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11 – 20 of 120This paper aims to argue that, contrary to popular thinking, technological disasters are potentially predictable, and therefore amenable to risk assessment and mitigation. What is…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to argue that, contrary to popular thinking, technological disasters are potentially predictable, and therefore amenable to risk assessment and mitigation. What is lacking at present is a more comprehensive understanding of the hazards, embedded in complex socio‐technical systems, which lead to such disasters.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper discusses several factors that contribute to hazard formation and development, including the interaction of human and mechanical components, ambiguity, evolutionary changes, innovation and poor communication in organisational systems. Two case studies of recent disasters in Australia are presented to provide illustrations of the complexity in socio‐technical systems and the hazards and risks that they harbour.
Findings
The paper finds that to progress, we need two things: better conceptual models and frameworks that reveal complexity and make systems more transparent, and more satisfactory approaches to risk management.
Originality/value
The paper concludes with some suggestions as to how the risks might be better understood and managed proactively.
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Dana B. Krieg and Anna K. Krause
This study aims to further investigate the relationship between perceived adherence to gender norms and binge drinking in college students. Thus, researchers examined college…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to further investigate the relationship between perceived adherence to gender norms and binge drinking in college students. Thus, researchers examined college students’ perceptions of adherence to masculine and feminine gender norms when gender and alcohol consumption of a vignette character were manipulated.
Methodology/approach
Undergraduate participants (N = 368) were randomly assigned to one of four vignette conditions: female moderate drinker, female binge drinker, male moderate drinker, male binge drinker and then surveyed regarding perceptions of the vignette character.
Findings
The results of this study indicate that there are significant relationships between the vignette character’s alcohol consumption and perceived adherence to feminine gender norms. The character’s gender, as well as the participant’s own alcohol consumption patterns, also related to perceived adherence to feminine gender norms.
Practical implications
College students’ perceptions of binge drinkers are influenced by gender norms, which has important implications for safe consumption of alcohol. When young men (or young women) are encouraged to drink to avoid appearing too feminine, negative consequences may be more likely. In this study, perceptions of the vignette character’s safety were also found to be related to alcohol consumption of the vignette character, as well as the alcohol consumption of the participant, suggesting that a heavy drinker might not show as much concern for another’s heavy consumption.
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Announcing the establishment of a National Computing Centre, the Minister of Technology, Mr Frank Cousins, told the Commons that it would provide and encourage training in systems…
Abstract
Announcing the establishment of a National Computing Centre, the Minister of Technology, Mr Frank Cousins, told the Commons that it would provide and encourage training in systems analysis, programming principles and computer applications. It would promote research into methods of programming and operating computers and into the influence of those methods on the design of computers.
Since individual and/or sectional interests are embedded in organisational relations, the meaning and significance of manpower plans will depend very much on the political and…
Abstract
Since individual and/or sectional interests are embedded in organisational relations, the meaning and significance of manpower plans will depend very much on the political and career systems of which they are both a condition and a consequence. Manpower planning can never be seen simply as a technical solution to practical problems for insofar as it reflects and reinforces power‐knowledge practices within organisations, it is as much part of the problem as of the solution. The post‐Griffith climate of industrial management in the NHS is leading to the imposition of an artificial consensus through bureaucratic and technicist means, rather than identifying and developing new ways to mobilise the creative collective power of the majority, who at present remain peripheral to, and disinterested in, their organisation.
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The experimental parliamentary subsidy on knights' fees and freehold incomes from lands and rents of 1431 was the only English direct lay tax of the Middle Ages which broke down…
Abstract
The experimental parliamentary subsidy on knights' fees and freehold incomes from lands and rents of 1431 was the only English direct lay tax of the Middle Ages which broke down. As such, this subsidy has a clear historiographical significance, yet previous scholars have tended to overlook it on the grounds that parliament's annulment act of 1432 mandated the destruction of all fiscal administrative evidence. Many county assessments from 1431–1432 do, however, survive and are examined for the first time in this article as part of a detailed assessment of the fiscal and administrative context of the knights' fees and incomes tax. This impost constituted a royal response to excess expenditures associated with Henry VI's “Coronation Expedition” of 1429–1431, the scale of which marked a decisive break from the fiscal-military strategy of the 1420s. Widespread confusion regarding whether taxpayers ought to pay the feudal or the non-feudal component of the 1431 subsidy characterized its botched administration. Industrial scale under-assessment, moreover, emerged as a serious problem. Officials' attempts to provide a measure of fiscal compensation by unlawfully double-assessing many taxpayers served to increase administrative confusion and resulted in parliament's annulment act of 1432. This had serious consequences for the crown's finances, since the regime was saddled with budgetary and debt problems which would ultimately undermine the solvency of the Lancastrian state.
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Coventry's social composition makes the LEA's problems several degrees simpler than those in the older, more complex industrial conurbations. The spectre of Plowden priority areas…
Abstract
Coventry's social composition makes the LEA's problems several degrees simpler than those in the older, more complex industrial conurbations. The spectre of Plowden priority areas is kept at bay by the overall prosperity of the city. The few remaining slums are disappearing, and it is very rare to find heads describing more than one or two of the children in a school as materially deprived. There are problem schools whose intake is largely from areas where the parents are educationally deprived — notably the immigrant sectors. But where there is enough money the chances of improvement are never completely out of reach, and among the immigrants in particular the parents' lack of education does not blind them to the need for their children to take the opportunities available. In a truncated society without a noticeable upper middle class, the LEA is also freed from competition with a large private sector. There are more private primary schools that secondary but most of these children will be fed into the authority's secondary schools.