Search results
1 – 10 of over 1000Purpose: In this chapter, I analyze proceedings from 2015 when the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) was asked to determine whether Dutee Chand, an Indian sprinter, could…
Abstract
Purpose: In this chapter, I analyze proceedings from 2015 when the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) was asked to determine whether Dutee Chand, an Indian sprinter, could compete as a female athlete. Excluded on the basis that her naturally high testosterone levels conferred an unfair athletic advantage, Chand argued that existing policies in international sport were scientifically flawed. The purpose of the analysis is to examine whether the case led to a shift in the gender politics of sport, law, and science.
Methodology/Approach: I present a textual analysis of the arbitral award document, drawing on feminist methodology to identify where and how the adjudicating panel’s assessment of the case was gendered.
Findings: The CAS decision defined the right to compete as primarily a matter for science to decide, in the process obscuring the gendered and tilted playing field upon which scientific knowledge production takes place. Furthermore, the right to unconditional recognition as a woman was reduced to science alone.
Social Implications: My analysis reveals that Chand’s victory is a precarious one, with binary and biologized models of sex and gender prevailing when the institutions of sport, law, and science determine the policy boundaries of “fair play” for female athletes.
Originality/Value of Study: This chapter shows how the institutions of sport, law, and science work together to determine gender. As a consequence, even feminist versions of the biology of sex difference risk reifying the authority of science as the dominant knowledge form within the institutional spaces of sport and law.
Lerato Aghimien, Clinton Ohis Aigbavboa and Douglas Aghimien
This book aimed to conceptualise a construction workforce management model suitable for effectively managing workers in construction organisations. To this end, this chapter…
Abstract
This book aimed to conceptualise a construction workforce management model suitable for effectively managing workers in construction organisations. To this end, this chapter presents the conceptualised model, which consists of seven workforce management practices with their respective measurement variables. Drawing from existing theories, models, and practices, the chapter concludes that a construction organisation that will attain its strategic objectives in the current fourth industrial revolution era must be willing to promote effective recruitment and selection, compensation and benefits, performance management and appraisal, employee involvement and empowerment, training and development, as well as improving workers emotional intelligence and handling external environment pressure. These practices can promote proactiveness, participation, and improved skills and can lead to effective commitment, better quality, and flexibility within the organisation.
Details
Keywords
This chapter presents a model of innovation in the public elementary schooling system by drawing on ongoing work on an “Educational Innovations Bank” in India, which seeks to make…
Abstract
This chapter presents a model of innovation in the public elementary schooling system by drawing on ongoing work on an “Educational Innovations Bank” in India, which seeks to make available a freely accessible forum for innovative teachers and a grassroots innovations resource for administrators. How do some teachers in government elementary schools, working in contexts of socioeconomic and educational deprivation, achieve their educational goals in spite of facing the same constraints as thousands of other teachers? What lessons do they offer for policy reform? The answers draw on the social entrepreneurship and workplace innovation literature to first locate the incentive for innovation in the social value that socio-educationally entrepreneurial and innovative behavior of teachers creates. Next, an examination is presented of how this social value leads to learning for an identity of competence, which in turn provides an incentive for further educational innovation. Finally, the evidence is presented to argue for policy entrepreneurship and a formal framework to help in the diffusion, adoption, and adaptation of both the enabling innovations that result from socio-educational entrepreneurship and the in-school or in-class educational innovations. Such a “bottom-up,” peer-learning-based approach to innovations that also “improve” provides a unique way of visualizing educational reform in resource-constrained public educational systems.
Details
Keywords
Glenn Finau, Kerry Jacobs and Satish Chand
The purpose of this paper is to explore and examine the role of accounting and accountants in customary land transactions between Indigenous peoples and foreign corporate…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore and examine the role of accounting and accountants in customary land transactions between Indigenous peoples and foreign corporate entities. The paper uses the case of two accountants who utilised accounting technologies in lease agreements to alienate customary land from Indigenous landowners in Papua New Guinea (PNG).
Design/methodology/approach
Employing a case study methodology, the paper draws on contemporary data sets of transcripts related to a Commission of Inquiry established in 2011 to investigate PNG’s Special Agricultural Business Lease system. Analysis of other publicly available data and semi-structured interviews with PNG landowners and other stakeholders supplement and triangulate data from the inquiry transcripts. A Bourdieusian lens was adopted to conceptualise how accounting was used in the struggles for customary land between foreign developers and Indigenous landowners within the wider capitalist field and the traditional Melanesian field.
Findings
This paper reveals how accountants exploited PNG’s customary land registration system, the Indigenous peoples’ lack of financial literacy and their desperation for development to alienate customary land from landowners. The accountants employed accounting technologies in the sublease agreements to reduce their royalty obligations to the landowners and to impose penalty clauses that made it financially impossible for the landowners to cancel the leases. The accountants used accounting to normalise, legitimise and rationalise these exploitative arrangements in formal lease contracts.
Originality/value
This paper responds to the call for research on accounting and Indigenous peoples that is contemporary rather than historic; examines the role of accountants in Indigenous relations, and examines the emancipatory potential of accounting.
Details
Keywords
Bimal Aklesh Kumar and Sailesh Saras Chand
Usability is one of the key concerns in the development of mobile learning applications. The aim of this paper is to design and validate a usability evaluation questionnaire (UEQ…
Abstract
Purpose
Usability is one of the key concerns in the development of mobile learning applications. The aim of this paper is to design and validate a usability evaluation questionnaire (UEQ) for mobile learning applications.
Design/methodology/approach
The UEQ was developed in four stages: selecting primary studies and extracting usability problems, thematic analysis, creating UEQ items and validation and reliability using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA).
Findings
CFA to derive the model fit was computed using AMOS to test the construct validity. The model-fit values were within their respective expected acceptance levels. To assess the reliability of the instrument item loadings, the internal consistency coefficients such as Cronbach’s alpha, McDonald’s Omega and composite reliability were considered. Indicator loadings ranged between 0.735 and 0.933, fulfilling the threshold of above 0.7.
Originality/value
The study provides a novel UEQ for mobile learning applications, which can be used by developers and in academic research to assess mobile learning applications.
Details
Keywords
Lerato Aghimien, Clinton Ohis Aigbavboa and Douglas Aghimien
The workforce management model conceptualised for the effective management of the construction workforce was subjected to expert scrutiny to determine the suitability and…
Abstract
The workforce management model conceptualised for the effective management of the construction workforce was subjected to expert scrutiny to determine the suitability and applicability of the identified practices and their attributed variables to the construction industry. In achieving this, a Delphi approach was adopted using experts from construction organisations in South Africa. These experts comprised workforce management personnel and construction professionals in senior management positions. The data were analysed using appropriate statistical tools such as interquartile deviation, Kendell’s coefficient of concordance, and chi square to determine consensus among these experts. After a two-round Delphi, the seven constructs proposed in the conceptualised workforce management model were adjudged to be important and worthy of adoption by construction organisations seeking to improve workforce management in the current fourth industrial revolution era.
Details
Keywords
Lerato Aghimien, Clinton Ohis Aigbavboa and Douglas Aghimien
In the quest for better construction workforce management, this chapter explored the background of workforce management and related theories, models, and practices. Through a…
Abstract
In the quest for better construction workforce management, this chapter explored the background of workforce management and related theories, models, and practices. Through a review, the chapter provided meaning to the concept of construction and workforce management. The chapter concluded that while the construction industry worldwide is important to the economic growth of the countries where it operates, the industry’s management of its workforce is challenged by several problems. These problems include the nature of the industry, skill shortage, unhealthy working environment, and poor image of the industry, among others. Also, while the construction industry is rich in diversity, this has been a major source of problems for workforce management. The chapter further revealed that to improve workforce management and attain better-performing construction organisations, careful recruitment, effective training, providing a safe working environment, putting policies to promote diversity, and ensuring innovativeness, among others, are essential.
Details
Keywords
Kathy Baylis, Murray E. Fulton and Travis Reynolds
To understand the political economy of export restrictions for grain commodities in Vietnam and India.
Abstract
Purpose
To understand the political economy of export restrictions for grain commodities in Vietnam and India.
Methodology/approach
Two theoretical models were developed (one for each country) to analyze government policies for export restrictions in Vietnam and India based on price fluctuations. In Vietnam, there was one choice variable – export tariffs. In India, there were two choice variables – export tariffs and procurements. In both cases, the elite were assumed to maximize expected rents.
Findings
Export restrictions have become an important feature of trade policy in Vietnam and India and are unlikely to be eliminated in the foreseeable future because to do so would be costly both politically and economically to local elites. The impact of food price increases can be particularly large given the importance of loss aversion.
Practical implications
Understanding export restrictions as the outcome of a political-economic calculation is important because it suggests that efforts to limit export restrictions in countries like Vietnam and India are unlikely to be successful.
Details