Search results

This paper investigates the nature of port-city relationships in two major port regions of the world, Europe and Asia. Although this issue is well analyzed through either isolated case studies or general models, it proposes a complementary approach based on urban and port indicators available for 121 port cities. In terms of demographic size and container traffic, it shows the decline of port-urban dependence, stemming from changes in global transportation and urban development. However, European and Asian port cities are not identically confronted to the same challenges, notably in terms of their hinterlands. A factor analysis highlights a regional differentiation of port-city relationships according to their insertion in both urban and port systems, with a core-periphery dualism in Europe and a port-city hierarchy in Asia. Thus, the distance to inland markets for European ports and the size of coastal markets for Asian ports are the main factors to explain the nature of port-city relationships in the two areas. It helps to evaluate which European and Asian port cities are comparable beyond their cargo volumes, by putting together micro (local environments) and macro (regional patterns) factors.

Bureaucracy to a large extent entrenches orderliness and productive means of achieving goals in both public and private organisations across the world. However, bureaucracy is not suitable in the management of hospitals due to its peculiar nature of operations. This study investigates the conundrum of bureaucratic processes and health-care service delivery in government hospitals in Nigeria.

The study surveyed 600 outpatients and attendees visiting tertiary and government hospitals in Nigeria using descriptive design to obtained data from the respondents. A research instrument, questionnaire, was used to gather data. Out of the 600 outpatients visiting the 20 hospitals in government and tertiary hospitals, 494 responses were returned from the attendees. The study employed random sampling strategy to collect the information.

The findings of this study were that service delivery in government hospitals were in adverse position on all the four constructs of bureaucratic dimensions as against quality of service delivery in hospitals in Nigeria. It discovered that bureaucratic impersonality cannot impact on the quality of service delivery in government hospitals in Nigeria. Separation and division of labour among health workers have no significant effect on quality service delivery in government hospitals. Formal rules and regulations (administrative procedure, rules, and policies) prevent quality service delivery in government hospitals in Nigeria. Also, patient’s waiting time was not significant to the quality of service delivery in government hospitals.

The results are constrained with dimensions of bureaucratic processes. Thus, the implication of this study is that bureaucracy in the Nigerian public hospitals is an unnecessary marriage which should be carefully separated and de-emphasised for quality service delivery in the hospitals to thrive.

Largely, this study is practical essential as it unearths the irrelevant operations procedure that hinder progress in Nigerian hospitals.

The study accomplishes recognised importance to survey how bureaucracy impedes quality service delivery in government hospitals. This study has provided a vital clue to elements that will bring rapid attention to patients’outcome in Nigerian hospitals and health-care facilities which hitherto has not been emphasised. The study has contributed to the existing body of knowledge associated to healthcare service quality in developing country.

The primary purpose of this study is to determine if the main character is a shapeshifter and, if so, how does the tale contribute to shapeshifting lore.

The focus of the study is confined to a version of the tale that appears in Jane Yolen's Folktales From Around the World (1986) and on summaries of other versions of shapeshifting tales when needed. Support for the findings is provided by an examination of the observations and rhetorical techniques employed by what appears to be an unreliable narrator and selected knowledge and practices from a variety of academic disciplines.

The research findings neither confirm nor deny that the main character is or is not a shapeshifter.

Instead, the critical reading confirms the traditional characterization of folktales as coming from diverse folk roots and disappearing or changing as they circulate through geographical space and narrative time.

It also implies that the tale has outgrown its practical and social folk roots and now extends far beyond that of traditional shapeshifting or literary folktales.

By bringing to light the racial and gender fears, ignorance and emotional and physical violence that lurk just below the surface of the society from which serpent-woman emerges, the study creates a haunting vision of the embedded biases that lurk just below the surface of many societies.

To this author's knowledge, this is the first study of this tale to appear in publication. The findings need further investigation.