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Despite the over-representation of stepfamilies in the clientele receiving protective services, there is still very little information about the different forms of the parental commitment of stepfathers in those families. However, the characteristics of families receiving child protective services (CPS) are likely to influence the way that the stepfathers’ commitment is expressed.

Taking into account the viewpoint of mothers (n = 10), stepfathers (n = 10), and adolescents (n = 10), this study attempted to document, using the free association method and semistructured interviews, the following: (1) the representations that the members of these stepfamilies had of the stepfathers’ parental commitment; and (2) the way in which engagement was expressed in daily life.

While the participants agreed that the stepfather had a parental role to play, that is to take care of the children, they did not necessarily agree about which dimensions were the most important. Whereas the adults emphasized the child-rearing dimension of this role and the necessary cooperation with the biological parents, the adolescents insisted on the relational aspect. The results likewise indicated that these men were very committed to their partners’ adolescents and showed that even in families challenged by problems that lead to involvement with CPS, stepfathers can play a positive, supportive role.

This study represents an important addition to the existing literature on the role of stepfathers in that it uses multiple measures and direct reports from father figures allowing us to explore the main dimensions of stepfather commitment.

From the 1960s onwards, students and members of the academic community on growing numbers of college and university campuses in the United States chose to confront the issue of apartheid by advocating divestment from corporations or financial institutions with any sort of presence in or relationship with South Africa. Student divestment advocates faced serious opposition from university administrators as well as opponents of institutional divestiture both at home and abroad. Despite these challenges, the academic community in the United States was one of the first arenas where anti-apartheid activism coalesced. This chapter examines the campaigns of students and educators who participated in the debate over divestment – to engage with the South African government and apartheid through dialogue and communication or to disengage completely from the country through withdrawal of financial investments. The anti-apartheid efforts of the academic community at Michigan State University, one of the first large research universities in the United States to confront the issue of apartheid and divestment at the university level and beyond, serves as a window to view academic activism against apartheid. The Southern Africa Liberation Committee (SALC), a consortium of students, faculty, and community members dedicated to aiding the liberation struggle of Southern Africa, led the efforts at Michigan State and collaborated with allies across Michigan and the United States. SALC focused most of its efforts on South Africa, though the organization also confronted the issue of South Africa's controversial occupation of South West Africa and the ongoing civil war in Angola.

When a crisis strikes, responders need to make sense of it to gain an understanding of its origins, nature and implications. In this way, crisis sensemaking guides the implementation of the response. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the sensemaking questions that responders need to address for achieving effective and efficient crisis management.

Data are drawn from six exercises, in which teams of professionals from different crisis organizations were confronted with two terrorist attacks. Just like in real incidents, these professionals convened in tactical response teams and formulated their response collectively.

The exercises demonstrate that crisis responders do not just have to make sense of the crisis, but also of their own roles and actions. They raise and address three sensemaking questions: What is happening in this crisis? (i.e. situational sensemaking), Who am I in this crisis? (i.e. identity-oriented sensemaking) and How does it matter what I do? (i.e. action-oriented sensemaking).

Crisis preparation tends to focus on plans and systems that accelerate or improve the construction of a situational understanding, while this study suggests the need of more preparatory attention for crisis responders’ roles and actions.

The research extends crisis sensemaking literature beyond the restricted focus on the incident itself by showing that responders are also trying to grasp their own role and how their actions matter when they are engaged in crisis response.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the social network in an emergency management organization during a large exercise held in Greenland in 2016. Inspired by approaches in business and organizational studies the aim is to investigate the flow of information through formal as well as informal channels.

Social network analysis is applied to model this flow and the social network is analyzed with regard to core/periphery structure and actor centrality. In order to explore the relationships between actor attributes such as age, years of experience, operational Arctic experience, smoking and personal interests, a regression analysis is employed with membership of the network core as dependent variable.

The findings show that smoking, rank and ad hoc membership of the emergency management organization influence the odds for being in the core of this particular social network most. Finally, some strengths and weaknesses of the approach are discussed as well as implications for future research in the field.

Emergency management tasks are often performed more through informal coordination than “by the book.” A medium for such informal coordination is the social network that emerges among individual actors who like each other, share interests and experience and communicate directly with each other. Emergency managers use that kind of social network to cut red tape and solve urgent problems and share knowledge in ways not mapped in plans or shown in organigrams. Most practitioners are aware of this, but it is a field not well theorized.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a model for a target searching problem in a two-dimensional region with time constraints. The proposed model facilitates the search operation by minimizing the mission time and fuel usage, and the search operation is performed by a set of agents divided into a number of groups.

The authors have applied optimization techniques, Cartesian product, inclusion–exclusion principle, cooperative strategy, Shapley value, fuzzy Shapley function and Choquet integral to model the problem.

The proposed technique optimizes the placement of base stations that minimizes the sortie length of the agents. The results show that the cooperative strategy outperforms the non-cooperative strategy. The Shapley values quantify the rewards of each group based on their contributions to the search operation, whereas the fuzzy Shapley values determine the rewards of each group based on their contributions and level of cooperation in the search operation.

The proposed model can be applied to model many real-time problems such as patrolling in international borders, urban areas, forests and managing rescue operations after natural calamities, etc. Therefore, defence organizations, police departments and other operation management sectors will be benefitted by applying the proposed approach.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, determining the optimal locations of base stations in a region is not explored in the existing works on target searching problems with fuel constraints. The proposed approach to cooperatively search the targets in a region is new. Introducing the Shapley function and fuzzy Shapley function is a novel idea to quantify the rewards of each group based on their contributions and level of cooperation in the search operation. This paper addresses these unexplored areas.

The purpose of this study is to frame digital transformation (DT) within municipalities to improve the life cycles of urban infrastructure.

The study provides the results from a systematic review of the literature on concepts of DT and its implications for municipalities, barriers and challenges to DT, as well existing DT frameworks for municipalities and their built assets. This literature review leads to the development of a DT framework to help cities conduct a planned and federated DT beforehand. Then, workshops are conducted with two major Canadian municipalities.

The results of these studies point to the need for a dedicated DT framework for municipalities because of their particular context and their role and proximity to citizens. The theoretical framework develops 22 elements, which are divided among 6 categories. Through its application, the framework helps to identify and target the predominant issues hindering the DT of municipalities, specifically “legacy practices” and “data management.”

Limitations include limited experimental conditions and small sample size. Further work is needed to validate the framework. Other approaches are advocated to complement the data collection and analysis to generate more convincing results.

The theoretical framework was validated through two case studies on two large Canadian municipalities.

Municipalities maximize the value they provide to citizens and to be at the forefront of resilience and sustainability concerns. The use of technology, digital processes and initiatives helps cities to improve planning, optimize works and provide better services to citizens.

The framework is original in that it specifically aligns assets management with DT in a municipal context.

The purpose of this paper is to illuminate an example of current practices and processes that enable transformation in the workplace in a South African multi-unit hospitality and tourism business, affording previously disadvantaged people the opportunity to advance in the organization and participate in the management and ownership of that organization.

A constructivist grounded theory methodological framework is used for the collection of data, analysis and theoretical development, utilizing Charmaz’s (2006, 2011, 2014) approach in both the collection and analysis of data as well as the theoretical perspective that emerged from the research process. Intensive semi-structured recorded interviews were conducted with the owner and managers of the company. Following transcription of the interviews, multi-level data coding allowed the move from an inductive to an abductive process with theoretical sampling allowing the shift toward conceptual and theoretical development.

Study findings provide insight about the processes and practices that enabled previously disadvantaged people to move into management and ownership of a multi-unit South African hospitality and tourism business. Leapfrogging emerged as a theoretical perspective that provides interpretive understanding of atypical upward employment mobility, i.e. “human leapfrogging.”

While this study is limited to a single hospitality and tourism company in South Africa that is not necessarily typical of other South African businesses, it provides a vivid illustration of the impact that visionary leadership and a genuine desire to “level the playing field” can have on individuals, both personally and professionally, and their wider communities.

Leapfrogging theory in the context of “human leapfrogging” suggests innovative business practices for fast-tracking marginalized individuals out of poverty and provides an urgently needed theoretical perspective for this process.

To the authors’ knowledge, the leapfrogging concept has not previously been applied in the context of atypical employment progression within the corporation, nor has its impact on the corporation and the lives of the affected individuals and their communities been examined.

The purpose of this review was to highlight the association between ID and obesity in toddlers and preschool children.

This review aimed to review and evaluate literature of the published research discussing the relationship between ID and overweight and obesity in children under the age of 5 years. Conflicting results of iron status in overweight and obese children under the age of 5 years had been found. However, most articles concluded that ID is associated significantly with overweight and obesity in children because of the systemic inflammatory reaction which is considered the major cause of ID; hepcidin with its resultant effect in decreasing duodenal absorption of iron; in addition to other causes including dietary and genetic factors.

Conflicting results of iron status in overweight and obese children under the age of 5 years had been found, but most articles concluded that ID is associated significantly with overweight and obesity in children, with systemic inflammatory reaction being the major cause through hepcidin with its resultant effect in decreased duodenal absorption of iron, in addition to other causes including dietary and genetic factors.

Many nutrients have been associated with weight gain and ID development. Unbalanced diet either in excess or shortage may affect weight status and serum iron profile. Future research is needed to study more in depth the association between ID and obesity in toddlers and preschool children and to further explore the various factors involved in pathogenesis of ID.