Recent developments in D-optimal designs

In the paper, some issues concerned with the determining spring balance weighing designs satisfying the criterion of D-optimality under the assumption measurement errors are uncorrelated and they have the same variances are discussed. In addition, highly D-efficient spring balance weighing designs are also considered. Some conditions under which any spring balance weighing design is regular D-optimal or highly D-efficient are proved. What is more, new construction methods of regular D-optimal and highly D-efficient spring balance weighing designs are presented.     

Life Balance and Work Addiction Among NCAA Administrators and Coaches

Intercollegiate athletics represent an industry prone to challenges of work addiction and life balance. Work addiction and life balance domains in male and female intercollegiate athletic coaches and administrators (N = 245) were examined using multiple regression analysis. Higher levels of stress/anxiety, sleep disturbance, and career satisfaction and lower levels of quality of relationships and friendships were the strongest predictors of work addiction. Counseling focused on reducing the negative aspects of work addiction, while maintaining job performance, may benefit this population.     

Stretching the borders: how international business travel affects the work–family balance

This study examined the consequences of international business travel for the balance between work–family domains by exploring how international business travellers and travellers’ partners manage the boundaries between work and family in order to maintain the balance. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was used in analysing the semi-structured interviews of 10 male travellers and 10 partners. Because of its irregular nature, international business travel affects the personal life and the family of business travellers. Work-related travel also has an impact on how travellers and their partners construct, manage and negotiate borders between work and family in order to avoid an imbalance between these domains. Integration of work and family is usually inevitable in international business traveler families. Integration may lead to role blurring and thus lead to imbalance.     

China’s flexible overseas food strategy: food trade and agricultural investment between Southeast Asia and China in 1990–2015

Using the UN Comtrade database and multiple sources of agricultural investment data, this paper outlines the emerging patterns of food trade and agricultural investment between Southeast Asian countries and China. The paper shows that China has adopted a flexible overseas food strategy. First, China has increased food export and shifted its food trade with Southeast Asia from a dependent relationship towards a complementary relationship at the regional level in recent years. Second, China tends to adapt to the existing conditions of food production and trade in Southeast Asian countries instead of fundamentally altering them. Finally, Chinese overseas agricultural investment is less driven by domestic food demand but more oriented for profit making, and this gives it flexibility in diversifying investment. An adequate understanding of China’s flexible food strategy in bilateral and multilateral relationships holds implications for global food security.     

Parents' Family Time and Work Schedules: The Split‐Shift Schedule in Spain

This study used data on couples from the 2003 Spanish Time Use Survey (N = 1,416) to analyze how work schedules are associated with family, couple, parent–child, and non‐family leisure activities. Spain is clearly an interesting case for the institutionalized split‐shift schedule, a long lunch break rooted in the traditional siesta that splits the workday between morning and evening. Results showed strong negative associations between the split shift and both family and parent–child activities. The evening shift was negatively associated with couple and family time, but not with parent–child time. Women spent much more time than men in parent–child activities for all work categories, and they were more responsive to the spouse's work hours. Men were substantially more active than women in non‐family leisure, considering both individuals' and their spouses' work schedules. Altogether, this study has important implications for scientific and public policy debates.     

The Subjectivity of Fairness: Managerial Discretion and Work–Life Balance

We use organizational justice theory to examine how perceptions of fairness affect the decision‐making process of line managers. In‐depth interviews were conducted with 35 Irish managers to explore how managers make organizational allocation decisions in cases where it is impractical to offer work–life balance accommodations to all employees. The findings suggest that firstly, managers construct the ‘life’ aspect of work–life balance within a heteronormative framework, where the emphasis is on caregiving and most usually parenting. Secondly, managers actively use their decision‐making powers around both formal and informal work–life balance supports to minimize injustice within their departments. By bringing together ideas about organizational justice and managerial decision‐making, we indicate how managers determine fairness through a decision‐making process narrowed by embedded gender role beliefs. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.     

Three layers of history in recurrent social movements: the case of food reform

Using the understudied genre of food reform movements for illustration, we advocate greater attention to recurrent social movements. Analysis of these movements calls for combining three levels of historical analysis. One links the incidence and character of mobilization to long-term, large-scale historical changes; the second shows how periods of activism are also animated and shaped by specific historical contexts; and the third tracks legacies from earlier to later periods, thus both tracing additional causal influences and connecting separate cases into coherent sequences. The social movements literature includes excellent examples of each type of historical account. Combining types is much less common. Doing so, we contend, offers methodological advantages for scholars comparing and sequencing mobilization around similar problems in different historical periods. We develop the argument from three eras of food protest: Grahamites in the 1830s and early 1840s, dietary reformers and food safety campaigners of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and organic advocates who gained popular support beginning in the late 1960s.     

现代行政法平衡论的不平衡审视

现代行政法“平衡论”通过行政关系与监督行政关系的互动实现平衡,但是在涉及主体之间、行政与环境关系、执行中所导致的结果等方面并不平衡,其提倡的以民制权论在目前可行性也不强,经历着后现代冲击的行政法也需要有新的发展思考。     

拍定人与第三人利益平衡机制之构建

强制拍卖的核心问题在于如何更好地协调拍定人和案外第三人的利益冲突。本文以利益平衡机制为视角,探析了公法说及私法说的理论缺陷,主张法院强制拍卖应采折衷说,在维护拍卖公信力和拍定人利益的同时扩张适用善意取得制度,区分拍定人的善意或恶意,在拍定人和第三人利益协调问题上取得圆满的契合点。