Escalation Process Research Articles

Heterosexual Seduction in the Urban Night Context: Behaviors and Meanings

ABSTRACTThis article presents an anthropological analysis of heterosexual seduction behaviors of men and women (from 18 to 65 years old, with varying civil status) who attended nightclubs located in the movida areas of Lisbon, Portugal. These behaviors were analyzed according to structure versus communitas theories. Nighttime seduction behaviors were observed and recorded in a field diary, and in-depth semistructured interviews with 60 men and 60 women were conducted. Interviews were analyzed using the thematic content analysis model. Results suggested that the communitas domain was evinced in the various seduction strategies. These courtship behaviors tended to follow a specific pattern: nonverbal seduction, visual seduction, verbal seduction, and acting—consisting of caresses, touches, and kisses. When this escalation process evoked positive responses, it generally culminated in the complete synchrony of movements between the two bodies. The seduction process encompassed both masculine and feminine initiatives: Women engaged primarily in nonverbal and visual seduction, while men appeared to orchestrate verbal courtship and acting. However, sometimes men and women did not want to seduce or be seduced because they were married (especially women) or were with their partners (especially young men) and did not want to endanger the structure domain.

From deprivation to violence? Examining the violent escalation of conflict in the Republic of Macedonia

This article looks into the process of conflict escalation in an attempt to provide a better understanding of the conditions that determine the shift from protest mobilization to organized armed violence. Acknowledging the defining impact of relative deprivation, the study argues that the existence of an interactive nexus between the intensity of state repression and group mobilization can possibly explain the critical shift from protest mobilization to organized violence in conjunction to the critical influence of opportunities. The study explores the intrastate conflict in the Republic of Macedonia and develops a methodological design that examines the levels of state repression with conflict intensity, adopting a time-frames analysis supported by human rights reports and interview material drawn from a series of research field trips in the region. Findings reveal a periodic association between repression and mobilization (1995, 1997, and 2001). The study provides evidence of the essentially grievance-based nature of group mobilization, and finds a reasonably interactive (two-ways) and analogous, but not always consistent, relationship between repression and conflict intensity, without establishing relations of fixed causality.

Conceptualising ‘communication for peace’

The importance of considering media and communication processes generally in the study of conflict formation and escalation has been widely recognised and researched. Extrapolating from their relevance for those processes, there exists a widespread conviction that communication also bears similar potential to contribute to conflict transformation and peacebuilding. This kind of assertion, however, as of yet, rests mainly on argumentation in analogy to their role in conflict escalation processes, and therefore largely leaves implicit the what and how of such assumed constructive contributions as well as the underlying conceptualisation of peace and communication. Together, this makes for a thoroughly fragmented ‘field’ of research from distinct, but still largely insulated disciplines, which carries nonetheless the seeds of a more comprehensive understanding of what is here tentatively termed ‘communication for peace’ (C4P) that could provide cross-pollination and contribute to a more thorough engagement with what is an important and increasingly vibrant area of activities. The present article therefore seeks to examine what could be the groundwork to build a framework for C4P on, to identify the major areas of relevant research that exist, lacunae in this body of work and fruitful intersections between different disciplines.

Using capacity alert calls to reduce overcrowding in a major public hospital.

To investigate the efficacy of capacity alert calls in reducing acute hospital overcrowding through addressing rising occupancy, high patient throughput and increased access block. Retrospective analysis of 24 months of in-patient, emergency department, and capacity alert call log data from a large metropolitan public hospital in Australia. The analysis explored statistical differences in patient flow parameters between capacity alert call days and other days including a control case set of days with statistically similar levels of occupancy. The study identified a significant (P<0.05) reduction in occupancy, patient throughput and access block on capacity alert call days. Capacity alert call days reversed rising occupancy trends, with 6 out of 7 flow parameters reporting significant improvement (P<0.05) over the 48 h following the call. Only 3 of these 7 flow parameters were significantly improved 48 h after control case days, confirming value in the alert mechanism and that the results are not a regression toward the mean phenomenon. CONCLUSIONS Escalation processes that alert and engage the whole hospital in tackling overcrowding can successfully deliver sustained improvements in occupancy, patient throughput and access block. The findings support and validate the use of capacity alert escalation calls to manage overcrowding, but suggest the need to improve the consistency of trigger mechanisms and the efficiency of the processes initiated by the capacity alert call.

A framework for risk assessment for maritime transportation systems—A case study for open sea collisions involving RoPax vessels

Maritime accidents involving ships carrying passengers may pose a high risk with respect to human casualties. For effective risk mitigation, an insight into the process of risk escalation is needed. This requires a proactive approach when it comes to risk modelling for maritime transportation systems. Most of the existing models are based on historical data on maritime accidents, and thus they can be considered reactive instead of proactive.This paper introduces a systematic, transferable and proactive framework estimating the risk for maritime transportation systems, meeting the requirements stemming from the adopted formal definition of risk. The framework focuses on ship–ship collisions in the open sea, with a RoRo/Passenger ship (RoPax) being considered as the struck ship. First, it covers an identification of the events that follow a collision between two ships in the open sea, and, second, it evaluates the probabilities of these events, concluding by determining the severity of a collision. The risk framework is developed with the use of Bayesian Belief Networks and utilizes a set of analytical methods for the estimation of the risk model parameters.Finally, a case study is presented, in which the risk framework developed here is applied to a maritime transportation system operating in the Gulf of Finland (GoF). The results obtained are compared to the historical data and available models, in which a RoPax was involved in a collision, and good agreement with the available records is found.

Training in Nonviolent Resistance for Parents of Violent Children: Differences Between Fathers and Mothers

Parents of violent children, who underwent training in nonviolent resistance (NVR), were compared with a wait-list control. Each parent reported on him/herself as well as on the other parent. Although both parents reported significant improvements in measures of parental helplessness, only fathers reported significant improvements on three scales measuring parent-child escalation processes, namely, power-struggles, parental submission, and negative feelings. Mothers were found to suffer more than fathers from escalating conflicts with the child both at the beginning and the end of treatment. Although fathers reported that escalation of both parents with the child lessened with treatment, mothers witnessed no significant improvements. Results were interpreted as showing that the special plight of mothers poses a still unmet challenge to NVR and probably to other modalities of parent training.

An interdisciplinary process for improving pain management in oncology.

182 Background: Upcoming changes in Medicare reimbursement models take into account HCAHP scores, and over the next 1-3 years, penalties will be enacted towards those institutions falling below a standard on their publicly available HCAHP scores. The HCAHP pain domain can be one of the most challenging to impact directly due to lack of pain management knowledge, proper assessment skills, expertise in managing complex pain syndromes, and the heterogeneity of pain symptomatology reported by advanced cancer patients. Methods: This project identified inpatient oncology units with suboptimal HCAHP scores. The objective was to improve HCAHP pain scores to &gt; 90th percentile. Nursing intervention focused on five primary areas: a) A requirement to attend a mandatory class on malignant pain management; b) making available nursing pain mentors; c) a requirement to address pain during rounds with physicians; d) priority access to medications to address pain; and, e) encouraging event reporting for uncontrolled pain issues. Resident physicians were provided expectations for pain management and attended a mandatory class on malignant pain taught by a palliative medicine attending physician. A palliative medicine physician was also assigned to the unit to evaluate patients with pain scores &gt; 6/10 or complex pain needs. An algorithm for pain control was designed to include a timeline for intervention as well as an escalation process for slow or inadequate physician response. A hand-off report was provided to the charge nurse by the senior resident physician at the end of each day that included a tentative plan for treating any escalating pain. Results: All initiatives were implemented in September 2012. By February 2013, Pain HCAHP scores increased 10% over the entire Taussig Cancer Institute, and increased 20% for the solid tumor oncology unit. This placed all units who received this targeted intervention above the 90th percentile as compared to other hospitals on the HCAHPS pain score. Conclusions: A well-defined collaborative model between physicians and nursing produced measurable improvement in pain outcomes for oncology inpatients. An interdisciplinary approach is essential for the management of complex pain issues in an oncology patient population.

The escalating politics of ‘Big Biology’

As the history of twentieth-century science suggests, controversies about ‘Big Science’ are vehicles for rethinking the relationship between science and society. Behind arguments about size, scale or enhanced coordination, with all their managerial undertones, lie deepseated commitments to alternative visions of the political organization of knowledge production. The experiments in large-scale biology discussed in this collection are thus best seen as ‘constitutional moments’ (Jasanoff, 2011), occasions when the challenge of creating new and extended research collectives forces an explication of the links between technical practices, organizational architectures and ethical imaginaries. As these articles make clear, however, constitutional moments in the contemporary life sciences come in many shapes and forms. A healthy degree of scepticism towards claims of scale, speed or novelty runs through this special section, and helps qualify many of the most hyperbolic arguments about the nature and consequences of large biological research projects. The very category of ‘big biology’, the editors point out, “is in question from the start”. And yet, all the contributors describe processes of escalation (if not always the ‘scaling up’ of things). They are concerned, that is, with an amplification of the political reflexivity of the scientific enterprise, brought about by the expansion, intensification or acceleration of research efforts. What can we glean from these case studies, then, about the evolving constitution of the life sciences in an era of large data infrastructures and a seemingly relentless push towards greater and faster circulation of informational and biological materials? The following are some open-ended reflections prompted by the many insights that crisscross this collection.

Black Tigers, Bronze Lotus: The Evolution and Dynamics of Sri Lanka's Strategies of Dirty War

Although much has been written on the Sri Lankan state's civil war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), less has been said about how the conflict's dynamics evolved. How did the parties come to utilize the methods they did? Why did the war become so brutal, characterized by a predisposition toward extreme violence on both sides? Using the typology of “dirty war,” this investigation seeks to address such questions, demonstrating how the strategic choices of the main belligerents shaped the conflict. The analysis shows that while the conflict emerged out of deep-rooted social and ethnic divisions, these factors do not account for how the war came to be defined so comprehensively by the methods of dirty war. It finds that dirty war developed from a sporadic tactic to advance political goals to dominant military practice by a reciprocal process of escalation that eventually internalized dirty war as the accepted mode of strategic communication.

Upward defiance in organizations: management lessons from the Battle of Blair Mountain

PurposeBased upon an analysis of 30 historic narrative accounts of mutinies, Coye, Murphy, and Spencer recently extended voice theory to clarify the ontological status of the concept of upward defiance. The purpose of this article is to extend the framework of Coye et al. and illustrate the process of escalation towards hostility to offer practicing managers guidance on appropriate steps to interrupt the extreme escalation of member resistance.Design/methodology/approachThe authors examined the significant historical insurrection within the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain. With the case of the Blair Mountain War, the historical record provides ample narrative data for a textual, interpretive, pseudo‐ethnographical analysis.FindingsThe examination of the Battle of Blair Mountain provides additional support for the upward organizational defiance framework proposed by Coye, Murphy, and Spencer. In addition, the authors have extended the theoretical upward defiance framework to account for the escalation of constructive to destructive forms of voice towards mutiny to reveal managerial actions and attitudes to mitigate follower defiance.Research limitations/implicationsThe common limitation to any historic case study is one of generalizability, although it often useful to accept the trade‐off between limited generalizability and the potential discernment associated with the methodology.Originality/valueThe paper investigates a mutiny outside of a maritime setting to offer support for Coye et al.’s conceptual framework, extend that framework in a manner more consistent with organizational practice, and offer guidance to practitioners.

From Insult to Injury: How Disputes Begin and Escalate among Adolescents and Young Adults in Medellin, Colombia

This article aims to contribute to the understanding of circumstances, causes of initiation, and process of escalation of physical disputes or fights resulting in physical injury. We analyzed data from a case-control study of perpetrators of violence between the ages of 15 to 24 (n=373) in the city of Medellín, Colombia. The findings show that 89% of conflicts resulting in injury took place in public places and most often involved males (78%). Six percent involved the consumption of alcohol, 20% reported having used illicit drugs before the initiation of the confrontation. Circa 50% of disputes began because of verbal aggression. Alcohol consumption was found to be associated with verbal aggression towards a friend or companion but not to other circumstances that start disputes. Drug use was not associated with the initiation of disputes. In 18.5% of the cases, a weapon was used while 5% of these disputes ended in a homicide. In none of the cases in which homicide was the outcome was there bystander intervention. In contrast, homicide did not result in the cases in which bystanders intervened.

Relationship Between the Police Educational Formation System and Public Security

The harmonization between the Albanian police education system and the EuropeanFramework and in particular with the Bologna System is a must of nowadays and for thepolice organization itself. In this context, the police organization needs to be upgradeespecially in the upper level but it can’t be understood without an adequate educationalsystem. Currently, the challenges of the police education system face some obstacles offormation type which lead to a lack in the police education to achieve university levels.This will return into a boomerang for the forthcoming generations which are beingprepared to be police staff, due to the lack of relevant university education. Based on thecurrent education model, a police officer recruit has the opportunity to joint policeorganization after the high school (18 years old), and his education level is destined to benot upgraded in any way in order to reach university levels. It seems that Albania has somuch need to an escalation process when it comes to the police education system that itcan accept a missing formation which could lead to real problems in the near future. Thistype of model could function in the basic operational level but it is destined tomalfunction in the upper level of leadership. In this contexts it is needed a paralleluniversity education level associated to the police education formation in order toupgrade the police leadership. Currently, there is no experience of cooperation betweenuniversities and police formation institution in this regard. In Europe and other countriesof the Region the main goal is the unification of curricula in order to have some commoncore curricula and in this manner to improve the mutual exchange of students and cadetsfrom one to another institution and from one to another country. This is absolutelyachievable also in police education and formation framework. A more effectivecooperation and exchange process of students among police academies and formationcenters in Europe and region will enable a more effective fight against crime and will leadto the so desirable product of enhancement of public trust towards police and an increaseof the perception of security.

Aligning national “logics” in a European military helicopter program

This article analyzes the public side of the NH90 network consisting of four participating countries (Germany, France, Italy, and the Netherlands) and their industrial partners. Comparable to observations in earlier international projects in the defense sector, the development and production of the NH90 defense helicopter did not match original plans and costs estimates. On the basis of four mechanisms that were intended to facilitate the cooperation between the partnering countries (the General Memorandum of Understanding; coalition formation; the role of the central agency; and the process of vertical escalation) the question is posed whether or not there was a true alignment of national interests and “logics.” The lack of standardization, as well as program delays and issues concerning the division of the work-share, lead to the emerging alignment being characterized as “quasi-alignment” at best.

P06.07 - Implementing Appropriate Phase I Study Designs in the Era of Combined Therapies

Over the past decade it has been shown that choosing a classical 3 + 3 design for dose escalation comes with severe limitations and puts further clinical development of a compound potentially at risk. Major concerns with 3 + 3 designs are the poor targeting of the true maximum tolerated dose, inflexibility with respect to cohort size and the fact that data outside the current cohort are ignored. This becomes even more pronounced in the context of combined therapies where starting dose combinations are usually known to have some level of toxicity. At the same time, clinical drug development in Oncology is becoming more and more competitive already in early phases and there is a need especially for small companies to optimize dose-escalation as single agent or in combination with other compounds whilst ensuring patients' safety. Bayesian adaptive trial designs following the escalation with overdose control (EWOC) principle offer an excellent way to overcome the obstacles of the 3 + 3 design whilst ensuring patients' safety which has been recognized by health authorities (FDA's critical path initiative). However, besides the clear advantages these designs offer, their implementation in practice was hampered by various challenges such as lack of communication between statisticians and clinicians and misunderstandings with respect to the actual dose escalation process. Based on scenarios we illustrate important steps to successfully implement Bayesian adaptive dose escalation following EWOC and highlight the importance of communication between statisticians and clinicians. We also discuss data from a recent clinicaltrials.gov search (Figure 1) on these designs used in practice.

Security event correlation approach for cloud computing

Cloud computing is a new business model, which represents an opportunity for users, companies, and public organisations to reduce costs and increase efficiency, as well as an alternative way for providing services and resources. In this pay-by-use model, security plays a key role. Cyber attacks are a serious danger, which can compromise the quality of the service delivered to the customers, as well as the costs of the provided cloud resources and services. In this paper, a hybrid and hierarchical event correlation approach for intrusion detection in cloud computing is presented. It consists of detecting intrusion symptoms by collecting diverse information at several cloud architectural levels, using distributed security probes, as well as performing complex event analysis based on a complex event processing engine. The escalation process from intrusion symptoms to the identified cause and target of the intrusion is driven by a knowledge-base represented by an ontology. A prototype implementation of the proposed intrusion detection solution is also presented.

Klassika zhanra: The flamewar as a genre in the Russian blogosphere

Adopting Garcés-Conejos Blitvich's (2010) genre approach to (im)politeness phenomena, this paper explores impoliteness as it emerges within a specific polylogous communicative event – the online flamewar. While scholars of CMC have referred to flaming as an essentially antisocial activity that negatively impacts Internet users (Johnson et al., 2009; Alonzo and Aiken, 2004), I show how a Russian-language flamewar contributes to sociability both on the micro level, by building alliances through the face-threatening ‘snub the other’ strategy, and on the macro level, by renewing the participants’ sense of belonging to a loosely delimited blogging community. The mechanics of the flamewar's progression, the impoliteness strategies employed therein, and the processes of escalation are highly recognizable to Russian-language bloggers, constituting the flamewar as a genre of social engagement. The flamewar-as-genre frames the core of the argument, in this case a debate on historical rights and discursive authority within a community with a strong sense of shared history, but a weak sense of common practice.

Escalation in Irregular War: Using Strategic Theory to Examine from First Principles

If all violence is intended to achieve political effects, what is distinctive about escalation in irregular war? Indeed, what is irregular war? To answer such fundamental questions this analysis employs the principles of strategic theory in an attempt to offer a theoretical and practical framework that will facilitate an appreciation of the subsequent contributions to this special issue. The assessment seeks to articulate how the escalation process in conditions of so-called irregular war might be conceptualized and, via examples, illustrate how certain broad observations may be held to be true. Ultimately, though, the argument emphasizes that the process of escalation cannot be distinctive or follow predictable patterns given that all wars are unique to their time and place and will be affected in their conduct by the contingent forces of passion, chance and reason.

Upward Defiance in Organizations: Management Lessons from the Battle of Blair Mountain

Based upon an analysis of 30 historic narrative accounts of mutinies, Coye, Murphy, and Spencer (2010) recently extended voice theory to clarify the ontological status of the concept of upward defiance. They proposed a conceptual framework, based on dimensions of perceived injustice to organizational members and barriers to voice, to locate the construct of mutiny in relation to voice theory, thereby enhancing comprehension of defiance in modern organizations. Mutinies, however, can also occur outside of a maritime milieu. One such example is the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain, which was the largest armed uprising in the United States since the Civil War. We examine this significant insurrection with a practical lens to 1) provide support for and extend Coye et al.’s (2010) upward defiance framework, 2) illustrate the process of escalation to hostility, and 3) offer organizational managers guidance on appropriate steps to interrupt the extreme escalation of member resistance.

The social process of escalation: a promising focus for crisis management research.

BackgroundThis study identifies a promising, new focus for the crisis management research in the health care domain. After reviewing the literature on health care crisis management, there seems to be a knowledge-gap regarding organisational change and adaption, especially when health care situations goes from normal, to non-normal, to pathological and further into a state of emergency or crisis.DiscussionBased on studies of escalating situations in obstetric care it is suggested that two theoretical perspectives (contingency theory and the idea of failure as a result of incomplete interaction) tend to simplify the issue of escalation rather than attend to its complexities (including the various power relations among the stakeholders involved). However studying the process of escalation as inherently complex and social allows us to see the definition of a situation as normal or non-normal as an exercise of power in itself, rather than representing a putatively correct response to a particular emergency.ImplicationsThe concept of escalation, when treated this way, can help us further the analysis of clinical and institutional acts and competence. It can also turn our attention to some important elements in a class of social phenomenon, crises and emergencies, that so far have not received the attention they deserve. Focusing on organisational choreography, that interplay of potential factors such as power, professional identity, organisational accountability, and experience, is not only a promising focus for future naturalistic research but also for developing more pragmatic strategies that can enhance organisational coordination and response in complex events.

Simulating Anger Escalation: Process Modelling of Emotional Conflict

We attempt to understand the process of anger escalation in emotional arguments by means of simulation of artificially emotional bots. Drawing from the social psychology literature, we propose a tentative model of anger escalation. The process model can be modified to produce comparative simulations of other theories of anger.