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The impact of climate disasters (e.g., floods, storms, or landslides), which are generally of low intensity and high frequency, should not be overlooked in developing countries. Global experiences related to the damage due to these disasters indicate that such events can be devastating in communities that are vulnerable to hazardous impacts. Cumulative effects of climate disasters are a sign of a potential catastrophe. Moreover, the recent increase in these events poses additional issues that increase the cost of local public administration, including emergency operation and infrastructure recovery. This chapter explains key problems related to climate disasters that are increasing, particularly in the local area of developing countries, and clarifies the need to incorporate climate disaster risk reduction into public development planning and practice. The chapter also provides descriptions of the research location, approaches of the study, and the structure of this book.

In management research, little is known about how ethno-racial minority leaders interact with similar employees in supervisor–subordinate relationships. This study aims to examine and provide a deeper understanding of individuals’ negative reactions to similar others, thus highlighting the double-edged nature of demographic similarity which has historically predicted positive affective reactions.

Using a survey design, the authors collected data from supervisor-subordinate dyads from multiple companies from the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex in Texas, USA. They used ordinary least squares regression and conditional process analysis to test the hypotheses, including a two-stage moderation and moderated mediation.

Incorporating social context, i.e. minority status, as a moderator, the results show that ethno-racial minority leaders supervising ethno-racially similar subordinates were more vulnerable to relationship conflict than non-minority dyads. This, in turn, is linked to a reduction in the leaders’ feelings of trust toward their ethno-racially similar subordinate.

This study draws on social identity theory and status characteristics theory to explain the contradictory processes and outcomes associated with dyadic ethno-racial similarity and suggests the conditions under which dyad racial similarity is connected with unfavorable outcomes. This framework helps to broaden the boundary conditions of relational demography to provide a more nuanced explanation of when and why minority leaders in demographically similar hierarchical dyads experience more relationship conflict, which ultimately diminishes trust.

Biography and autobiography are among the most heavily used elements of a public library's bookstock, but their dual functions as information sources and as general reading material create problems of classification and utilisation. Libraries need to acquire the classic works in the genre. Some features are discussed which may help to define the works of genuine and lasting quality: the objectivity of the biographer; the occupation and celebrity of the subject; the extent to which the biography relates the public and private lives of the “biographee”; and the originality of treatment.

The study aims to present an in-depth review of previous research on relational demography (individual–team dissimilarity) over the past 30 years. In doing so, the authors highlighted the main theoretical underpinnings, teased out the common methodological approaches and identified the major mediating processes and contingency factors that influence relational demography's effect on individual outcomes in teams.

The authors searched and examined eight databases (ABI/INFORM Complete, ProQuest, EBSCO, Web of Science, JSTOR, PsycARTICLES, PsycINFO and Science Direct) and distilled 106 studies from 34 journals. The authors synthesized and analyzed this body of work to identify extant patterns and themes in relational demography.

The findings reveal that the majority of theories used are categorized into three segments. The antecedents used are mainly surface- and deep-level variables, while the outcomes are classified into personal- and work-related constructs. For research testing, Euclidean distance and Blau's index are primarily utilized as heterogeneity measures, while various forms of regression are used as the analytical tool for hypotheses testing.

Extant literature reviews on relational demography are scant. This study provides an extensive synthesis and analysis of the studies in the area over the past 30 years and offers an agenda that can motivate future research.

Presents a special issue, enlisting the help of the author’s students and colleagues, focusing on age, sex, colour and disability discrimination in America. Breaks the evidence down into manageable chunks, covering: age discrimination in the workplace; discrimination against African‐Americans; sex discrimination in the workplace; same sex sexual harassment; how to investigate and prove disability discrimination; sexual harassment in the military; when the main US job‐discrimination law applies to small companies; how to investigate and prove racial discrimination; developments concerning race discrimination in the workplace; developments concerning the Equal Pay Act; developments concerning discrimination against workers with HIV or AIDS; developments concerning discrimination based on refusal of family care leave; developments concerning discrimination against gay or lesbian employees; developments concerning discrimination based on colour; how to investigate and prove discrimination concerning based on colour; developments concerning the Equal Pay Act; using statistics in employment discrimination cases; race discrimination in the workplace; developments concerning gender discrimination in the workplace; discrimination in Japanese organizations in America; discrimination in the entertainment industry; discrimination in the utility industry; understanding and effectively managing national origin discrimination; how to investigate and prove hiring discrimination based on colour; and, finally, how to investigate sexual harassment in the workplace.

This paper examines the growth of private corporate influence in American higher education. A key question is corporate philanthropy and privatization at what cost? The terms often used in these discussions are commodification of the academy, privatization of a public good, or the increasing corporatization of higher education. Today, American universities are responding to the demands of the marketplace, as knowledge is being used as a form of venture capital and where professors have become academic entrepreneurs and students have become consumers. The foregoing is made more complex as an increasingly diverse student pool seeks access to postsecondary education, in the face of federal policies that serve to restrict access and financial support. A discussion of the collateral costs of our corporate culture as we face challenges to access, equity, and opportunity in America in the twenty-first century concludes this paper.

The primary school in any rural village is a significant and vivid institution. Its classrooms, playground, buses, staffroom, governing body, PTA committee, religious celebrations, educational visits and community events are a focus not just for village pride but for parental and social aspirations and tensions. Village schools are special local spaces, in which the bite is keenly felt of national education policies. They are sources and sites of friendships, rivalries and divisions amongst both children and adults; places where celebrations and disappointments occur on a daily basis; an important local employer and reliant on a range of committed volunteers. Village schools are genuinely lively and dramatic places.

But not in The Archers. The mostly invisible children of Ambridge simply board a bus to Loxley Barrett aged five, then mysteriously alight aged 11 at Borchester Green or the fee-paying Cathedral School. During those primary years Ambridge’s children, parents and listeners seem blissfully unaffected by tests, snow, bullying, crazes, curriculum change, poor teachers, brilliant teaching assistants, academisation, Ofsted inspections, fussy governors, budget crises or any other rural educational reality.

In this chapter we consider why primary education, a topic that dominates the lives and conversations of real village families from all backgrounds, seems to be of such insignificance to the inhabitants of Ambridge?

Previous quantitative research documents that college students with disabilities do not attain higher education at rates equal to their nondisabled peers. This qualitative study posits that socioeconomic status (SES) is a determinant of this discrepancy, and explores how SES and disability shape the college experience of New York City (NYC) students with learning disabilities (LDs), specifically.

Research findings from semi-structured interviews with students with LDs (n = 10) at a low-SES and a high-SES colleges are presented against the backdrop of administrative data from NYC baccalaureate-granting colleges (n = 44), disability staff surveys (n = 21), and disability staff interviews (n = 9). Examined through the lens of political economy, qualitative data demonstrate the ways colleges create environments that enable or hinder student success through difference in policy implementation.

Student themes like stress, identity, and entitlement are discussed against the theoretical and empirical exploration of the intersectionality of SES and disability. Socioeconomic differences are linked to variation in students’ college choice, accessing evaluations, requesting accommodations, and receiving supplementary supports.

This paper aims to describe the conduct and outcomes of an integrated assessment (IA) of the vulnerability to climate change of government service provision at regional scale in New South Wales, Australia. The assessment was co-designed with regional public sector managers to address their needs for an improved understanding of regional vulnerabilities to climate change and variability.

The study used IA of climate change impacts through a complex adaptive systems approach incorporating social learning and stakeholder-led research processes. Workshops were conducted with stakeholders from NSW government agencies, state-owned corporations and local governments representing the tourism, water, primary industries, human settlements, emergency management, human health, infrastructure and natural landscapes sectors. Participants used regional socioeconomic profiling and climate projections to consider the impacts on and the need to adapt community service provision to future climate.

Many sectors are currently experiencing difficulty coping with changes in regional demographics and structural adjustment in the economy. Climate change will result in further impacts on already vulnerable systems in the forms of resource conflicts between expanded human settlements, the infrastructure that supports them and the environment (particularly for water); increased energy costs; and declining agricultural production and food security.

This paper describes the application of meta-analysis in climate change policy research and frames climate change as a problem of environmental pollution and an issue of development and social equity.