埃及苏伊士运河大学汉语教学管理中的问题与对策

苏伊士运河大学中文系、孔子学院是埃及汉语教学的重要基地,自成立以来,在埃中双方的共同努力下,发展较为迅速,已经培养了两届70多名本科毕业生,培训了1400多名社会各界人士,为埃及苏伊士运河沿岸地区的贸易、旅游、教育、建筑、轻工及食品等行业输送了急需的汉语人才,在汉语语言推广和中国文化传播方面发挥着越来越重要的作用.     

偶然的事件还是命运的预兆——莎士比亚《罗密欧与朱丽叶》欣赏

莎士比亚早期的戏剧《罗密欧与朱丽叶》是世界文学史、戏剧史上的著名悲剧之一。这部剧虽然不同于他中期创作的那些著名的悲剧，但同样是对于人类社会和人类本性当中的必然性悲剧因素的思考。在《罗密欧与朱丽叶》这部剧中，是一系列偶然性的情节导致了最终必然的毁灭。罗密欧与朱丽叶注定的命运，在整部剧中人物的对话中都有预兆。     

Organizational wisdom practices and firm product innovation

Review of Managerial Science - The manner in which organizational wisdom-related variables or practices (e.g., reasoning, intuition, virtue, prudence, and aesthetics) are related to firm product...     

When the victim becomes vicious: Combined effects of pseudo transformational leadership and epistemic motivation on contempt and deviant behaviors

Utilizing affective events theory (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996), the current study unravels how and when pseudo-transformational leaders promote contempt, avoidance, and aggression. Specifically, we examined whether pseudo-transformational leadership enforces feelings of contempt, which, in turn, fosters interaction avoidance and covert aggression in followers. We hypothesized that contempt also has an indirect effect that is contingent on levels of epistemic motivation of followers. By adopting a multi-wave research design, we gathered data from 277 employees of the service sector of Pakistan. The results signified that followers of pseudo-transformational leaders feel contemptuous of them and respond with interaction avoidance and indirect aggression. Further, we found that the impact of pseudo-transformational leadership on contempt was more pronounced in individuals with higher levels of epistemic motivation. We believe that this study opens up a new avenue in the pseudo-transformational leadership literature by highlighting the mechanism and conditions under which such leaders are deleterious for organizations.     

Impact of temporal aggregation on stock control performance of intermittent demand estimators: Empirical analysis

Intermittent demand is characterized by occasional demand arrivals interspersed by time intervals during which no demand occurs. These demand patterns pose considerable difficulties in terms of forecasting and stock control due to their compound nature, which implies variability both in terms of demand arrivals and demand sizes. An intuitively appealing strategy to deal with such patterns from a forecasting and stock control perspective is to aggregate demand in lower-frequency ‘time buckets’, thereby reducing the presence of zero observations. In this paper, we investigate the impact of forecasting aggregation on the stock control performance of intermittent demand patterns. The benefit of the forecasting aggregation approach is empirically assessed by means of analysis on a large demand dataset from the Royal Air Force (UK). The results show that the aggregation forecasting approach results in higher achieved service levels as compared to the classical forecasting approach. Moreover, when the combined service-cost performance is considered, the results also show that the former approach is more efficient than the latter, especially for high target service levels.     

Bureaucracy and Democracy: A Theoretical Analysis

This article addresses the relationship between bureaucracy and democracy, bureaucratic politics and democratic politics. Bureaucratic theories and politics are discussed, democratic theories and politics are analyzed, and the argument in favor of reconciling bureaucracy and democracy is analyzed with implications for democratic theory and public administration. Persistence of bureaucracy is stressed, deficiencies in democratic theory and practice are noted, and the importance of a functionally balanced and professionally competent bureaucracy is reminded for administration of sound governance in both developed and developing societies. It is hypocrisy to speak of functioning democracy without a balanced professional bureaucracy.     

Bayesian Methodology for Model Uncertainty Using Model Performance Data

A simple and useful characterization of many predictive models is in terms of model structure and model parameters. Accordingly, uncertainties in model predictions arise from uncertainties in the values assumed by the model parameters (parameter uncertainty) and the uncertainties and errors associated with the structure of the model (model uncertainty). When assessing uncertainty one is interested in identifying, at some level of confidence, the range of possible and then probable values of the unknown of interest. All sources of uncertainty and variability need to be considered. Although parameter uncertainty assessment has been extensively discussed in the literature, model uncertainty is a relatively new topic of discussion by the scientific community, despite being often the major contributor to the overall uncertainty. This article describes a Bayesian methodology for the assessment of model uncertainties, where models are treated as sources of information on the unknown of interest. The general framework is then specialized for the case where models provide point estimates about a single‐valued unknown, and where information about models are available in form of homogeneous and nonhomogeneous performance data (pairs of experimental observations and model predictions). Several example applications for physical models used in fire risk analysis are also provided.     

Advance Letters as a Means of Improving Respondent Cooperation in Random Digit Dial Studies: A Multistate Experiment

Advance letters can potentially reduce the degree of nonresponsein random digit dial (RDD) surveys; however, they can also havea heterogeneous impact on subgroups, disproportionately raisingparticipation rates among certain segments of the populationand thereby having a detrimental effect on nonresponse bias.This is, in part, because advance letters can only be used inRDD surveys with the subset of respondents for whom an addresscan be identified. It may also be related to who in a householdsees the letter. We assess whether the use of advance letterscan improve the level of participation in the Behavioral RiskFactor Surveillance System (BRFSS) without introducing otherpotential data biases. The data reported here corroborate previousfindings, in terms of the positive impact that advance letterscan have on overall response rates (approximately a 6-percentage-pointgain). Moreover, the advance letters were cost-efficient inthat the cost of obtaining a fixed number of completed surveysusing advance letters was lower than the cost without letters.However, the positive impact of the advance letter on reducingnonresponse may have been offset to some extent in that theadvance letter may have biased the sample of those who completedthe interview toward older, white respondents and those of highersocioeconomic status, and away from younger, nonwhite individualsand persons with lower education and income levels. This lattergroup was underrepresented in the final sample and also lesslike to remember having received a letter.     

A comparative study of U.S. and Iraqi students

This study uses a sample comprised of U.S. students and Iraqi students to determine if differences occur over ethical perceptions based on cultural/demographic issues. Irrespective of demographics, the results of this study indicate significant cultural differences between Iraqi students and American students with regard to selected ethical issues concerning graduate education. Specifically the differences occurred in the students' perceptions of winning is everything, selling one's soul, logic before emotion, and pander to professors. Iraqi students consistently viewed these beliefs as more necessary for success in their graduate education than did their American counterparts.