Culture and Organization: The Case of Transmanche-Link

The relationship between culture and organization has often been discussed, but rarely explored directly. This paper implements a cultural values instrument taken from Hofstede together with a behavioural instrument derived from Van de Ven to matched samples of British and French managers working on the Channel Tunnel project. The results largely replicate the findings of Hofstede regarding cultural values, but do not support the predicted implications for behaviour. In essence, the British were found to be more bureaucratic and more team-oriented than their French counterparts, who tended to be more fonceur and competitive. This indicates that the relationship between culture and behaviour might be more complicated than research to date suggests.     

Rendering sexism invisible in workplace narratives. A narrative analysis of female entrepreneurs’ stories of not being talked to by men

Entrepreneurism is widely regarded as being one way in which women can sidestep the sexism of male‐dominated institutionalized work environments and enter into a world in which men and women operate on a level playing field. Yet, in a corpus of stories of female entrepreneurs’ experiences, we noted that being ignored by men was a constant theme. Taking a social constructionist and narrative approach to identity, we analyse the gendered identity work that female entrepreneurs do in these stories and we seek to explicate the process through which female entrepreneurs do not evaluate being ignored by men as sexism‐in‐action. Using positioning theory as an analytical tool, we analyse these stories at three different levels: the here‐and‐now interaction between interviewer and storyteller; the there‐and‐then identity work of the characters in the storyworld; and the wider societal Discourses that the storytellers enact, and which are enacted by such identity work. Findings indicate that despite making gendered difference, inferiority and lack of agency relevant, the stories are not evaluated as sexism‐in‐action because the female entrepreneurs enact a postfeminist and neoliberal Discourse of freedom, autonomy and choice, rather than a feminist Discourse of discrimination and sexism.     

Ethnic differences in the academic achievement process in Canada

This research examines the extent to which differences in achievement between German-speaking and French-speaking students are accounted for by theoretically related intervening variables and the extent to which the entire achievement process differs across the two ethnic groups. For the two ethnic groups, both main effects and interaction effects have significant consequences for the academic achievement process, even when a number of other variables are controlled. The results suggest that the whole process works to the benefit of the German-speaking students and to the detriment of the French-speaking students.     

Lessons From Infants: 1960–2000

Our image of the infant as an organism interacting with the environment has changed dramatically in the past 40 years. A new surge of infancy research began in the 1960s and continues unabated today. The view of the infant has been transformed from that of a primarily reflexive organism to a highly competent being, exquisitely sensitive to sensory and perceptual information. Controversy still swirls around the issue of when infants acquire specific knowledge about objects and events. New work is reviewed on how infants and toddlers use knowledge to guide their behavior in challenging situations. Despite the tremendous growth of knowledge about infant development over the past 40 years, it seems that we are on the threshold of even more exciting discoveries.     

Passenger Rail Security,Planning, and Resilience: Application of Network,Plume, and Economic Simulation Models as Decision Support Tools

We built three simulation models that can assist rail transit planners and operators to evaluate high and low probability rail‐centered hazard events that could lead to serious consequences for rail‐centered networks and their surrounding regions. Our key objective is to provide these models to users who, through planning with these models, can prevent events or more effectively react to them. The first of the three models is an industrial systems simulation tool that closely replicates rail passenger traffic flows between New York Penn Station and Trenton, New Jersey. Second, we built and used a line source plume model to trace chemical plumes released by a slow‐moving freight train that could impact rail passengers, as well as people in surrounding areas. Third, we crafted an economic simulation model that estimates the regional economic consequences of a variety of rail‐related hazard events through the year 2020. Each model can work independently of the others. However, used together they help provide a coherent story about what could happen and set the stage for planning that should make rail‐centered transport systems more resistant and resilient to hazard events. We highlight the limitations and opportunities presented by using these models individually or in sequence.     

The Beginnings of Tool Use by Infants and Toddlers

Children (aged 9, 14, 19, and 24 months) were encouraged to use tools to achieve a demonstrated goal. Each tool was most efficiently applied when held by the handle with the thumb toward the head of the tool in a radial grip. The tools were presented at midline and oriented to the left and right on alternating trials, so the children who managed to grasp a tool in both orientations with the radial grip demonstrated planning of actions in advance. The tools included a spoon, hairbrush, toy hammer, and magnet; the goals were to feed one's self, feed another, brush one's hair, brush another's hair, hit pegs, and retrieve metal objects. Children were found to use more radial grips with the self‐directed tools (i.e., hairbrush‐to‐self and spoon‐to‐self), indicating that they could plan their actions better when directed toward the self than toward an external goal.     

Measuring the affective quality of life of university students: The validation of an instrument

The purpose of this study is to develop an instrument for measuring the quality of life of university students, and to report its validity and reliability. The study used a representative sample of undergraduate and graduate students in the faculty of education at a major Canadian university. The construct validity of the scales was assessed by Piazza's technique for the analysis of attitude items. The findings supported conceptualizing the quality of life of university students in four dimensions including Positive Affect, Interaction with Students, Interaction with Professors, and Negative Affect. The alpha reliabilities of these scales ranged from 0.75 to 0.93. Some potential applications of this instrument for understanding educational attainment, as well as for the evaluation of university departments and faculties, are mentioned.     

The Teaching of Listening as an Integral Part of an Oral Activity: An Examination of Public-Speaking Texts

This article presents the results of a content analysis of 10 current public-speaking textbooks to determine the nature and extent to which they teach listening in an integrated approach with public speaking as an oral activity. Lewis and Nichols (1965 Lewis, T. R. and Nichols, R. G. 1965. Speaking and listening: A guide to effective oral-aural communication, Dubuque, IA: W.C. Brown.  [Google Scholar]) predicted that listening would increasingly be taught especially in an integrated approach with speaking. Beyond the prediction, they established a template for the pedagogy that emphasized the oral modality. Their prediction has not proved accurate. Ample research illustrates the lack of listening instruction. The current study sought both to replicate these findings and to examine the emphasis on the oral modality as reflected in public-speaking texts. Six research questions asked about listening inclusion and concentration, differences in written and oral modalities, delivery, development via writing, discussion of the oral modality, and pedagogy. The results of this analysis confirmed that these texts do contain treatments of listening but with one exception, only to a slight degree. Listening was seldom integrated with the teaching of speech within these texts. Second, with two exceptions, the texts seldom developed instruction with an emphasis on speech as an oral activity. Overall, the texts failed to reflect the pedagogy for teaching the oral modality essential to listening instruction. The results are discussed in terms of the extent to which the texts advance the teaching of listening and speaking as an interdependent oral activity. The conclusions indicate that the pedagogy advanced through these texts focus too greatly on writing to appropriately advance an understanding of the oral aspects essential to listening education.     

Using Object Knowledge in Visual Tracking and Reaching

Nine‐month‐old infants were presented with an engaging and challenging task of visually tracking and reaching for a rolling ball that disappeared and reappeared from behind an occluder. On some trials, the infant observed the experimenter place a barrier on the ball's track; the barrier remained partially visible above the occluder throughout the remainder of the trial. When the task involved only predictive tracking, infants' anticipatory gaze shifts were faster when no barrier was present. When the task involved both tracking and reaching, there were more reaches when no barrier was present. If the infant reached, the timing and extension of the reach and the accompanying gaze shift did not differ with regard to the barrier. Because catching the ball was quite difficult for these infants, task demands interfered with the integration of visual information and visuospatial reasoning about the barrier with the reaching action.