Substantive Experience Research Articles

Dirty work in the clean city: An embodied Urban Political Ecology of women informal recyclers’ work in the ‘clean city’

This paper investigates the ways that ‘cleaning up’ Indian cities impacts those who rely on accessing waste on city streets for their livelihoods. I focus on low-income Dalit women recyclers in Ahmedabad, India as they navigate material and discursive shifts in urban waste management emanating from the national Swachh Bharat Abhiyan and 2016 Solid Waste Management Rules, and the municipal privatization and mechanization of solid waste management practice. The study is informed by 10 months of ethnographic research and a series of interviews and group discussions with women recyclers between 2016 and 2018. Using a feminist embodied Urban Political Ecology approach, I suggest the imagining and production of the ‘clean and green’ world-class city is affecting Dalit women recyclers’ work in two ways. First, I argue that emerging cleanliness governance mechanisms and solid waste management practices are re-spatializing and masculinizing waste labour in the city. I show how spatial, discursive and temporal shifts in solid waste management are producing new challenges for Dalit women recyclers in accessing waste, intensifying their physical and financial burdens and requiring more precarious adaptations to generate daily incomes. Second, I explore women recyclers’ own clean city aspirations, expressing a desire to experience the ‘clean and green’ city and a simultaneous sense of betrayal as their livelihoods, communities and bodies are excluded from its imagining and material production. I suggest that an embodied intersectional analysis of waste labour reveals how the imagining and production of clean and sustainable ‘modern’ cities can cause damage to socially marginalized and gendered bodies as they are displaced from work and denied the substantive experience of urban citizenship in the ‘world-class’ city. Attention to embodiment thus deepens an understanding of the complexities and contradictions invoked in urban environmental governance and infrastructural transformations, informing the imagining and production of more equitable and reparative urban futures.

Pharo siklariben, or about difficult access to education for Roma children in Poland and Europe during the pandemic

The coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis has shaken the institutional structures of many countries, including education systems. Authorities are calling for measures to limit the spread of the virus. Media and street notices remind people of the importance of 'washing hands regularly' and 'staying at home and avoiding contact with others'. The aim of this article is to analyse the learning and teaching experiences of Roma pupils in Poland. It presents research on the impact of COVID-19 on the education of Roma pupils on the example of a focus interview with 11 teachers of SP3 in Chorzów conducted in 2021. The content of the article will also include the author's four years of practical and substantive experience as a former Roma education assistant in Silesia in Primary School No. 15 in Chorzów and in Primary School No. 3 in Gliwice. In addition, the author has worked for five years with the Integration Community Centre in Chorzów, where the project "Roma of Tomorrow" was implemented.

Identifying focus areas to decode the decision to litigate contractual disputes in construction

PurposeStrong and independent judiciary symbolizes transparency and impartiality in the dispute resolution process. However, litigation is often time-consuming and affects the working relationship between the disputants. In the construction context, where projects typically have a short life span of three to four years, dispute resolution through litigation induces unaffordable process delays. Despite the inherent challenges associated with litigation, it is observed that disputing parties resort to litigation. This behavior, called the litigation dilemma, ostensibly appears counterintuitive to rational decision-making.Design/methodology/approachThe study identifies 35 “decision to litigate” (DTL)-triggers from a review of the literature and court cases followed by expert interviews and groups them into thematic research domains using Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) followed by Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA).FindingsDTL studies in construction stands benefited through interdisciplinary research. “Presumptuous decision-making,” “construction project characteristics,” “milieu influence,” “interest in amicable resolution,” “positional focus” and “opportunism” are the six focus areas to decode the DTL in construction.Research limitations/implicationsThe study identifies factors that consolidate the knowledge from various fields with the substantive experience of construction professionals from across the world to help understand the dynamics behind the DTL in the context of contract-linked disputes in construction.Originality/valueThe findings from the domains of law, behavior, sociology and economics can help understand the above dilemma in the context of contractual disputes in construction. However, studies that explore the “decision to litigate” (DTL) contractual disputes in construction are limited, providing a vast scope for further research. The current study addresses a part of this gap.

Intrinsic motivation of luxury consumers in an emerging market

Consumers no longer consider luxury as an absolute goal. Even though previous studies have primarily linked luxury with consumers' extrinsic motivation, intrinsic motivational factors have seen few studies. As a result of this gap, this study attempts to investigate the intrinsic factors that influence consumers' experiences with luxury brands. By using self-determination theory, this paper aims to assess the personal ‘self’ factors of luxury consumers' enriching experiences. An offline questionnaire from 316 luxury consumers was used to collect data for the study. AMOS SEM v 22 was then used to analyse the data. Our findings indicate that luxury consumers have shifted to luxury for ‘self,’ and are driven by intrinsic factors. As luxury relates to consumers' self-fulfilment, it creates an intrinsic and substantive experience for customers that assists them in their search for self-growth. The study contributes to the literature concerning personal self and enriching experiences through luxury consumption and creates an opportunity to examine the impact of consumers’ happiness, which was discovered to be a critical indicator of enriched luxury experience and word of mouth, resulting in a boosting of the personal self.

Preventing a boondoggle: assuring a short term research abroad activity is an educative experience

Purpose At Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, an annual short-term, research abroad non-credit program was created in 2012 as a core component of the undergraduate research initiative that achieves learning outcomes in a meaningful way. The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach In order to describe, and analyze the short-term research abroad activity, an instrumental case study design was created. The instrumental case study was chosen as a means of allowing the facilitators/authors to communicate how they attempted to assure that the program was educative. In order to determine if the program was in fact educative and that it met its goal of being an effective research experience the authors utilized two additional research methods. The first was a document analysis of the participant’s research artifacts. Each participant was required to communicate their findings by writing a paper that was submitted for publication to an applicable research journal. Findings The study found that an experiential education as a pedagogical framework coupled with a short-term research abroad activity can lead to a substantive educative experience, where the authors described and analyzed attempts to ensure that the short-term research abroad program was educative, it also describes the educational assessment findings which describe what was found when the authors tested whether they, in fact, met this goal. Research limitations/implications During the design phase of the short-term research abroad program, the authors turned to experiential education as a principle for how they would ensure that the program was grounded in an acceptable educational theory. Experiential education is a widely accepted educational practice used in experiences such as co-ops and internships, study abroad, undergraduate research and service learning. Practical implications To frame the short-term cultural research abroad program as something from which student could learn the authors utilized the National Society of Experiential Education’s (2013) list of eight principles of good practice. In order to safeguard that an activity is educative, an assessment or an evaluation of a demonstrative artifact is essential. In assessing the final artifact against a rubric or some other non-biased or less biased criteria, an educator can ensure that the student has gained new knowledge in the form of student learning outcomes (SLOs). In addition, the educator can use the results of this assessment to modify many different aspects of the experience ranging from the timing, the modality, the pre-work, even the learning outcomes themselves. Social implications Given financial and curriculum inflexibility of some students, Universities and faculty could achieve attainment of research-based, program agnostic, SLOs by offering short-term study abroad alternatives to the traditional semester or year-long experiences. With graduates looking to enter the job market where businesses are more globalized and executive’s recognition of a need for more international experience, carefully constructed short-term study abroad programs are meaningful avenues to build those credentials. Originality/value Such offerings can be constructed as customized experiences to achieve highly integrated skills across all degree programs.

Service-Learning as a Tool to Cultivate Democratically Minded Students: A Conceptual Framework

The field of public administration is intrinsically linked to a substantive experience of democracy and the development of a democratic community. This article employs John Dewey’s constructivist pedagogical approach to make the case that service-learning can be a vehicle to cultivate students’ understanding of democracy as a movement toward a common good. We use the term “real democracy” to describe the ways that substantive practices of Dewey’s communal democracy materialize in today’s public sector. We highlight the concerns “real democracy” presents for public administrators before arguing that Master of Public Administration (MPA) programs are a particularly suitable setting to cultivate Dewey’s constructivist approach to democratic education given that the spirit of the approach is already well-aligned with MPA core competencies. Finally, we present public administration educators with a democratic service-learning conceptual framework that ties together pedagogical goals, service-learning design and outcomes, and Dewey’s constructivist, democratic student experience.

Quality Improvement in Neurology: Dementia Management Quality Measurement Set Update.

Dementia is a neurologic condition manifested by a substantial decline in multiple cognitive abilities that collectively render a person unable to function at expected levels and progressively impede independent ability to perform everyday activities. For decades, public health officials have warned of the coming tsunami of Alzheimer disease (AD), and dementia has even been characterized as the dominant scourge of modern times, replacing cancer.1 Recently, hopeful signs have appeared, including reports from some longitudinal research studies that incidence of dementia is declining,2 and from the federal government that research funding for AD and other dementias will approach $1 billion USD in 2017.3 The authors thank all the Dementia Management Update Quality Measurement Set Work Group members for their dedication, time, energy, contributions and work that supported the development of this manuscript: Amy E. Sanders, MD, MS, FAAN (American Academy of Neurology); Robert Roca, MD (American Psychiatric Association); Piero Antuono, MD (American Academy of Neurology); Kelly Sullivan, PhD (American Academy of Neurology); Karl Goodkin, MD, PhD, DFAPA (American Psychiatric Association); Donovan Maust, MD, MS (American Psychiatric Association); Michael Lubin, MD, MACP (American College of Physicians); Sam Fazio, PhD (Alzheimer's Association); Ann Knutson (Alzheimer's Association); Robert O'Keefe, MA (Alzheimer's Association); Eric Tangalos, MD, FACP, AGSF, CMD (AMDA–The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine); Glenn Smith, PhD (American Academy of Clinical Neuropsychology and American Psychological Association); Brian Unwin, MD, FAAFP (American Academy of Family Physicians); Joseph Shega, MD (American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine); Dale Strasser, MD (American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation); Michele Grigaitis, DNP, FNP-BC, CNRN (American Association of Neuroscience Nurses); Jerry Johnson, MD (American Geriatric Society); Mary Kathleen Owens, RN MSN, C-NE, RAC-CT (American Health Care Association and Gerontological Advanced Practice Nurses Association); Catherine Piersol, PhD, OTR, FAOTA (American Occupational Therapy Association); Lise McCarthy, PT, DPT, GCS (American Physical Therapy Association); Kathleen Welsh-Bohmer, PhD, ABPP (American Psychological Association); David Webster, MD, MBA (Humana); James Galvin, MD, MPH, FANA (Lewy Body Dementia Association); Daniel Marson, PhD, JD (National Academy of Neuropsychology); Richard Fortinsky, PhD (The Gerontological Society of America); Marsden McGuire, MD (Veteran's Affairs); John Absher, MD (American Academy of Neurology Facilitator); James Nininger, MD (American Psychiatric Association Facilitator); Amy Bennett, JD (American Academy of Neurology Staff); Gina Gjorvad (American Academy of Neurology Staff); Erin Hagen (American Academy of Neurology Staff); Becky Schierman, MPH (American Academy of Neurology Staff); Samantha Shugarman, MS (American Psychiatric Association Staff); and Kristin Kroeger (American Psychiatric Association Staff). The authors also thank Jean O'Keefe for participation and the individuals and organizations who offered public comments.

Rejecting and accepting international migrant patients into primary care practices: a mixed method study

Purpose – International migrants frequently struggle to obtain access to local primary care practices. The purpose of this paper is to explore factors associated with rejecting and accepting migrant patients into Canadian primary care practices. Design/methodology/approach – Mixed methods study. Using a modified Delphi consensus approach among a network of experts on migrant health, the authors identified and prioritized factors related to rejecting and accepting migrants into primary care practices. From ten semi-structured interviews with the less-migrant-care experienced practitioners, the authors used qualitative description to further examine nuances of these factors. Findings – Consensus was reached on practitioner-level factors associated with a reluctance of practitioners to accept migrants − communication challenges, high-hassle factor, limited availability of clinicians, fear of financial loss, lack of awareness of migrant groups, and limited migrant health knowledge – and on factors associated with accepting migrants − feeling useful, migrant health education, third party support, learning about other cultures, experience working overseas, and enjoying the challenge of treating diseases from around the world. Interviews supported use of interpreters, community resources, alternative payment methods, and migrant health education as strategies to overcome the identified challenges. Research limitations/implications – This Delphi network represented the views of practitioners who had substantive experience in providing care for migrants. Interviews with less-experienced practitioners were used to mitigate this bias. Originality/value – This study identifies the facilitators and challenges of migrants’ access to primary care from the perspective of primary care practitioners, work that complements research from patients’ perspectives. Strategies to address these findings are discussed.

Emergency Room Psychiatric Services: A Qualitative Study of Nurses’ Experiences

Emergency nurses working in general emergency divisions (EDs) are primarily trained to assess and treat acute physical problems. However, ED nurses often care for psychiatric patients and the perceptions of nurses in EDs regarding their experiences with psychiatric patients have not been well-studied. Using focus groups, the purpose of this study was to explore and describe ED nurses’ experiences, and feelings caring for patients with mental illness. Krueger and Casey's qualitative analysis for focus groups was utilized to code and categorize phrases and identify themes from transcribed interviews. Four themes emerged; powerlessness best captured the overarching and substantive experience of the participants. Based on the findings, implications for emergency room care of psychiatric patients are described.

A fenomenologia social na pesquisa em estratégia

A investigação científica em estratégia vem passando, no decorrer do tempo, por transformações que podem ser analisadas como uma evolução da produção do conhecimento nesse campo. Tal evolução processa-se via tentativa de formulação de um saber estratégico voltado para organizações e ambientes dinâmicos. Dessa forma, o conhecimento estratégico elaborado até o momento relaciona-se com várias ferramentas para auxiliar o gestor no processo de tomada de decisão. Todavia, observam-se outras dimensões na estratégia, as quais existem por si e em si mesmas, mas que, por variados motivos, são exploradas de maneira pouco aprofundada, como o estrategista. Isso se dá não por desinteresse dos pesquisadores, mas por necessidades de natureza prática, que são orientadas pelo modo de produção capitalista - ideologia. Isso ocorre quando a ciência estuda a realidade posta e não a origem ou os primeiros princípios. Dessa forma, investiga-se, neste trabalho, como se processa a pesquisa em estratégia, com a constatação do predomínio de uma visão funcionalista na pesquisa sobre esse fenômeno. Diante desse contexto, emerge a necessidade de abordar o tema a partir de outras perspectivas, como a interpretativa. Pretende-se propor outro modo de acesso ao fenômeno estratégico a partir do emprego da fenomenologia social. Tal vertente, que pertence à orientação paradigmática interpretativa, trata de questões como intersubjetividade, alter ego, mundo da vida, processo de significação, tipificação, conduta e ação social, teoria da motivação e construção de esquemas típicos - ideias que apresentam grande potencial de contribuição para o avanço da compreensão holística da estratégia. O paradigma interpretativo oferece algo a mais à estratégia, buscando conhecer o fenômeno estratégico à luz da subjetividade do estrategista, considerando tanto sua racionalidade substantiva quanto sua experiência de vida. Destaca-se que esse olhar é uma proposta de aprofundamento dos estudos a partir de outra linha paradigmática de pesquisa, não apresentando tal orientação maior ou menor relevância que a linha vigente funcionalista. Portanto, neste trabalho, pretende-se contribuir para o avanço das pesquisas em estratégia, ainda que seu escopo seja propedêutico, elaborando uma proposta de abordagem inovadora do fenômeno estratégico.

The Civilised Detective: Tomás Eloy Martínez and the Massacre of Trelew

This article considers the ‘Trelew Massacre’ of August 1972 in Chubút, Argentina, through the primary prism of Tomás Eloy Martínez's journalistic account, La pasión según Trelew, first issued in 1973 and again, in a much expanded second edition, in 2009. The substantive experience of 1972 is assessed in terms of Martínez's construction of La pasión and the events of the ‘Dirty War’ (known as El Proceso by its authors) opened by the coup of March 1976. Martínez's impressive work of documentary reportage is also reconsidered in comparison with that of Rodolfo Walsh and, at deeper historical remove, that of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, as well as in the context of Hannah Arendt's notion of ‘the banality of evil’ and a putative national history of ‘bloodletting’ in Argentina.

Subspecialization in neurology: the role of the united council for neurologic subspecialties

AAN= : American Academy of Neurology; ABMS= : American Board of Medical Specialties; ABPN= : American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology; ACGME= : Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education; ANA= : American Neurological Association; AUPN= : Association of University Professors of Neurology; CNS= : Child Neurology Society; PCN= : Professors of Child Neurology; RCPSC= : Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada; UCNS= : United Council for Neurologic Subspecialties. In recent decades, there has been considerable growth in neurologic subspecialties. In response to this trend, the American Academy of Neurology (AAN), American Neurological Association (ANA), Association of University Professors of Neurology (AUPN), Child Neurology Society (CNS), and Professors of Child Neurology (PCN) helped establish the United Council for Neurologic Subspecialties (UCNS) in order to provide accreditation of training (fellowship) programs in neurologic subspecialties and certification of graduates of these programs (and, during a limited “practice track” period, practitioners qualified by their substantive experience). This article reviews the reasons why UCNS was established, how it operates, and what it has accomplished. In the first issue of Neurology ® in 1951, an article by Pearce Bailey, MD, entitled “The past, present, and future of neurology in the United States,” noted that by the end of World War II, neurology had not yet attained “unchallenged professional autonomy as a medical specialty.”1 Bailey pointed to the establishment of the AAN in 1948 as reason for hope that there would be “a new renaissance of neurology in the near future” and he concluded that “[t]he time has come for neurology as a specialty to assume responsibility for the total medical treatment of neurologic patients.” In the decades since Bailey's article, AAN has undertaken many initiatives to help neurologists achieve this goal. In 1998, AAN President Francis I. Kittredge, Jr, MD, FAAN, appointed a Commission on Subspecialty Certification that was chaired by Stephen M. Sergay, MB BCh, FAAN. This was a time of major change in neurology. Neuroscience was advancing at an explosive rate. New technologies and treatments were developed that promised dramatic advances in neurologic care. The boundaries between emerging areas of practice in neurology and other specialties were becoming blurred. The number of AAN sections was growing fast, and new subspecialties did …

What's the Problem with a “Rigorous Academic Curriculum”?: Setting New Terms for Students’ School Experiences

An analysis of the ubiquitous but taken-for-granted term “rigorous academic curriculum” reveals that by definition it is not an academically rigorous term. The term contains multiple meanings, negative connotations, and a constricted conception of the school curriculum. It is associated with a discredited learning theory and in practice tends to function more as a status marker than as a substantive educational experience. We should shift our thinking and teaching away from the imprecise and potentially miseducative notion of a rigorous academic curriculum and toward the ideal of a vigorous educative curriculum.

Citizenship and belonging as a moral imperative for lifelong learning

Citizenship and belonging was identified as one of the nine progressive themes of the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE) inquiry into the future of lifelong learning in the United Kingdom. It was used to inform the inquiry’s recommendations on the desired form of that future. This paper articulates a critique of the report and recommendations of the inquiry from a citizenship and belonging perspective. Three different contemporary conceptions of citizenship and belonging are identified and here articulated: a formal conception, grounded in the rights and duties of citizenship or the individual values that it demands of citizens; a participatory conception, grounded in what it means to engage as a citizen; and an existential conception, grounded in the substantive nature and experience of being and belonging as a citizen. The conception of citizenship and belonging that emerges from the inquiry report is strongly participatory. While this is consistent with much recent theorisation of citizenship and belonging, it is limited in its lack of focus on belonging and in its formal homogeneity. It is argued that the progressive reform imperative for citizenship and belonging in lifelong learning is a moral imperative that stands against a contemporarily powerful economic imperative for accountability. Although not identified explicitly in the NIACE inquiry report as a driver of its recommendations, it is evident that the economic imperative for accountability has blunted expression of the moral imperative to citizenship and belonging in the inquiry report and recommendations.

Street Credentials and Management Backgrounds: Careers of Nonprofit Executives in an Evolving Sector

The nonprofit sector is confronting a potential leadership deficit and mounting pressures to become more efficient and businesslike. To begin to assess how these tensions influence pathways to leadership, this study investigates the professional backgrounds and nonprofit experience of leaders in the sector. Analysis demonstrates that some leaders have management credentials and management experience, but many advance in the nonprofit sector through substantive experience alone. Even though some nonprofit executives have spent most of their careers in the public sector or the business sector, the study also demonstrates that a nonprofit ethic matters a great deal for leadership. These findings suggest that substantive experience and dedication to the nonprofit sector constitute primary pathways to leadership in the sector, raising many questions about the role of management expertise and the evolution of leadership in the sector.

Peripheral visions: publics, power, and performance in Yemen

The government of Yemen, unified since 1990, remains largely incapable of controlling violence or providing goods and services to its population, but the regime continues to endure despite its fragility and peripheral location in the global political and economic order. Revealing what holds Yemen together in such tenuous circumstances, Peripheral Visions shows how citizens form national attachments even in the absence of strong state institutions.Lisa Wedeen, who spent a year and a half in Yemen observing and interviewing its residents, argues that national solidarity in such weak states tends to arise not from attachments to institutions but through both extraordinary events and the ordinary activities of everyday life. Yemenis, for example, regularly gather to chew at, a leafy drug similar to caffeine, as they engage in wide-ranging and sometimes influential public discussions of even the most divisive political and social issues. These lively debates exemplify Wedeen's contention that democratic, national, and pious solidarities work as ongoing, performative practices that enact and reproduce a citizenry's shared points of reference. Ultimately, her skillful evocations of such practices shift attention away from a narrow focus on government institutions and electoral competition and toward the substantive experience of participatory politics.

Embedding the Humanities in Cross-Disciplinary General Education Courses

We present the University of Idaho model of general education, in which all undergraduate colleges have responsibility for teaching the humanities to first-year students in cross-disciplinary "Core Discovery" courses. While this approach may threaten to weaken these disciplines, it addresses concerns about relevance and results in a substantive humanities experience.

Growing older—the good, the bad and the ugly: Subjective views of aging

This paper uses findings from in-depth life story research undertaken in the United Kingdom to examine the meanings of growing older for men and women aged between 60 and 96 years old, drawing on previous gerontological work about the experience of aging. The findings revealed that meaning as applied to age was not fixed chronologically, but held diverse meanings based on participants' feelings, experiences, and interactions with others, whilst also reflecting and resisting some of the commonly held and mainly negative, stereotypes about later life. The participants said that they did not feel old, but indicated that there had been times in their lives when they had felt old: times of illness, redundancy, and bereavement They also associated aging with physical and mental decline and illness, whether or not this reflected their substantive experience. Although participants' stories revealed that the unpleasant aspects of growing older cannot be denied, they also indicated that attitudes, behavior, and actions can, to an extent, help later life to be a more positive experience.

Health Care in the Federal Bureau of Prisons

Having spent five years imprisoned in Federal Medical Centers (FMC), I have substantive experience with the health care delivery system of the Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBOP). Intimately familiar with the symbolic quality of health care provided, I lived the rationing of health care practiced by FBOP medical personnel, and saw the organized denial of medical care to wards of the FBOP. Medical care within the FBOP is symbolic, with minimal expectation of improving prisoners' health. Discretionary medicine is top-down FBOP policy. The symbolic health care(less) provided by the FBOP is the focus of the present article.

Accounting Professionalism—They Just Don't Get It!

INTRODUCTION I realize that my title contains two ambiguous pronouns--they and it. After reading this commentary, I hope you will be able to identify who is and what it is that they don't get. The accounting profession has been beaten up badly in the media over the last few years, and with some justification. The forces at work were numerous and complex and different investigators place emphasis on a variety of phenomena that created the environment in which Arthur Andersen disappeared and the reputation of the entire profession was tarnished. Some of these forces were not new, such as: * corporate and individual greed, * delivering services that acted to impair independence, * becoming too cozy with clients, and * participating actively in finding ways to avoid the provisions of accounting standards. What was new is that the profession's historical defenses to combat these forces proved ineffective. The bottom line is that the profession--indeed, society as whole--has paid a high price for the accounting profession's failure to meet the expectations of investors, creditors, and other users of financial statements. This commentary attempts to identify the core of the problem. I will also make some suggestions on how the profession can prevent a recurrence of the recent bad times, and how educators may better prepare entrants to the profession. My observations are based upon observing the profession's evolution over the past 50 years and participating actively in it for nearly 40 years. My comments will frequently refer to Arthur Andersen, since that is the only firm with which I had substantive experience. Those comments are not intended to be praiseworthy, apologetic, or critical of Andersen. Rather, they merely will help illustrate the world as I saw it over a good many years. PAST EMPHASIS ON PROFESSIONALISM Some historical perspective helps set the stage for understanding how accounting professionalism gradually lost significance in the 1980s and 1990s. In the 1940s, even the large accounting firms were not very big entities. When I graduated from college, Andersen was the 12th largest firm--in Chicago--and had about 30 partners. Andersen was a part of the Big 8 by the mid-1960s, and it was probably seventh in size, with about 350 partners around the world. Accounting education in the 1950s and 1960s focused more on professionalism and the accounting code of ethics. Nearly all entrants to the large firms were recent college graduates whose courses in auditing focused on professional responsibilities and the importance of ethical behavior. The apprenticeship approach inherited from the United Kingdom was a thing of the past, and the hiring of experienced individuals with diverse business backgrounds had not appeared on the scene. The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) was mostly a professional organization whose senior committees developed the professional standards that guided accounting decisions and auditing approaches. Jack Carey was the Institute's most significant spokesman, and his focus over the years was on heightening the awareness of the importance of ethical professional behavior. Only later did the AICPA become, in effect, a trade association with only limited impact on matters of professionalism and ethical behavior. The large firms were headed by a leading accounting professional, often one who had risen to the top of the firm based upon acknowledged know-how, exposure to diverse accounting issues, and honed technical skills. These individuals were often well known in the broad business community and were active outside their firm. The firm leaders used articles and speeches to articulate the nature of the profession and its importance to our business and commercial system. They spoke out forcefully on the issues of the day, often without regard to whether one or more clients might find their remarks objectionable. …