Search results

The aim of this paper is to outline the approach and process in place within Kentz Engineers & Constructors to develop graduate engineers on an international basis.

The approach adopted is that of a case study which describes activities and processes within the organization and the rationale behind them, supported by appropriate material. The case study is based upon threads of experiences within the organization over an extended period of some years.

Findings include the need to facilitate experiential learning and provide mentoring within a socialization as well as developmental process.

This is a case study focusing on the experiences and practices of one organization. It does not represent an empirical study. However, it contains insights that may be of practical value within businesses and other organizations seeking to develop graduate engineers, or, more broadly, seeking to manage the transition of new workers.

This paper illustrates the approach of one international organization to the development of graduate engineers within the construction industry.

Focuses on business firms in Singapore, identifying the industries in which the Internet is being used for business. These firms are early adopters in the local environment where use of the Internet for business is a new phenomenon still, and they provide information about their Internet experience in terms of their use, perceptions, and the problems encountered. Finds that companies in seven major industries lead in the business use of the Internet in Singapore: computer and information technology; hospitality; manufacturing; travel; retail; publications; and banking and finance. Most of the survey respondents use the Internet for marketing and advertising, customer service and support, information gathering, and, to a lesser degree, electronic transactions. The respondents’ perception of the attributes of the Internet are largely positive. The problems encountered by the respondents include difficulty in locating information, rising costs of Internet use, and security.

In 1767, did Sir James Steuart predict the political and financial crises that started the French Revolution? Étienne de Sénovert, the editor and translator of Steuart’s work, seems to argue to this effect in the introduction to the first French edition of An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy in 1789. The visionary “prediction” set forth by Steuart was the following: if the king of France had introduced public credit, this would have changed the political balance in French political society, making it very unstable. The English and the French governments used different ways of borrowing money in 1760: the French king contracted debts with a network of financiers close to the government, while the English government borrowed on the credit markets through the intermediary of the Bank of England. The second of these methods constitutes public credit and has proved its efficiency. According to Steuart, implementing the English public credit system in France could have dangerous consequences. Landed interests and moneyed interests would compete for the control of the State. The author realized that the French nobility, the landowners, as a social and economic group would have no chance in facing such a powerful rival (the public creditors). In this chapter, the author analyzes Steuart’s “prediction” as a coherent part of his systematic and original approach to political economy. Steuart’s theories about the role of political economy and the role of “interest” are connected to his understanding of institutions. Introducing such a complex support for the value as public credit might have different consequences in France and England. Steuart thinks each country’s economy should be analyzed according to its own institutional and social context.

Steuart’s work was still relevant in 1789 for two reasons. Firstly, the author’s prediction of political antagonism between capitalists and nobility anticipated the political conflict about debt expressed by pamphleteers such as Sieyès, Mirabeau, and Clavière between 1787 and 1789. This is the context of Étienne de Sénovert’s claim: the political narrative built by the revolutionaries of 1789 (rescuing the “sacred” public debt from royal despotism) fitted Steuart’s prediction. This may have been the incentive for the translation and publication of his work in 1789 and 1790. Secondly, Steuart’s financial and monetary theory was at the heart of the project of financial reform that would lead to the assignats. Steuart’s (1767) theory of public finance and state power in 1789 provides a key to the understanding the events of the time, and to how actors tried to make sense of them. Steuart made another crucial observation about the deep effect of what he called “the modern economy” upon the power of the governments of Europe: even an absolute monarch could not damage public credit without destroying his own sovereignty.

Birding, the active seeking out and identification of birds, is a wide‐spread and fast growing avocation on this continent, and indeed throughout the world. Jon Rickert's A Guide to North American Bird Clubs lists 17 national/continental organizations for both professional ornithologists and amateur birders and 844 state, provincial, and local associations. In addition, there are those legions of “unorganized” bird watchers and occasional, inquisitive discoverers of backyard birds. Members of this diverse congregation of birders have at least one thing in common — the need for a reliable identification tool enabling them to correctly label the just‐seen, unfamiliar bird. A field guide is just such a tool.

Various achievements of Australia in the field of applied ethics from the 1980s to 2016 are outlined. The review covers academic scholarship, research and teaching; the ethics of business and actions to build ethics into the structures of enterprises. This follows the 3-fold categorization developed by De George (2012). A brief account of the formation and history of the Australian Association for Professional and Applied Ethics is included, as is a selection of scandals involving Australian organisations. Australia is shown to have made a significant contribution to the academic discipline of applied ethics and to have been aware of its position, distant from the English-speaking West and in the midst of nations of the global south.

This paper aims to examine issues of bribery, cronyism and nepotism in one of the most corrupt countries in Africa.

This is a single-country case study, drawing on material dating from the mid-1970s, including court cases.

The corruption is pervasive and systemic, showing severe problems with governance in general, in the sector and against corruption. Nonetheless, two operators, one South African and one Nigerian, have delivered extensive access to mobile networks.

The system of governance requires significant structural reforms, if the burden of corruption is to be reduced.

This paper sheds new and explicit light on the complex history of telecommunications in Nigeria. It adds to the small base of material on corruption in the telecommunications sector. It identifies issues that could usefully be taken up by institutions in Nigeria.

Engagement, motivation, and persistence are usually associated with positive outcomes. However, too much of it can overtax our psychophysiological system and put it at risk. On the basis of a neuro-dynamic personality and self-regulation model, we explain the neurobehavioral mechanisms presumably underlying engagement and how engagement, when overtaxing the individual, becomes automatically inhibited for reasons of protection. We explain how different intensities and patterns of engagement may relate to personality traits such as Self-directedness, Conscientiousness, Drive for Reward, and Absorption, which we conceive of as functions or strategies of adaptive neurobehavioral systems. We describe how protective inhibitions and personality traits contribute to phenomena such as disengagement and increased effort-sense in chronic fatigue conditions, which often affect professions involving high socio-emotional interactions. By doing so we adduce evidence on hemispheric asymmetry of motivation, neuromodulation by dopamine, self-determination, task engagement, and physiological disengagement. Not least, we discuss educational implications of our model.