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Conducts a survey of management training and development practices in large Kuwaiti organizations. Covers areas such as needs assessment, programmes and participants′ selection, programme evaluation and future trends. Indicates that systematic needs assessements and programme evaluation are sorely lacking in these organizations. Practices related to programme and participants′ selection and training content areas are, generally, consistent with previous findings in the West. Contrary to the situation in the West, the private and joint sectors are less active in management development areas than the government sector. Executive educational programmes, an approach that is most successful in the West, are rarely used. Discusses results and implications of the study in the context of the Arabian Gulf region social and economic environments.

To counteract processes of landscape deterioration, marginalisation and loss of cultural heritage due to rural restructuring of farming in late-modern Norwegian society, an agricultural landscape scheme started up in 2009. The purpose of this paper is to examine the way this recently introduced strategy of directing particular resources to a group of selected agricultural landscapes contributes in instigating integrated landscape management and to gain insight in the role cultural heritage play.

The authors ask how potential conflicts between local interpretations of cultural heritage and the assessments made by authoritative heritage managers are expressed in the initial planning documents.

While the reasoning and selection of the two areas are strongly influenced by the authoritative heritage discourse, the agricultural landscape scheme is nonetheless open to local adaptations and adjustments, and the two plans vary both in form and contents due to the major stress put on active involvement of farmers to render long-term management feasible.

Examination of the role cultural heritage plays is part of a larger research project where problems related to biodiversity, legal implication and public participation are dealt with separately.

The study will provide important results for future adjustments and potential enlargement and has transfer value to conservation schemes in other European countries.

Global health challenges and threats could be confronted by collaborative efforts of international community. Governance for global health is a set of formal and informal processes, operating beyond state boundaries, and refers to institutions and mechanisms established at the national, regional and international levels. Nordic countries demonstrated a long-standing commitment to development assistance for health (DAH), and more recently to governance for global health. Governance for global health tools could be used effectively to achieve collective solutions for the maintenance and promotion of health as a common good, could ensure accountability and transparency, and reconcile the interests of different actors on the international and national levels. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of tools and approaches in support of eight sub-functions of governance for global health applied by the Nordic countries. This will help international audience to compare those mechanisms with similar mechanisms that are available or planned in their countries and regions, and may benefit policy scholars and practitioners.

This study uses qualitative review of research literature, policy documents and information available from institutional websites related to the governance of global health in four Nordic countries. In total, 50 selected publications were analyzed using framework synthesis, mapping all findings to 8 dimensions (sub-functions) of governance for global health and related tools.

Review reveals which tools are available, how they have been applied by the Nordic countries and influenced all domains (sub-functions) of governance for global health at different levels: national governments, agencies and networks; bilateral and multilateral partnerships; inter-governmental institutions and international health-related organizations. Common trends and approaches in governance for global health have been formulated.

This study is unique in relation to the prior literature as it looks at the role of Nordic countries in the governance for global health system through the lens of tools applied in support to its sub-functions.

Examines the thirteenth published year of the ITCRR. Runs the whole gamut of textile innovation, research and testing, some of which investigates hitherto untouched aspects. Subjects discussed include cotton fabric processing, asbestos substitutes, textile adjuncts to cardiovascular surgery, wet textile processes, hand evaluation, nanotechnology, thermoplastic composites, robotic ironing, protective clothing (agricultural and industrial), ecological aspects of fibre properties – to name but a few! There would appear to be no limit to the future potential for textile applications.

The ability of the Irish economy to continue growing depends not only on demand, but also on supply conditions. While these have remained favourable up to now, there are signs of increasing skill shortages and ongoing pressure on economic infrastructure. It has been established that human resources development (HRD) is vital to maintaining Ireland’s competitiveness internationally. This paper seeks to document the nature of HRD at organizational level in Ireland. Following a brief sketch of the Irish context, we draw on a nationally representative survey of HRD practices and present data on where responsibilities for HRD policy decisions lie, the extent of and the approaches to the identification of HRD needs, HRD coverage and delivery, and the nature of longer‐term developmental activities. Variations between firms of different size, between sectors, between firms of different origin, and between unionized and non‐union environments are, where appropriate, highlighted.

“Corporate planning” is the term which, perhaps more than any other, epitomises the adoption of business management techniques by the public sector. In Britain, with massive local government reorganisation in 1974, many librarians were forced to come to terms with such techniques whether they liked it or not. Of course, in its purest sense corporate planning applies to the combined operation of an entire organisation be it local authority, university, government department or industrial firm. However, in this paper I do not intend discussing “the grand design” whereby the library is merely a component part of a greater body. Rather, it is my intention to view the library as the corporate body. It is a perfectly possible and very useful exercise to apply the principles of corporate planning, and the management techniques involved, to the running of a library or group of libraries. Indeed, many librarians have already done this either independently or as their part in the corporate plan of their parent organisation.

This special “Anbar Abstracts” issue of Employee Relations is split into seven sections covering abstracts under the following headings: Design of work; Performance, productivity and motivation; Patterns of work; Pay, incentives and pensions; Career/manpower planning, recruitment; Industrial relations and participation; Health and safety.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a professional self-efficacy scale for counsellors and psychologists encompassing identified competencies within professional standards from national and related international frameworks for psychologists and counsellors.

An initial opportune sample of postgraduate psychology and counselling students (n=199) completed a ten-minute self-report survey. A subsequent independent sample (n=213) was recruited for cross-validation.

A series of exploratory analyses, consolidated through confirmatory factor analyses and Rasch analysis, identified a well-functioning scale composed of 31 items and five factors (research, ethics, legal matters, assessment and measurement, intervention).

The Psychologist and Counsellor Self-Efficacy Scale (PCES) appears a promising measure, with potential applications for reflective learning and practice, clinical supervision and professional development, and research studies involving psychologists’ and counsellors’ self-perceived competencies. It is unique in being ecologically grounded in national competency frameworks, and extending previous work on self-efficacy for particular competencies to the set of specified attributes outlined in Australian national competency documents. The PCES has potential utility in a variety of applications, including research about training efficacy and clinical supervision, and could be used as one component of a multi-method approach to formative and summative competence assessment for psychologists and counsellors. The scale may be used to assess students’ perceived competencies relative to actual competency growth against national standards, and to identify trainees’ and practitioners’ self-perceived knowledge deficits and target areas for additional training.

Inductances of complex coils, in the presence of linear materials only, can be computed by discretizing coils into simpler elements, whose magnetic behavior is analytically expressible, and suitably combining elementary contributions. Reliable results require high numbers of elements. In such cases, advantages can be taken from Graphic Processor Unit (GPU) capabilities of dealing efficiently with high numbers of repeated simple computational tasks. The purpose of this paper is to set up a fast and prompt numerical procedure to cope with the above described task.

The coils are first decomposed into current segments, taking into account accuracy, relative position and shape of coils to determine the number of segments. An analytical formula is then used to compute elementary contributions using GPUs to speed up the process, and finally superposition is used to recover the result.

The main advantages of the proposed approach are first demonstrated using simple examples, with analytical solutions, to validate the method accuracy and promptness, then more complex cases are taken to demonstrate its generality.

The method is intrinsically limited by the linearity assumption, excluding the presence of magnetic materials. The adopted formulas require in addition that coils must lie in free space.

The proposed method can help in the design of complex coils or coils systems, where the performance depends on total magnetic energy or magnetic forces among coils.

The paper presents an original implementation in GPU-based computational environment of a procedure to compute inductances, based on the superposition of a high number of current segments. The procedure includes an original method to self-adaptively define number and position of current segments used in the coils discretization.