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I didn’t promise, I said inshallah: Saudi Arabian employees’ perceptions of the importance of implicit promises within the psychological contract
Get PDFThe psychological contract was both conceptualised and has been investigated primarily in Western contexts. While research has demonstrated its utility for exploring the nature of the individual employment relationship in other cultures, the fundamental tenets of the psychological contract have never been challenged. In particular, there is an absence of empirical research on how the notion of implicit promises might be viewed in Eastern contexts, in spite of promises constituting a significant plank of employee interpretation of the psychological contract. Using two case studies in Saudi Arabia, this research investigates how different sources of information influence the construction of implicit promises in a culturally unique employment context. We propose a theoretical model that outlines key factors that shape employee beliefs of implicit promises in order to guide future research in the field of psychological contracts
Exploring the real Dad's Army in the Imperial War Museum, London
No full textBook synopsis: This book skilfully combines cutting-edge historical research by leading and emerging researchers in the field to investigate the utilization of British humour during the Second World War as well as its legacy in British popular culture.
Juliette Pattinson and Linsey Robb bring together case studies that address a variety of situations in which humour was generated, including wartime jokes, films, radio, cartoons and private drawings, as well as post-war recollections, museum exhibitions and television comedy. By adopting an original interpretative framework of various wartime and post-war sites, this books opens up the possibility for a more variegated, richer analysis of Britain's wartime experience and its place thereafter in the cultural imagination.
Through the lens of humour, this book promises to add critical nuance to our understanding of the functioning of British wartime society. Covering sources such as The British Cartoon Archive, BBC World War II People's War Archive and The Ministry of Information, and including analysis of the lasting role of comedy in Britain's memories and depictions of the war, the result is a rich addition to existing literature of use to students and scholars studying the cultural history of war
Theorising work–life balance endeavours as a gendered project of the self: the case of senior executives in Denmark
Get PDFRecent work–life balance (WLB) studies offer considerable insight into the challenges and strategies of achieving WLB for senior managers. This study shifts the focus from asking how to asking why individuals are so invested in pursuing a particular kind of WLB. Through analysing 62 life history interviews with male and female senior executives in Denmark, we develop the concept of the gendered project of the self to theorise WLB. We show how for the executives, WLB was not simply an instrumental process of time or role management; instead, pursuing WLB in a certain way was a key part of acquiring and maintaining a particular desired subjectivity or a sense of self as a better person, better worker and better parent. We argue that theorising WLB as the gendered project of the self allows us to explicate the mechanisms through which gendered social and cultural expectations translate into how male and female executives can and want to pursue their WLB goals – first by driving one’s desire for WLB and, second, by shaping and restricting what is desired. In doing so, we highlight the importance of scrutinising the role of broader WLB discourses in shaping the experience and uptake of organisational WLB policies
Seasonal characteristics of crime: an empirical investigation of the temporal fluctuation of the different types of crime in London
Get PDFMost types of crimes show seasonal fluctuations but the difference and similarity between the periodicity of crimes is understudied. Interpreting the seasonality of different crime types and
formulating clusters of crimes that share similar seasonal characteristics would help identify the common underlying factors and revise the patterns of patrolling and monitoring to enable sustained management of the control strategies. This study proposes a new methodological framework for measuring similarities and differences in the timing of peaks and troughs, as well as the waveforms of different crimes. The method combines a Poisson state-space model with cluster analysis and multi-dimensional scaling. A case study using 12 types of crimes in London (2013–2020) demonstrated the amplitude of the seasonal fluctuation identified by this method explained 95.2% of the similarity in their waveforms, while the timing of the peaks covered 87.5% of the variance in their seasonal fluctuation. The high predictability of the seasonal patterns of crimes as well as the stable categorisation of crimes with similar seasonal characteristics enable sustainable and measured planning of police resource allocation and, thereby, a more efficient management of the urban environment
Vestígios de Resisência (Traces of Resistance)
Get PDFThis paper (in Portuguese) presents a brief ‘case study’ of a successful social protest in Nazi Germany to raise some questions about the effects of certain kinds of spontaneous street protests and how they can have resonances and traces that evoke unsettled reactions generations later. There are many reasons for this: for example, the politics change, the context becomes clearer. It is also possible that some events become symptomatic carriers of a broader set of concerns and disputed ways of being, perhaps challenging other narratives of resistance (or non-resistance). That is, sometimes it might be hard to celebrate a protest not because it was corrupt, but rather because it calls into question the inaction of others. This can then become one of the issues around forgetting: if we recall what others did, it might make us wonder about the things we failed to do
Repeated, cross-cutting and spatially migrating outflow channel formation, Grjótá Valles, Mars
Get PDFCross-cutting relationships and the incision history for multiple outflow channels have been mapped and studied to establish their relative chronology in Grjótá Valles, Mars, in order to establish whether observed geomorphic channels were formed in a single event or multiple events. The relative chronology can be established by mapping cross-cutting relationships between channel margins and successive incision, where later channels incise downwards into older channels. We show that the source areas of five distinct channels can be established, with younger channels progressively sourced further to the east along the Grjótá Valles fault system, and incising downwards into older channels. The channels resemble examples interpreted elsewhere as cut by catastrophic aqueous flow processes (diluvial) due to their regional morphology, the presence of streamlined islands surrounded by anabranching channels marked by incision, recessional terraces and longitudinal erosional grooves, however turbulent lava flows may also have been involved. That five distinct flows occur progressively further to the east may indicate the progressive propagation from west to east of the processes at depth that released the fluid responsible for cutting the channels, such as dike propagation and associated seismicity. Our observation of multiple flows and channel formation episodes implies instantaneous volumes of fluid that are smaller than that for a single flow interpretation
Communicating economic evidence about immigration changes attitudes and policy preference
Get PDFExisting studies demonstrate that threat perceptions matter for immigration attitudes. However, while these perceptions are potentially sensitive to information about immigrants’ impacts, questions remain about whether inserting such information into public debates changes attitudes and policy preferences—especially on polarizing issues like immigration. Moreover, few studies have considered messages featuring the type of non-photorealistic visual elements that increasingly appear in media. Using a survey experiment fielded in the United Kingdom, we examined whether evidence about European Union immigrants’ modestly positive economic impacts on the UK—presented either as text, with visualizations, or as an animated film—changed immigration attitudes and policy preferences. While visual elements did not have an effect over and above text, all the informational treatments moved attitudes and preferences in positive directions, even among Leave voters. Our study brings together research on immigration public opinion and visual media, and has implications for policymaking and journalism practice
Research on the influence mechanism of organic food attributes on customer trust
Get PDFBased on the quality level that consumers can discover at various stages, the literature summary divides organic food attributes into three categories: trust, search, and experience. This paper deeply analyzes the internal relationship among the search attribute, trust attribute, and per-ceived quality and the mechanism of effect on customer trust. After distributing and collecting 310 consumers’ valid questionnaires, the research hypotheses were empirically tested utilizing a structural equation model and mediation effect test. The research results indicate that: (1) The food safety attribute and nutritional content attribute in the organic food trust attribute have positive effects on the perceived quality and customer trust. (2) The price and label in the organic food search attribute positively affect the perceived quality, i.e., the price harms customer trust, while the label has no significant effect on customer trust. Perceived quality plays a mediating role be-tween the trust attributes, search attribute, and customer trust, i.e., the price and label indirectly affect customer trust through perceived quality. (3) The perceived quality of organic food positively affects customer trust. The results provide an important theoretical basis for enterprises to implement effective strategies to enhance consumers’ trust in organic food
R&D contribution in TFP growth of Greek industry: a limited information likelihood approach
No full textWe provide a novel panel model to decompose total factor productivity (TFP) growth in the Greek industry at the firm level while we tackle the contribution of R&D. We, therefore, opt for parametric methodology that provides statistical inference and would validate the results. Our modeling departs from prior strong assumptions such as error terms across firms being independent. In fact, we provide a novel limited information maximum likelihood (LIML) estimation method that adequately deals with the issue of endogeneity and model misspecification. We demonstrate that our model detects variability in terms of TFP growth components across industries and firms. Our results show that R&D would enhance TFP of Greek firms, albeit the crisis has had a detrimental impact. Financial ratios such as liquidity and solvency ratios also affect TFP as we demonstrate that both would enhance TFP. The solvency ratio is important as it provides an estimate of whether the firm can cope with debt. We also note variability across small versus medium and large firms and report that small firms are more productive and spend more of their revenues on R&D. In terms of policy, our evidence warrants higher R&D spending to enhance TFP growth, though R&D funding is a concern
No differences in implicit hand maps among different degrees of autistic traits
No full textPeople with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or higher autistic traits have atypical characteristics in sensory processing. Atypicalities have been reported for proprioceptive judgments, which is tightly related to internal bodily representations underlying position sense. However, no research has directly investigated whether self-bodily representations are different in individuals with ASD. Implicit hand maps, estimated based on participants’ proprioceptive sensation without sight of their hand, are known to have a distortion such that the shape is stretched along the medio-lateral hand axis even for neurotypical participants. Here, with the view of ASD as falling on a continuous distribution among the general population, we explored differences in implicit body representations along with autistic traits by focusing on relationships between autistic traits and the magnitudes of the distortions in implicit hand maps (N ~ 100). We estimated the magnitudes of distortions in implicit hand maps both for fingers and hand surfaces on the dorsal and palmar sides of the hand. Autistic traits were measured by questionnaires (Autism Spectrum (AQ) and Empathy/Systemizing (EQ-SQ) Quotients). Whereas the distortions in implicit hand maps were replicated in our experimental situations, there were no significant relationships between autistic traits and the magnitudes of the distortions as well as within-individual variabilities in the maps and localization performances. Consistent results were observed from comparisons between IQ-matched samples of people with and without a diagnosis of ASD. Our findings suggest that there exist consistent perceptual and neural processes for internal, implicit body representations underlying position sense with different degrees of autistic traits
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