Inquiring Systems and Development Led Inquiry: Uniting the Efforts of Farmers,Development Professionals,and Researchers

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - This paper introduces Development Led Inquiry (DLI) as an approach to improve situations incorporating relationships...     

Stochastic comparisons of order statistics,with applications in relibility

This paper reviews recent developments in the stochastic comparison of order statistics. The results discussed are basically: (l) Stochastic comparisons of linear combinations of order statistics from distributions F and G where G^?1 F is convex or starshaped. (2) Stochastic comparisons of individual order statistics and of vectors of order statistics from underlying heterogeneous distributions by the use of majorization and Schur function theory. (3) Stochastic comparison of random processes. Applications to reliability problems are presented illustrating the use and value of the theoretical results described     

No city for migrant women: construction workers’ experiences of exclusion from urban governance and discrimination in labour markets in Ahmedabad

ABSTRACT

Ahmedabad, Gujarat, is one of the fastest growing cities in the world, and a reflection of India’s story of exclusionary economic growth. This article focuses on research carried out with women construction workers with the help of a migrant construction workers’ union in Ahmedabad. It describes the method used by women members of the union to make visible their experiences as migrants in the city – with men, local authorities, and employers – to highlight the additional burdens that they bear due to a negligent state and industry, advocate for better working and living conditions, and raise consciousness of gender inequalities that need to be integrated into the demands of the workers’ union.     

Causal Linkages in Supply Chain Management: An Exploratory Study of North American Manufacturing Firms

In this paper we investigate the key causal linkages in supply chain management. We propose a conceptual framework and test this framework on data from 215 North American manufacturing firms using structural equation modeling techniques. Three major research issues are addressed in this study: Do sourcing decisions affect the degree to which firms achieve manufacturing goals of cost, flexibility, dependability, and quality? Does the degree of manufacturing goal achievement lead to higher customer responsiveness? Does the degree of manufacturing goal achievement lead to higher internal manufacturing performance? The study examines the relationship among sourcing decisions, manufacturing goals, customer responsiveness, and manufacturing performance. The results support the notion that an integrated supply chain involves aligning sourcing decisions to achieve manufacturing goals that are set to respond favorably to the needs of customers.     

Twelve‐Month‐Olds Know Their Cups From Their Keps and Tups

Fourteen‐month‐olds are sensitive to mispronunciations of the vowels and consonants in familiar words (N. Mani & K. Plunkett (2007), Journal of Memory and Language, 57, 252; D. Swingley & R. N. Aslin (2002), Psychological Science, 13, 480). To examine the development of this sensitivity further, the current study tests 12‐month‐olds’ sensitivity to different kinds of vowel and consonant mispronunciations of familiar words. The results reveal that vocalic changes influence word recognition, irrespective of the kinds of vocalic changes made. While consonant changes influenced word recognition in a similar manner, this was restricted to place and manner of articulation changes. Infants did not display sensitivity to voicing changes. Infants’ sensitivity to vowel mispronunciations, but not consonant mispronunciations, was influenced by their vocabulary size—infants with larger vocabularies were more sensitive to vowel mispronunciations than infants with smaller vocabularies. The results are discussed in terms of different models attempting to chart the development of acoustically or phonologically specified representations of words during infancy.     

The Differential and Contingent Impact of Concurrency on New Product Development Project Performance: A Holistic Examination*

This article comprehensively examines how the four facets of new product development (NPD) concurrency, consisting of process and product concurrency groupings, influence NPD project performance under the five contextual conditions of (i) location of product in family stream, (ii) project size, (iii) stage in the product life cycle, (iv) innovativeness of the product, and (v) predictability of market demand. Using data from a large sample of NPD projects in multiple industries, there is support for this hypothesized four‐faceted structure of concurrency, consisting of process and product concurrency groupings, thereby contributing new knowledge to the concurrency literature. All four facets of concurrency display a contingent impact on NPD project performance, even though individual effects vary according to the specific contextual variable under consideration. In particular, the process concurrency facet of dynamic iterative routines was universally effective across all five contextual variables, while the product concurrency facet of cross‐functional coordination was effective in significantly influencing at least one NPD project measure. This article also reports similar, but less strong, contingency patterns, with respect to the process concurrency facet of the implementation of downstream coordination and the product concurrency facet of the use of computer‐based integrated design tools. Theoretical and practical implications of our results are also offered.     

The Impact of Mispronunciations on Toddler Word Recognition: Evidence for Cascaded Activation of Semantically Related Words from Mispronunciations of Familiar Words

While the specificity of infants' early lexical representations has been studied extensively, researchers have only recently begun to investigate how words are organized in the developing lexicon and what mental representations are activated during processing of a word. Integrating these two lines of research, the current study asks how specific the phonological match between a perceived word and its stored form has to be in order to lead to (cascaded) lexical activation of related words during infant lexical processing. We presented German 24‐month‐olds with a cross‐modal semantic priming task where the prime word was either correctly or incorrectly pronounced. Results indicate that correct pronunciations and mispronunciations both elicit similar semantic priming effects, suggesting that the infant word recognition system is flexible enough to handle deviations from the correct form. This might be an important prerequisite to children's ability to cope with imperfect input and to recognize words under more challenging circumstances.     

Methodology‐as‐Technique and the Meaning of Rigour in Globalized Management Research

This paper analyses the genre of ‘methodology‐as‐technique’, which we suggest provides the underpinning logic for a particular conception of scientific rigour that is increasingly regarded as normal in globalized management research. Based on a qualitative interview study of management researchers in the peripheral context of India, we associate the methodology‐as‐technique genre with social scientific methods of organizing, conducting and disseminating knowledge founded on Western neo‐imperialism and colonialism. Our analysis draws attention to the consequences of the genre of methodology‐as‐technique which relate to a narrowing and displacement of research goals, erasure of context, and devaluation and marginalization of alternatives. By providing insight into how methodology‐as‐technique comes to dominate in peripheral locations such as India, we suggest that these normative constraints also present an opportunity for denaturalization, by making what is increasingly seen as normal appear alien or strange. We conclude by arguing that countering restrictive definitions of rigour in management research relies on development of a more expansive and inclusive conception of the global that fosters indigenous ways of knowing and promotes decolonizing methodologies.