Initiative in work teams: adaptation and validation of the Personal Initiative at Group Level Scale / Iniciativa en los equipos de trabajo: adaptación y validación de la Escala de Iniciativa Personal a nivel Grupal

In this study, we conceptualize personal initiative as a collective construct and adapt and validate a scale to evaluate it with a sample of 308 Spanish participants belonging to 91 work teams. Personal initiative at group level is a behavioural syndrome in which the team shows an approach to work that is self-initiated, proactive, persistent, capable of modifying the atmosphere and pro organization. As a predictive variable, we analysed the climate for initiative as well as personal initiative at group level. The resulting variables that were analysed referred to organization and team performance, with the team productivity and innovation as the criteria, analysing radical innovation. The scale has suitable psychometric properties. The results show that there is a relationship between the two predictive variables. Furthermore, personal initiative at group level is related to team productivity, while the climate for initiative is related to innovation.     

Israel's military public diplomacy evolution: Historical and conceptual dimensions

This study provides an historical overview of the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit (ISU) from the early years of the State of Israel until 2009. Analyzing five periods during which the ISU played a key role in Israel's public diplomacy, this research sheds light on the challenges the ISU faced in different periods and circumstances and examines how the ISU tried to modify its methods and actions in response to geopolitical changes and media development, albeit not always successfully. The study suggests better understanding the adaptation process by applying a three-layer framework for analysis: the tactical layer, the strategic layer and the perceptional layer. The findings of this work demonstrate that in adapting to new circumstances, the ISU focused mainly on the tactical response level, with the result that it did not undertake any review or debate over the need for deeper perceptional changes in ISU policies.     

Critical Reflections on the March for Science

Using MacKendrick (2017) as a springboard, this essay explores the March for Science as an example of social mobilization. I lay out some concerns regarding the use of this tactic as a response to attacks on science and suggest some ways sociology could contribute to the development of more efficacious actions to address the denigration of scientific knowledge.     

State‐led industrial development,structural transformation and elite‐led plunder: Angola (2002–2013) as a developmental state

From 2002 to 2013, Angola engaged in large‐scale state‐led reconstruction and development alongside an elite‐led appropriation and seizure of national assets. Until the oil price shock, Angola had been succeeding in promoting rapid economic growth, and possibly even significant social development, alongside a massive grab of wealth and power by local elites. Today, though an economic crisis has taken hold, frequent predictions of the country's imminent collapse have yet to be fulfilled. This article reviews the state's development planning and expenditure with a focus on public investment and industrial development to determine to what extent Angola during this period might be considered a developmental or petro‐developmental state. It is argued that, while more significant than generally thought, petro‐developmental outcomes were and are limited by the autocratic and neopatrimonial tendencies of the Angolan elite. Nevertheless, limited success with structural transformation may have lasting effects. Following its long civil war, the conditions existed for Angola to follow a new path of state‐led development. Though it may now be more difficult, structural transformation and economic diversification remain the only path to economic and social development.     

Measuring long‐term trends in policy coherence for development

This article measures long term trends in policy coherence for development. Based on result chains, it develops a counterfactual methodology, and then applies it to assess changes in inputs, outputs and outcomes over time. While the literature does not indicate any significant change in policy coherence for development over the last decade, this research finds that, if the time scale is lengthened to 50 years, an overall increase in policy coherence for development of the Dutch government, vis‐à‐vis the DR Congo, in the domains of finance and security, can be detected. These changes in policy coherence for development inputs seem to have contributed, in conjunction with similar policies from other countries, in some instances, to positive outcomes in the DRC.     

Stakeholder Perspectives on Children's Mental Health Needs and Supports in Six Low‐ and Middle‐Income Countries

Low‐ and middle‐income countries (LMIC) are faced with disproportionately high levels of unmet child mental health needs. This study explored through interviews the perspectives of 17 inter‐agency service stakeholders from Brazil, Indonesia, Kenya, Pakistan, Rwanda and Turkey on existing supports and challenges. Four themes emerged on the holistic nature of children's mental health needs linked with disadvantage; limited resources and skilled workforce; stigma; and strategies for future implementation, including awareness, parental engagement, skills‐based programmes and cultural adaptation. Stakeholder input is essential in conceptualising, developing and evaluating culturally appropriate interventions for vulnerable children in LMIC.     

Critical discourse analysis of perspectives on knowledge and the knowledge society within the Sustainable Development Goals

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is employed to analyze discourses of knowledge and the knowledge society in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Discourse analysis is a collective name for a number of scientific methodologies for analyzing semiosis, namely how meaning is created and communicated though written, vocal or sign language. Employing a genealogical approach which locates discourses in the field of prior discourses, two prior discourses of the knowledge society are identified in the key document of the SDGs. The concepts knowledge and knowledge society are found to have a marginal position within the main policy document “Transforming our world,” adopted by the United Nations in September 2015. The techno‐scientific‐economic discourse is found to be dominant at the level of implementation and of goals, while there is some evidence of the pluralist‐participatory discourse at the level of vision and strategy. Analysis of some of the policy advice provided by international organizations and civil society indicates that more pluralist‐participatory discourses on knowledge were represented when the SDGs were being formulated. Developed countries and the corporate sector were very influential in determining the final text and were probably instrumental in excluding more transformational discourses and maintaining the status quo.     

Women's entrepreneurship,neoliberalism and economic justice in the postfeminist era: A discourse analysis of policy change in Sweden

Since the early 1990s, there has been investment in women's entrepreneurship policy (WEP) in Sweden, which continued until 2015. During the same period, Sweden assumed neoliberal policies that profoundly changed the position of women within the world of work and business. The goals for WEP changed as a result, from entrepreneurship as a way to create a more equal society, to the goal of unleashing women's entrepreneurial potential so they can contribute to economic growth. To better understand this shift we approach WEP as a neoliberal governmentality which offers women ‘entrepreneurial’ or ‘postfeminist’ subject positions. The analysis is inspired by political theorist Nancy Fraser who theorized the change as the displacement of socioeconomic redistribution in favour of cultural recognition, or identity politics. We use Fraser's concepts in a discourse analysis of Swedish WEP over two decades, identifying two distinct discourses and three discursive displacements. Whilst WEP initially gave precedence to a radical feminist discourse that called for women's collective action, this was replaced by a postfeminist neoliberal discourse that encouraged individual women to assume an entrepreneurial persona, start their own business, compete in the marketplace and contribute to economic growth. The result was the continued subordination of women business owners, but it also obscured or rendered structural problems/solutions, and collective feminist action, irrelevant.     

The additive hazards model with high-dimensional regressors

This paper considers estimation and prediction in the Aalen additive hazards model in the case where the covariate vector is high-dimensional such as gene expression measurements. Some form of dimension reduction of the covariate space is needed to obtain useful statistical analyses. We study the partial least squares regression method. It turns out that it is naturally adapted to this setting via the so-called Krylov sequence. The resulting PLS estimator is shown to be consistent provided that the number of terms included is taken to be equal to the number of relevant components in the regression model. A standard PLS algorithm can also be constructed, but it turns out that the resulting predictor can only be related to the original covariates via time-dependent coefficients. The methods are applied to a breast cancer data set with gene expression recordings and to the well known primary biliary cirrhosis clinical data.     

高职职业道德教育的人口——研究学生

本文指出研究高职生是高职院校开展职业道德教育的人口和重要实践前提,学院应为丌展职业道德教育创造最佳的教育环境。