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Office automation has arrived. Traditional office functions such as dispersal of mail and typing have become electronic mail and word processing. Automation of these functions is typically undertaken to reduce labor costs and to improve quality in communication and text preparation. Not only have traditional office functions been computerized, but automation is creating new tasks for the office; for example, strategic human resource planning via human resource information systems and materials requirement planning for just‐in‐time inventory systems. Office technology has changed, and with it, office functions.

This chapter discusses the application of fuzzy cognitive map (FCM) modelling to construction management (CM) challenges and problems. It focuses on the critical issue of managing the complexity and uncertainty inherent in CM by providing a new intelligent layer that enhances classical approaches to construction modelling and management. It investigates how the myriad types of internal and external factors affecting the feasibility and performance of construction projects can be modelled using a fuzzy hybrid method that explores the complex relationships among many contributing factors and assesses and evaluates their impacts on past and future projects. This chapter proposes a hybrid modelling approach in the traditional context of cost, schedule and risk management and describes how augmenting and enhancing existing state-of-the-art tools and processes in CM can assist construction managers. This chapter provides a background on the theory of FCMs, presents foundational and current research, and explains how to apply this approach in the CM domain. This chapter also provides a detailed description of how to develop, modify and employ interactive models to specific CM challenges and problems. It includes a customisable, interactive base model and demonstrates how the model has been applied to specific CM events and issues. Examples are presented that highlight the interplay between project-specific goals and characteristics and the way these impact the interrelated and often opposing triad of cost, schedule and risk. The presented examples and practical applications make this state-of-the-art approach useful to both academic and industry practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to explore epistemic conditions to make a comparative anthropology on contract thinking, regarding what could be defined as normative principles of democracy in organisations. Also to examine the influence of seminal works to contract thinking today, i.e. Psychological contract (Denise M. Rousseau) and Social contract (Jean‐Jacques Rousseau).

Use of a Seven normative criteria comparative framework discriminating forms of democratic contracts today.

The paper presents a grid to assess later works on psychological contracts; and criteria defining a “democratic contractualism”.

The paper assesses the initial theory of psychological contracts and its reception from 1995 to 2005.

The paper strengthens the psychological contracts' framework with historical and external comparisons.

This chapter presents a qualitative investigation of lecturers’ perceptions of critical thinking and how this influenced how they taught. All of the participants taught the same first-year university chemistry course. This case study provides insights about how there may need to be fundamental shifts in lecturers’ perceptions about learning and the development of critical thinking skills so that they can enhance knowledge and understanding of chemistry as well as advance the students’ critical thinking. Recommendations are made for professional learning for lecturers and for changing the “chemistry” of the design of learning experiences through valuing critical thinking in assessments and making critical thinking more explicit throughout the course. The authors argue that critical thinking must be treated as a developmental phenomenon.

The Marquis de Sade wrote that people behave differently in separate spaces and that, in different environments, they more easily reveal their true predilections. Throughout de Sade's writings, he reveals ways that hidden rooms, closets, castles, brothels, and monasteries can be used as spaces to unleash inner evil. Conveyed within de Sade's writings are ways in which characters actively change their settings in order to create these heterotopias – or spaces that are separate from normal routines. The role that separate spaces play in maintaining alternative behaviors has not been adequately examined in either de Sade's writings or in heterotopia literature. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the inner workings of a heterotopia frozen in time and space – a small town family business. This query merits exploration because the incestuous, atemporal behaviors that de Sade enacted can manifest themselves in family businesses. To examine this facet of family business, a customized methodology will be introduced – the Sadean duography. This manuscript is beneficial to practitioners in family businesses who seek to understand the hazards of inherting or purchasing new businesses, and to scholars in entrepreneurship and organizational studies seeking a deeper understanding of the role of heterotopias, also known as third spaces.

This chapter examines the everyday experiences of short women, focusing on the problems they face and the coping strategies used to navigate being short in a heightist society. Further, this chapter views height as a stigmatized identity, which both negatively and positively impacts short women.

Sixteen qualitative interviews were conducted with women 5′2″ and under.

Using the literature on stress, and coping models laid out by social psychologists, this chapter elucidates the unique place of short women in American society.

While there has been a wealth of literature on how short stature impacts men, research on how short stature impacts women has been scant.

An appreciation, by colleagues, of the work of Denise Lecoultre for the OECD.

The purpose of this monograph is to present the first English translation of a unique French colonial report on women living under colonial rule in West Africa.

The issue begins with a discussion of the contribution this report makes to the history of social development policy in Africa, and how it serves the on‐going critique of colonisation. This is followed by the English translation of the original report held in the National Archives of Senegal. The translation is accompanied by explanatory notes, translator’s comments, a glossary of African and technical terms, and a bibliography.

The discussion highlights contemporary social development policies and practices which featured in identical or similar forms in French colonial social policy.

As the report demonstrates, access to basic education and improving maternal/infant health care have dominated the social development agenda for women in sub‐Saharan Africa for over a century, and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future in the Millennium Development Goals which define the international community’s agenda for social development to 2015. The parallels between colonial and post‐colonial social policies in Africa raise questions about the philosophical and cultural foundations of contemporary social development policy in Africa and the direction policy is following in the 21st century.

Though the discussion adopts a consciously postcolonial perspective, the report that follows presents a consciously colonial view of the “Other”. Given the parallels identified here between contemporary and colonial policy‐making, this can only add to the value of the document in exploring the values that underpin contemporary social development practice.