Search results

The purpose of this paper is to examine the supervening loss of inter-organisational trust in long-term commercial contracts. The underlying research question is whether contract law – the legal institution regulating economic exchanges – should intervene and enable a party to a long-term commercial contract to extricate itself from a situation where a relationship of trust has broken down irretrievably.

This paper uses doctrinal methodology and theoretical conceptualisation to answer the underlying research question. The legal instrument chosen for analysis purposes is the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts. This paper also draws on extant literature on inter-organisational trust (including conceptual and empirical studies) to support the arguments and propositions. Furthermore, this study proceeds to assess the substantive justifiability of the proposed remedial measure using four normative values: legal certainty and predictability, protection of the performance interest, economic efficiency and the preservation of the relation.

The central argument put forward in this paper is the reformulation of draft Article 6.3.1 proposed by the UNIDROIT Working Group on Long-Term Contracts, which confers a novel right to terminate for a compelling reason. This paper presents a multidimensional model of inter-organisational trust that would serve as the conceptual framework for the proposed reformulation of the provision and establishes a coherent juridical basis for the legal solution that would accord with the Principles of International Commercial Contracts’ general remedial scheme. As for the normative assessment, this paper demonstrates that the proposed remedial measure would significantly promote efficient outcomes and positively serve the norms of legal certainty, protection of the performance interest and the preservation of the relation.

This paper addresses the lacuna in current legal scholarship in relation to the adverse socio-economic effects following trust violation and deterioration in inter-organisational relationships. Additionally, the propositions and findings should contribute to the workings of the UNIDROIT in adopting new rules and principles that would serve the special requirements of cross-border trade.

In 1920 Margaret Sanger called voluntary motherhood “the key to the temple of liberty” and noted that women were “rising in fundamental revolt” to claim their right to determine their own reproductive fate (Rothman, 2000, p. 73). Decades later Barbara Katz Rothman reflected on the social, political and legal changes produced by reproductive-rights feminists since that time. She wrote: So the reproductive-rights feminists of the 1970s won, and abortion is available – just as the reproductive-rights feminists of the 1920s won, and contraception is available. But in another sense, we did not win. We did not win, could not win, because Sanger was right. What we really wanted was the fundamental revolt, the “key to the temple of liberty.” A doctor’s fitting for a diaphragm, or a clinic appointment for an abortion, is not the revolution. It is not even a woman-centered approach to reproduction (2000, p. 79).

Starting from an event occurring in 2018, I consider burials of abortive remains as a battleground for reproductive governances. Public debate on pregnancy loss is often intertwined with the abortion debate. In Italy this association caused a considerable delay in implementing practices recommended by international guidelines on pregnancy loss. In this essay, I analyse burial regulations and the ways in which they are enforced asking what is at stake when the State, the regions, the Catholic Church, healthcare and cemetery professionals and women undergoing a termination or a pregnancy loss decide what to do with bodily remains. What is the meaning of these peculiar dead bodies? How are they publicly named? What are the effects of the actions performed on fetal remains over the lived experiences of women and couples with different reproductive histories? Who has the right to make decisions over these peculiar bodies and relationships?

Based on a long-term ethnography on abortion and pregnancy loss in Italy, I explore the inherent complexity of these questions, arguing that burial practices conflict with abortion rights when they signify the body unequivocally, separating it from social and intimate relationships, fixing its identity and determining the conditions for its recognition. Human flesh, sociologically understood (Memmi, 2014), is both material and symbolic: a fluctuating reality that takes on different meanings and affects over time within relationships.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a theoretical conceptualisation of guilt and the depoliticization of downsizing practices. The authors begin with a critical review of the relevant management literature aiming to establish the discursive normalization and individualization of (un)employment. The authors then use secondary sources to reflect on the downsizing process. A process that, as the authors argue, is distinguished into three separate but interconnected phases: corporate memos (phase 1), termination scripts (phase 2) and the role of outplacement services (phase 3). By examining this process, the aim is to point to the mechanisms through which downsizing practices are neutralized and depoliticized.

This is a conceptual work that provides a systematic overview of the existing management literature on downsizing and guilt. Use of other secondary sources (corporate memos and termination scripts) is also employed to draw links between the discursive normalization of downsizing as identified in the relevant literature and the specific organizational processes and practices implemented by corporations during downsizing. The authors identify common ideas and themes that cut across the relevant literature and the secondary sources and aim to offer a theoretical conceptualisation of guilt and the depoliticization of downsizing practices.

This paper argues that downsizing discourses and practices contribute to the feelings of personal responsibility and self-blame, reinforcing an individualistic understanding of work and unemployment that excludes more structural ones, and that it helps in reproducing the existing structures of power.

The study recognizes that employees’ reactions are not only unpredictable but also constantly evolving, depending on personal and social circumstances. The authors also recognize that the work is based on secondary sources much of which talk about practices in US companies, and thus the authors are and should be cautious of generalizations. The authors hope, however, that the authors will encourage further empirical research, particularly among organization studies and critical management scholars, on downsizing practices and guilt. For the authors’ part, the authors have tried to offer a critical reflection on how guilt is produced through corporate discourses and practices, and the authors believe that further empirical investigation on the three phases of the downsizing process (as identified in our work) and the lived experience of (un)employment is needed. As corporate downsizing discourses and practices frame (un)employment in strictly individualist and behavioral terms, the authors wish to emphasize the need for further theoretical investigation and political contestation. The authors, therefore, hope that the work will contribute to the relevant literature on downsizing practices and open up the discussions around layoff policies and the structural conditions of (un)employment.

The paper shows that downsizing practices and feelings of guilt are strongly linked to and exemplify the “individualization” of social and political issues such as work and unemployment. The authors suggest that individualization signifies, in some sense, a retreat from organized collective resistance and mobilization based upon class and that the prevalence of the ideology of individualism (and its correlative, meritocracy), over alternative explanations and solutions to such public issues, helps in reproducing existing structures of power and inequity.

This article describes the significance of mutual aid and self‐help groups for employee assistance programmes (EAPs). In an era of dwindling resources, groups can be valuable adjunctive resources. Examples given are a recovery network of AA members at the workplace willing to act in a 12‐step fashion with EAP clients, a co‐dependency assessment and support group, a supervisor′s mutual aid support group and a peer support group diversity network. The benefit to EAP professionals of developing these groups is an expanded range of referral resources, increased visibility for the EAP and an opportunity to engage in community building within the workplace.

If a seller fails to deliver the correct quantity, the buyer may reject the goods in accordance with the Sale of Goods Act 1979, section 30(1). The nature of this right to reject is unclear, and whether breach by short delivery will suffice to terminate the contract is also unclear. The purpose of this paper is to clarify this area of law.

The focus is on the combined case‐law and academic commentary on the topic of short delivery, and the broader issue of termination.

The paper suggests that breach by short delivery does terminate the contract. It suggests that the right to cure cannot provide an entirely satisfactory response for victims of short delivery. The paper also proposes a reform of the Sale of Goods Act 1979 to take this into account.

This research mainly focused on the current legal position. Further research on the historical development of the rules on short delivery, which were crystallised in the Sale of Goods Act 1893, will provide valuable insights into this area of law.

The proposal for reform could have a practical benefit in terms of protecting buyers from the danger of short delivery, by providing them with a more secure remedy than what appears to be currently available.

To the extent of the author's knowledge, this is the first dedicated analysis of short delivery in the literature.

This paper aims to examine the forms and experiences of victimization of foreign domestic helpers (FDHs) in Hong Kong, the effects of victimization on FDHs and FDHs’ coping strategies.

The main findings are based on semi-structured interviews with a sample of 12 FDHs in Hong Kong.

The findings uncovered a continuum of violence ranging from relatively mundane abuses on an everyday basis to acute events at the time of termination. Some respondents also experienced secondary victimization from police and/or pending criminal justice proceedings after contract termination.

Victimization exerted significant adverse physical and psychological effects on FDHs in our study. Nevertheless, contrary to common assumptions about FDHs as passive victims, our findings suggest that some FDHs experienced a degree of empowerment, as they found ways to cope with their difficulties by individualized and social strategies depending on the degree of victimization and the resources available.

The findings suggest there is an urgent need to review the existing laws and policies that, at best, are ineffective and, at worst, create far more problems than they solve.

The purpose of this paper is to examine village heads’ information seeking and decision making in 2014 Kaohsiung Blast and to analyze if the current disaster trainings help those leaders to enhance disaster risk deduction in an unprecedented disaster.

This study adopts after-action review and information seeking and decision making literature both from communication research and disaster research. Document analysis, and in-depth interviews with 13 village heads, 1 district officer, and 15 residents from the affected areas are conducted.

This study finds that the village heads have received trainings of regular types of disasters; however, most of them act like lay people in Kaohsiung Blast. In the beginning of the gas leaking, village heads slack off when first respondents arrive. After the Blast, most of them wait for authority orders and cannot launch minimum self-help and community help which they learned from the trainings.

This study confirms that the leadership research should take different categories and levels of leaders into consideration to distinguish public leaders from non-public leaders, professional disaster risk reduction leaders from non-professional leaders, and higher authorities from basic levels of government. The findings from this study provide a basis for the rational design of the job descriptions of village leaders.

This study is the first empirical research to investigate first-level but non-professional disaster management staffs’ information seeking and decision making after an unprecedented disaster in Taiwan.

Recent guidelines suggest that cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) has a pivotal role to play in the treatment of common mental health problems (CMHPs). There is a danger that we simply ask for ‘more of the same’ instead of looking at all the current limitations preventing individuals from accessing appropriate help. Doing this leads us to aim for a more radical and innovative approach to the CMHPs. This paper suggests that progress in primary care mental health has been much more limited than mental health workers and, in particular, researchers often acknowledge. It looks at the major obstacles barring the way to the development of services that could meet the needs of the very large number of people in our communities with CMHPs.

The Therapeutic Communities (TCs) movement tends to become from a revolutionary answer to the problem of addiction to another mainstream therapeutic proposal. The author considers that the crisis in 1968 in the seminal TC of Daytop was a pivotal event of this transition. This study aims to evaluate the impact of this historical crisis on the course of the TCs movement, assuming that, to enter into a constructive dialogue that can lead to the overcoming of today’s deadlocks of the movement, an awareness of the history is needed.

The present paper is a perspective/opinion paper and starts with a brief review of the origins of the first TCs for addicts. Emphasis is placed on their inevitable, according to the author, confrontation with the political and scientific status quo of that time. Then, it focuses on the period of the crisis in Daytop TC. The author interprets the events under a whole new scope, based on conversations he personally had with pioneers of that time, on his longstanding experience on the field, and the available literature.

The author attempts a historical and sociological analysis of the course of TCs and the Daytop TC. He concludes with a dispute of the prevailing idea that the Daytop crisis was a product of the confrontation between personal ambitions. He maintains that the collision that took place in Daytop TC was a confrontation between two antipodal perspectives over the notion of therapy. In any case, the subsequent estrangement of the movement from the groundbreaking attributes of the first TCs did not prove to be in the best interests of addicts; it was rather dictated by the need of the leaders of TCs to rescue their professional career.

The present paper attempts to offer a different view from the conventional reading of TCs’ history and their present situation for today’s predicaments of this proposal to be understood and possibly overcome.