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In this study, phytic acid was extracted from Jamaican sweet potato, which has been reported to contain a high phytic acid to zinc ratio and fed to Wistar rats for three weeks. Animals were then sacrificed and blood glucose, intestinal amylase activity and faecal minerals were determined. Blood glucose levels in all the groups fed phytic acid extract from sweet potato or commercial phytic acid were reduced compared to their controls. This lowering was more pronounced in the groups fed phytic acid extract from sweet potato or commercial phytic acid plus zinc supplement. Faecal zinc was significantly higher in the groups fed phytic acid extract from sweet potato compared to the controls in weeks 1 and 2. Supplementation of the diets with phytic acid extract from sweet potato or commercial phytic acid resulted in an increase in the faecal output of iron except for the group that was fed commercial phytic acid plus zinc. Overall, the supplementation of the rat diet with phytic acid extract from sweet potato resulted in a general increase in the output of these faecal minerals.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of factors such as attention, preparation, participation, feedback and engagement on the student learning performance.

Students of an undergraduate business course of a British university took part in the survey. The survey questionnaire was distributed to students during the revision week of the course and a total of 61 valid responses were gathered from them. The linear regression analysis using statistical package for the social sciences was performed to analyse the data.

The results indicated the significant relationships for all six hypotheses. The model explains a variance of 43.2 per cent in learning performance, which indicates that independent constructs contribute significantly on the research model’s performance.

First, the sample only provides the students’ views about the use of clickers in the classroom setting. Second, the sample size for the gathered data is small. Third, the variance explained by the research model is reasonably moderate and hence can be improved further.

This is the first study to explore the impact of factors such as attention, preparation, participation, feedback and engagement on the student learning performance in the UK educational setting.

It is well-known that significant production pressures exist on many construction projects and previous studies have suggested that this pressure is a contributory factor in safety incidents on sites. While research has established that production pressures exist, less is understood about the construction practices that occur when projects are under such pressures and their repercussion for safety. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Through an ethnographic approach on a large construction project in the UK, these practices were explored and unpacked. The lead researcher was a member of the Health and Safety department, and undertook participant observation as a main research tool for three years.

It was found that informal, covert and dangerous “piecework” strategies were adopted at the site level in direct response to scheduling demands. Construction workers were incentivised through extra finance and rest periods to finish the work quickly, which, in turn, prioritised production over safety. Unreasonable production pressures remain an unresolved problem in the construction industry and are, perhaps consequentially, being informally managed on-site.

This study improves our understanding of the complexities involved in the unresolved demands between production and safety on construction sites, which marks a step towards addressing this substantial challenge that is deeply ingrained within the industry.

The relationship between demographic factors and worker well-being has garnered increased attention, but empirical studies have shown to inconsistent results. This chapter addresses this issue by examining how age, gender, and race/ethnicity relate to worker well-being using large, representative samples. Data from the Gallup Healthways Index and Gallup World Poll provided information on both job and life satisfaction outcomes for full-time workers in the United States and 156 countries, respectively. In general, results indicated that increasing age was associated with more workers reporting job satisfaction and fewer people reporting stress and negative affect. Women were comparable to men in reported job satisfaction and well-being, but more women reported experiencing negative affect and stress. Less consistent well-being differences in ethnic/racial groups were found. Finally, we found strong evidence for direct and indirect national demographic effects on worker well-being showing need for considering workforce demography in future theory building. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

This chapter reviews empirical studies into the relationship between management control, strategy and sustainability.

The review explores the theoretical frameworks and models used in previous empirical research as well as the research questions and methods applied to empirically explore this emerging research area.

Even if a growing body of empirical research has emerged over the last decade, our knowledge of how companies design or use management control to support sustainability strategy appears to be limited, providing considerable scope for further research.

This review structures the state of our empirical knowledge in the area of management control, strategy and sustainability and makes suggestions for future research paths.

Decision-making has long been recognized as being at the core of organizational life. Yet, the cognitive mechanisms by which managers make decisions represent a critical field of exploration. In this context, business models (BMs) are cognitive representations of organizational architectures that managers use to orient their firms in the business environment. While BMs – as managerial schemas – have been extensively studied for their beneficial applications at the strategic level, scholarly attention has rarely focused on their dark side. In this chapter, we point out that BM thinking – that focuses excessively on established schemas – might narrow managerial cognition in the process of fine-tuning the current BM; in the process, opportunities for more radical BM innovation can be overlooked. We systematize March and Simon’s contribution on managerial cognition into a more comprehensive conceptual framework by integrating the perspectives of Kahneman, Baron, and Gollwitzer. The result is an epistemologically coherent framework for managerial cognition and decision-making that focuses on how managers can overcome cognitive biases that derive from a reliance on established BMs as schemas. We close this chapter with directions for further research.

Provides a general approach for the incorporation of the influence of insiders and outsiders in the union utility. In particular, the specification is such that the weight of the influence of the outsiders can vary; and this makes it possible to consider different degrees of union altruism and also to embrace all the previous work on the subject. Examines both the monopoly union and the efficient bargain cases. Comparative statics analysis provides some interesting results, such as that wages are more inflexible downwards.

ALMOST EVERY communication we receive from manufacturers or suppliers, whether sent direct or from professional public relations companies, claims that the firm concerned is the most important firm in its category.

All of us seek truth via objective inquiry into various human and nonhuman phenomena that nature presents to us on a daily basis. We are empirical (or nonempirical) decision makers who hold that uncertainty is our discipline, and that understanding how to act under conditions of incomplete information is the highest and most urgent human pursuit (Karl Popper, as cited in Taleb, 2010, p. 57). We verify (prove something as right) or falsify (prove something as wrong), and this asymmetry of knowledge enables us to distinguish between science and nonscience. According to Karl Popper (1971), we should be an “open society,” one that relies on skepticism as a modus operandi, refusing and resisting definitive (dogmatic) truths. An open society, maintained Popper, is one in which no permanent truth is held to exist; this would allow counter-ideas to emerge. Hence, any idea of Utopia is necessarily closed since it chokes its own refutations. A good model for society that cannot be left open for falsification is totalitarian and epistemologically arrogant. The difference between an open and a closed society is that between an open and a closed mind (Taleb, 2004, p. 129). Popper accused Plato of closing our minds. Popper's idea was that science has problems of fallibility or falsifiability. In this chapter, we deal with fallibility and falsifiability of human thinking, reasoning, and inferencing as argued by various scholars, as well as the falsifiability of our knowledge and cherished cultures and traditions. Critical thinking helps us cope with both vulnerabilities. In general, we argue for supporting the theory of “open mind and open society” in order to pursue objective truth.