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This chapter examines disability rights movement's rejection of a right to physician-assisted suicide (PAS). Supporters of PAS frame the right to enlist a physician's help in determining the nature and timing of one's death as a fundamental liberty interest and as a right to privacy. The disability opposition counters this with disparate impact and slippery slope arguments and stories of disability pride as a rhetorical rejection of a right it deems dangerous and discriminatory. In examining this clash of rights talk, this chapter analyzes the legal and political consequences of anti-rights rhetoric by a movement that is grounded in notions of autonomy and self-determination.

Self-determination theory (SDT), offers a theoretical framework for enhancing employee motivation and stimulating positive outcomes such as commitment, well-being and engagement, in organizations. This paper aims to investigate the application of SDT among leaders and delineate practical managerial approaches for supporting basic psychological needs in the workplace.

Participants were 51 leaders who had personally applied SDT with their own followers. Data were collected via free-listing method and analysed to extrapolate examples of SDT-application that are both practically salient and aligned to theoretic tenets of SDT.

The findings reveal how SDT is operationalized by leaders to support basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness in the workplace. The SDT-informed management strategies are discussed in relation to the literature and alongside case scenarios to illustrate approaches for integrating elements of SDT into day-to-day management activities.

Despite extensive literature support for SDT, very little empirical attention has been paid to examining how the theory is applied, interpreted and/or used by practitioners in real world settings. This research is the first to draw on the lived-experience of practitioners who have applied SDT, contributes previously unexplored strategies for supporting workers’ basic psychological needs and responds to calls for SDT research to identify a broader range of managerial behaviours that support employee motivation.

The purpose of this research is to focus on the serious but under‐examined incidence of fatalities and injuries among rail trackworkers. It identifies the pressures on trackwork, locating them within an analysis of the economic structure of the privatised rail industry and illustrates the consequences of these pressures at the operational level.

A series of semi‐structured interviews was held with management representatives of the infrastructure and maintenance companies, rail safety bodies and officials and representatives of the RMT. These were supplemented by focus‐group style discussions with track maintenance workers in Scotland and the North of England. The paper then relates these qualitative data to the analysis of recent major incidents which have involved fatalities of rail employees.

Within the structure of the post‐privatised industry, improvements to the safety regime are always in danger of being constrained by countervailing economic and organisational pressures. There is a marked discrepancy between the higher level safety structure and the experience of employees at track level.

There is virtually no workforce input into the construction of safety procedures despite the fact that rail workers' commitment to the industry represents a large untapped resource for safety improvement.

The rail industry in general, and trackwork in particular, have been conspicuously under‐researched since privatisation.

This study aims to identify the content in introductory business sustainability courses in the USA to determine the most frequently assigned reading material and its sustainability orientation.

In total, 81 introductory sustainable business course syllabi reading lists were analyzed from 51 US colleges and universities. The study utilized frequency counts for authors and readings and R analysis of key words to classify readings along the sustainability spectrum.

The study reveals the most frequently assigned authors and readings in US sustainable business courses (by program type) and places them along the sustainability spectrum from weak to strong. In total, 55 per cent of the top readings assigned in the sample advocate a weak sustainability paradigm, and 29 per cent of the top readings advocate a strong sustainability paradigm.

This study focused on reading lists of introductory courses in the USA; cases, videos and supplemental materials were excluded, and the study does not analyze non-US courses.

The findings of this study can inform instructors of the most commonly assigned authors and readings and identify readings that align with weak sustainability and strong sustainability. Instructors are now able to select sustainable business readings consistent with peers and which advance a weak or strong sustainability orientation.

This is the first research to identify the most commonly assigned authors and readings to aid in course planning. This is also the first research to guide instructors in identifying which readings represent weak versus strong sustainability.

Most Americans are keenly aware of the costs political corruption extracts on system support, fiscal policies and economic development, and ultimately, government effectiveness. Among a list of 10 challenges facing the nation, the public ranks political corruption as the nation's biggest crisis Samussen (2019). Importantly, this issue cuts across partisan and demographic lines. Members of both political parties and independents consistently cite political corruption as a serious problem facing the country.

However, there is a specific kind of political corruption that is disturbing for the health of American democracy – the corruption of Congress. Most Americans appear to have little faith in lawmakers to do the right thing. Majorities believe that Congress is out of touch with average Americans, focused on the needs of special interests, and is corrupt. To be sure, political corruption severely undermines government legitimacy and weakens the development of political, economic, and social structures. This chapter considers the problem of congressional corruption including what forms it takes, where it arises, what anti-corruption reforms are needed, and what these findings mean for the future of American democracy. More specifically, this chapter will permit us to examine if and how perceptions of congressional corruption influence citizens' interactions with government and provide a better understanding of citizens' policy preferences for regulating political corruption.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a soft computing model based on multi-objective evolutionary algorithm (MOEA), namely, modified micro genetic algorithm (MmGA) coupled with a decision tree (DT)-based classifier, in classifying and optimising the students’ online interaction activities as classifier of student achievement. Subsequently, the results are transformed into useful information that may help educator in designing better learning instructions geared towards higher student achievement.

A soft computing model based on MOEA is proposed. It is tested on benchmark data pertaining to student activities and achievement obtained from the University of California at Irvine machine learning repository. Additional, a real-world case study in a distance learning institution, namely, Wawasan Open University in Malaysia has been conducted. The case study involves a total of 46 courses collected over 24 consecutive weeks with students across the entire regions in Malaysia and worldwide.

The proposed model obtains high classification accuracy rates at reduced number of features used. These results are transformed into useful information for the educational institution in our case study in an effort to improve student achievement. Whether benchmark or real-world case study, the proposed model successfully reduced the number features used by at least 48 per cent while achieving higher classification accuracy.

A soft computing model based on MOEA, namely, MmGA coupled with a DT-based classifier, in handling educational data is proposed.

The emphasis of this survey is on motion picture reference material that has been published since 1982. This update does not, for the most part, include titles covered in a prior RSR article (1:4; 1983), written by myself, or in an even earlier article by Leslie Kane (7:1; 1979). In those few instances where titles that have appeared in the earlier RSR film surveys are discussed, it is because they now have a new subject emphasis.

Experimental design is a powerful technique for understanding a process, studying the impact of potential variables affecting a process and providing spontaneous insight for continuous quality improvement possibilities. It has proved to be very effective for improving the process yield, process performance and reducing process variability. A number of successful applications of the experimental design technique for process optimisation have been reported by both US and European manufacturers over the last ten years. This paper illustrates an application of Taguchi methods (TM) in an industrial setting for identifying the critical factors affecting a certain process and subsequently reducing process variability. Both the analysis of variance (ANOVA) on mean response and the signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR) have been carried out for determining the optimal condition of the process. A significant improvement in the process performance was observed in terms of variation reduction.

There has been an unprecedented increase in online learning worldwide, including in teacher education. However, student lurking can be a common issue, leading to a non-interactive learning environment.

The authors employed a qualitative case study with thematic analysis to examine a novel “self-directed” pre-service teacher online degree module that engaged students in regular peer-feedback, which intended to promote student engagement and interactivity. The research questions were as follows: To what extent did the seminar series represent the principles of self-directed learning and were learning outcomes effective from the process? And, how effective was the use of peer feedback?

The thematic analysis revealed that student progression and course completion was successful, and it represented some principles of self-directed learning; but (a) it cannot be presumed that pre-service teachers are competent in giving (peer) feedback and (b) pre-service teachers may need specific guidance and training for providing competent feedback.

This paper is highly original in respect of its combination of the self-directed learning framework with use of peer feedback, to engage students in an interactive learning environment. The present paper identifies that peer feedback is a powerful tool in online learning; peer feedback can supplement self- and teacher-assessment; but it should not be assumed that pre-service teachers are competent in providing (peer) feedback – pre-service teachers may need specific training in providing feedback.