Occurrence Of Disputes Research Articles

Construction and validation of a preliminary Chinese version of the Wake Forest Physician Trust Scale.

BackgroundThe development, validation, and psychometric properties of the Wake Forest Physician Trust Scale (WFPTS)-equivalent instrument for Chinese patients were investigated.Material/MethodsWe approached 3442 randomly selected outpatients at 3 Shanghai (China) general hospitals, treated ≥2 times per year by the same physician, for participation between November 2008 and December 2008. A Chinese version of the WFPTS (C-WFPTS) was prepared and administered to eligible and consenting patients, and subjected to validity assessment using 5 patient behaviors: (1) recommendation of the physician; (2) occurrence of dispute; (3) seeking a second opinion; (4) treatment adherence; and (5) consideration of switching physicians.ResultsA total of 352 (M: F, 149: 203; mean age, 40.67±17.31 years; age range, 14–94 years) consenting and eligible patients were included in the analysis. The unidimensionality and internal consistency of C-WFPTS was confirmed (Cronbach’s α=0.833). Physician trust correlated significantly with physician satisfaction (r=0.73, P<0.001) and all 5 behaviors (1: r=0.453, 2: r=0.209, 3: r=0.406, 4: r=0.444, 5: r=0.471; P<0.001 for all), indicating validity and predictive validity, respectively. Patient trust increased significantly with increasing age and physician visits (P>0.05), but was not related to gender, birthplace, or insurance type.ConclusionsC-WFPTS has good psychometric properties, reliability, and validity for the evaluation of patient trust in the patient-physician relationship, and thereby provides an essential tool for the characterization of patient-physician relationships in China, which is necessary for healthcare reform.

Reviews of Cases of Construction Disputes in Malaysia and its Relation with Standard Form of Construction Contract

In Malaysia itself, the construction industry has well governed the economic trend and providing the pathway towards modernization. Construction industry is a huge process that involves many activities in different phases and participation of various professions. The complexity of this industry has made it closely linked to disputes. There are always possibilities of dispute occurrence even when almost all projects are governed by their respective contracts. This study is initiated to find the relationship of standard forms of contract with construction disputes. The focus of this study will be on the construction disputes litigation cases in Malaysia reported to the Current Law Journal (CLJ) between year 1999-2009. The secondary data for this study is obtained from questionnaire survey distributed throughout Malaysia, which looks into construction dispute cases that were not referred to formal law journals. Research findings identified that all projects are governed by standard forms and even though the parameters causing construction dispute are actually monitored by the standard form itself, disputes are not declining or effectively resolved, and hence, making the standard forms as one of the the major causes of construction disputes.

Construction Dispute Resolution Framework Based on Extrinsic And Intrinsic Factors Influencing Arbitral Decision Making

Occurrence of disputes is a common feature in construction contracts which result in time and cost overruns and further damages the relationships between the parties. If the parties to a dispute can predict the outcome of the dispute with some certainty, they are more likely to settle the matter out of court resulting in avoidance of expenses and aggravation associated with adjudication. The outcome of construction disputes are affected by a large number of complex and interrelated factors. Dispute settlement is mainly based on the facts of the case like conditions of the contracts; actual situations on site; documents presented during arbitral proceedings etc which are termed as intrinsic factors. It is also observed that though the case may be the same but it is interpreted differently at different levels. This suggests that there may be other factors related to the arbitrator’s characteristics and other psychology aspects further termed as extrinsic factor influencing decisions.. The paper focuses on the feasibility of the Artificial Intelligence approach in predicting the outcome of construction dispute and enlists the various extrinsic factors. The tool so developed would result in dispute avoidance to some extent and would reduce the pressure on judiciary.

PROJECT DISPUTE PREDICTION BY HYBRID MACHINE LEARNING TECHNIQUES

This study compares several well-known machine learning techniques for public-private partnership (PPP) project dispute problems. Single and hybrid classification techniques are applied to construct models for PPP project dispute prediction. The single classification techniques utilized are multilayer perceptron (MLP) neural networks, decision trees (DTs), support vector machines, the naïve Bayes classifier, and k-nearest neighbor. Two types of hybrid learning models are developed. One combines clustering and classification techniques and the other combines multiple classification techniques. Experimental results indicate that hybrid models outperform single models in prediction accuracy, Type I and II errors, and the receiver operating characteristic curve. Additionally, the hybrid model combining multiple classification techniques perform better than that combining clustering and classification techniques. Particularly, the MLP+MLP and DT+DT models perform best and second best, achieving prediction accuracies of 97.08% and 95.77%, respectively. This study demonstrates the efficiency and effectiveness of hybrid machine learning techniques for early prediction of dispute occurrence using conceptual project information as model input. The models provide a proactive warning and decision-support information needed to select the appropriate resolution strategy before a dispute occurs.

Incorporation of database approach into contractual issues: Methodology and practical guide for organizations

A total avoidance of project disputes is an impossible situation. Yet, the purpose should identify the perspectives of minimizing disputes or maximizing avoidance. By referring to past experiences on the causes and the suggested solutions, this research reckons that it can assist in avoiding or resolving similar situations at the onset of the dispute occurrence. Therefore, the objectives are: (a) to propose and develop a practical database system that can be employed by organizations to manage the past experiences, particularly for contractual issues, and (b) to validate and evaluate the database system from related organizations. Two actual projects were referred prior to finalizing the database system's structure. Microsoft Office Access tool was selected due to its wide-spread availability and user-friendliness to construction related organizations. The database system was evaluated and received positive feedback. It renders an insight toward the effort in avoidance of project disputes through the database approach.

LEGAL SENTIENCE AND THE PROBLEM OF THE INSTANT: A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF THE TEMPORAL STRUCTURE OF PRECEDENT AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR LEGAL AUTHORITY

This paper assesses the authority of precedent from a phenomenological standpoint. Phenomenology distinguishes between two temporal models. One describes time in an idealised form, as a divisible chain of instants or events. The other looks at lived temporality as fluid and indivisible duration. In the system of precedent, we witness an interaction of both models. The legal order is constructed from slices in time that become the building blocks of future judgments. Precedents are binding for a potentially indefinite period and carry transcendental weight. But they are also entirely dependent on the occurrence of disputes in the lived world. If the law’s structural stability is to serve as a source of its authority, it is undermined by this paradox because its structure lacks the consistent input it demands. But this paper considers an alternative source of authority: the common law’s awareness of its structural shortcomings, and the mechanisms it has developed to overcome them.

Anatomy of Construction Disputes

AbstractDisputes have been identified as one of the epidemics of the construction industry. Many studies have found that risks, uncertainties, inadequate contract documentation, and behavioral factors are notable dispute sources. Many have described disputes with reference to the subject matter. This approach is pragmatic but has not yet lead to any form of conceptualization. The study contributes to the construction dispute research domain in (1) proposing an anatomy of construction disputes, (2) identifying the key factors contributing to the happening of construction disputes, and (3) providing an example on the use of the anatomy through a dispute occurrence likelihood evaluation exercise. The proposed anatomy distinguishes two types of construction dispute: contractual and speculative. Contract incompleteness is the root cause and underpins both types of construction disputes. In addition, task and people factors fuel contractual and speculative disputes, respectively. The proposed anatomy is arrange...

LEARNING FROM THE GREAT WAR? THE ORIGIN OF DEMOCRATIC PEACE

This paper explores the effects of dyadic democracy on both the occurrence and level of militarized disputes, with an emphasis on longitudinal tendencies and degrees of violence. We argue that experience with total war, namely, the First World War, induced democratic constraints on conflictual foreign policies via significant change in military manpower systems. Experience with total war led democratic governments to recognize each other’s sensitivity to public concerns about the burdens imposed by conscription. Thus, democratic peace in the modern era can be traced to (1) total war experience for ‘old’ democracies; and (2) the level of violence in foreign policies exceeding a threshold that induces public concerns about the burden of conscription. Empirical testing based on the Militarized Interstate Disputes (MID) data set shows a significantly different effect for democratic dyads on the onset of militarized disputes before and after the First World War. Democratic dyads, however, do not reduce the likelihood of disputes in cases with a low level of violence regardless of the era in question. This implies that conflict‐averse behavior between democracies is a product of learning from the experience of total war that leads to greater government awareness of public concern about more intense foreign policy actions.

Risk Allocation in Public-Private Partnership Infrastructure Projects: Comparative Study

It is important for the public and private sectors to establish effective risk allocation strategies for public-private partnership (PPP) projects in order to achieve a more efficient process of contract negotiation and reduce the occurrence of dispute during the concession period. This paper aims first to identify the preferred risk allocation in PPP projects of mainland China and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (referred to as China and Hong Kong from here onward) and then to compare these preferences to those in the U.K. and Greece by a questionnaire survey based on the same risk register. The results in China and Hong Kong show that the public sector preferred to retain most political, legal, and social risks, and share most microlevel risks and force majeure risk; while the majority of mesolevel risks were preferred to be allocated to the private sector. The comparative analyses of risk allocation preference among these four countries/jurisdictions indicate that the public sector in the U.K. was most able to transfer the PPP risks to the private sector, followed by Greece, Hong Kong, and China. Respondents from Greece exhibited the greatest degree of support for the public sector to retain the macrolevel risks. All respondents agreed that private investors should take a more active role in managing the mesolevel risks. Respondents from China and Hong Kong considered that majority of the microlevel risks should be shared equally between the public and private sectors, while respondents from Greece indicated that the private sector should take a more active role in managing the microlevel risks. The comparative study provides international investors a better understanding of risk preferences in different countries/jurisdictions so that they could adjust their strategies according to the specific situation and achieve better value for money in running their PPP projects.

Engineer’s role in resolving disputes in offshore projects

Offshore construction and supply projects involve complex contractual arrangements regulating the relationships of operators, contractors, subcontractors and suppliers. Although every effort is made to prevent the occurrence of disputes when parties enter into contract, it is a fact of life that disputes do arise. This paper explains the role of engineers in the dispute resolution process. It highlights the features of disputes which arise out of the offshore construction and supply industry by way of inclusion of a description of: the life cycle of a typical offshore development; a typical engineering, procurement, construction, installation and commissioning project; the engineer’s involvement in the contractual process; types of frequently occurring disputes; and the role of engineers in dispute avoidance. By way of introducing the various methods of disputes resolution, including litigation, arbitration, adjudication, expert determination, mediation, the engineers’ functions in these processes are highlighted.’The paper concludes that engineers are indeed important if not crucial to every stage of an oil and gas construction project. They have every opportunity to assist in dispute avoidance by being more aware of the contractual relationship between various parties and the project procedure. They can be factual witnesses to set out the chain of events that happened, expert witnesses to assist the court or tribunal in understanding the technical issues, and they are also well placed to judge the rights and wrongs of the parties given their technical backgrounds in understanding the day-to-day running of a project.

The nursing strategy of lumbar discitis

Objective To investigate the origin and nursing strategy of lumbar discitis. Methods E-leven cases of lumbar diacitis were treated with active therapy and systematic nursing care. Results Of all 11 ca-ses treated, 7 had completely vanishing symptoms 6wk postoperation with ESR and C - reactive protein returned basically to normal, and the remaining 4 recovered 8wk postoperation. Conclusion Discifis may caused by var-ying factors. During operation, strict instrument disinfect/on and sterile operatianshould be achieved. Once pres-ented with cliscitis, the patient would bemisersble with slightly longer duration. Patient thorough and systematic nursing care can be one of the important links in addition to active and potrnt therapy, with can relieve the pain of the patient, facilitate their early rehabilitation and reduce or avoid the occurrence of medical disputes. Key words: Discitis; Nursing

Taking Arms Against a Sea of Troubles: Conventional Arms Races During Periods of Rivalry

This article revisits the arms race to war relationship with the hope of resolving a lingering debate in international relations over the effects of arms races. Previous empirical studies in this area suffered from a possible selection effect, rendering them unable to differentiate between the escalatory and deterrent effects of arms races. Specifically, earlier quantitative investigations were unable to test deterrence hypotheses, because the unit of analysis (dispute) presupposed that deterrence had already failed in preventing dispute onset. In order to take the possibility of deterrence seriously, a dataset is constructed that identifies arms races independently of dispute occurrence. This article improves on previous studies in that a measure of interdependent arming exogenous to dispute initiation allows for a test of whether arms races actually deter the onset of militarized disputes or contribute to dispute escalation. Both the deterrence and escalation hypotheses are tested using a sample of ‘strategic rivals’ from 1816 to 1993. The analyses reveal that arms races increase the likelihood of disputes and war. Furthermore, to account for the possibility that the arms race to war relationship may be spurious to dyadic hostilities accounting for both arms races and war, a selection model is employed that differentiates between dispute and war processes. This indicates that arms races do not contribute to deterrence and are instead associated with both disputes and war.

Conflict in Nepal

Society contains a lot of social interactions regarding its structure and functions. Such interactions are so indifferent and inseparable from the entire range of social relationship that those are regarded as a natural and compulsory process of social behavior. The main processes of social interaction are cooperation, competition, conflict, accommodation, assimilation, and integration. The theme of this paper is only the basis of conflict. When we cast our glance at the social life it seems clearly that not only cooperation but also conflict is an essential and natural aspects of human life. In the context of politics conflict is very violent. Even when we see to other spheres apart from political sphere we can find conflict in the family between husband and wife, between brothers, between neighbors, between students, between two parties, between farmers, between government and antigovernment and so on; but it is also a bitter truth that hundred percent cooperation, love and sacrifice is impossible in any family because sometimes there is also an occurrence of dispute, conflict and misunderstanding. This very bitter truth is applicable to the society also. Economic Journal of Nepal Vol.28(4) 2005 pp.257-263

Patterns of Negotiation in Non-War Disputes

Studies of militarized interstate dispute (MID) outcome variables have focused particularly on whether or not these disputes have resulted in war. With a few exceptions, this simple dichotomous dependent variable categorization largely ignores numerous militarized disputes with outcomes that fall short of war along with their respective settlement method. We propose that theories and findings on war might not apply to non-war disputes. This is especially true when considering approaches to conflict management. We find that: (I) the outcome of war almost always results in one side prevailing. Negotiated settlement and compromise are more likely outcomes of non-war disputes. (2) Power relations play a key role in outcomes of war but have a much-reduced impact on non-war outcomes. (3) Territorial issues are associated with dispute occurrence and war. Territorial issues, at the same time, seem to lend themselves to negotiated and compromise outcomes. (4) Ripeness occurs at the mid-severity range as opposed to lower or higher levels.

UNIMED: history and characteristics of a Brazilian medical cooperative

This article describes the organizational characteristics of the UNIMED medical cooperative in Brazil. After an overview of UNIMED's share in the current health plan market, the author analyzes its organizational structure, historical evolution, and contractual regimen with member physicians, including the formula used to calculate the payment schedule for physician services. The plan currently includes 367 local member cooperatives, operating in over 80% of Brazil's counties, with 41% of existing physicians to serve 7% of the population. The organization's history began with local cooperatives and subsequently federations, the confederation, and other companies in the group. The organizational design and dynamics favor a high degree of decentralization and autonomy, subordination of all components in the system to the physician cooperative command, and the occurrence of internal disputes and conflicts between individual interests and those of the organization.

Learning to Say "No" in Chinese

This study investigated the characteristics of adult-child disputes in 10 Mandarinspeaking families in Mainland China. Naturalistic interactions between caregivers and their 2-year-old toddlers were analyzed by coding the occurrence of disputes and the disagreement strategies used by caregivers and toddlers in times of dispute. Results showed that children's most frequent disagreement strategies included direct refusals, protests, and silence. In contrast, adults seldom used silence or refusals but instead used direct positive requests, expressions of dissatisfaction, and prohibitions when disagreeing with their toddlers. Overall, the results from the present study support the notion that disputes are ways to reflect existing social structures and ways by which adults in a culture can socialize children into disagreement strategies appropriate to their roles.

The Sociology of Critical Capacity

This article argues that many situations in social life can be analyzed by their requirement for the justification of action. It is in particular in situations of dispute that a need arises to explicate the grounds on which responsibility for errors is distributed and on which new agreement can be reached. Since a plurality of mutually incompatible modes of justification exists, disputes can be understood as disagreements either about whether the accepted rule of justification has not been violated or about which mode of justification to apply at all. The article develops a grammar of such modes of justification, called orders of worth ( grandeur), and argues that the human capacity for criticism becomes visible in the daily occurrence of disputes over criteria for justification. At the same time, it is underlined that not all social situations can be interpreted with the help of such a sense of justice, which resides on a notion of equivalence. Regimes of love, of violence or of familiarity are systematically distinct from regimes of justification.

Are Contract Disputes Predictable?

Are some construction projects more prone to contract disputes than others? If so, can these projects be identified before construction begins? This paper describes research conducted with the CII Dispute Prevention and Resolution Task Force to answer these questions. This research analyzed the effect of different project characteristics on the occurrence of contract disputes. This paper explains the project characteristics that were evaluated, our data analysis techniques, and the conclusions that we made from this analysis. Three categories of project characteristics were considered: people aspects, process aspects and project aspects. The findings of this work are based on statistical analysis of data on the frequency and severity of disputes on 159 construction projects. A logistic regression model named Disputes Potential Index was created from this data set that predicts those projects that have a high likelihood of experiencing contract disputes. People, process, and project issues all play a role ...

A Theory of Oligopoly

A Theory of Oligopoly