Examines the experience of worker participation and finds that the tendency is for such programs to weaken unions and limit workers' power in significant ways. (JOW)

The working alliance is that sector of the experience of counseling participants characterized by their collaboration, mutuality, and cooperation with the work of counseling. Discusses the dimensions of the working alliance, counselor and client contributions to it, and perceptions of others about it, and reviews obstacles to building the…

The Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Survey of 2,353 companies showed sporadic employee participation in decision making. Although case studies of Ford Motor, Australia Post, Lend Lease, Telecom Australia, and Woodlawn Mining illustrate successful programs, most managers appear cautious about industrial democracy. (SK)

Today's participatory work cultures are moving power down through organizations. Many of them empower self-directed work teams (SDTs) with the responsibility for managing themselves and their work. Key issues in building successful SDTs include selecting team players, training for success, and rewarding team performance. (JOW)

Mainstream development is obsessed with material goods, considers humans superior to nature, disempowers women, centralizes resources, and reduces diversity. Sustainable development seeks harmony with nature, is people oriented, focuses on basic needs of all, decentralizes resources, and requires participatory rather than representative democracy.…

Pacific Gas and Electric's employee involvement program aggressively focuses on customer service, performance measurement tied to management bonuses, and commitment to change in the organizational culture. (SK)

Describes Boulder Valley (Colorado) School District's development of a portfolio approach focusing on the administrator's leadership role in improving school success, rather than individual evaluation. The process features stakeholder collaboration in goal-setting and appraisal of school success, concentration on learning and teaching activities,…

Unless unions can gain a greater role in decision making on the content of work, they risk losing members to management-controlled participation schemes. (JOW)

Discusses the development of evaluation's collective capacity and offers an analysis of ways members of the evaluation community can work to build collective strength. These include better efforts to educate evaluation clients. (SLD)

Interviews with 28 middle-school students about their attitudes and beliefs about the leadership. Several common themes about leadership emerged from the interviews, the more prominent of which are that leadership is caring and helping, that teachers are the leaders of the school, and that principals are managers, not leaders. (Contains 43…

With the implementation of site-based decision-making occurring in schools, an understanding of the views of secondary school principals and of secondary school teachers would provide valuable information. In the study, six principals and six teachers, from either high performing or low performing schools, were purposefully selected for their…

Established in 1940, Lady Gowrie Child Centres in Australia provide integrated early childhood programs and develop and share project work, information, resources and training at local and national levels. While changes in social policy compromised their provision of integrated programs, the centre in Adelaide has made real strides towards moving…

Previous research into deinstitutionalization has largely ignored the perspective of people with intellectual disabilities, especially those with severe intellectual disabilities. This research aimed first to understand how women with severe intellectual disabilities experienced transition from a locked ward of an old long-stay hospital into other…

This article reports the results of a longitudinal study of 35 Swedish comprehensive schools involving interviews with teachers, school leaders, students, and parents carried out in 1980, 1982, 1985, and 2001. During the 35-year period covered by the study, the schools experienced significant reforms. The most important of these reforms involved a…

Observations were conducted in three county councils to find out whether the government's ambition to develop Learning Disability Partnership Boards (as expressed in the White Paper "Valuing people") are being realized. All the partnerships practiced various inclusive activities in order to involve people with learning disabilities in…