Search results
1 – 10 of 25Patrick Nunn and Roselyn Kumar
Climate change poses diverse, often fundamental, challenges to livelihoods of island peoples. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate that these challenges must be better…
Abstract
Purpose
Climate change poses diverse, often fundamental, challenges to livelihoods of island peoples. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate that these challenges must be better understood before effective and sustainable adaptation is possible.
Design/methodology/approach
Understanding past livelihood impacts from climate change can help design and operationalize future interventions. In addition, globalization has had uneven effects on island countries/jurisdictions, producing situations especially in archipelagoes where there are significant differences between core and peripheral communities. This approach overcomes the problems that have characterized many recent interventions for climate-change adaptation in island contexts which have resulted in uneven and at best only marginal livelihood improvements in preparedness for future climate change.
Findings
Island contexts have a range of unique vulnerability and resilience characteristics that help explain recent and proposed responses to climate change. These include the sensitivity of coastal fringes to climate-environmental changes: and in island societies, the comparatively high degrees of social coherence, closeness to nature and spirituality that are uncommon in western contexts.
Research limitations/implications
Enhanced understanding of island environmental and social contexts, as well as insights from past climate impacts and peripherality, all contribute to more effective and sustainable future interventions for adaptation.
Originality/value
The need for more effective and sustainable adaptation in island contexts is becoming ever more exigent as the pace of twenty-first-century climate change increases.
Details
Keywords
Stefano Moncada, Lino Pascal Briguglio, Hilary Bambrick and Ilan Kelman
Karen Singer-Freeman, Christine Robinson and Linda Bastone
Our chapter addresses the balance assessment professionals must strike in supporting academic freedom, shared governance practices, and learning improvement efforts within…
Abstract
Our chapter addresses the balance assessment professionals must strike in supporting academic freedom, shared governance practices, and learning improvement efforts within colleges and universities in the United States. Specifically, we address how assessment professionals (faculty or staff whose primary job involves accreditation or the assessment of student learning) can encourage increased educational equity while supporting academic freedom. The authors offer a unique perspective. As former faculty members, current assessment practitioners, and a current academic administrator, we work to ensure that our institutions are using assessments of student learning to improve learning for all students. This work gives us insight into the ways in which assessment information shapes institutional efforts, balancing the rights of faculty to control the curriculum with the rights of historically underserved students (including students from underserved ethnic or racial groups, first generation college students, students from low-income households, and students with special needs or disabilities) to receive a quality education. We propose that one solution to this apparent conflict is to provide faculty with data that allow them to analyze the ways in which their assessment choices influence educational equity. To contextualize our work in this area we summarize institutional and faculty freedoms and discuss areas of conflict. We then describe ways to reduce areas of conflict by creating a culture of inquiry that centers around consideration of data and opportunities to modify assessments to increase educational equity.
Details
Keywords
Tim Hallett and Amelia Hawbaker
The “micro” turn in institutional research is a welcome development in a field that has commonly adopted a macro approach to the study of institutions. Nevertheless, research in…
Abstract
The “micro” turn in institutional research is a welcome development in a field that has commonly adopted a macro approach to the study of institutions. Nevertheless, research in the emergent “microinstitutional” tradition often ignores a fundamental social form: social interaction. The goal of this chapter is to bring this form of society back into institutional analysis, as a key mesocomponent of an “inhabited institutional” approach. The authors argue that social interactions are vital to the understandings of institutions, how they operate, and their impact on society. The authors advance inhabited institutionalism as a mesosociological approach that is consistent with key premises of institutional theory.
Details
Keywords
Holly Chiu, Dov Fischer and Hershey Friedman
Board diversity has been an important topic in corporate governance. Extant literature examines the overall diversity in the boardroom and its impact. However, since important…
Abstract
Purpose
Board diversity has been an important topic in corporate governance. Extant literature examines the overall diversity in the boardroom and its impact. However, since important decisions are usually taken by the committees, it is important to also examine diversity in committees. We use the Coca-Cola Company as the case study and examine its diversity in both audit and finance committees. Our goal is to raise the awareness of researchers, board nominating committees, and diverse directors themselves, as to whether diverse directors are placed in the right positions to allow them to contribute their diverse views and experiences.
Methodology/Approach
We conducted a case study of the Coca-Cola Company using its proxy statement in both 2016 and 2018.
Findings
While Coca-Cola’s self-reported board diversity stood at 27% in 2016, and increased to 31% by 2018, the critical audit and finance committees showed a distinct lack of diversity. Focusing on gender diversity for the purposes of this chapter, we investigated two possibilities: (1) that the lack of committee diversity is due to the lack of finance and leadership skills of those board members who were from underrepresented groups, but this possibility does not seem likely, (2) that the presence of a female CFO removed the urgency to place board members from underrepresented groups on the audit and finance committees.
Value
We provide a cautionary perspective on the implementation of diversity policies at the highest levels of an organization. The pursuit of diversity, like other admirable corporate goals, can degenerate into a check-the-box mentality. When this happens, diversity can become viewed as a substitute for real competency rather than a complement to existing competencies.
Practical Implications
It is suggested that boards revise the recruiting and selecting process to include more female candidates, and be sensitive how and where those diverse directors can best contribute their perspectives and experiences.
Details
Keywords
The following bibliography focuses mainly on programs which can run on IBM microcomputers and compatibles under the operating system PC DOS/MS DOS, and which can be used in online…
Abstract
The following bibliography focuses mainly on programs which can run on IBM microcomputers and compatibles under the operating system PC DOS/MS DOS, and which can be used in online information and documentation work. They fall into the following categories:
FOURTEEN years ago 16% of all employees in our manufacturing industries were what are commonly described as ‘white collar’ workers. They belonged to the group that includes…
Abstract
FOURTEEN years ago 16% of all employees in our manufacturing industries were what are commonly described as ‘white collar’ workers. They belonged to the group that includes clerical, technical and administrative staffs. If that seems a very high proportion what can be thought of the fact that by 1960 the figure had risen to 21%? The actual rate of growth is even more startling. During that 12 years the total number of employees in manufacturing industry increased by 12% but in the same period the ‘white collar’ workers in that section of the economy rose by 48%, according to figures issued by the Ministry of Labour.
FOURTEEN years ago 16% of all employees in our manufacturing industries were what are commonly described as ‘white collar’ workers. They belonged to the group that includes…
Abstract
FOURTEEN years ago 16% of all employees in our manufacturing industries were what are commonly described as ‘white collar’ workers. They belonged to the group that includes clerical, technical and administrative staffs. If that seems a very high proportion what can be thought of the fact that by 1960 the figure had risen to 21%? The actual rate of growth is even more startling. During that 12 years the total number of employees in manufacturing industry increased by 12% but in the same period the ‘white collar’ workers in that section of the economy rose by 48%, according to figures issued by the Ministry of Labour.
To discuss and review the shift to computer enhanced self‐monitoring CCTV surveillance systems of public spaces and the social implications of this shift.
Abstract
Purpose
To discuss and review the shift to computer enhanced self‐monitoring CCTV surveillance systems of public spaces and the social implications of this shift.
Design/methodology/approach
A review of the research and evaluation literature concerning CCTV surveillance systems culling out the history of public space CCTV systems and the concerns associated with first and second generation CCTV surveillance.
Findings
The main difference between first and second generation surveillance is the change from a “dumb camera” that needs a human eye to evaluate its images to a computer‐linked camera system that evaluates its own video images. Second generation systems reduce the human factor in surveillance and address some of the basic concerns associated with first generation surveillance systems such as data swamping, boredom, voyeurism, and profiling. Their enhanced capabilities, though, raise new concerns, particularly the expansion of surveillance and its intrusiveness.
Research limitations/implications
Additional research is needed to assess CCTV surveillance on a set of social dynamics such as informal guardianship activities by citizens.
Practical implications
The adoption of computer‐enhanced CCTV surveillance systems should not be an automatic response to a public space security problem and their deployment should not be decided simply on the technology's availability or cost.
Originality/value
This paper provides a concise overview of the concerns associated with first generation CCTV surveillance and how the evolution of computer‐enhanced CCTV surveillance systems will alter and add to these concerns. For researchers it details research questions that need to be addressed. For practitioners and government officials considering the use of public space CCTV surveillance it provides a set of issues that should be considered prior to system adoption or deployment.
Details