Exit Processes Research Articles

Becoming an Ex-Extremist: Stopping the Hate and Embracing a New Identity

Abstract Domestic radicalization to violent extremism has evolved into the most urgent terrorism threat facing the West. We contribute to research on extremism and role exit processes by demonstrating how identity transformations are linked to the pursuit and avoidance of possible future selves motivated by negative emotional states of shame, embarrassment and guilt. The data are drawn from in-depth life history interviews with 47 former members of US domestic violent extremist groups. The interviewees, who had detailed accounts of childhood maltreatment, abuse and neglect, were vulnerable and looking for belonging, acceptance and significance in their lives. The interviews revealed that the extremist role identity conflicted with other emerging aspects of their selves (e.g. parent, spouse) that created an interaction between negative emotional states (i.e. shame, guilt and embarrassment) and doubts about their group involvement. The internal conflicts and emotional awareness opened individuals to embrace non-extremist versions of themselves. These processes diverted their extremist trajectory by creating doubts, engaging in anticipatory socialization and avoiding a feared possible self.

Water-exit impact of deep-sea mining vehicles: Experimental and numerical investigations

The operation of the deployment and retrieval system of a deep-sea mining vehicle (DSMV) is closely related to its water exit process; rapid water exit processes under wave conditions tend to exert negative influences on the safety and reliability of the entire system. To evaluate the specific effect of the interaction between the DSMV and the surrounding seawater, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) was used to predict the hydrodynamic characteristics and water-exit impacts of the DSMV at different retrieval speeds. First, a stokes-wave-free surface based on an overset mesh method integrating the volume of fluid (VOF) method was developed to reproduce level 4 sea conditions. Subsequently, the water surface deformation and water resistance were recorded to verify the proposed numerical method. These numerical and experimental findings indicate that when a vehicle body passes through wavy water at a relatively high speed, its lifting cable experiences a water-esistance force that is several times its weight. Finally, a vehicle body with a small retrieval speed might undergo several wave cycles, resulting in its lifting cable becoming loose.

Closing the Workforce Staffing Chasm by Breaking Boundaries: Innovative Partnerships and Strategies Between Recruitment and Nursing.

As hospitals are experiencing a nursing shortage, nursing leaders must build innovative partnerships and strategies between nursing and recruitment to close the workforce gap. One large health care system was experiencing a high vacancy rate. To improve recruitment and retention efforts, nursing leaders partnered with the recruitment department and other key stakeholders to develop strategies. Together, they designed a candidate-centric recruiting and hiring process, designed innovative recruitment campaigns including recruiting former employed nurses, recruitment of traveling nurses into employees, increased graduate nurse recruitment efforts, and implementation of a registered nurse (RN) Ambassador program. The team improved work process efficiency for recruiters and candidates. Retention efforts focused on engaging nurses in the work environment, decreasing nurse leader workload to allow a focus on staff relationships, and improving exit processes in an effort to retain the nurse. The actual vacancy rate was as high as 20.9% in July 2021 to 8% in September 2022, indicating the system is closing the vacancy rate and nearing the goal of 5%.

RFID-Based IoT Scanning System for Tracking Parking Slot Application

The increasing demand for parking spaces in various facilities, such as shopping centers, ports, and airports, poses a significant challenge for parking managers. Drivers waste time and fuel searching for available parking slots, resulting in increased air pollution and negative environmental and health impacts. Therefore, a new solution is needed to address these issues and improve parking management efficiency. A parking management system that utilizes RFID technology and allows for the RFID Tag on each car to display user data, user ID, and parking space reservations is needed to improve the efficiency and convenience of parking at various facilities. The proposed system design incorporates various components, including a Camera Sensor, Raspberry PI, ESP8266, UHF RFID reader, and RFID Tag. The RFID technology captures radio waves emitted by the RFID Tag, enabling individual identification through unique codes. Testing revealed high accuracy at close range but decreased effectiveness at longer distances. Internet speed and network latency affected system performance, with faster speeds enabling faster data transmission. The system, developed using Thunkable and Firebase, provides real-time parking space availability information and streamlines vehicle entry and exit processes through RFID technology. This system has the potential to greatly improve the parking experience at busy public facilities by facilitating efficient parking spot finding and enhancing overall convenience for drivers.

The art of not being neutral in qualitative research

ABSTRACT This article is a contribution to the ongoing dispute about ethical and methodological standards of neutrality within qualitative research. By invoking the notions of friendship-based research and situated ethics, we discuss important ethical dilemmas that can arise in research processes when informant and researcher develop friendship-like relations. We consider the benefits and drawbacks of such an approach, especially when working within sensitive fields – in this case, the impact of psychiatric diagnoses and gang exit processes on identity formation. We challenge traditional ideals of personal non-involvement in qualitative research, particularly with regard to ethical issues by analyzing and discussing a case of unforeseen events during the establishment of a research group that transformed a formal informant – researcher relationship into friendship-based research.

Conceptualizing responsible exits in conservation philanthropy

AbstractConservation philanthropy has grown significantly in the past decade. As the number of philanthropic‐supported conservation initiatives increases, so too will the frequency of exits—the ending of funding relationships. A trend toward “strategic philanthropy,” where foundations fund time‐limited grants, is already contributing to near‐constant exits. We draw attention to exits as a critical and ubiquitous—yet understudied—part of conservation grantmaking processes that can have tremendous impacts on the people and places foundations invest in. This paper begins to address this research gap with the first empirical study of exit processes in the context of ocean conservation philanthropy. We draw on an analysis of interviews and a knowledge co‐production workshop with donors representing 36 foundations investing in ocean conservation globally to: (1) develop a conceptual framework that broadens and clarifies definitions of exits and provides a common language to characterize exits along varied dimensions, and (2) derive best practices for exiting responsibly. This paper provides timely guidance for environmental philanthropy broadly, including the need to think about exits early and often as an integral part of the grantmaking strategy. Responsible giving must include responsible exits.

Intelligent security sanitizing gate

ABSTRACT It is very difficult to keep track of employee attendance manually. In addition to the length of time that the registration process takes, there are still chances that some errors may occur. It’s easy to put an end to errors, save time and eliminate hassles with a dedicated attendance recording app that automates the process. With these tools, you can track employee entry and exit processes, keep a record of hours worked, manage employee overtime, half-offs, days off, and much more. In this research paper, a gate has been proposed through which employees’ departure and attendance are calculated. Prevent any unwanted person from entering at the same time, a unit can be added through which individuals are sterilized for the Prevention of viruses. The proposed system showed high efficiency in recording the attendance and departure of employees and preventing any unwanted person from entering. The raspberry pi 4 model/ 8GB is used and Practical tests were conducted and applied to the system of employees in one of the educational institutions and proved highly efficient.

Cross-lagged effects of voluntary job changes and well-being: A continuous time approach.

Well-being plays an important role in organizational entry and exit processes. However, longitudinal research on the relationship between voluntary job change and well-being is still sparse, and focuses on rather short time intervals (max. 3 years). Using 12 waves of the Household, Income, and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, the present study extends previous research by examining whether and how well-being is affected by a voluntary external job change, and vice versa. We tested cross-lagged effects between voluntary job change and well-being (job satisfaction, vitality, sense of belonging) with a sample of 2,565 workers, and between job change and work-family conflicts as another indicator for well-being with a sample of 1,574 working parents. Results of continuous time modeling revealed that job change predicted decreased job satisfaction and vitality and increased work-family conflicts. Job change had no significant effect on the sense of belonging. The strongest relations between job change and well-being were observed in the first 5 years after an organizational entry (job satisfaction 1 year 2 months; vitality 4 years 4 months; work-family strains 3 years 5 months; sense of belonging 3 years 8 months). Job change had no significant effect on the sense of belonging. We also found partial support for reverse effects: Increased job satisfaction made a job change less likely (strongest effect after 2 years) and higher work-family conflicts more likely (strongest effect after 4 years). Thus, the results indicate when it is especially important to support newcomers to improve adjustment and prevent quitting. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Walking out on hate: A qualitative investigation of how and why White supremacists quit hate groups.

Through in-depth, semistructured interviews with former White supremacists (N = 9), the authors explored how and why former White supremacists left their hate groups, and why some chose to then speak out against their former racist ideologies. Using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA; Smith et al., 2009), the authors identified nine themes related to the process of leaving one's hate group and becoming an antihate activist. Participants initially left their hate groups because of both painful and encouraging interactions with members of marginalized communities, which led to the disintegration of their White supremacist ideological convictions. Upon exiting, participants navigated threats to their safety, experienced shifts in their social networks, encountered new emotional states, and healed through introspection and connection with others. Finally, participants connected with former White supremacists who had become antihate activists, spoke out publicly against hate, and developed antihate activist identities. The authors offer directions for future research, as well as provide implications for clinical interventions supporting hate group members through their exit processes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Intimate Belonging—Intimate Becoming: How Police Officers and Migrant Gang Defectors Seek to (Re)shape Ties of Belonging in Denmark

This article examines the ways that Danish gang exit programs engage police officers and gang defectors in a pervasive work on belonging between gangs, kinship networks and the state. In urban Denmark, the majority of gang exit candidates are of ethnic-minority background and form part of the street-gang environment in marginalized migrant neighborhoods. This is an intimate social environment constituted by diasporic kinship networks, where gang formations are entangled with kinship formations. Hence, when gang defectors leave their gang, they also often leave their family and childhood home for a life in unfamiliar places and positions. As I show, gang desistance is thus a highly dilemmatic process in which gang defectors find themselves “unhinged” from meaningful social and kinship relationships and in search of new ways of embedding themselves into a social world. Based on an ethnographic study of gang exit processes in Denmark’s second largest city, Aarhus, this article shows how police officers and gang defectors seek to (re)shape ties of belonging between gangs, kinship networks and the state. The process, I argue, illuminates the intimate aspect of the notion of belonging, in which kin and state relatedness is deeply rooted in interpersonal spaces and relationships.

Growing Up Nonprofit: Predictors of Early-Stage Nonprofit Formalization

The nonprofit organizational life cycle literature has traditionally focused on the entry and exit processes; the intermediate organizational life stages between these bookends have received less attention. Almost half of all nonprofits at any given time operate in an early life stage with less than US$100,000 in revenue, minimal overhead spending, and no paid managers. This study examines the process by which nonprofits leave the small, informal, startup phase and begin the next life stage characterized by growth and formalization. We identify financial and organizational characteristics that predict whether the nonprofit will successfully transition out of the early and informal life stage. We find that investments in professional fundraising and access to government funds are predictive of the transition out of the start-up phase, while traditional financial predictors such as revenue concentration, equity ratio, fixed cost ratios, and the accumulation of unrestricted assets have modest to no effects.

How flexible are small firms? An analysis on the determinants of flexibility

Although the standard microeconomic analysis is usually based on the assumption on the existence of a “representative firm”, it is known, as early as since the classical economists, that industrial economies are characterized by persistent heterogeneity among firms. One of the main sources of heterogeneity that is used to explain the vitality of small firms is flexibility. It is suggested that small firms are more flexible than large firms and, therefore, can survive in an uncertain environment. This paper studies four sources of flexibility (technology flexibility, labor flexibility, systemic flexibility, and dynamic flexibility) in Turkish manufacturing industries. The main source of small firm flexibility is found in the case of dynamic aspects, i.e., entry, exit and growth processes whereas there are no differences between small and large firms in other types of flexibility.

Having it all, or avoiding black holes? Career–family strategies and the choice between leaving or staying in academia among Swedish PhDs

ABSTRACT Despite a persistent notion that women exit academia due to family responsibilities, research on exits is scarce. Based on 32 interviews, the paper explores how male and female PhDs recount the choice of leaving versus remaining in academia in terms of aspirations, opportunities and constraints. The main question is whether the exit/remain decision reflects gendered work-family strategies in a modern dual-earner society like Sweden. The narratives form a fourfold typology of strategic and accidental stayers, as well as strategic and accidental leavers. The analysis points to assymmetric opportunities connected to both gender roles and internal/external employment prospects. Family concerns formed a prominent reason for exit but problems of job insecurity and care involvement were highlighted by both men and women. Female but not male stayers could forsee obstacles and applied a range of strategies to minimize the impact of family on their careers. All in all, findings did not conform to prevailing notions of female exits but suggest that the academic career system present women and families with complex dilemmas even in a country with supportive policies. In future, exit processes should be furthered studied in other institutional contexts.

The Italian Public Sector Workforce: Recent Evolution in the Light of the Rules on Turnover

The public sector represents the largest employer in all OECD countries, however the size of the public workforce varies significantly across countries and sectors and over time. This paper provides an analysis of the evolution of public sector employment in Italy over the past decade, combining an overview of the main legislative interventions that have shaped the recruitment and exit processes and an empirical descriptive analysis of the resulting trends and workforce composition. Finally, I provide an in depth analysis of the case of universities, where the contraction in the size of the workforce was most severe.

Discussion on the Accommodation Infection Prevention-control of the Supportive Medical Team Assigned to Hubei During COVID-19 Outbreak

Objective To summarize the infection prevention and control experiences in the resident of medical team giving support to Wuhan, and to provide some reference for our same occupations. Methods Based on the previous experience of supporting Wuhan medical teams and combined with the actual situation of our own medical team, we carried out the prevention and control of resident infection from six aspects, including the establishment of infection control team, training for control knowledge, resident layout, standardizing entry and exit processes, personnel behavior management, personnel health management. Results By the time of April 10, 2020, 172 members of our medical team had been fighting in Wuhan for 50 days and nights, in the face of the COVID-19 public health emergency, the medical team protected the members and there were no cases of medical staff infection. Conclusion In the novel coronavirus pneumonia affected area, it is effectively to prevent the occurrence of infection and personal infection in medical teams through a series of feasible prevention and control measures. At the same time, we found that many members of the medical team had mental health problems. Early psychological crisis intervention training is helpful for medical team members to better fight against the epidemic.

Quasi-enveloped hepatitis virus assembly and release.

Hepatitis A virus (HAV) and hepatitis E virus (HEV) infections are the main causes for acute hepatitis worldwide. Both viruses had long been considered as nonenveloped viruses. However, recent work has uncovered that both viruses circulate in the bloodstream as membrane-cloaked, "quasi-enveloped" particles that are, surprisingly, infectious and likely the only form mediating virus spread within the host. The discovery of quasi-enveloped HAV and HEV particles has fundamentally changed the traditional view on the life cycle and pathogenesis of these viruses. However, because HAV and HEV are phylogenetically unrelated and their capsid assembly processes are quite distinct, it is not clear whether they use similar or different mechanisms for envelopment and exit. This review provides an overview of the current knowledge about the assembly and exit processes of HAV and HEV and perspectives for future studies.

A longitudinal air–water trans-media dynamic model for slender vehicles under low-speed condition

A trans-media aerial underwater vehicle (TMAUV) could break through the single-medium limitation with the abilities to fly in the air, navigate underwater, and cross the air–water surface repeatedly. This paper researches on the air–water trans-media trajectory, including the water entry and exit trajectories, for slender TMAUVs. A longitudinal dynamic model is developed for the air–water trans-media process under low-speed condition. In this condition, the vehicle is assumed to be fully wetted and the water surface is assumed to be kept flat. A novel estimation for the fluid force is proposed for the immersed part of the vehicle, with angular velocity and angle of attack taken into consideration. Added mass and its derivatives are calculated by the cross-sectional method based on the slender body theory. To verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the model, water entry experiments of a slender projectile with a length of 2000 mm are performed with ground and underwater high-speed cameras. Simulations and experimental results show similar trends, as indicated by the comparisons. Furthermore, the proposed model is compared with computational fluid dynamics method simulating water entry and exit processes. Simulation results present good agreement with experimental results. On the basis of the results, the proposed model could be used to predict the water entry and exit trajectories with different initial conditions.

(Un)Becoming a Fitness Doper: Negotiating the Meaning of Illicit Drug Use in a Gym and Fitness Context

The widespread availability of doping and its growing prevalence among fitness groups has contributed greatly to the realization of an emergent public health issue. Emanating from an ethnographic study in Sweden, the purpose of this study was to describe and analyze the processes involved in becoming and “unbecoming” a fitness doping user. The study employs a cultural and sociological perspective as its theoretical framework and discusses how the participating users gradually develop their knowledge about the drugs and how the process of becoming a user is negotiated in relation to ideas and ideals concerning health, gender, and individual freedom and Swedish law. Regarding exit processes, (re)entering into what is perceived to be an ordinary “normal” life was seldom a straightforward process. To understand the complex and sometimes complicated transition processes involved in becoming respectively unbecoming a fitness doper, the results highlight the limitations of using stage models for understanding exit process as heuristic tools. Furthermore, the article argue for the necessity to investigate the negotiations of fitness doping, taking place in the intersection between subcultural affiliations/spaces, doping legislation, and mainstream perceptions of living a “Normal” life. It is argued that processes of (un)becoming a fitness doper are anything but linear and thus need to be understood in relation to sociocultural belonging and ongoing negotiation of the individual’s sense of self.

Return to Work between the Conflicting Priorities of Work and Health Orientation

The basic aim of this study was to analyse health-related exit processes from working life and their conditional constellations. It focused on biographical coping in the context of professional reorientation and Return to Work (RTW). The aim was to describe, among other things, phases, characteristics and mechanisms of coping with a double-folded biographical disruption, i. e. coping with the chronic disease and the vulnerable occupational situation. The study focused on 6 women and 4 men between 25 and 57 years of age who were interviewed (episodically-narrative) at 2 different points in the survey period from 2011 to 2014: during their medical respectively vocational rehabilitation (t1) and again about one year later (t2). The overall characteristic of all cases was the initiated or already faced health-related occupational biographical disruption caused by a chronic musculoskeletal disease partly accompanied by psychosomatic issues or triggered by a mental illness. This study followed the methodological approach and research style of the Grounded Theory 1. A health-related exit from working life is usually gradual and is caused by complex risk constellations. Only in the interplay of personal and contextual factors does a framework for the double-folded biographical disruption develop. The resulting social, biographical and health challenges lie in the areas of private and working life. RTW is experienced as an experimental phase to return to everyday working life under limited health conditions. A key finding of this study is the recognition that the transformation of the importance of health is taking place in exit and reorientation processes. This paper focuses on its significance for the rehabilitation and RTW process. The applied perspective on biographical processes makes it possible to describe health-related breaks as a change in status from healthy to sick, from high performance to limited performance. Professional stakeholders in medical and rehabilitative settings should be made more aware of the identity-building processes, individual professional biographical crises and disease management processes of those affected. It is important not only to evaluate RTW as the one and only success, key outcome and end of the rehabilitation process, but to understand RTW as a continuing process of occupational reorientation under limited health conditions and to design it as a participatory process.

Building a firm level dataset for the analysis of industrial dynamics and demography

This paper illustrates the building procedure of a firm-level panel dataset that merges several sources of information concerning the various activities of business firms. The aim of this work is to achieve a detailed dataset able to shed light on firm demographics, in terms of survival, entry and exit processes, distinguishing between “voluntary and “involuntary exits. Moreover, the derived dataset allows to monitor the innovation activities of the firms and also to capture complementarities between two instruments of intellectual property rights (IPRs), namely granted patents and registered trademarks. We assess the validity of the proposed procedures resorting to the virtual universe of Italian limited liability companies as provided by Bureau van Dijk (BvD). The dataset covers more than 1 million companies operating in both manufacturing and service sectors and contain financial and economic information, as well as, among the others, the ownership structure and administrative procedures undergone by the firms, which may lead to firm exit. The main purpose of the paper is to provide a unified set of procedures to help the researcher dealing with the vast amount of information available on corporate firms and of ever increasing size. This will also facilitate the replication of empirical analyses, across researchers working on dataset with similar characteristics, although from different countries or data providers.