Constituent Institutions Research Articles

FEEDBACK

Objectives: To explore perception of Khyber Medical University teachersregarding challenges in provision of timely feedback to students. Setting: Khyber MedicalUniversity, Peshawar. Period: March 2016 to September 2016. Methods: A qualitative multiplecase study in which seven focus group discussions with seven constituent institutes of KhyberMedical University have been conducted, each institute is taken as one case, selected throughpurposive maximum variation sampling technique. Each FGD was audio-recorded, transcribedverbatim, analyzed and themes were identified. Results: Total forty faculty members participatedin seven focus group discussions. Three themes that emerged were ”institutionalization offeedback” indicating need of establishing a feedback culture so that it is taken as a norm bothby teachers and students; “Lapses in feedback priority” indicating teachers don’t give priorityto feedback due time constraints, work overload, lack of training and resource deficiencies:“establishing manageable model of feedback at organizational/institutional level” indicatinga need for developing a feasible feedback model compatible to university contextual needsinstead of implementing any ideal feedback model. Conclusion: The concept of providing andreceiving feedback is deficient and its significance with respect to teaching and learning islacking. Contextual academic workload and time constraints may impact the quality and timingof feedback provided. There is need of collaborations between university administration andfaculty so that feedback can be utilized effectively in the learning process.

Core Institutions of Constitutional Law

The article is devoted to current theoretical issues related to the system-structural formation of constitutional law. The author considers the main approaches to the subject matter of constitutional law and its constituent institutions. Particular attention is paid to the characteristics of the main institutions of constitutional law, to which the author relates the foundations of the constitutional system, the foundations of the legal status of the individual, the federative structure, the right to vote, the foundations of the formation and functioning of the system of public authorities. An important place in the article is assigned to the definition and analysis of factors influencing the development of system-forming institutions, as well as their inherent tendencies. In the author's opinion, the essence of the constitutional law core institutions contains not only legal, but also moral principles.

Financialization and Vested Interests: Self-Regulation vs. Financial Stability as a Public Good

:I propose an institutionalist analysis of financialization through the lens of Thorstein Veblen, built on some peculiar characteristics of money and related financial instruments in a market-based capitalist economy. Following the case of the overcapitalization of farmlands, studied by Veblen (1919), I argue that modern capitalism is a financialized society dominated by vested interests that rely on financial liberalization-led speculative overcapitalization, often leading to a perverse accumulation process and resulting in systemic catastrophes. Consequently, one of the major constituent institutions of liberal finance, market-dependent selfregulation, proves unable to deal with society-level issues like financial stability. This latter issue must be handled at a systemic level, as a public good. Therefore, specific public regulation and action mechanisms must be designed to maintain society (and dominant vested-interests) within some viability limits to ensure a smooth functioning of the economy.

Unbundling institutional determinants of multinational investments

ABSTRACTPrevious studies often examined how a broad-based institution affects foreign direct investment (FDI) flows across countries. However, analysis of differential impacts of two or more constituent institutions within a broad-based institution appears to be more useful for policy decision-making. There is a paucity of studies on how constituent institutions within a broad measure of institution affect FDI across countries. Our article constitutes the first attempt in bridging this gap. In this article, we examine the relative effects of property rights institution (PI) and contracting institution (CI) on investment flows. Our results show that PI is much more important than CI in determining the cross-border flows of FDI and affiliate sales. Moreover, PI is found to be more important for FDI than for affiliate sales, indicating that final goods are less of a concern for being expropriated by governments and powerful elites than capital goods. Through unbundling a broad-based institution and examining how the constituent institutions affect investments flows, our article provides practical location decisions for investments in FDI, mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and affiliate sales.

Orchestrating Research with Medical Education

India is known for its educational prowess since ancient times and is considered as the seat of few of the oldest universities in the world. However, with this unmatchable herit-age and deference in the area of higher educa-tion worldwide, India is yet to make an impact on global education scenario qualitatively. India now has over six hundred degree award-ing institutions, whereas in 1950 there were just 30 and the institutions affiliated to these were 695. Currently, the numbers of universi-ties / higher learning centers have grown to nearly 700 with affiliated and constituent in-stitutions approaching 40000 maximum. Thus, it could be seen that there is quantum leap in the number of institutions. Though, the higher education is considered as the peak stage of formal education, it should include more spe-cialties required for socio economic develop-ment for a self-reliant country.

The King is Dead Long Live the King: What Follows after the Troika?

The focus of this paper is the need to reshape the financial assistance programmes and the related activities of the Troika in a way that would make them more socially and democratically acceptable. The starting point, therefore, is an analysis of the current role of the Troika and of each of its three constituent institutions in the framework of the financial assistance programmes.This analysis is followed by a discussion of the new style of European interventionism embodied by the Troika with special emphasis on the democratic and social deficits by which it is marred. Next, in order to describe the effects of this European interventionist approach as practised by the Troika, the example of wage and collective bargaining policy has been selected as a specific illustration. Finally, some concrete suggestions are put forward as to how the attempt at crisis management conducted by the Troika (or its successor institutions) might be set on a policy footing inspired by a more socially and democratically oriented political vision.

Screening for noncommunicable disease risk factors at a workplace in India: A physiotherapy initiative in a healthcare setting

Abstract Background Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) account for two-thirds of all deaths globally. Physiotherapists have the requisite expertise to initiate and lead NCD risk factor screening and prevention programmes. The workplace can provide an ideal setting for physiotherapists to screen for risk factors and implement prevention programmes. Objective This study was designed to identify the common modifiable risk factors for NCD among employees of a healthcare institution. Methods A cross-sectional study of NCD risk factors was conducted in a large healthcare teaching institution. Employees from four of the seven constituent institutes of the healthcare institution were evaluated using the World Health Organisation STEPS Instrument (Steps I and II). Continuous variables were expressed as mean ± standard deviation. Categorical variables and the prevalence of risk factors were expressed as frequencies and percentages. Results A total of 247 employees (response rate 68.2%) participated in the study. Poor dietary habits, suboptimal blood pressure, and physical inactivity were identified as the most common modifiable NCD risk factors in this population. Conclusion Knowledge of NCD risk factors can be used by physiotherapists to implement health promotion programmes in the workplace as a means of reducing NCD-related economic and social burdens in India.

In the Realm of Our Lorde: Eros and the Poet Philosopher

Feminist Studies 40, no. 1. © 2014 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 169 Lyndon K. Gill In the Realm of Our Lorde: Eros and the Poet Philosopher I have an embarrassing confession. I was not able to attend Hunter College’s momentous celebration of Audre Lorde’s life and work, held in anticipation of the twentieth anniversary of her shaking free of flesh.1 But that is not my confession. Undoubtedly, like many of you who could not be present physically for the séance royale that was at once a commemoration and an invocation of the original “sister outsider,” I committed nonetheless to show up virtually. That I could commit to showing up at all was because the technology-savvy organizing committee had generously decided—perhaps inspired by Lorde’s distaste for exclusions —to offer the conference through a livestream broadcast.2 We are coming closer to the confession now. I readied myself well in advance of the day to experience what I could of the fête through a computer screen. Yet by the morning of the gathering, not only had it completely slipped my mind, but other mundane obligations—a faculty meeting, a 1. On October 12, 2012, the Women and Gender Studies Program at Hunter College—one of the constituent institutions of the City University of New York—hosted a celebratory one-day symposium on the life and work of Audre Lorde, followed by special screenings of films about the warrior poet. The cluster of articles on Audre Lorde in this issue of Feminist Studies commemorates that gathering. 2. See the livestream broadcast, “A Celebration of Audre Lorde,” October 12, 2012, from the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College, http://new.livestream.com/roosevelthouse/audrelorde. 7 Celebrating Audre Lorde’s Legacy 8 170 Lyndon K. Gill promised tea with a favored student—conspired to fill in the space I had cleared to bring the celebration of Lorde to one small corner of Texas.3 For any black, queer, Caribbean American intellectual—let alone one as committed as I am to Lorde’s vision for our collective future regardless of how we look, where we live, or who we fuck—it is painfully embarrassing to admit that I nearly lost the chance to honor Audre on a haphazard Friday morning. But in these moments when I feel most lost, my mother has a way of reorienting me, of finding me, and walking me home. I am sure among black mothers this is quite unremarkable, but the steady hand outstretched still feels just a touch miraculous. And here again, a generosity extended via technology—a generosity of spirit that I hope is my inheritance—intervened to cure my absent-minded distraction: my mother sent me a text message. Having committed herself to showing up for the symposium despite whatever might be left undone at work, my mother—Donna Veronica Gill, a labor activist who has worked for Hunter College as an administrator for as long as I can remember—recognized that there was more important work to do that day. In her text to me, she very unceremoniously asked if by chance I was watching the livestream at that moment (perhaps presuming I had stepped away from the computer, but hardly imaging I might have forgotten the day’s events entirely) because there was a professor from the University of Pennsylvania speaking who I had to hear. Distraught at my forgetfulness, but curious about this professor who had brought me to my mummy’s mind so pointedly, I quickly tuned in to the livestream broadcast and could not have been happier to see that, although she had gotten the details confused (the speaking professor was from Temple University, not the University of Pennsylvania), my mother was, as per usual, quite right. Aishah Shahidah Simmons, newly minted adjunct professor of women’s and LGBT studies at Temple University, was in the middle of delivering a presentation that one might best describe as an incantation (the text of her talk follows this article). Simmons called Lorde into that room 3. This would have been a kind of virtual return to Texas for Lorde, who— according to a photograph of her...

Changing the Culture of Academic Medicine

The culture of academic medicine has been described as hierarchical, competitive, and not highly supportive of female or minority faculty. In response to this, the authors designed the Learning Action Network (LAN), which was part of the National Initiative on Gender, Culture and Leadership in Medicine (C-Change). The LAN is a five-school consortium aimed at changing the organizational culture of its constituent institutions. The authors selected LAN schools to be geographically diverse and representative of U.S. medical schools. Institutional leaders and faculty representatives from constituent schools met twice yearly for four years (2006-2010), forming a cross-institutional learning community. Through their quarterly listing of institutional activities, schools reported a wide array of actions. Most common were increased faculty development and/or mentoring, new approaches to communication, and adoption of new policies and procedures. Other categories included data collection/management, engagement of key stakeholders, education regarding gender/diversity, and new/expanded leadership positions. Through exit interviews, most participants reported feeling optimistic about maintaining the momentum of change. However, some, especially in schools with leadership changes, expressed uncertainty. Participants reported that they felt that the LAN enabled, empowered, facilitated, and/or caused the reported actions.For others who might want to work toward changing the culture of academic medicine, the authors offer several lessons learned from their experiences with C-Change. Most notably, people, structures, policies, and reward systems must be put into place to support cultural values, and broad-based support should be created in order for changes to persist when inevitable transitions in leadership occur.

Economic Exploitation in Intercollegiate Athletics

This paper investigates philosophically the question of whether or not college and university athletes in the USA are doing something morally wrong should they terminate their college or university experience prior to graduation and enter the professional athletic ranks. Various moral arguments are brought to bear in order to attempt to shed light on this issue. One reason why such athletes ‘turn professional’ before they graduate is the perceived economic exploitation they experience as essentially underpaid workers earning much revenue for their respective institutions. But who is exploiting whom here? Is it just student athletes who are exploited by the system? I expand the reasoning about the exploitation of intercollegiate athletics to include not just student athletes, but their supporting colleges and universities. In the end, it is proposed that the National Collegiate Athletic Association and similar academically related athletic agencies should permit and encourage each of their constituent institutions as a matter of policy to protect themselves (and their supporting taxpayers, in the cases of public institutions) contractually from economic exploitation by professional sports franchises. Thus the question of student athletes leaving college for professional sports contracts has hidden beneath it questions of private professional sports franchises’ exploitation of the institutions with which such student athletes are affiliated.

Centralizing Public Procurement in China: Task environment and organizational structure

This article explores current environment and practices of public procurement in China, aiming to summarize the task environment and to find a favourable organizational structure. We selected three representative procurement centres and conducted an in-depth field study on their purchasing practices. Given China's political and administrative context, we conclude that the task environment should consist of a strong Decision-Making Team, a unified supervisory agency, constituent institutions and vendors. We recommend a unified procurement centre with a functional structure as a favourable choice. The key departments of a procurement centre include Purchasing/Tendering, Contract Management and Inventory Allocation.

ANC Decline, Social Mobilization and Political Society: Understanding South Africa's Evolving Political Culture

This article examines the evolving political culture in contemporary South Africa. It draws on elite culture, neo-patrimonialism, and revisionist institutionalist perspectives to understand state weaknesses and patterns of politicization confronting South Africa's developing democracy. While it accepts that the democratic political system and its constituent institutions are in place and function formally, a discourse of violence or threats of violence to rival political actors is commonplace. The article is structured as follows: the first part describes the increased social mobilization of disgruntled citizens who rely on a discourse of violence rather than articulating grievances through political structures; the second part focuses on those factors that ferment this kind of political culture. The article discusses the deepening economic inequality and its expression in class conflict under conditions of democracy. It then discusses the politics of the ANC as a dominant party, and in particular intra-elite conflict, ANC factionalization, and the consequent weakening of state institutions. These factors, the paper argues, encourage a politics in which political society, rather than civil society, becomes the main terrain for expressing conflict.

Urban (re-) organization in Late Roman Palestine and the early Rabbinic guild: The Tosefta on the city and classification of space

Over the latter half of the 2nd century and into the 3rd century, urban institutions and administration figured ever more prominently in the organization and governance of Roman Palestine. In this context, the consolidation of the earliest guild of rabbinic masters took hold, and their Mishnah and its supplement, Tosefta, were composed. When compared with correlative passages in the more utopic Mishnah, traditions in Tosefta show decidedly greater interest in the urban setting and its constituent institutions as the territory for meaningful, ordered, human activity. Tosefta superimposes over Mishnah's utopic mapping of a world centred on one city, an "ideal" Jerusalem, a complementary mapping in which meaningful human action and interaction is centred upon one's "local city." In this respect, one might characterize Tosefta as "diasporizing" Mishnah's mapping of an ideal world centred upon a single Temple-city.

The Japanese Self in Cultural Logic (review)

Takie Sugiyama Lebra, The Self in Cultural Logic. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2005, 303 pp. In the prologue of The Self in Cultural Logic, Takie Lebra introduces herself as an ambivalent expatriate, alienated from her home country and struggling to come to terms with its limitations-and yet irreversibly Japanese (ix). In her important contributions to anthropology, Takie Lebra has embraced the role of cultural ambassador, presenting japan in ways that encourage Americans to appreciate commitments to society. In Constraint and Fulfillment, her rich ethnography of middle class women in a small city outside of Tokyo in the mid 1970s, Lebra revealed how the division of labor between men and women brought housewives unexpected and yet undeniable forms of empowerment and gratification (1984). Her ethnography of self-reconstruction in a Buddhist-based healing cult revealed the importance of self-accusation and reflection on one's obligations, drawing a sharp contrast with the self-forgiveness customary of Western countercultural psychotherapies (1974: 357). The book under review here offers a unifying theoretical framework for understanding these seeming contradictions, highlighting tensions and trade-offs in the relationship between and society in Japan. Through this frame-work, Lebra is able to show how social pressure and intimacy, propriety and insubordinacy co-exist in social relations. Lebra acknowledges her debt to Parsons early in the Prologue. She was trained as a sociologist in the heyday of structural functionalism, and this influence is plainly on in the formalized view of that provides the book's architecture. Venn diagrams and charts with circulating arrows populate the book. Students who are new to Japan will appreciate the clarity with which Lebra reveals the abutting worlds of official ceremonial appearances and hidden, backroom dealings, and her analysis of how the two are intertwined. In this endeavor, Lebra does not shy away from the very real issues of social fragmentation and corruption that face Japan today. For example, she includes police corruption and domestic violence as examples of the darker side of paternalism. Her discussion of wedding ceremonies as a form of self display includes not only a discussion of traditional ritual but also an example of the bridegroom, recently laid off, who hires an actor to play the boss' at his wedding. By developing and expanding the now-familiar uchi/soto (inside/outside) and ura/omote (back/front) dichotomies that have been popular in postwar Japan anthropology, Lebra sheds light on a vast range of otherwise unrelated social institutions and practices-including welfare reform, school discipline, domestic violence, corporate restructuring, mother-child suicide, seniority promotion, divorce, police violence and benevolence, attention to hierarchy in language, standardized patterns in Noh theater, and treatment of alzheimer's patients, to name only some. Yet even while Lebra confronts the social tensions that play out daily in the popular media, she misses the opportunity to engage with critical lines of current scholarship. Her structuralist framework, which proposes a unifying set of motivations to explain a vast range of behavior, implicitly sees behavior as rooted in shared cognitive schemas, rather than in historically rooted ideas and practices. This framework, which tends to see subjects as actors of prescribed roles rather than agents, pays insufficient attention to the problem of ideological persuasion or resistance-and to the very sophisticated ways in which the state (and its constituent institutions, such as schools and companies) have gone about drawing its members into the fold. At times, the geographic mapping of social spheres of interaction replaces an analysis of why abiding by prescribed norms is compelling or accepted by citizens-and what might make them less acceptable. …

Provision of Electronic Information Services for the Visually Impaired

The UK’s Special Educational Needs and Disability Act (SENDA) of 2001 places new duties on bodies responsible for providing post-16 education and related services. In particular, this means that appropriate access to electronic information sources needs to be provided for all those with disabilities. This paper concentrates on the needs of the visually impaired and covers the blind, the partially sighted and those with colour blindness. Following a brief overview of the technology available (both hardware and software), issues related to appropriate interface design are described. The infrastructures to support the provision of such facilities in three of the constituent institutions of the University of Wales (the universities at Aberystwyth, Cardiff and Swansea) are then outlined.

A report on The 19thSMYTE (Small Meeting on Yeast Transport and Energetics), 14–17 September 2001, Chania, Crete, Greece

The annual SMYTE meetings were launched in 1983 to join the international scientific community interested in solute membrane transport and related energetics in yeasts and to foster discussions about the most recent developments in this field. The 2001 meeting took place in Chania, Crete (Greece) at MAICh (Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Chania), one of the four constituent Institutes of CIHEAM (International Centre for Advanced Mediterranean Agronomic Studies) and it was organised by George Diallinas (University of Athens) and Vicky Sophianopoulou (Institute of Biology, National Center for Scientific Research ‘Demokritos’, Athens). Due …

Civil Service Reform in Ghana: A Case Study of Contemporary Reform Problems in Africa

Among the factors determining the success or failure in Civil Service Reform (CSR) are high level political administrative commitment; and the motivation and involvement of civil servants themselves in a bureaucratic system that is too weak to impose central top-down reform. The article evaluates Ghana's Civil Service Reform Programme (CSRP), which was intended to make the civil service a value for money institution. It is argued that this objective was not achieved because of the absence of the factors mentioned above that ensure success. Hence the Civil Service Performance Improvement Programme (CSPIP) in March 1995 whichwas intended to make the civil service and all its constituent institutions more efficient. The article then relates the Ghanaian experience so far to recent developments at the level of theory, and their implications for other CSR programmes in Africa.

INTERNATIONAL CO‐OPERATION IN SCIENCE IN THE FORMER USSR

The founding of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in 1918 is evoked, It and its constituent institutes are continuing to function, despite the economic difficulties which have beset Ukraine since the break‐up of the Soviet Union. As an effort to internationalize its activities and to contribute to gaining back the united scientific space of the former Soviet Union, the Ukrainian Academy of sciences played an instrumental role in bringing about the creation in 1993 of the International Association of Academies of Sciences (IAAS) consisting of the now independent academies of many of the constituent republics of the former USSR. This organization is sponsoring a number of international scientific activities, including a publication programme for young scientists. It is also developing exchange mechanisms that can function without hard currency.

THE BELARUSSIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES DURING THE TRANSITION PERIOD

The work and the prospects of the Belarussian Academy of Sciences are described. The Academy, like other institutions in Belarus, has suffered greatly since the period of transition began in 1990. The Academy and its constituent institutes are struggling to continue providing their traditional leadership in regard to basic and applied research in all disciplines. In some areas, particularly in the hard sciences, Belarussian researchers continue to chalk up internationally recognized successes; however, the size of the research staff in the republic has declined by 50 per cent since 1990, and there is difficulty in recruiting new blood. The basic problem is one of finance; however, the Academy is trying to tap several sources of funding including the government. It is also taking steps to influence the training of young scientists and academics and to forge links with the Academies of other countries. At all costs, Belarus must not lose its scientific potential.

Presidential Election Laws and Multipartism in Latin America

This article examines the interaction between the rules governing presidential elections and multipartism in Latin America. Data from 16 Latin American systems are examined through the use of a multivariate model to gain an understanding of the independent impact of presidential electoral formula (plurality vs. majority), the timing of presidential and legislative elections (concurrent vs. nonconcurrent) and legislative district magnitude on legislative multipartism, and by extension, on the number of relevant political parties operating in the nation. The findings demonstrate the strong and significant impact which formula and timing have on multipartism. They also point to the importance of examining the interaction between elections for different constituent institutions. Finally, they underscore the applicability of Duverger's law to presidential elections.