Salient Reasons Research Articles

Voice of the Minority Workers in the Workplace - A Literature Review Based Study on Women and Ethnic Minority Workers

Purpose: Employees’ voice has emerged as an important issue in the work place as it can significantly impact their engagement and productivity as well as performance of the organization as a whole. Though, demographic heterogeneity and effective voice communication mechanisms for all employees irrespective of gender, ethnicity and other aspects are an integral part of high-performance Human Resource Management systems and may contribute a lot to enhance performances in the organization in many ways, the failure to ensure synergy among these group may result in rather a negative effect on overall organizations. Whenever majority employees get the opportunity to gain their interests through their leaderships and related roles and the minority are deprived of getting their legitimate or even minimal facilities, they start to consider themselves only as a worker rather than an integral part of the overall organizational structure. This isolated feeling keeps them apart from thinking for the betterment of the organization. This is the most common scenario for women in most of the organizations which psychologically puts them into a corner of the organization with the course of time. The same happens for ethnic minority and especially black employees because of the absence of institutional focus on them to provide them necessary back-ups to express their voices. This main purpose of the research is to identify the salient issues of voice and silence of the employees who are minority in the organization based on their “gender” (i.e. woman employees) and ethnic group. Methodology: The main research methodology incorporated in this paper includes study and review of existing academic papers published based on the empirical studies conducted elsewhere in the world. Analyzing the papers from various search repositories, it has been tried to explore the basic issues and the salient reasons of their silence along with the measures proposed in previous studies. This research also tries to come up with recommendation for uplifting the voice and silence of employees. Findings: The major research findings recommend that, the best way to uplift the voice Women and ethnic minority employees is to create awareness of their rights as well as providing them back-up support by trade unions and other inter and intra-organizational groups concerned with the minorities. At the same time most of the literature put emphasis on the organizational concerns for bringing the minority employees into main stream to provide them the maximum opportunity to express their voice with complete participation. Most importantly, the research finding suggests incorporating Information and Communication Technology (ICT) as a tool for promoting the voice of women and ethnic minority people.

Destra cattolica e destra politica

Public opinion often reduces the conflict between the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X founded by Marcel Lefebvre (1905-1991) and the Holy See to the problem of the Liturgy and the Latin Mass. The difficulties related to the return of the Fraternity to the Catholic Church, even if it was sustained by Pope Benedict XVI, show that the salient reasons for the conflict do not concern the liturgy, but the politics, as well as the notion of a confessional Catholic state for which Lefebvre’s heirs continue fighting against the teachings of the Second Vatican Council.This article aims to explore this conflict on the basis of interviews carried out with priests, members of the Fraternity, and an analysis of the correspondence between the Fraternity and the Holy See.

Glaucomics: A Call for Systems Diagnostics for 21stCentury Ophthalmology and Personalized Visual Health

This article analyzes and theorizes the current knowledge silos at the intersection of omics science, ophthalmology, personalized medicine, and global visual health. Visual disorders represent one of the largest health care expenditures in the United States, costing $139 billion per year. In middle-income and industrialized countries, glaucoma is a World Health Organization priority category eye disease, known for difficulties in its early diagnosis, chronic progressive nature, and large person-to-person differences in drug efficacy and safety. A complex disease, glaucoma is best conceptualized as a syndrome displaying an ostensibly common clinical end-point, but with vastly heterogeneous molecular underpinnings and host-environment interactions. About 12% of all global blindness is attributable to glaucoma. Glaucomics is a term that we coin here so as to introduce omics science and systems diagnostics to ophthalmology, a field that can benefit enormously from personalized medicine, and which has sadly lagged behind in systems diagnostics compared to fields such as oncology. We define glaucomics as the integrated use of multi-omics and systems science approaches towards rational discovery, development, and tandem applications of diagnostics and therapeutics, for glaucoma specifically, and for personalized visual health, more broadly. We propose that glaucoma is one of the neglected lowest hanging fruits and actionable targets for omics and systems diagnostics in 21(st) century ophthalmology for the salient reasons we describe here. Additionally, we offer an analysis on two of the most pertinent neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), trachoma and river blindness, which continue to plague visual health in developing countries. We conclude with a call for research on omics applications in glaucoma and personalized visual health.

Identifying and Measuring Multilevel Influences on College-Aged Athletes’ Multiple Health Behavior: A Pilot Study

The current study gathered preliminary data relative to the influences on intercollegiate athletes’ multiple health behavior. A secondary objective was to inform future measurement of identified factors. A sample of 20 intercollegiate athletes participated in an open-ended survey, followed by a corresponding focus groups (≈90-minute). Qualitative data were gathered relative to the factors impacting athletes’ excessive alcohol intake, fruit and vegetable consumption (FVC), and maintenance of physical activity after college. In general, participating athletes reported influences within their social and physical environments (friends, bar accessibility, etc.) as the leading enablers of their excessive alcohol intake, while individual level influences were the most salient reasons not to drink excessively (responsibilities, health, etc.). Individual characteristics (taste preference, health, and expense) and the physical environment (availability and accessibility) were reported as the most salient levels of influence on athletes’ FVC. And when anticipating future maintenance of physical activity, athletes mostly reported individual level influences (outcome expectation, intrinsic motivation, etc.), with mention of family and friend influences. An in-depth comparison of current outcomes to similar research among young adult and athlete populations is provided, including validated measurement scales and future research suggestions. Current results provide an essential foundation for progressive research examinations among similar populations.

The Toronto declaration on bridging knowledge, policy and practice in aging and disability

Experience has shown that the most effective national programs for enhancing the rights of a marginalized population are those that are both developed and implemented by organizations that represent those individuals. In the case of individuals ageing into, and with, a disability, there is a strangely absent alliance between disability organizations and those representing the elderly. This is strange because they have so much in common and there is a clear strategic value in their joining forces, especially in light of the powerful provisions of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). I explore the historically salient reasons for this -misconceptions about disability and about ageing -and make suggestions -based on the model of disability found in the WHO’s International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) -that would help to address these misconceptions, and perhaps facilitate a robust alliance between advocates for the elderly and persons with disabilities. In light of this resolution, I conclude with a few additional success criteria for national strategies for rights protection.

National occupational research agenda for noise: What we know and what we still need to know.

The white paper generated by the original hearing loss prevention team of the National Occupational Research Agenda (NORA) has been revised and updated. In the process, important recent research results have come to light; some of them opening up new questions. Unfortunately some of the old questions remain unanswered. This paper will summarize some of the unanswered questions and concentrate on various new findings as well as research needs in areas such as impulse noise assessment, the interaction of noise and aging, the effects of noise on communication and safety, tinnitus, extra-auditory effects, and the evaluation of hearing conservation programs. There will always be areas about which knowledge is insufficient, but there are also salient reasons why action must be taken to prevent unwanted consequences.

Why communities of practice succeed and why they fail

Summary A specific form of intra-organizational networks – a community of practice (COP) – is increasingly regarded as an important structure within organizations. This network structure is well suited for the development and sharing of knowledge and practices across divisions. Our research explores the most salient reasons for the success and failure of such networks. An investigation of 57 COPs from major European and US companies led to the discovery of 10 “commandments” that lead to the successful development and sharing of best practices. It also identified five main reasons for failure.

Enrolling Adolescents in Research on HIV: Young Women Must Be Included

As researchers managing an HIV prevention microbicide trial, which takes place across three provinces, we would like to commend Singh et al. for their informative article on the need to include adolescent women in HIV prevention trials [1]. This commendation is based on our clinical trial experience where we have enrolled 16- and 17-year-old women and are actively continuing with their follow-up. In our study, we include these young women, who are often those at highest risk for HIV infection, for several reasons. Most notable among these are: (1) All participants in HIV prevention trials (regardless of the arm to which they are randomised) have a reduced risk of HIV infection, due to the intervention of preventive counselling and education that is ethically required for participants in such trials. In addition, access to sexually transmitted infection (STI) diagnosis and treatment and referrals for partner treatment while in the clinical trial further serves to reduce risk factors for HIV infection and STI re-infection. (2) These young women are sexually active and at risk, and form part of the end-user constituency for a proven microbicide. This sexual activity is evidenced by statistics from the Human Sciences Research Council for 2005 for South Africa, which show that the prevalence of HIV in the 15- to 34-year-old group is 20%. Furthermore, the Children's Bill passed in June 2005 [2] says that young women can have access to contraception from the age of 12 years without parental consent. It is thus ethically imperative that young women should be included in the testing of such products. (3) Including those currently at greatest risk for infection ensures that the study will be able to detect the efficacy of the intervention. It is clear that both the participants and the research question benefit from the inclusion of younger women in communities where HIV risk is high and education, counselling, and new prevention technologies are needed. Younger women are most at risk when it comes to sexual transmission of HIV [3]. Clinical HIV prevention trials provide an environment where confidentiality can be maintained and where young women can be educated on methods to protect themselves in a confidential and consistent manner through trial participation. Thus, the inclusion of young women in such trials is an opportunity to empower the younger generation of young women across communities. To deny that these young women are sexually active would be to turn a blind eye to an important epicentre of the epidemic, and counterproductive to the HIV prevention research agenda. The age of consent for adolescent participation in clinical trials without obtaining legal guardian/parental support is a major factor that complicates their involvement in HIV prevention trials and other health-care research. The requirement for parental consent that often accompanies the ethical approval process of most studies is at times an insurmountable barrier and distances the young women that require this type of intervention from securing access to these potential prevention options. As Singh et al. point out, there are many salient reasons why adolescents can and should be considered capable of giving informed consent without parental assent or approval. Researchers must continue to work in collaboration with local and scientific communities, ethics committees, and policy makers to ensure that the need for the participation of young women in HIV prevention trials is understood. It would seem then that both researchers and ethicists should work with actual examples of ethical research activities that include adolescents without parental involvement, in order to develop guidelines for adolescent research in the field of HIV that are both protective and practical. 3

An Integrated Solution to Acetabular Revision Surgery

The three salient reasons for failure of acetabular revision surgery have been failure of fixation, wear and lysis, and dislocation. This review focuses on the major progress made in addressing these three items, leading to an overall approach integrating three contemporary techniques with a strong likelihood of improving acetabular revision surgery. These three techniques are the use of hemispheric cementless acetabular components, alternate bearings, and big heads.

The "Art of Farming": Exploring the Link between Farm Culture and Maryland's Nutrient Management Policies

Policies and regulations designed to reduce nutrient runoff from Maryland farms into the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries would benefit from a better understanding of the cultural contexts of farming. Ethnographic work with Maryland farmers suggests that one of several key reasons why they are reluctant to comply with nutrient management regulations is because the regulations do not reflect an adequate understanding of the cultural aspects of farming. We offer the art of farming construct as a way to help organize and present, in a holistic and integrated manner, relevant cultural attributes of farming, which are often not recognized by efforts to apply broad-based agricultural and environmental regulations based on best available science. Components of the art of farming help explain some of the salient reasons why farmers were opposed to Maryland's nutrient management regulations and resisted (to varying degrees) implementing nutrient management plans. We conclude with a call for using the art of farming concept as a cultural bridge to promote dialogue among farmers, scientists, and resource managers on farm nutrient management.

Is total thyroidectomy the best possible surgical management for well-differentiated thyroid cancer?

A thoughtful approach is needed to provide the best possible management of well-differentiated thyroid cancer. The approach should account for the biological characteristics of the tumour and integrate the three main treatment modalities: surgery, radioactive iodine treatment, and long-term suppression of thyroid hormone. The initial surgical approach is crucial for obtaining results designed to nearly eliminate death and keep morbidity to a minimum. Well-differentiated thyroid cancers are derived from follicular cells and encompass about 85% of all thyroid cancers including papillary, follicular, mixed papillary follicular, and the follicular variant of papillary carcinoma of the thyroid. A substantial number of patients with these tumours fall into a high-risk category, defined by any of the present staging systems, and there is little debate that nearly all patients at high risk should undergo an initial total thyroidectomy. Furthermore, all patients receiving postoperative radioactive iodine treatment, or those with nodal metastasis, bilateral clinically important disease, and those who had irradiation to the head and neck in childhood, should undergo an initial total thyroidectomy as well. The debate about doing less than a bilateral resection is centred on young patients with small, unilateral thyroid cancers who do not fall into a high-risk category. Yet, even in these patients there are compelling reasons why a bilateral resection (total thyroidectomy or neartotal thyroidectomy) is a better operation, particularly to keep recurrence rates to a minimum. The salient reasons that lend support to these recommendations are summarised in panel 1. 1–4

Merleau-Ponty and Derrida: intertwining embodiment and alterity

While There Have Been Many Essays devoted to comparing the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty with that of Jacques Derrida, there has been no sustained book-length treatment of these two French philosophers. Additionally, many of the essays presuppose an oppositional relationship between them, and between phenomenology and deconstruction more generally. Jack Reynolds systematically explores their relationship by analyzing each philosopher in terms of two important and related issues - embodiment and alterity. Focusing on areas with which they are not commonly associated (e.g., Derrida on the body and Merleau-Ponty on alterity) makes clear that their work cannot be adequately characterized in a strictly oppositional way. Merleau-Ponty and Derrida: Intertwining Embodiment and Alterity proposes the possibility of a Merleau-Ponty-inspired philosophy that does not so avowedly seek to extricate itself from phenomenology, but that also cannot easily be dismissed as simply another instantiation of the metaphysics of presence. Reynolds argues that there are salient ethicopolitical reasons for choosing an alternative that accords greater attention to our embodied situation. As the first full-length monograph comparing the philosophers, Merleau-Ponty and Derrida will interest scholars and students in European philosophy and teachers of courses dealing with deconstruction.

EMOTIONAL SELF-AWARENESS AND ETHICAL DELIBERATION

How are we to distinguish between appropriate emotional responses that reveal morally salient reasons and inappropriate emotional responses that reflect our prejudices? It is often assumed that reason – considered as distinct from emotion – will make the distinction. I argue that this view is false, and that the process by which emotional responses are vetted involves ‘emotional self-awareness’. By this, I mean feeling an emotion, being aware of so doing, and feeling some usually subtle emotional response, often of calm or anxiety, to it, together with a general readiness to feel and acknowledge what emotions one has. Registering and exploring feelings of anxiety that arise in emotional self-awareness helps enable us to detect when emotions and thoughts are inappropriate. Deliberation that is not emotionally open in this way is therefore at an epistemic disadvantage. Furthermore, the attempt to remain unemotional when evaluating one's emotions can be produced or co-opted by anxiety about one's feelings of precisely the kind that indicates one's emotional responses and thoughts are being distorted.

The Moral Insignificance of ``Bare'' Personal Reasons

Common sense supports the idea that we can have morally significantreasons for giving priority to the interests of persons for whom wehave special concern. Yet there is a real question about the natureof such reasons. Many people seem to believe that there are biologicalor metaphysical special relations, such as family, race, religion orpersonal identity, which are in themselves morally important and thussupply reasons for special concern. I maintain that there are nogrounds for accepting this. What matters morally, I argue, is thesubstance of personal or wider social relationships. My ``substantivist''account of the source of morally salient reasons for special concernis positioned between nonreductionist and strong voluntarist views ofspecial responsibilities. Substantivism is more plausible than theseviews and has important implications for how we approach morallyweighing personal versus impartial reasons.

Cultural Competence: Developing Policies To Address the Health Care Needs of Culturally Diverse Clientele

Home health care organizations striving to effectively serve their clientele may be experiencing barriers, one of which is serving a culturally and linguistically diverse population. The National Center for Cultural Competence (NCCC) identifies seven salient reasons in this article for incorporating cultural competence into organizational policy. The article provides an examplary definition that can be adapted and useful to home health care organizations. A checklist, developed by the NCCC, is also included to facilitate policy making that supports culturally and linguistically competent health care delivery.

Leisure Constraints: A Replication and Extension of Construct Development

This research replicates and extends previous work on leisure-constraints construct development by applying constraints data from a sample of adults with mental retardation. Factor analysis extends definitions for three constraint categories (intrapersonal, interpersonal, structural), confirming the nonhomogeneous nature of leisure constraints. Interpersonal constraints, for example, may have multiple meanings depending upon where one is situated along the continuum from dependence to interdependence to independence. Model testing fails to replicate the hypothesized hierarchy among the three constraint categories. Intrapersonal constraints may not be salient reasons for nonparticipation in leisure interests, whereas structural and interpersonal constraints appear to be in need of negotiation. The findings support the need to refine the propositions associated with the proposed hierarchical model of leisure constraints.

How American Adolescents Interpret Success and Failure in Classroom Music: Relationships among Attributional Beliefs, Self-Concept and Achievement

Research involving early adolescents highlights systematic declines in motiva- tion for learning as students progress from elementary school to secondary school. Students' attributions or explanations for past achievement outcomes often are important determinants of future activity choice, investment and persistence. In this article, we critique prior music attribution research and report findings from our empirical study of American 7th-graders' attributional beliefs about success and failure in classroom music. Our results demonstrated that secondary students do not attribute success and failure to the same factors, and that many of the most salient reasons for music-related outcomes (family-, teacher- and peer-influence) are not addressed in traditional attribution research. Attributional beliefs, particularly those concerning music ability, were strongly linked to students' music self-concept and achievement test scores, and the magnitude of those linkages was typically greater when students reflected upon past failures. Based on these findings, we recommend that music practitioners increase their awareness of students' attributional beliefs (particularly the tendency to attribute failure to lack of ability and/or negative family influence), encourage students to consider the r6le that less stable and more controllable factors (effort, persistence, strategy use, metacognition) play in determining achievement outcomes, and employ instructional or evaluative strategies that promote more expansive and developmental views of music ability among all students.

Changing Agency Practices Toward Openness in Adoption

The impact of openness in adoption on private adoption agencies' practices and services was examined. In 1987-89 and 1993 staff from private agencies participated in structured interviews concerning their current practices regarding openness and the services offered by the agency. Over time, agencies tended to offer a greater range of openness options. Agency personnel reported that client demand, changes in agency philosophy, and competition from independent or private adoptions were among the most salient reasons for this change. Compelled to adopt new roles in response to openness, many agencies now offer mediation services to help address requests for information or problems within the adoptive family-birthparent relationship. The perspectives of adoption staff regarding the main advantages and disadvantages of each type of openness are explored, and implications for practice are discussed.

The 1995 International Energy Workshop: the poll results and a review of papers

The report summarizes the highlights of the 1995 IEW meeting held at the IIASA Conference Center in Laxenburg, Austria. It gives an overview of the poll results and presents two issues discussed at the meeting. The first focused on global and regional energy markets with a particular emphasis on the situation in countries undergoing economic transition in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union; the second topic concentrated on energy-related environmental issues with an emphasis on climate change. This report illustrates the usefulness of the IEW as a forum for establishing a consensus and assessing the divergence within the energy research community concerning likely future developments. The medians of the poll results represent the conventional wisdom about possible future trends of oil prices, primary energy consumption, and carbon dioxide emissions. The standard deviation is also presented in this report for future developments, and shows the degree of dissension within the research community. For some analyses, it is also useful to know the extreme views about the future within the research community, and these are given in the poll results that fall outside of the standard deviation. The paper analyzes how the poll results have evolved over the past 15 years, and presents some of the salient reasons for the consensuses and disagreements concerning future energy-related developments.

Physician attitudes toward confidentiality of treatment for adolescents: Findings from the Upper Midwest Regional Physicians Survey

The provision of confidential medical services to adolescents is an enduring health policy issue in the United States, and the focus of policy statements by several professional medical organizations. Physician attitudes toward confidential service provision to teenagers were examined in the Upper Midwest Regional Physician Survey, a representative sample of community-based pediatricians and family physicians. Overall, three-quarters of participants favored confidential service provision for youths. Multivariate analysis revealed that the most salient reasons for favoring confidentiality were perception of unique needs among adolescents, year of licensure, high self-assessed competency in addressing sexual concerns of adolescence, adequacy of training in interpersonal and sexual issues, frequency of addressing interpersonal issues, and lower self-assessed adequacy of training in traditional medical problems of youths. Implications for state and federal legislation are discussed.