Strategic Maneuvering Research Articles

Permissible progress: Sexual(ities that) progress in and beyond English primary schools

This paper examines what is permissible sexual progress in English primary schools by exploring the possibilities – but also the limitations – of the introduction of familial sexualities. In recent years, Stonewall (a prominent and politically mainstream Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Trans charity) have increasingly utilised ‘the family’ as a ‘child-friendly’ topic to encourage primary educators to broach same-sex relationships by incorporating their ‘inclusive’ range of Different Families resources into lessons. This strategic manoeuvre emerges in a socio-political and spatiotemporal context dominated by neoliberal sexual politics and follows ‘moral panics’ surrounding queer progressive politics inspired initiatives, most notably No Outsiders (2006–2009) which previously unsettled institutionalised discourses of ‘childhood (sexual) innocence’ in pursuing radical, but arguably necessary approaches for disrupting and undoing heteronormativity. In spite of this, Stonewall’s Different Families, Same Love initiative is now the dominant approach for introducing lesbian and gay sexualities in English primary schools; yet, little is known about how primary-aged children respond to this intervention. Focusing on a leading exponent of Stonewall’s initiative, I explore 4–9 year olds dis/engagements with gay and lesbian sexualities when introduced in a familial context. Reflecting on mixed ethnographic and focus group data, I question not only which gay and lesbian sexualities ‘progress’ in contemporary English primary schools, but also how well. To this end, recommendations are made for improving families’ curricula without losing sight of the limits of this approach.

An ethnographic study of improving data collection and completeness in large-scale data exercises

Background: Large-scale data collection is an increasingly prominent and influential feature of efforts to improve healthcare delivery, yet securing the involvement of clinical centres and ensuring data comprehensiveness often proves problematic. We explore how improvements in both data submission and completion rates were achieved during a crucial period of the evolution of two large-scale data exercises. Methods: As part of an evaluation of a quality improvement programme, we conducted an ethnographic study involving 90 interviews and 47 days of non-participant observation of two UK national clinical audits in a period before submission of data on adherence to clinical standards became mandatory. Results: Critical to the improvements in submission and completion rates in the two exercises were the efforts of clinical leaders to refigure “data work” as a professionalization strategy. Using a series of strategic manoeuvres, leaders constructed a cultural account that tied the fortunes of the healthcare professions to the submission of high-quality data, proposing that it would demonstrate responsibility, transparency, and alignment with the public interest. In so doing, clinical leadership deployed tactics that might have been seen as unwarranted managerial aggression had they been imposed by parties external to the profession. Many residual challenges were linked not to principled objection by clinicians, but to mundane problems and frustrations in obtaining, recording, and submitting data. The cultural framing of data work as a professional duty was important to resolving its status as an abject form of labour. Conclusions: Improving data quality in large-scale exercises is possible, but requires cooperation with clinical centres. Enabling professional leadership of data work may offer some significant advantages, but attention is also needed to mundane and highly consequential obstacles to participation in data collection.

Uloga i značaj proizvoda u marketing koncepciji banke

Strategic maneuvering of the product, price, distribution, and promotion, as elements of supply, is the essence of the marketing concept of modern banking. The occurrence and development of the global network have radically changed all elements of the marketing mix. By establishing a product range and with dynamic management of the changes in its structure, banks are consolidating their possibilities with clients' needs. They are trying to offer as rich and readily available product range as can be achieved. They are aiming to adapt the supply in relation to the demands of existing and potential users as much as possible. The supply often exceeds demand. Therefore, they try to never make decisions regarding the adjustment of the product without cooperating with the clients. Availability of different adjustable and competitive banking products established by the usage of information technologies is becoming the foundation of banking. Focusing on the client, well-rounded high-quality product supply, as well as constant innovations, represent the key factors of banks' business success.

Система стратегічного маневрування підприємств роздрібної торгівлі зі створення нового ринкового простору та його економічного захисту

Система стратегічного маневрування підприємств роздрібної торгівлі зі створення нового ринкового простору та його економічного захисту

Rohingya Refugee Crisis in Bangladesh: The Case of UNHCR’s Response

How does the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) respond to a sudden influx of a large number of refugees in a state rejecting the international legal standards on refugee protection? By applying a qualitative case study method, this article seeks to shed light on that question by focusing on the UNHCR’s response in the context of the Rohingya refugee influx to Bangladesh, a non-signatory state to the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967. This article recognizes the existence regime complexity involving the international refugee regime and argues that Bangladesh has tried to challenge UNHCR’s involvement through authorizing the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to lead the international humanitarian response in the early days of the 2017-18 Rohingya refugee crisis. Furthermore, this article adopts challenged institutions as a framework to explore how the UNHCR responded to the challenge through a series of strategic maneuvers to uphold its mandate of providing “international protection” to the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. The main findings suggested that although UNHCR has been able to emerge as a leading stakeholder of the humanitarian response to the Rohingya refugee crisis, the existing operational context in Bangladesh still challenges the agency to uphold its mandate fully. Other findings include the fragmentation of authority in the international response coordination, increasing institutional competition, and lack of coordination between UNHCR and other major humanitarian agencies.

KADIN HAREKETLERİNDE ADAPTİF STRATEJİLER: TÜRKİYE DE KADINA YÖNELİK ŞİDDETLE MÜCADELE ÖRNEĞİ

Türkiye’deki kadına yönelik şiddetle mücadele hareketinde son yıllarda stratejik adaptasyon yönteminin benimsendiği görülmektedir. Seküler ve İslami kadın hakları savunucularının koalisyonu sonucu ortaya çıkan bu hareket şiddetle mücadele taleplerini “kadın-erkek eşitliği”ni vurgulayan feminist söylem yerine mevcut hükümetin vurgu yaptığı “kadının aile içindeki önemi”ne referans yaparak adapte etmiş, yani “uyumlandırmış,” bu çerçevede kadına yönelik şiddetin aile yapısını sarstığını öne sürmüştür. Bu söylemsel uyumlandırma ve koalisyon stratejilerine ek olarak kadınların hükümet kurumlarıyla birlikte hareket etme, onları kendi yanlarına çekme yoluna gittiği, devlet kurumlarını protesto eden, çatışmacı yaklaşımların ise azaldığı görülmektedir. Malezya ve Mısır gibi Müslüman toplumlardaki kadın hakları hareketlerinin seyri incelenip karşılaştırıldığında bunlarda da son yirmi yılda benzer stratejilere yönelindiği görülmektedir. Bir başka deyişle, Müslüman “kızkardeşlerin” benzer siyasi kısıtlara ve fırsatlara benzer tepkiler verdikleri ve birbirlerinden ders alarak stratejik repertuarlarını geliştirdiklerini söyleyebiliriz.

An ethnographic study of improving data collection and completeness in large-scale data exercises.

Background: Large-scale data collection is an increasingly prominent and influential feature of efforts to improve healthcare delivery, yet securing the involvement of clinical centres and ensuring data comprehensiveness often proves problematic. We explore how improvements in both data submission and completion rates were achieved during a crucial period of the evolution of two large-scale data exercises. Methods: As part of an evaluation of a quality improvement programme, we conducted an ethnographic study involving 90 interviews and 47 days of non-participant observation of two UK national clinical audits in a period before submission of data on adherence to clinical standards became mandatory. Results: Critical to the improvements in submission and completion rates in the two exercises were the efforts of clinical leaders to refigure "data work" as a professionalization strategy. Using a series of strategic manoeuvres, leaders constructed a cultural account that tied the fortunes of the healthcare professions to the submission of high-quality data, proposing that it would demonstrate responsibility, transparency, and alignment with the public interest. In so doing, clinical leadership deployed tactics that might have been seen as unwarranted managerial aggression had they been imposed by parties external to the profession. Many residual challenges were linked not to principled objection by clinicians, but to mundane problems and frustrations in obtaining, recording, and submitting data. The cultural framing of data work as a professional duty was important to resolving its status as an abject form of labour. Conclusions: Improving data quality in large-scale exercises is possible, but requires cooperation with clinical centres. Enabling professional leadership of data work may offer some significant advantages, but attention is also needed to mundane and highly consequential obstacles to participation in data collection.

Argumentative Strategies and Stylistic Devices

The extended pragma-dialectical argumentation theory assumes that people engaged in argumentative discourse manoeuvre strategically. In argumentative reality, the strategic manoeuvring is often carried out according to an argumentative strategy. Language users make an effort to present their strategic manoeuvres in a specific way and the analysis of the stylistic choices in actual argumentative discourse is the most important basis for identification and analysis of argumentative strategies. In this article, it is shown what requirements must be satisfied by a systematic stylistic analysis of argumentative discourse, and the results of such an analysis are illustrated by means of a case study.

How Prostate Cancer Cells Use Strategy Instead of Brute Force to Achieve Metastasis.

Akin to many other cancers, metastasis is the predominant cause of lethality in prostate cancer (PCa). Research in the past decade or so has revealed that although metastatic manifestation is a multi-step and complex process that is orchestrated by distinct cellular and molecular mechanisms, the process in itself is an extremely inefficient one. It is now becoming increasingly evident that PCa cells employ a plethora of strategies to make the most of this inefficient process. These strategies include priming the metastatic sites ahead of colonization, devising ways to metastasize to specific organs, outsmarting the host defense surveillance, lying in a dormant state at the metastatic site for prolonged periods, and widespread reprogramming of the gene expression to suit their needs. Based on established, recent, and evolving lines of research, this review is an attempt to understand PCa metastasis from the perspective of military combat, wherein strategic maneuvering instead of brute force often plays a decisive role in the outcome.

Project –Appraisal Vis-À-Vis Risks and Uncertainty Management in Construction Industry: A Plausible Strategic Maneuver

Genesis of risk and uncertainty is an innate facet in any project. A cause, occurrence and consequence are the signature- hallmarks of every risk. Dodging and dealing with plausible critical situations in complex projects demand strategic quantification and management of uncertainties of different nature much in advance. In this milieu, we propose a methodology to classify uncertainties based on the dictates of probability theory, possibility theory, belief/plausibility theory and fuzzy set theory. A general framework of risk and uncertainty management is forwarded. Our recommendation embraces: (1) identification, assessment, analysis and distribution of all possible risk and uncertainty amongst the parties involved or those who might get associated in accordance to their capacity, competency and characteristics; (2) allocation and distribution (governed by the terms and conditions of the contracts) of the various risks and uncertainties to those, capable of handling them better and (3) monitoring, scrutiny, response and mitigation by those assigned according to the contractual-conditions. It is expected that the proposed model shall serve as a ready-to-use template for project valuation to effectively address plausible risks and uncertainties in construction-industries, eventually contributing to the cause of sustainable development.

Now That Was A Riot!: Social Control in Felonious Times

ABSTRACTIn early 2017, dozens of US states introduced legislation designed to further criminalize confrontational protest tactics through expanding the scope of felony prosecutions and summoning the specter of the “riot” to depoliticize political action; indelibly linking it to criminal violence. This shift towards felonies and rioters took the form of legislation, intelligence reports, prosecutions, and rhetorical attempts at nearly every level of government. Demonstrations and campaigns were recast as felonious conspiracies, and the participants, rioters. In doing so, demonstrators were denied legibility as political actors, and instead held up in courts and newspapers as anti-social, irrational, and unruly criminal mobs. These legalistic, rhetorical, and strategic maneuvers can be critically interpreted through a mixed methodological approach embedded within Discourse Analysis and Autoethnography, and interpreted through a genealogical, social control framework. Through a close reading of these rhetorical shifts and their implications for policing and political repression, social movements adopting revolutionary nonviolence can increase resiliency through focusing on creating power, not simply challenging it.

Challenging judicial impartiality

AbstractImpartiality is one of the core values underlying the administration of justice. A complaint about a judge’s supposed lack of impartiality may be filed on the grounds of the judge’s verbal behavior. In this article I will analyze complaints that concern the judge’s use of rhetorical questions during court hearings. I will explore what role these complaints may play in the strategic maneuvering of a party who seeks the judge’s disqualification.

Refutational Strategies in Mencius’s Argumentative Discourse on Human Nature

Mencius, a prominent Confucian philosopher in the Warring States period (c. 453 BC–221 BC) of ancient China, is well-known for his argumentative skills, including his refutational skills used to maintain his own standpoints. This paper attempts to reveal how Mencius refuted his opponents argumentatively and strategically on the issue of human nature. To this end, the pragma-dialectical approach to argumentation is adopted to first reconstruct Mencius’s argumentative discourse on human nature according to the four stages in critical discussion—the confrontation, opening, argumentation and concluding stages. Under the ancient Chinese historical and cultural context, Mencius’s argumentative discourse about human nature was developed in three critical discussions, between Mencius the protagonist, and his explicit interlocutors and implicit adversaries who held different views on human nature—the antagonists. The discussions were undertaken around three single mixed differences of opinion concerning three propositions, with resolution of the first difference of opinion serving as a starting point of the second, and the resolution of the second as a starting point of the third. Then based on the reconstruction, the paper elaborates the refutational strategies that Mencius employed in various stages, such as dissociation, reductio ad absurdum based on refutational analogy, and conciliation. It further points out that the employment of these strategies is strategic maneuvering undertaken by Mencius in an attempt to realize both dialectical and rhetorical aims.

Electoral incentives and Public Employees’ Retirement Systems in Brazilian municipalities

This paper tests whether Brazilian mayors manipulate the funding policies of Public Employees’ Retirement Systems (PERS) owing to electoral motivations, using an unexplored dataset containing the statements of contributions prepared by municipal governments that we match to four nationwide elections. In Brazil, PERS are active in more than 2000 municipalities and must collect contributions from public-sector employees and local governments to meet their defined benefit promises. The institutional context provides variation in both reelection incentives and the funding of PERS that allows for credible estimation: term limits and close races generate exogenous variation in incentives, and the large increases in contribution rates mandated by a national pension reform, implemented by municipalities with different lags, provide the necessary variation in the funding practices. Overall, the regression discontinuity estimates support the hypothesis that mayors seeking reelection in competitive environments reduce the flows of funding to municipal PERS. Moreover, the results confirm the notion that while politicians have benefited from the changing legislation and a lack of supervision in the past, less room for strategic maneuvering has been open recently.

Hypothetical Questions as Strategic Devices in Negotiation

In this article, we analyze the use of hypothetical questions in integrative negotiation. We argue that hypothetical questions are useful devices for advancing implicit proposals and can also provide strategic argumentative support for the acceptance of a particular solution. To explain why negotiators prefer to use hypothetical questions when putting forward implicit proposals and to demonstrate how these questions fulfill negotiators' argumentative purposes, our study uses the pragma‐dialectical concept of strategic maneuvering and applies it to the analysis of a number of real‐life negotiations. We conclude by demonstrating that hypothetical questions can be effective devices for strategic maneuvering and that negotiators can employ these kinds of questions to resolve some of the rhetorical predicaments imposed by the negotiator's dilemma as well as to gain a competitive edge over their counterparts.

تحليل المناورة الإستراتيجية في الخطاب الحجاجي = Analysis of Strategic Maneuvering in Argumentative Discourse

This article aims to introduce pragma-dialectics to those who are interested in the study of argumentation. I first explain the theoretical and analytical aspects of the standard version of pragma-dialectics. Then, I apply it to an excerpt of a TV interview in which Mahmoud Saad, an Egyptian interviewer, hosted Mohammed Morsi, who was a presidential candidate at that time. Afterwards I illustrate the rationale of extending the standard theory through suggesting the notion of ‘strategic maneuvering’. In order to show the significant differences between the two versions of the theory in terms of analytic reconstruction and evaluation, I finally re-analyze the text at issue taking into consideration the rhetorical (perlocutionary) effects Morsi attempts to achieve……

From Discussion to Fist-fighting: Was Strategic Maneuvering Derailed during the Debate on the Presidential Age Limit Bill in Uganda?

Of recent, due its impact on political events and socio-political processes like general elections and peace building, parliamentary discourse has become the object of research in Africa. In Uganda, in particular, at different times in the country’s history, it has been at the heart of fomenting conflict, but also key in fostering peace. It is of historic importance that we analyse how the controlled institutionalized parliamentary discourse during the presidential age limit debates degenerated to fist fighting and chair hurling in the Uganda Parliament. Using the pragma-dialectical, the rhetorical and linguistic approaches this study seeks to check the arguer’s commitment to pursuing a reasonable argumentation as s/he tries to discursively resolve the difference of opinion which is usually at the heart of parliamentary debates. Through a review of the atmosphere surrounding the presidential age limit debate and the two critical sessions of the relevant parliamentary discussions, the author tries to establish whether this discursive resolving of differences of opinion was achieved or whether there are factors that contributed to derailing the discursive strategic maneuvering.

Strategisch manoeuvreren met stijl

Abstract Strategic maneuvering with style: a systematic approachIn the extended pragma-dialectical approach to argumentation (Van Eemeren, 2010), presentational devices are distinguished as one of the three aspects of strategic maneuvering by arguers in argumentative discourse. Language ‐ or stylistic ‐ devices are an important subset of presentational devices. However, analyses of stylistic devices are often ad hoc: in most cases, a systematic analysis of these devices employed by arguers is lacking. This paper has two (interrelated) aims. Firstly, we aim to show how a systematic analysis of stylistic devices can be integrated in a pragma-dialectical analysis of strategic maneuvering in argumentative discourse. To this end, we make use of methodological insights from linguistic stylistics. Secondly, we argue that the proposed integration of pragma-dialectical argumentation theory and linguistic stylistics is of added value for both disciplines. Our approach and its added value is illustrated by a case study: the pleadings that were delivered in a Dutch civil law case.

En dan zit je met de gebakken peren!

Abstract You have to face to consequences! Strategic maneuvering with the argumentum ad consequentiamIn argumentative discourse fallacies occur regularly, but often they seem not to be noticed by the participants. This also goes for the fallacy known as the argumentum ad consequentiam, in spite of the fact that people generally denounce this fallacy when confronted with clea r cases. In this paper it is argued that the explanation of this paradox is that the different types of argumentum ad consequentiam are modes of strategic maneuvering which take on a reasonable appearance when they mimic legitimate pragmatic argumentation or reductio ad absurdum argumentation. The following hypothesis was tested in an experiment: instances of the argumentum ad consequentiam are regarded less unreasonable than clear cases if they are presented as reasonable pragmatic argumentation.

Strategic Maneuvering in Argumentative Confrontations: A Pragma-Dialectical Analysis of Mark Zuckerberg's Congressional Hearings

Strategic Maneuvering in Argumentative Confrontations: A Pragma-Dialectical Analysis of Mark Zuckerberg's Congressional Hearings