This paper examines ways in which patriarchal/familistic cultural systems condition responses to the kinds of social and economic changes that challenge family‐owned businesses. Using a case study of an ethnic enclave in the southeastern United States, the paper looks at intergenerational succession, paying particular attention to how small firms manage to transfer control within the family. Key to successful transfer is the presence of trust and the utilization of social capital as well as the ability of successive generations to acquire skills that enable them to identify new market niches. The manuscript also discusses how firms manage conflict between old and new ideas, develop informal mechanisms for incorporating new ideas, and maintain the flexibility necessary for market survival.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

Decades of increases in premarital sexual involvement of college students have been related to numerous variables, one of which is religiosity. This investigation sought to determine any change in the premarital sexual attitudes and behaviors of students enrolled at a private religiously-affiliated university over a two-decade period of time. Using anonymous questionnaires administered in social science classes in 1981, 1991, and 2000, a total sample of 1,545 never-married undergraduates, 791 women and 754 men, was obtained. Significant behavioral differences were found between time intervals for women and men in age at first intercourse, number of sex partners, and demographic and personal characteristics. Among women, significant attitude changes concerned acceptance of sexual intercourse with casual and serious dating partners. Religiosity and participation in sexual intercourse were inversely related for women and men.

Water Framework Directive (WFD) statutory authorities and stakeholders in Ireland are now challenged with the issue of how the proposed programmes of measures in the newly required River Basin Management Plans - designed to protect and restore good ecology by reverting as closely as possible back to natural conditions - are to be implemented in a way that concurrently complies with other existing and emerging intersecting European Union legislation, such as the Floods Directive (FD). The WFD is driven largely by ecological considerations, whereas the FD and other legislation are more geared towards protecting physical property and mitigating public safety risks. Thus many of the same waterbodies, especially heavily modified waterbodies, arguably have somewhat competing policy objectives put upon them. This paper explores the means by which Ireland might best achieve the highest degrees of cost effectiveness, economic efficiency and institutional durability in pursuing the common and overarching objective of the WFD and FD - to ensure Irish waterways are put to their highest valued uses.

The "Three Rivers Project" is a government initiative and one of a series of catchment based water quality monitoring and management systems being developed throughout Ireland since 1997. The establishment of these multi-sectoral, basin-wide and community based systems is a response to historically perceived disjointed, legalistic and non-participative approaches to water resource management and purports to transcend the restrictions of traditional local authority administrative boundaries. The new management model embodies the concepts and objectives contained in the European Union (EU) Water Framework Directive (WFD) enacted in December 2000. Ireland, in common with many EU countries, has failed to halt decades of increasing levels of eutrophication of surface waters due principally to phosphorus loading. The "Three Rivers Project" is promoting the benefits of an integrated and cooperative approach to the management of three important river systems in Ireland, namely, the Boyne, Liffey and Suir. The project objective is to protect and improve water quality to conform with "good ecological status". The implications of the Project findings for agricultural, municipal and industrial policy are grave and one of the greatest challenges now is to organise and fund Irish River Basin Management Systems as envisaged by the WFD to continue and build on the work which the "Three Rivers Project" has undertaken.

The present study investigates the extent to which marital partners are different or similar in their ways of enacting the therapeutic, or supportive, role. Specifically, the article compares husbands and wives categorically as in non-dyadic studies and then as marital partners as in dyadic studies. In addition, this study, by using data from the Aging Couples Study, included only dual-earner couples so as to control for the effects of work life on marital relations. Results showed that studies of individual married men and women understate the differences between marital partners in that some wives "overbenefit" in the exchange of conjugal supports. However, husbands more often "overbenefit." Findings also indicated that the norm of reciprocity does not prevail regarding the extent of support, although it does for the types of support exchanged.