. A distributed leadership perspective suggests (e.g. Gronn, 2000; Ogawa & Bossert, 1995; Scribner, Sawyer, Watson, & Myers, 2007; Smylie, Conley & Marks, 2002; Spillane, Halverson, & Diamond, 2004) that successful school leadership is not simply the charge of the formal leaders and, instead, that the entire staff of a school throughout its multi-layered network of relationships and interactions (Crow, Hausman, & Scribner, 2002; Scribner et al, 2007; Spillane, Halveron, & Diamond, 2001), is responsible for school leadership. Through an examination of the leadership literature that yielded task orientation (Fleishman, 1953), communication orientation (Gronn, 2000; Spillane, 2006), and trust orientation (Hobby of the Hays Group, 2004; Oduro, 2004; MacBeath, 2005) as key characteristics of leadership, the author (also the granddaughter of the subject) used this tri-fold lens as a means of recognizing leadership among support staff, in particular a rural school custodian. This qualitative study (Lincoln & Guba, 1985) that utilized snowball sampling (Gall, Borg, & Gall, 1996) resulted in hour-long interviews of nineteen informants whose conversations were analyzed and that revealed the leadership impact of one school custodian over his fifty plus year stint as a custodian and significant school leader. Recommendations for leadership programs include incorporation of further studies of support staff within the current scope of what is considered distributed leadership.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The goal of present study is to employ the theoretical framework of Health Belief Model (HBM) in order to (a) theoretically explicate direct and indirect effect of knowledge on benefits, barriers, and cues to action; and (b) test for the contribution of non-linear relationships in cost effectiveness of HBM in nosocomial transmission of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) preventive behaviors. Findings indicate while greater knowledge leads to lower perception of benefits; it has no significant effect on barriers and behaviors. Benefits and barriers influence staff preventive behaviors significantly and study finds significant multiplicative effect of perceived barriers. Additionally findings indicate significant indirect role of cues to action mediating the effect of benefits and barriers on behaviors. Theoretical implications extending HBM for preventive behaviors in infection risk control are outlined and intervention recommendations for interventions are suggested.