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The Employee Voice Behaviours in African Context: The Case of Zimbabwe
No full textAbstract: This exploratory study aimed to investigate the Employee Voice
Behaviours (EVB) in the African context, and Zimbabwe was chosen as a case
study. A sample of 30 volunteers was used in this study and data was collected
via WhatsApp social media. The structured interviews were employed to
collect data. Thus, the data was collected and placed into categories as a
framework. The data analysis included descriptive statistics, multiple
regression, correlation and framework. The results indicated that the majority
of employees in Zimbabwe present constructive voices than destructive
behaviours. The findings also established that Zimbabwean workforce
remains disciplined in their organisations. The study again found that the
majority of people working in organisations in Zimbabwe is neither married
nor have children. Also, the majority go to church and do not consume
alcohol/smoke. However, besides a small sample that could have affected the
outcome, this study concludes that understanding of EVB remains elusive;
therefore, more studies are required in this field. Future researchers should
consider qualitative methods with larger samples to establish these variations.
Besides, the current research presents significant findings that could inform
policy-makers in Zimbabwean organisations.
Keywords: Employee Voice Behaviours, African Context, Zimbabwe
Status does not predict stress: Women in an egalitarian hunter—gatherer society
No full textt is widely believed that there is strong association between physiological stress and an individual's social status in their social hierarchy. This has been claimed for all humans cross-culturally, as well as in non-human animals living in social groups. However, the relationship between stress and social status has not been explored in any egalitarian hunter–gatherer society; it is also under investigated in exclusively female social groups. Most of human evolutionary history was spent in small, mobile foraging bands of hunter–gatherers with little economic differentiation – egalitarian societies. We analysed women's hair cortisol concentration along with two domains of women's social status (foraging reputation and popularity) in an egalitarian hunter–gatherer society, the Hadza. We hypothesized that higher social status would be associated with lower physiological indicators of stress in these women. Surprisingly, we did not find any association between either foraging reputation or popularity and hair cortisol concentration. The results of our study suggest that social status is not a consistent or powerful predictor of physiological stress levels in women in an egalitarian social structure. This challenges the notion that social status has the same basic physiological implications across all demographics and in all human societies
Evaluating the contribution of planning gain to an inclusive housing legacy: a case study of London 2012
Get PDFWhen London won the bid to host the Olympic and Paralympic games in 2005 it heralded a new moment in games making where it was claimed that the hosting of a mega event would be galvanized to create an inclusive legacy. Affordable Housing was a key dimension of this legacy. This article seeks to interrogate four key policy assumptions that underpinned the strategy for delivering affordable housing associated with the Growth Dependent Planning Paradigm. Firstly, that rising land values would create the potential to capture value for public good. Secondly, that S106 agreements (Planning gain) introduced in the 1990 Town and Country Planning Act would capture this value. Thirdly, that state and market would work in a symbiotic relationship reconciling private profit with public good and fourthly, that governance of planning should be overseen by an appointed rather than elected body. This article interrogates these assumptions through a longitudinal analysis of planning applications between 2000 and 2017. It argues that this policy framework has been relatively ineffective in levering public good. The findings are relevant for those interested in planning gain, value capture, urban regeneration and the potential for mega-events to achieve broader social objectives
James Sibley Watson’s The Fall of The House of Usher: Surrealism—improvisation—complementary serendipities
Get PDFThis study embraces music’s continuing role in the Surrealist movement through improvisation to a silent film. It presents extracts from the first recorded organ improvisation (recorded in Arundel Cathedral, UK) to James Sibley Watson’s experimental silent film: The Fall of the House of Usher (1928) based on Edgar Allan Poe’s short story which was a siren song for the surrealists). Research on this film (around 12 minutes long) has focused on the cinematic context and modernism (Cartwright, 1995) and the reconstruction of Alec Wilder’s original score for the work (Brewer, 2015), but has not explored the surrealist context or potential of the film. This improvisation is published at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5tFr2iFrUw
In a commentary (1928), Sibley Watson states: “the importance of the piece lies in its mood – in a development of emotional tone almost without action. We decided to make a picture with a mood rather than a story.” I argue therefore that the images create a dépaysement or disorientation (Calvin, 1982: xvii) through fading, dissolving, and prismatic images. The film therefore provides rich grounds for improvisation that employs a “systematic hybridity” (Sholl, 2015) in which structures (whole-tone, octatonic for example) are distorted. Improvisation therefore sustains and defamiliarizes and provides a complementary serendipity in which a new “image” is created that is a “rapprochement of two more or less distant realities.” (Pierre Reverdy, 1975: 73)
I use organ improvisation treatises from the 1920s (the film was shown all over America (Horak, 2008: 35)) to differentiate my practice. I present an interpretation of an improvisation, understood through the previous contexts, which deliberately attempts to create a flat, terse and dream-like (Breton, 1980: 328) interior choreography. This “mood,” I propose, is performative of an “unarticulated language” (Stravinsky, 1942: 128) that provides a surrealist counterpoint to the film
Destination London: The Expansion of the Visitor Economy, A. Smith, A. Graham (Eds.). University of Westminster Press, London (2019), 266, (Pbk), £22.99 ISBN: 9781912656264
Get PDFUrban tourism used to be a neglected area of research (Ashworth and Page, 2011), but lately it has attracted more attention from academics as a result of the rapid increase in the number of people vising cities, in particular in world tourism cities such as London, and the role these destinations play in the global economy. Yet, as the authors rightly point out, there is still limited research that looks specifically at the visitor economy in the UK capital, ‘a notable omission, given the scale and significance of tourism in London’ (p. 1).
Destination London: The Expansion of the Visitor Economy, therefore contributes to filling part of this gap in research by discussing ‘how and why the expansion of the visitor economy is happening and what effect this is having on the city’ (p. 2). The book is co-edited by two well-known scholars from the University of Westminster, Dr Andrew Smith and Professor Anne Graham, comprising 11 chapters that focus on different aspects related to the development of the visitor economy in London, and are authored or co-authored by colleagues from the same institution
Timothy Barker (2018) against transmission: media philosophy and the engineering of time
Get PDFBook review of Against Transmission by Timothy Barker (Bloomsbury, 2018)
Co-localization of two-color rAAV2-retro confirms the dispersion characteristics of efferent projections of mitral cells in mouse accessory olfactory bulb
Get PDFThe accessory olfactory bulb (AOB), located at the posterior dorsal aspect of the main olfactory bulb (MOB), is the first brain relay of the accessory olfactory system (AOS), which can parallelly detect and process volatile and nonvolatile social chemosignals and mediate different sexual and social behaviors with the main olfactory system (MOS). However, due to its anatomical location and absence of specific markers, there is a lack of research on the internal and external neural circuits of the AOB. This issue was addressed by single-color labeling and fluorescent double labeling using retrograde rAAVs injected into the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BST), anterior cortical amygdalar area (ACo), medial amygdaloid nucleus (MeA), and posteromedial cortical amygdaloid area (PMCo) in mice. We demonstrated the effectiveness of this AOB projection neuron labeling method and showed that the mitral cells of the AOB exhibited efferent projection dispersion characteristics similar to those of the MOB. Moreover, there were significant differences in the number of neurons projected to different brain regions, which indicated that each mitral cell in the AOB could project to a different number of neurons in different cortices. These results provide a circuitry basis to help understand the mechanism by which pheromone information is encoded and decoded in the AOS
Prevalence and determinants of caesarean section in south and south-east Asian women
Get PDFBackground: Caesarean section is considered a relatively preferable and safe method of delivery as compared to normal delivery. Since the last decade, its prevalence has increased in both developed and developing countries. In the context of developing countries viz., South Asia (the highest populated region) and South-East Asia (the third-highest populated region), where a significant proportion of home deliveries were reported,however, the preference for, caesarean delivery and its associated factors are not well understood.
Objective: To study the caesarean delivery in the South and South-East Asian countries and to determine the factors associated with the preference for caesarean delivery.
Methodology: Demographic and Health Survey Data on from ever-married women of nine developing countries of South and South-East Asia viz., Vietnam, India, Maldives, Timor-Leste, Nepal, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Cambodia have been considered. Both bivariate and binary logistic regression models were used to estimate the propensity of a woman undergoing for caesarean delivery and to assess the influence of maternal socioeconomic characteristics towards the preference for caesarean delivery.
Results:Obtained results have shown an inclination of caesarean delivery among urban than rural women and are quite conspicuous, but is found to be underestimated mostly among rural women. Caesarean delivery in general is mostly predisposed among women whose baby sizes are either very large or smaller than average, have a higher level of education and place of delivery is private medical institutions. The logistic regression also revealed the influence of maternal socioeconomic characteristics towards the preference for caesarean delivery. Based on nine South and South-East Asian countries an overall C-section prevalence of 13%, but based on institutional births its increase to 19%. The forest plot demonstrated that a significant inclination of C-section among urban than rural regions. In Meta-Analysis, very high and significant heterogeneity among countries is observed, but confirms that in terms of prevalence of C-section all of the countries follow independent pattern.
Conclusion: Study of seven urban and four rural regions of nine South and South- East Asian countries showed, a significant inclination towards the caesarean delivery above the more recent outdated WHO recommended an optimal range of 10-15%and are associated maternal socioeconomic characteristics. In order to control unwanted caesarean delivery, the government needs to develop better healthcare infrastructure and along with more antenatal care related schemes to reduce the risks associated with increased caesarean delivery
