Refining the Concept of Political Will: A Gender Perspective

While politics are known to be prevalent at managerial levels, there is currently little insight into what drives managers to engage in organizational politics and whether there are gender differences in this respect. In the current study we explore the concept of political will by using a qualitative approach based on 14 semi‐structured interviews with managers (five men and nine women) in a global semiconductor company. We identify key dimensions of managerial political will consisting of three attitudinal ambivalences: functional, ethical and emotional. We also examine gender differences along these dimensions and discuss managers' political will in the context of a masculine organizational setting. We conclude by discussing the theoretical and practical implications of the findings and further research directions.     

A control chart for variance based on squared ranks

A nonparametric control chart for variance is proposed. The chart is constructed following the change-point approach through the recursive use of the squared ranks test for variance. It is capable of detecting changes in the behaviour of individual observations with performance similar to a self-starting CUSUM chart for scale when normality is assumed, and a relatively better power when assessing nonnormal observations. A comparison is also made with two equivalent nonparametric charts based on Mood and Ansari-Bradley statistics. When dealing with symmetrical distributions, the proposed chart shows smaller (better) out-of-control average run length (ARL), and a competing performance otherwise. In addition, sensitivity to changes in mean and variance at the same time was tested. Extensive Monte Carlo simulation was used to measure performance, and a practical example is provided to illustrate how the proposed control chart can be implemented in practice.     

After the End of History

Over the last century, the national approach has been the mainstream conception leading superpowers’ foreign policy, while the end of the Cold War brought about the worldwide multiplication of local conflicts. This differs from the past as this extensive international fragmentation urgently requires the adaptation of a new theoretical model to current international relations. This implies the re-consideration of some basic concepts such as national sovereignty, whose traditional fixed borders tend now to blur with a set of overlapping clusters of jurisdictional, economic, political, cultural interests.     

Gated Communities in the United States: From Case Studies to Systematic Evidence

Scholarly research about gated communities is a recently established field of study, because the significant proliferation of these communities has occurred in the last couple of decades. In this article, I argue that the seminal work of Blakely and Snyder (1997, Fortress America: Gated communities in the United States. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.) gave the first impetus and the initial research directions in gated communities’ study. The subsequent research established it as a true interdisciplinary urban field and produced important knowledge across several different academic disciplines: sociology, political science, anthropology, urban policy and planning, geography, and legal studies. The article discusses this first phase of theoretical and empirical work, based mostly on qualitative and secondary data sources. A new methodological shift is proposed, which should determine the second phase of research based on hypotheses testing and collection of systematic empirical evidence. Such evidence is essential to understand the wider impact of gated communities on larger urban areas and society as a whole.     

Five-Way Experiential Learning Model for Social Work Education

Social workers exercise their practice skills by helping clients find strengths and solutions. In order to comprehensively practice skills for diverse client situations, it is crucial to practice and fine-tune the applications of various therapeutic approaches through clinical drills. This paper presents an experiential learning model, expanded from Kolb's Learning Cycle, which fits the dynamic pedagogical needs of the social work profession. It examines the implementation of the use of the ‘Five-Way Experiential Learning Model’ based on practice learning through personal reflections and professional evaluations. This practice learning study helped 79 MSW students define their ‘five-way learning’ and to analyze its impact on their acquisition of social work skills and clinical practice competencies. This process demonstrates the importance of the transtheoretical connection to achieve a better understanding of clients' situations through the process of change and peer input. Discussions will focus on the model elements, results on experiential learning, and ethical considerations.     

Minimizing the maximum travel time in a combined model of facility location and network design

This paper presents a combined Facility Location/Network Design Problem which simultaneously considers the location of facilities and the design of its underlying network so as to minimize the maximum customer-facility travel time. The model generalizes the classical p-center problem and has various applications in regional planning, distribution, telecommunications, emergency systems, and other areas. Two mixed integer programming formulations are presented and compared. Several valid inequalities are derived for the most promising of these formulations to strengthen its LP relaxation bound and to reduce the enumeration tree. Numerical results of a series of computational experiments for instances with up to 100 nodes and 500 candidate links are reported.     

Environmental and social predictors of phosphorus in urban streams on the Island of Montréal,Québec

Researchers have identified the importance of social characteristics for understanding ecological patterns in cities but the use of these characteristics in urban stream research has yet to be fully explored. Urban development is currently the second-largest cause of stream impairment in North America due in part to nutrient loading. However, research into factors that influence nutrient concentrations in urban streams is lacking. We sampled seven streams on the island of Montréal daily to measure phosphorus (P) concentration and P flux in each stream. We then compared stream P concentration and flux to several watershed characteristics commonly used to predict stream nutrients (e.g., watershed imperviousness, land use, existence of a riparian buffer) as well as several socio-economic characteristics of the watersheds (e.g., average home value, median household income). Overall, impervious surface cover and measures of land use were most effective at explaining the variation in P concentration and P flux in streams on the island of Montréal, while the riparian buffer and socio-economic variables were less effective. However, dollars spent on fertilizer per hectare of residential land and percent residential land use became important predictors of stream P concentration when impervious surface cover was removed from the regression model. This suggests that after accounting for the impact of physical watershed characteristics, social factors may be important predictors of urban stream P concentration. The results of our study suggest that more research is needed to determine the role that socio-economic variables play with respect to urban stream P.     

Willingness for mobility amongst European fishermen

The global trend of fisheries overexploitation and collapse has resulted in the need to reduce fishing effort, and providing alternative employment for fishermen is a frequently mentioned policy option in order to achieve this goal. Reducing fishing effort is central to the European Commission Common Fisheries Policy and over the years, the Commission has developed a number of socio-economic measures to encourage labour mobility among fishermen, and as such mitigate the impact caused by the structural adjustment. Considering this aim, this paper seeks to identify European fishermen's willingness for occupational and geographical mobility and the characteristics that influence this willingness. A survey was conducted with the participants in the inshore commercial fisheries of the Highlands of Scotland (UK), the Algarve (Portugal) and the South Evoikos Gulf (Greece), and logit models fitted to identify the characteristics that influence willingness for labour mobility. The paper argues that there are differences in attitudes towards labour mobility among fishermen from the different countries and that personal preferences, demographic characteristics, job-related and financial reasons influence the willingness for both occupational and geographical mobility. The paper concludes by pointing out the importance of taking local conditions and the heterogeneity that characterizes fishermen's behaviour into account, in order to achieve successful policy measures aimed at providing alternative occupations for fishermen.