Actual Accomplishment Research Articles

Leadership decisions for company SurVIRval: evidence from organizations in Poland during the first Covid-19 lockdown

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyze the leadership decisions taken during the crisis and their influence on the goals recognized by managers as crucial for surviving.Design/methodology/approachDuring the survey, conducted in April 2020 (one month after the first economic lockdown in Poland), as part of a research project called Sur(VIR)val – Survival during the virus, data was collected from 178 leaders from randomly selected companies from Poland using the CAWI method. Ordered logistic regression modeling was used to examine the impact of the decisions taken by company leaders on the goals seen by leaders as most important for company survival.FindingsThe results obtained in the study show that during the first Covid-19 lockdown in 2020, leaders made decisions that can be seen as oriented toward survival and continuity. Changing to remote working, extending payment deadlines for customers, as well as selective employment reduction turned out to have the greatest influence on strategic support for maintaining current production levels and retaining competent employees in order to survive the crisis.Research limitations/implicationsThis study has certain limitations. First, the list of leadership decisions and company goals used as dependent variables is not exhaustive. Second, the selection of business goals oriented toward survival may not derive directly from the lockdown situation. Third, our study did not measure the actual accomplishment of the company goals, but the managerial perceptions as to which ones are crucial for company survival during crises, and which of them should be given strategic support respectively. Fourth, the research sample was randomly constructed and covered only business organizations in Poland. Fifth, the hypotheses were formulated in a way that treated leadership decisions as one construct. Finally, we used survey, with a scale measuring managerial perceptions.Practical implicationsLeaders should ensure that proper IT tools are developed within the organization, and that the skill level of employees is high enough for fast shifting employees on to remote working. At the same time, it is important to maintain IT infrastructure at a high level. In terms of general recommendations for leaders, they should make quick decisions, maintain the most valuable resources of the company (human resources and cash flow) and take actions aimed at taking advantage of opportunities (R&D) during and after the crisis.Social implicationsAdditionally, due to the key importance of human resources for the survival of the organization, leaders should respond quickly by making flexible decisions about sending employees on leave and downtime. As human resources are the most valuable assets of the company from the point of view of its survival, decisions concerning employment reduction should be taken carefully. Leaders who acted in panic after the first lockdown and made employees redundant, later on had problems recruiting skilled employees back and strived to return to full organizational capacity.Originality/valueAlthough scholars have investigated leadership decisions and actions taken during economic crises, little is known about how leaders behave when taken by surprise, and what decisions they make when the duration of a crisis is difficult to predict. The results of this study show which leadership decisions during the first Covid-19 lockdown in 2020 influenced prioritizing critical company goals oriented toward survival.

Multiple facets of learning a skill - Amalgamation of learning theories in cadaveric surgical skill lab.

Multiple facets of learning a skill - Amalgamation of learning theories in cadaveric surgical skill lab.

The rhetoric and reality of the AU peace operations in Darfur (Sudan): Is the ‘African Solution’ enough?

ABSTRACT This study explored whether the African Union’s peace operations driven by the ‘African solutions’ approach is enough or not. To bear evidence, this study uses the AU’s intervention in Darfur to interrogate the efficacy of the ‘African solutions’. The reason for selecting the case of Darfur is motivated due to the following two critical rationales. In the first place, this state has faced a prolonged internal conflict state of affairs. More importantly, the case of Darfur is chosen mainly because the case is one of the glaring examples of the AU’s comprehensive peace operation. The interviews were conducted in Ethiopia (Addis Ababa) and Sudan (Khartoum). This study argues that given the reluctance of international actors to engage in Africa to tackle instabilities, the idea of ‘African solutions to African problems’ seems an alternative approach to the multifaceted security challenges of the continent of Africa. However, currently, there is a wide gap between the AU’s ambitions and its actual accomplishment; for practical reasons, the ‘African solutions’ maxim requires a sober political and financial commitment from the member states of the AU.

The Online Education Controversy and the Future of the University

The neo-liberal reform of the university has had a huge impact on higher education and promises still more changes in the future. Many of these changes have had a negative impact on academic careers, values, and the educational experience. Educational technology plays an important role in the defense of neo-liberal reform, less through actual accomplishment than as a rhetorical justification for supposed “progress.” This paper outlines the main claims and consequences of this rhetorical strategy and its actual effects on the university to date.

Jurisdiction: Grounding Law in Language

Jurisdiction, a concept often demarcating law's territorial scope, and thus the bounds of state sovereignty, is offered here as a theory of legal language and its relation to law's social force. Reconsidered in light of its etymology as law's speech, new theories of jurisdiction suggest that law is simultaneously founded and enacted through language both spectacular (such as courtroom arguments or in the preambles of constitutions) and mundane (such as in legal aid intake exchanges, or in the forms of bureaucratic records). Jurisdiction points up how the force of law, and the sovereignty that law's force presupposes, can be seen as being made, and made seemingly unassailable, in the discursive and textual details of law's actual accomplishment. This review considers a segment of legal language scholarship produced in recent decades, while arguing for the ground that language, as juris-diction, always holds for law and sovereignty.

Las organizaciones sindicales ante la Responsabilidad Social de las Empresas Transnacionales en el contexto de la globalización económica

This article is based on two research projects conducted in the European Union and Spain in order to study the different positions and strategies of public institutions, companies and their associations and trade unions in the field of Corporate Social Responsibility nowadays. The article analyses Corporate Social Responsibility as a field in which we can find relations of force and negotiations among different institutions and actors, trade unions are one of them, that have adopted different strategies in order to play a relevant role in the definition and establishment of the new responsibilities of transnational corporations in the context of economic globalization. In this area, Corporate Social Responsibility is an extremely useful tool for supranational and national public institutions, as well as for companies and their associations, in order to build a neoliberal global economy. Nevertheless, trade unions propose that the actual accomplishment of the commitments voluntarily made by companies should be demanded and externally verified, and also that Corporate Social Responsibility Policies turn into a matter of national and transnational collective bargaining. Therefore, trade unions are laying the foundations of an international regulation of the global labour market nowadays.

Matrix Approach to Project Planning Design and Management

The failure of many projects, be it, Federal, states or local government is due in many cases, to poor design. Design can be defined as the formal framework that establishes, in advance, what the intention of the project is; a logical plan of activities, with the means to measure progress, taking into consideration the environmental factors and other socio-political factors that could affect the assumptions on which the project is based. The matrix method is primarily a device of project planning which define the project inputs, outputs and the intermediate and higher objectives in measurable terms. Targets are established to permit subsequent measurement or verification of achievement of the defined outputs and objective. The paper proposes a methodology to the design of a successful project and an example of the matrix method as applied to a development project. I. Preamble: The failure of many projects is due in most cases to poor design. The design is the formal Framework that establishes the intention of the project. It is a Logical plan of activities, with the means to measure progress, taking into consideration the environmental factors and socio political factors that could affect the assumptions on which the project is based. An integral part of project planning is both the design and evaluation, evaluation showing the result of comparing plans with the actual accomplishment. Several projects, are bases on the design shown in figure 1 below which is limited in its effectiveness.

The framing of return from above and below in Ecuadorian migration: a project, a myth, or a political device?

AbstractAlthough return migration is a significant topic in current policy, the competing interests of sending and destination countries in promoting it and the prospects of making return strategies ‘from above’ a viable and desirable option for migrants are relatively neglected topics. In this article, I explore the distinct agendas, meanings and expectations underlying the prospects of return migration from Ecuador to Italy. I approach this recent migration flow through ethnography and an institutional analysis of the policy strategies and discourses emerging in the source country. The Ecuadorian government has recently developed a Plan Retorno aimed at facilitating emigrants’ return and economic reintegration. The narratives of Ecuadorian migrants generally reveal a deep‐rooted expectation to return home. While initially hoping to return home ‘soon’, however, migrants systematically tend to postpone their homecoming. When it does take place in the short term, it is likely to be through migration ‘failure’ rather than an actual accomplishment of their earlier objectives. Given the distinct interests and expectations driving them, it is possible to assess the relationship between the two approaches to return. I conclude that return migration, irrespective of its actual accomplishment, is relevant to a better understanding of emigrant policies and of immigrant life trajectories overseas.

The construction of ethnic minority identity: A discursive psychological approach to ethnic self-definition in action

The present article intends to examine how ethnic minority group members account for their ethnic identity as part of a series of interviews with young Mapuches on what it means to be Mapuche in contemporary Chilean society. The focus is on the actual accomplishment and display of ethnic self-definition and group identification. We draw on insights from discursive psychology to explore some features of common-sense practical reasoning that ethnic minority group members use to negotiate, self-ascribe or resist a particular sense of identity, and to produce observable and reportable identities. We have a particular interest in illustrating how ethnic self-definition can be seen as the contingent outcome of a practical and interpretive issue for members of society, with a special focus on how ethnic minority identity is constructed through the flexible use of group-defining attributes and characteristics, categories and common-sense categorial knowledge. We suggest that understanding the complex significance and meaning of ethnic self-definition for minority group members is dependent on engaging closely with its occasioned context of production and treating social identities as a feature of how people describe themselves. It is argued that this view of ethnic minority self-definition as a practical and interpretive issue and as a discursive product in action can provide a further contribution to literature of both discursive and intercultural studies of ethnic identification of minority groups, intercultural and interethnic relations.

Inquiring Minds Learn to Read, Write, and Think: Reaching All Learners through Inquiry

Teachers are well aware that their primary challenge is motivating students. This is particularly true for students who are reluctant, with a history of struggling or failing in school, who may have a damaged learner identity. After 10 years of studying this problem through teacher research in our own schools and demonstration sites, we have found that reframing curricular topics as promotes engagement, literacy, and deep learning for all students, especially reluctant ones, and invites them into the classroom project as full and necessary participants. Inquiry is a particularly democratic form of teaching and learning (see Wilhelm, 2007) that privileges preexisting interests, unique perspectives, and the various strengths of students who typically may be marginalized in school. Inquiry takes various forms. Examples include general forms such as the inquiry and design framework, which we use (Lehrer, 1993), or Understanding by Design (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005), as well as disciplinary-specific ones, such as Cognitively Guided Instruction in math and Physics by Inquiry, and involves project-based learning and problem-oriented/case-based learning. All these models share the same basic features, are informed by the same cognitive research, and are supported by robust data sets. Inquiry meets the needs of all students, particularly those who are reluctant, because it makes the purpose of learning explicit, provides opportunities to make and do things with what is learned, helps students stake their identities as learners and-perhaps most important-allows students to achieve visible signs of competence, deep understanding, and actual accomplishment (Smith & Wilhelm, 2006). The problem of motivation When Jeff (Author 1) and Michael Smith conducted their award-winning research into the literate lives of young men (Smith & Wilhelm, 2002, 2006), the most salient findings involved motivation. To summarize one major point: every boy in the study-equal numbers of whom were identified as low-, middle-, and high-achieving-rejected most school literacy and learning on the basis that school did not meet specific conditions, similar to those identified by Czikszentmihalyi (1990) as characterizing experiences. Flow is being so immersed in an activity that nothing else seems to matter. He identifies the experience of flow as the hallmark of engagement, motivated performance, and the experience of happiness. However, every boy in the study was highly motivated to engage in literacy and learning activities outside school in ways that met all the dimensions of flow experience. (This included an illiterate boy who subscribed to car magazines that he solicited friends to read to him as he tricked out his car.) The conditions of flow, therefore, were closely associated with the lack or presence of engagement in learning of any kind, including that of literacy. Jeff and Michael collapsed Czikszentmihalyi's eight aspects of flow into four interrelated principles and then added a fifth, social interaction, which was sought after by all the boys and typified all the literacy and learning activities the informants found engaging. Conditions of FLOW experience * A clear purpose, intermediate goals, immediate and continuous feedback about one's progress. * A challenge that requires an appropriate level of skill and assistance to meet the challenge (as needed to be successful). * A sense of control and developing competence (e.g., learners exercise their own voice, stake their opinions and identity, make meaningful choices, and name their growing competence). * A focus on immediate experience (e.g., what is learned has current relevance and is connected personally to students as well as to the world; students make and do things with an immediate function; involves fun and sometimes humor). * Social interaction (e.g., learners are involved in group work, use peer assistance, negotiate and share what is learned, participate peripherally but legitimately in larger communities of practice [see Lave & Wenger, 1991]. …

What do laypersons want to know from scientists? An analysis of a dialogue between scientists and laypersons on the web site Scienzaonline

Scienzaonline is an interactive web site developed by the Museum of Zoology of Rome that offers various services. After the site had been online for three years, we examined approximately 800 questions received by the service Expert on line to understand what laypeople's interests in science are and in which life contexts they emerge. The contents of the questions were categorized to reveal the function and the nature of the knowledge that people expect from “experts”. Some kind of actual accomplishment motivates most of the questions, though a considerable number of them have knowledge and understanding as their objective. Information is the main form of expected knowledge and disciplinary knowledge is viewed as the privileged source of it. A relevant percentage of messages reveal the desire to obtain explanations and validations of reported facts, an aid to go beyond factual knowledge. Striving to find answers to “great unanswered questions” emerges as a passionate intellectual endeavor for some people.

New Logics of Integration in European Security and Defence Policy: Change in Conflict-Resolution Mechanisms in the Intergovernmental Decision-Making Process

The EU is undertaking important developments in the area of European security without asserting new fundamental goals. This paper proposes a conceptualisation of new logics of integration in the ESDP, by focusing on the transformation of conflict-resolution mechanisms in the adoption and implementation of policy provisions in the area. I argue that since 1998, pressing external events have led to an integrative policy change in the area of European security, manifest in an increasing use of expert incrementalist methods within the intergovernmental framework of the EU. The urgency of collective decisions adopted in substantive negotiations at a high political level combines with the incrementalist “filling-in” in the operational phase. While bargaining is highly determinant in the adoption of key compromises, the operational phase has become infused with administrative management and expert consultation, corresponding with the proliferation of newly created specialized agencies and think tanks, thus creating dynamics for the introduction of novel program specifications. Integrative outcomes are manifest in the progress in military operational capacity, the actual accomplishment of EU-based “Petersberg” operations, the focus on a more pragmatic understanding of the relationship with NATO and the proposals for coordination and flexibility envisaged in the draft of the Constitutional Treaty. The focus on conflict-resolution mechanisms provides theoretical determinants to explain integration logics in the ESDP, as a process of development of practical goals.

Why People Fail to Recognize Their Own Incompetence

Successful negotiation of everyday life would seem to require people to possess insight about deficiencies in their intellectual and social skills. However, people tend to be blissfully unaware of their incompetence. This lack of awareness arises because poor performers are doubly cursed: Their lack of skill deprives them not only of the ability to produce correct responses, but also of the expertise necessary to surmise that they are not producing them. People base their perceptions of performance, in part, on their preconceived notions about their skills. Because these notions often do not correlate with objective performance, they can lead people to make judgments about their performance that have little to do with actual accomplishment.

Being, Feeling and Doing: Discourses and Ethnic Self-Definitions among Minority Group Members

In psychology there is a growing research interest in issues of ethnic minority identity and acculturation. In this research the emphasis is on relatively stable or enduring internal dispositions and attitudes. Studies on the way ethnic minorities define and account for their identity are scarce. However, ethnic minority members often have to explain and justify their identity, not only in interactions with dominant group members but also in relation to their own group. The present study examines how Chinese people living in the Netherlands account for their ethnic identity. The focus is on the actual accomplishment and manifestation of ethnic self-definitions in talks with other Chinese. The analysis highlights the different resources the participants use to manage the normative issues and personal responsibilities involved. Accounts were accomplished by stressing the significance of appearance, the importance of early socialization and the (non-)possession of critical attributes. However, these deterministic accounts leave little room for personal agency, and the participants also tried to define an active and constructive role for themselves. It is concluded that discursive psychology can make an important contribution to our understanding of ethnic minority identity.

Successful University Students with Learning Disabilities

A pronounced difference between seeming ability and actual accomplishment suggests a learning disability (LD), which can have extensive academic and nonacademic negative effects, but the concept of LDs is rife with controversy. This study investigated eight university students' perceptions of how their learning disabilities have affected them. They emphasized the desirability of early diagnosis and of having general education teachers being alerted to potential LDs.

Empowering the Feminine: The Narratives of Mary Robinson, Jane West, and Amelia Opie, 1796-1812 (review)

REVIEWS 111 or even an inanimate object that passes among members of society recording its impressions. I did not realize how many such novels there are, and Bellamy's discussion is enlightening. On the other hand, I do not think she proves her case that these texts "encouraged a far more extensive analysis of the economic and social base of the commercial state than was possible within more anthropomorphic works" (p. 125). Indeed, is it not Bellamy's point that novels—about people!—try to sort out conflicts within the "commercial state"? Sandra Sherman University of Arkansas Eleanor Ty. Empowering the Feminine: The Narratives ofMary Robinson, Jane West, and Amelia Opie, 1796-1812. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998. ? + 224pp. $45; £33.75. ISBN 0-8020-4362-3. Even after more than a quarter-century offeminist criticism, potentially important women writers remain "undiscovered." A name like Jane West's may arouse only vague associations with a multitude of mediocre female scribblers, or, at best, the slightly less vague notion that its possessor held conservative, boring political and social opinions. Eleanor Ty has now rescued three previously neglected women who wrote in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. Focusing on the prose of West, Mary Robinson, and Amelia Opie, she attends both to the ideological work performed by this writing and to its literary accomplishment. By virtue of its detail and its conviction, her study will surely convince at least some readers that its subjects have been unjustly neglected. Ty has chosen the particular writers at issue here partly because they appear more conformist in their attitudes than do the "revolutionary" novelists she discussed in her previous book, Unsex'd Revolutionaries: Five Women Novelists of the 1790s. Although all three react more or less directly to the life and work of Mary Wollstonecraft, they do not openly endorse her principles. Instead, Ty argues, they explorethe possibilities ofempowering the female subject by glorifying traditional "feminine" values. Their rhetoric draws on the sentimental and Gothic traditions; their plots emphasize the plight of the seduced maiden. But they also pay close attention to problems of filial relations, and by investigating the power of the ties between daughters and fathers, daughters and mothers, they expose unexpected complexities in familiar plots. Indeed, unexpected complexity is what consistently attracts Ty's attention. She demonstrates persuasively that no simple ideological or rhetorical label will suffice to define the accomplishments of the writers who interest her. Mary Robinson, who experimented as actress, poet, novelist, playwright, and autobiographer, also had a notorious if brief career as mistress to the Prince of Wales. A famous beauty, she attracted the attention of such painters as George Romney, Thomas Gainsborough, and Sir Joshua Reynolds, all of whom painted her portrait. In her popular Memoirs, she describes herself as actress, narrates her 112 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION 12:1 affair with the Prince, and reports on clothes she has worn in various situations. In other words, she represents herselfin stereoptyical feminine terms, employing also the opposed stereotype of good mother, but neglecting her actual accomplishment as a writer. But in Thoughts on the Conditions of Women, and on the Injustice of Mental Subordination, probably written about the same time, she articulates her views, as Ty puts it, "from the position of the 'thinking' woman" (p. 34), offering forceful feminist analysis. And in her novel Walsingham, Robinson imagines a woman living much of her life in male disguise, then uses this plot device as a means to investigate male and female positions in society. The False Friend, a disillusioned work that should be read, Ty suggests, not as realism but as an almost phantasmagoric vision of its times, exposes the vulnerability of the female situation, imagining a series of patriarchal monsters who prey on women. The Natural Daughter employs autobiographical material in its study of heroines of sensibility, one of whom struggles for financial and social independence. In short, Robinson, although fully aware of her audience's desires and demands, proved adept at devising strategies to articulate a genuine social critique—while yet representing "femininity" in familiar forms. Ty's analyses of West and Opie likewise discover evidence of social criticism in the guise of...

Outcomes of a diabetes professional education seminar.

Sixty seven practicing diabetes edu cators attended a day-long seminar on patient education in Nashville, Ten nessee. At the end of the conference, participants recorded specific inten tions to revise their practice and the extent of actual accomplishment was assessed via mail three months later. On the average, each participant listed just over three intentions and had a 60% implementation rate. Results are discussed in terms of the strengths and weaknesses of the evaluation tech nique.

Behavioral objectives for psychological consultation in the school as evaluated by teachers and school psychologists

A set of behavioral objectives was developed for the consultant role of the school psychologist, based on Meyers' consultation model. A Likert-type questionnaire was developed to assess the degree to which teachers and school psychologists agreed upon the desirability and the actual accomplishment of these objectives. Based on a sample of 120 teachers and 83 school psychologists, it was found that both groups perceived a difference between the “desired” role and the role that school psychologists actually fulfill. However, there were also significant differences between teachers' and school psychologists' rating of the “actual” role, the school psychologists' rating agreeing more with the consultation model. Examination of individual items showed greater acceptance of objectives relating to Meyers' level of indirect service to the child, and less acceptance of Meyers' levels of direct service to the teacher and service to the school system.

Conversion of Seamaster Cargoliners to Full Containerships

It is the intent of this paper to provide certain specific design information on the operator's decisions leading to accomplishment of a major 5-ship conversion program and follow that background summary with comments on the postconversion service performance. The paper is intended to supplement and/or complement a paper simultaneously prepared by the conversion contractor covering the actual detailed planning and accomplishment of the conversion.

Inflated Expectations and Social Reinforcement in the Lowland Philippines

Two alternative hypotheses of the psychological impact of planned social change in the lowland Philippines were investigated. (1) Planned social change produces social reinforcement which leads to a more content population; or (2) it leads to a cycle of rising expectations which outstrip actual accomplishment, the result of which is dissatisfaction and hostility-especially among young people. Results in general favored the social reinforcement hypothesis. Efforts aimed at increasing a community's level of development tend to produce more modern value systems and increased general contentment. However, they also tend to produce a greater emphasis upon the local government to continue to meet the needs of people.