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Research was conducted on parents’ experience of caring for a child living with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). The focus of this research was on the key psychological aspects of the process of adjustment to the illness of their child (family and spousal relationship, daily life, emotions, career, spirituality, and coping strategies). There was evidence throughout the study of gender‐specific differences in constructing the different aspects of the shared experience. The main findings included major differences in the initial reaction and coping styles between mothers and fathers. These differences could be perceived as a threat or could serve as a source of isolation between parents. Additional findings included the unequal sharing of caregiving tasks between partners: the primary caregiving role usually being assumed by the mother, with the father playing a supportive role. The unique contribution of this study in further describing the lived experience of parents of a child with DMD is its attention to the internal dynamic of the relationship between mothers and fathers. This dynamic is highly dependent on the respective roles of primary and secondary caregiver. This research has implications for the design and implementation of intervention strategies aimed at couples caring for a child with DMD, or with other severe, chronic, and uniformly fatal illnesses.

The following bibliography focuses mainly on programs which can run on IBM microcomputers and compatibles under the operating system PC DOS/MS DOS, and which can be used in online information and documentation work. They fall into the following categories:

The purpose of this paper is to arrive at a general definition of an HPO and a (practical) way to measure an HPO. Managers are looking for techniques to strengthen their organizations in a way that they cannot only cope with threats but could also quickly take advantage of opportunities, and thus, grow and thrive. The academic and especially the practitioner fields reacted on this “thirst for high performance knowledge” with a plethora of books and articles on the topic of high performance organizations (HPOs). These publications each came with their own description and measurement of HPOs, which created a lot of confusion among practitioners.

In this study the following reserach question is answered: how can an HPO be defined and its performance measured? So that with the answer, this paper can take away the aforementioned confusion. This paper does this by conducting an extensive systematic review of the literature on HPO, after which this paper synthesizes the findings into a proposal on how to define and measure the HPO.

This paper was able to obtain from the literature a list of definitions and measurements for an HPO. The common denominator in these definitions and measurements turned out to be respondents given their opinion on the effects of the organizational practices they apply on organizational performance vis-à-vis that of competitors. This paper concluded therefore that an HPO should be defined and measured relative to competitors and should be based on the perception of managers and employees of the organization: An HPO is an organization that achieves results that are better than those of its peer group over a longer period of time.

With the answer on the research question, this paper fills the current gap in the definition and measurement literature on HPOs, and thus, has moved the research into HPOs forward, as researchers can use these research results in their future studies on high performance and HPOs.

Although there is a plethora of literature on high performance and HPOs no univocal definition and measurement of the HPO can be found. This study provides for the first time an academically well-founded definition and measurement method.

This article describes financial professionals' perceptions of their clients' financial behaviors and the explanatory factors underlying these behaviors.

In this qualitative research, the authors seek to understand financial professionals' experiences in relation to how their clients manage their own finances. The authors conduct and analyze 26 semi-structured interviews with financial professionals from several industries within the financial sector in Canada.

The professionals in this study noted that despite their clients' financial knowledge, several other factors can explain these individuals' financial behaviors. They include psychological factors (such as financial bias, the need for instant gratification, and the lack of awareness regarding the long-term effects of certain types of financial behaviors), financial habits (such as lifestyle, financial planning and lack of discipline) and the financial system's flexibility with respect to debt financing and repayment. These perceptions are categorized according to whether they are related to debt financing or repayment, savings or investments.

By using a qualitative methodology that relies on the perceptions of financial professionals, this study aims to better understand the financial behaviors of individuals and households, and these behaviors' underlying factors. This study's findings could be useful to various stakeholders interested, in one way or another, in financial literacy, such as organizations aiming to strengthen and promote financial literacy, educators, researchers, regulatory bodies of financial institutions and financial advisers.

In order to allow flexibility in the enforcement of the tax law, the language used is often intentionally vague and ambiguous. This enables the government to implement the intent of the lawmakers in administering that law. However, interpreting these vague and ambiguous laws requires tax professionals to face planning situations that are complex and uncertain. Due to an increase in civil litigation, the importance of tax professionals making defensible decisions has been magnified in recent years. Carnes, et al. (1994) report that tax partners with Big‐Six accounting firms spend about 30 to 45 percent of their time resolving ambiguous tax questions. Therefore, tax professionals could benefit from models or systems (i.e., decision support systems, expert systems, artificial intelligence) that provide decision direction when facing ambiguous tax situations. One such area in which tax professionals must assist their clients is the determination of what levels of compensation are reasonable for owner‐employees of closely‐held corporations (Hagan, et al. 1995).

An accelerometer is a device that measures force due to gravity or a change in speed or direction of travel. This paper describes accelerometers and their application in other disciplines and, by way of an example, explores the utility of accelerometers for studying aggression. We end with a discussion of additional ways accelerometers might be used in group processes research.

We first review the use of accelerometers in other disciplines. We then present the results of four studies that demonstrate the use of accelerometers to measure aggression. Study 1 establishes the measure’s concurrent validity. Study 2 concerns its stability and representative reliability. Study 3 seeks to establish the measure’s predictive validity by associating it with an existing measure. Study 4 demonstrates the ability of accelerometers to address a sociological research question.

In Studies 1 and 2, we find that accelerometers can be used to differentiate between distinct levels of aggression. In Study 3, we find that men’s average peak acceleration correlates with a previously validated measure of aggression. Study 4 uses accelerometers to reproduce a well-established finding in the aggression literature.

We conclude that accelerometers are a flexible tool for group processes’ researchers and social scientists more broadly. Our findings should prove useful to social scientists interested in measuring aggression or in employing accelerometers in their work.

International security is a constant threat to the pursuit of economic optimum. In the traditional economic analysis history, states are seen as agents in constant search for power, which leads to the emergence of conflicts of interests. The modern concept of security can be defined as the economic study of all the risks of short, medium and long term on the functioning of economic and social life. It can be divided into four sublevels: individual security, national security, international security and global security. The adoption of an enlarged approach to international security by integrating economic and environmental conditions highlights the expression of new collective priorities. Today, theories of security take into account the economic, human and social relationships, societal priorities and the balance of power in the international system. Human security implies a multi-disciplinary analysis, including human rights, state organisation, international relations and strategic studies. Security and sustainable development are deeply interconnected, which involves bearable production conditions for the environment in the long term, the end of extreme poverty, the creation of social stability and the rejection of discrimination.

The T-O-E framework enjoys robust scholarly accolade but it rarely espouses clearly task and individual factors. Although task and individual contexts had been separately addressed by task-technology-fit (TTF) and unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT), respectively, the purpose of this paper is to complement and/or extend the T-O-E’s insights by integrating TTF and UTAUT frameworks, and developing and empirically testing a 12-factor framework that spans five contexts.

Survey data were proportionally collected from six groups of small service enterprises with strong operations in Port Harcourt, Nigeria and the mode of sampling was purposive and snow-ball while analysis involved logistic likelihood regression.

The relationship between adoption and the factors within the contexts of technology, organization, environment and task were statistically supported though some had negative coefficients. For individual context, social factor had a statistically significant negative coefficient but hedonistic drive was not statistically supported.

The study is limited by its scope of coverage; therefore, extended data are needed to apply the findings to other sectors/industries and to factor in the implementation and post-adoption phases and business-to-business adoption in order to forge a more integrated and holistic adoption framework.

The findings encourage vendors and policy makers to place more premiums on organizational and task factors than on technological, environmental and individual factors and to craft informed marketing programs that would appeal to actual and potential adopters and cause them to progress in the loyalty ladder.

This paper contributes to the growing research on technology adoption; it uses factors within the T-O-E, TTF and UTAUT frameworks to explain adoption of technologies and to establish the underlying relationships amongst T-O-E factors through integrating other useful frameworks.

The debate about the labour process was, in the second half of the seventies, dominated by the question whether, under all circumstances, management was motivated by the objective of gaining total control over the entire production process and its constituent elements. More specifically the debate centred on whether control was an objective in itself or merely part of the strategy to maintain profits in the long run. Political, economic and technological influences were not sufficiently taken into consideration by the scientists who took part in this debate. Recently, since 1980, precisely the last mentioned elements were emphasised. It was shown that political, economic and technological developments exert a strong influence on managerial strategies. It was suggested that in theorising about the labour process it is necessary to take full account of business cycles, the progress of technology, developments in the labour and product market; and of the interrelationship between all these factors. In addition, researchers also studied managerial behaviour, managers' sub‐cultures and attitudes; managerial decision‐making processes; and workers' opposition.

This research aims to explore and theorize the role of embodied practices – orchestrated by service providers – in the social production of servicescapes. It is claimed that the social character of the servicescape is shaped not only by narratives and materialities but also through the body. Bodily physical behaviors like physical movements in space, gestures, facial expressions, postures and tactile engagements with the surrounding materiality constitute a body language that conveys information and expresses meanings. In this kinetic capacity, the body becomes a building agent in the social constitution of the servicescape. As the author empirically demonstrates in the context of city tourism with diverse experiential opportunities, it is due to the body’s discriminatory orientation, walking, looking, pointing and acting in selective ways that the city emerges as a servicescape of particular kind.

Market-oriented ethnography was conducted in Saint Petersburg, Russia, where the author observed the guiding practices of tour guides leading international tourists during two-day city excursions.

This research identifies and unpacks three clusters of embodied practices deployed by service providers as they guide customers at the servicescape: spatializing, emplacing and regulating. The role of the body and its association with narratives and materialities is identified in each cluster.

A number of embodied practices are provided for use by contact employees as they guide customers in the servicescape. Specific guidelines are also offered to service providers for the strategic employment of body language, their training is navigational skills and the coordination of body, narratives and materialities.

This study extends current materialistic and communicative approaches on the construction of servicescapes by claiming that the servicescape in not only a physical and narrative construction but something that is also configured through the body; provides three clusters of embodied practices deployed by service providers; theorizes the intertwined nature of narratives, materiality and the body; defines servicescapes as dynamic socio-spatial entities emerging from the constant {narrative-material-body} arrangements orchestrated by service providers; and sheds light on the mediating role of the body in the social production of servicescapes.