抗日战争时期在中日两国的美国传教士作用之比较

本文通过对美国赴华与赴日传教士团体的比较研究,认为赴华美国传教士及其子弟在中国和美国本土两线都积极而成功地影响了美国的东亚政策,从而密切了当时的中美关系并推动了抗日战争的顺利发展.相对于此,赴日美国传教士所发挥的作用是微妙和复杂的.同时,本文还通过对传教士历史功能分析模式的再探讨,揭示了传教士在特殊历史时期所扮演的"外交"、"宣传"角色背后的深层蕴含.     

How organizational cognitive frames affect organizational capabilities: The context of corporate sustainability

We draw on the emerging literature on the micro-foundation of capability development to investigate the effects of the relative importance of corporate sustainability in a firm's organizational cognitive frame on the development of distinct organizational capabilities. Based on survey data from 124 Danish manufacturing firms and seven interviews, we find that the relative importance of corporate sustainability in a firm's organizational cognitive frame positively encourages the development of three organizational capabilities, namely, stakeholder integration, market sensing, and organizational learning. However, contrary to our expectation and reasoning, we find that the development of the strategic planning capability is negatively affected. Our findings provide novel empirical evidence and contribute to an improved understanding of the effect of a firm's organizational cognitive frame on the development of organizational capabilities.     

Workplace adversity and resilience in public relations: Accounting for the lived experiences of public relations practitioners

Public relations practitioners face workplace challenges as they cultivate public relationships, resolve conflicts, and manage crises. Odds of adversities may be high in this role, requiring practitioners to be resilient. This qualitative study explores workplace adversities in public relations from a practitioners’ perspective, and examines how they enact resilience. By asking current practitioners about their lived experiences, we found workplace adversities occurred on multiple levels and ranged from mundane to life-altering events. Patterns of resilience were, metaphorically, bouncing forward, bouncing up, bouncing back, and bouncing around. This study contributes to public relations and resilience scholarship by (1) uncovering workplace adversities and resilience enactment in public relations, therefore connecting practice with scholarship, (2) extending the “bounce back” metaphor in the resilience literature, therefore making resilience more inclusive, and (3) exploring the connections of multi-level resilience, and suggesting the complex and negotiated nature of resilience among individuals embedded in collectives.     

Status and Socioeconomic Determinants of Farming Households’ Food Security in Ngaka Modiri Molema District,South Africa

The global relevance of food security has attracted a plethora of research, because it is a determinant of either the prosperity or poverty of any nation. Accordingly, food security is directly associated with the poverty in many developing countries of the world today. Rural people around the world continue to struggle with food insecurity, persistent poverty and inequality, and environmental degradation. This necessitated a research study on food security in the North West province of South Africa, with a view to evaluate the food security status and its determinants in the area, as well as to compare the impact of gender on the food security status of households. A cross-sectional survey was conducted, where 346 maize farmers in the Ngaka Modiri Molema District Municipality of the North West, South Africa, were interviewed. A logically structured questionnaire was used to collect data where household expenditure survey was used to evaluate the food security status of these farmers, after which a logistics regression model was used to determine the factors responsible for food security. The findings reveal that, with more farming experience, the probability of household food security decreased. Also, an increase in the household size, by one member, decreases the probability of a household achieving food security. Similarly, a unit increase in the age of the head of household decreases the probability or likelihood of being food secured in the study area. The result also revealed that more than half of the farming households were food secure, while the female-headed households were more food secure, proportionately, compared to male-headed households.

     

Affirmative action in municipal government: Political, structural and demographic determinants of alternative strategies

The 167 members of the California City Managers Association were surveyed regarding the affirmative action policies of their cities. The research sought to determine factors that influence affirmative action efforts. Affirmative action outcomes and policies were measured against the following: minority political power as reflected in the diversity of the city council, frequency of interaction regarding affirmative action between council members and administrators, the ethnic composition of the city, level of advocacy regarding affirmative action in the city and the personal values of the city manager. The finding support the thesis that affirmative action success in government varies directly with the diversity of the population served and the political representation of minorities. Also important was the relationship between managerial values and affirmative efforts. Council manager interaction was directly related to the percentage of minority supervisors and managers.     

Some complex variable transformations and exact power comparisons of two-sided tests of equality of two Hermitian covariance matrices

Power studies of tests of equality of covariance matrices of two p-variate complex normal populations σ₁ = σ₂ against two-sided alternatives have been made based on the following five criteria: (1) Roy's largest root, (2) Hotelling's trace, (4) Wilks' criterion and (5) Roy's largest and smallest roots. Some theorems on transformations and Jacobians in the two-sample complex Gaussian case have been proved in order to obtain a general theorem for establishing the local unbiasedness conditions connecting the two critical values for tests (1)–(5). Extensive unbiased power tabulations have been made for p=2, for various values of n₁, n₂, λ₁ and λ₂ where n₁ is the df of the SP matrix from the ith sample and λ₁ is the ith latent root of σ₁σ^-1₂ (i=1, 2). Equal tail areas approach has also been used further to compute powers of tests (1)–(4) for p=2 for studying the bias and facilitating comparisons with powers in the unbiased case. The inferences have been found similar to those in the real case. (Chu and Pillai, Ann. Inst. Statist. Math. 31.     

A new look at child abuse tragedies

Thirty-five child abuse inquiry reports, published in Britain between 1973 and 1989, were reviewed and the cases reanalysed using a systemic framework. Problematic interactions were identified within the families, among members of the professional networks and between the families and professionals. These relational aspects of each case interacted and progressively skewed the course of events. The findings have important implications for the practice of child protection, including the assessment of risk and decisions by statutory professionals to employ controlling interventions such as Emergency Protection Orders.