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This paper aims to propose a collaborative approach toward an integrated vulnerability assessment to climate change in Germany that attempts to bridge the gap between scientific output and policy demand.

Conceptually, the approach follows the definition of vulnerability as used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but it has modified this basic concept. It clearly distinguishes between three time slices (presence, near and remote future) not only regarding the change in the climatic conditions but also socio-economic development trends.

The paper concentrates on the selected methodological framework, the collaborative research design and those preliminary results of the nationwide vulnerability assessment that are transferable to other settings.

A Vulnerability Network (“Netzwerk Vulnerabilitaet”) emerged from an applied research project commissioned under the Adaptation Action Plan of the German Strategy for Adaptation to Climate Change by the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety and the Federal Environment Agency. The assessment serves as evidence basis for the implementation of the German Adaptation Strategy. Thus, all relevant federal authorities and agencies are represented in the Vulnerability Network.

The approach is the first really integrative vulnerability assessment for the whole Germany, as it considers not only 16 sectors but also interconnections between these sectors and cumulative effects for three different time slices. Moreover, the normative component of the assessment was clearly separated from the analytic one. The Vulnerability Network as a whole has been responsible for all normative decisions to be taken during the assessment procedure thus ensuring a wide understanding and acceptance of commonly achieved results.

The media, private citizens and other stakeholders regularly appraise political negotiations, but the character of these negotiations and the reasons for outcomes are little understood. The purpose of this conceptual paper is to discuss this character and explore its implications.

This is a conceptual paper. The author carried out a literature review and used his experiences in supervising political negotiation simulations.

The author argues that political negotiations have several specific characteristics that distinguish them from other kinds of negotiations. Political negotiations, for instance, tend to address often rather fuzzy public interests, involve value conflicts or are simultaneously performed “on stage” and “behind the scenes.” These characteristics may matter, as they can provide structural disincentives to negotiators, who might be tempted to focus on selling outcomes rather than on improving them (“saleability-oriented negotiating”). Hence, the author argues that political negotiators and their stakeholders face the challenge that political contexts may foster weak negotiation performances.

The author proposes an approach to political negotiations’ training that takes the findings of this paper into consideration.

This paper is the first, to the best of the author’s knowledge, to provide a detailed characterization of political negotiations and to discuss related implications.

The purpose of this paper is to try to determine to what extent differences and similarities in sociopolitical, cultural and economic backgrounds are reflected in gender role portrayals in magazine advertisements in the USA, China and Thailand.

Content analysis is used. Five different magazine categories are selected from the USA, China and Thailand in 2007: news and general interest; sports; entertainment; women's and business. The coding system employed is modified from Courtney and Lockeretz.

Overall, the paper finds that advertisers in Thailand, China and America shared some gender stereotyping. In addition, Chinese and Thai magazine advertisements show more gender stereotyping, while US advertisements show more egalitarian representations. These findings are consistent with their respective culture backgrounds.

The use of content analysis is limited because it is mainly descriptive in nature and adequate causal explanations cannot be established. Besides, this research is cross‐sectional and the changes in gender role portrayals in cultures over time cannot be sufficiently captured.

The paper's observations support the hypotheses that the sociopolitical, cultural and economic differences of the three countries lead to different gender role attitudes in each society, and these different attitudes need to be considered by international advertisers. The paper also suggests that international advertisers should carefully consider the use of gender role stereotypes in their creative design, for the benefit both of the advertisers and the society.

No similar studies have been conducted on Thai advertisements and the most recent study in China was in 1997. It is also worthwhile to examine gender role portrayals in advertisements from three countries with unique sociopolitical backgrounds: the capitalistic USA (with Judeo‐Christian values), socialist China (with weak Confucian values) and capitalistic Thailand (with strong Confucian values).

Christian Churches in the United States are facing decline and, just like other organizations, must renew themselves. This study explores the culture of a successful Midwestern church and its climate for innovation in an effort to move this church toward renewal. Through multiple regressionanalysis, support was found for the literature’s claims that a strong adhocracy culture has a significantly positive relationship with climate for innovation. However, the findings offered startling support that a strong clan culture has an even greater significant correlation with climate for innovation. Interestingly, it was found that market and hierarchy cultures have a small inverse relationship with support for innovation, and also that market culture has a small inverse relationship with resource supply. These results have significant implications for churches, ministries, and other nonprofit leaders and their organizations.

The study’s purpose was to determine Extension agents’ (n= 111) perceived level of importance, knowledge, and training needs for leadership skills. Mean Weighted Discrepancy Scores were calculated to determine training needs. Participants’ perceived responses were average to above average importance for all skills; however, the participants’ perceived responses were varied concerning knowledge for most skills. The five highest rated training needs were resolve conflict, efficiently manage time, assess community needs, effectively lead a team, and prioritize tasks. The only common training need by Agriculture & Natural Resources (ANR), Family & Consumer Sciences (FCS), and 4-H agents was resolve conflict. Create vision was a training need only identified by FCS agents. The 4-H role needs were handle emotions and handle criticism.

Without feedback from members and former members, professional organizations run the risk of being stalemated. This study sought to explore perceptions of current and former members of the Association of Leadership Educators (ALE) related to the organization and the climate within the organization. No statistical differences were found in the perceptions of dues paying and non-dues paying members related to the climate of ALE as measured by the Team Climate Inventory (TCI); however, perceptions of both groups were fairly neutral. Open-ended questions were asked to elaborate, enhance, and clarify findings. Five themes emerged as successes achieved by ALE including the members, the ALE annual conference, information and idea sharing, networking, and the Journal of Leadership Education. Five themes also emerged as challenges facing the organization including a lack of direction or identity, recruitment and retention issues, lack of cohesion, lack of communication, and lack of participation.

Collegiate livestock judging is primarily an extracurricular activity that reinforces concepts taught in the classroom. Previous research has determined that participating on a livestock judging team can aid in the development of perceived life skills. Participants of this study indicated that their experience on a collegiate team helped them develop professional public speaking skills, learn the value of hard work and dedication, and be task and goal- oriented.

The purpose of this study is to analyze reported good institutional responsible research and innovation (RRI) practices from an organizational and learning perspective to discuss the usefulness of RRI as a broad umbrella concept.

This study connects neo-institutional and translation accounts of diffusion to different modes of learning and discusses reported best practices from 12 reports, including in total 23 organizations in the research system worldwide, in light of this theoretical framework. This study categorizes the good practices identified in the reports and discusses how the nature of the practices influences the potential learning from them. The authors then apply the results from the discussion of this study to current policy developments on RRI.

The two most often mentioned good practices overall are organizational policies and the establishment of organizational units, but the type of good practices recommended differs across the various aspects of the RRI umbrella concept. This diversity within the RRI construct is a practical argument against the effectiveness of RRI as an umbrella concept.

This study is novel in the fact that the authors, building on Wæraas (2020), systematically relate types of good practice to neo-institutional theory and translation perspectives explicitly combined with learning approaches and apply this approach in the field of research organizations. The policy implications from the empirical and theoretical analyses are novel and timely in these early phases of the EU funding framework programme Horizon Europe and can also be relevant for the increasingly important umbrella concept of Open Science.

THE Reference Department of Paisley Central Library today occupies the room which was the original Public Library built in 1870 and opened to the public in April 1871. Since that date two extensions to the building have taken place. The first, in 1882, provided a separate room for both Reference and Lending libraries; the second, opened in 1938, provided a new Children's Department. Together with the original cost of the building, these extensions were entirely financed by Sir Peter Coats, James Coats of Auchendrane and Daniel Coats respectively. The people of Paisley indeed owe much to this one family, whose generosity was great. They not only provided the capital required but continued to donate many useful and often extremely valuable works of reference over the many years that followed. In 1975 Paisley Library was incorporated in the new Renfrew District library service.

Engaging learners is one of the most important responsibilities of an educator. Finding opportunities to connect with individuals in a meaningful way is a powerful tool, particularly for leadership educators. The purpose of the study was to determine whether there were any statistically significant relationships between different demographic groups and core self-evaluations among a sample of adult agricultural leadership development program participants. The results of the study found that gender, educational attainment, and geographic region were not statistically significantly related to core self-evaluations. However, there was a statistically significant difference between groups in both the age and organizational level demographic clusters. A recommendation is for educators to use the findings as a starting point to inform learning interventions and to strive to accommodate the needs of individual learners accordingly.