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The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the voluntary annual report disclosures, relating to conflict diamonds, for four of the largest diamond mining companies operating in South Africa can be explained through applying legitimacy theory and media agenda‐setting theory.

Applying legitimacy theory under the assumption of media agenda‐setting theory, the study draws a comparison between the volume of disclosure relating to conflict diamonds made in the annual reports of four of the largest diamond mining companies operating in South Africa and the volume of South African media publications addressing conflict diamonds.

The results of the study suggest that changes in the degree of media attention relating to the issue of conflict diamonds are largely mirrored by the annual report disclosure by one firm, but not by the other firms in the sample. Hence, legitimation motives lend support for only one of the four firms.

It should be noted that in relying upon legitimacy theory to examine variations in voluntary annual report disclosures regarding conflict diamonds, the study does not invalidate the likelihood that other theories, such as stakeholder theory or political economy theory, for example, may also hold explanatory power.

No prior research combining legitimacy theory and media agenda theory to explain voluntary disclosure of conflict diamonds by South African diamond mining companies could be found.

To examine the weblogs written by members of UK legislatures and to determine whether such weblogs address commonly cited criticisms of MPs' web sites and serve to bridge the gap between representative and constituent.

Examination of the literature on MPs' web sites to draw up a list of common criticisms. Construction of evaluation criteria to analyse the blogs in terms of content, currency, design, interactivity and evidence of personality both as a snapshot and over a longer period.

That weblogs are, on the whole, kept up to date and show promising levels of activity. Blogs enable constituents to see with what their MPs have been involved (on both the local and the Parliamentary stages) and to see what areas of policy particularly interest their MP. Personality of the MPs is apparent on most of the blogs, which are less party‐oriented than many MPs' web sites. Although the gap between representatives and constituents may have been bridged to an extent, blogging is still largely a top‐down form of communication – even though people do submit relevant and pertinent comments to the blogs, proper two‐way debate is rarely seen and comments are not always acknowledged or answered.

Based on a small number of blogs covering the UK only.

Provides simple evaluation criteria that could be applied to blogs in other areas.

Provides a useful first structured analysis of weblogs written by elected representatives, on which further work can be undertaken once the sample size has increased and existing blogs are more established.

The zombie-plague apocalypse is a powerful social imaginary that focuses attention on the border between legitimate citizens and zombie “others.” The surge in the number of zombie apocalypse films provides an illuminating area for studying the role imagined for public administration by popular culture. The response to zombies in apocalyptic films brings to fore new realities with the re-conceptualization of the legitimacy and authority of government. This re-conceptualization provides content for analyzing the portrayal of existing governmental institutions overwhelmed by the apocalypse, including local governments, the military, public health agencies, emergency services, and public utilities,

Despite the abundance of dispositional affect, work-family, and leadership research, little has been done to integrate these literatures. Based primarily on conservation of resources theory, which suggests individuals seek to acquire and maintain resources to reduce stress, the purpose of this paper is to provide an empirical examination of the relationships between leader dispositional affect, leader work-family spillover, and leadership.

Survey data were collected from a diverse sample of managers from a broad set of occupational groups (e.g. financial, government, library). Regression and Monte Carlo procedures were used to estimate model direct and indirect effects.

The results indicate that dispositional affect is a strong predictor of both work-family spillover and leadership. Further, the relationship between negative/positive affect and leadership was partially mediated by work-family conflict/enrichment.

Data were cross-sectional self-report, which does not allow for causal interpretations and may increase the risk of common method bias.

This study helps address why leaders experience both stress and benefits from multiple work and family demands, as well as why leaders engage in particular forms of leadership, such as passive and active leadership behaviors.

This study provides the first empirical examination of leader's dispositional affect, work-family spillover, and leadership, and suggests that manager's dispositional affect and work-family spillover have meaningful relationships with leader behavior across situations.

Drawing on affective events theory, the purpose of this paper was to investigate direct and indirect relationships between perceived organizational politics and workplace cyberbullying (WCB) perpetration mediated through anger, as well as to examine the moderating role of gender in these relationships.

The sample comprised 534 white-collar employees who were employed in a variety of service industries, including banking, higher education, telecommunications, health care and insurance in Islamabad, Pakistan. Data were analyzed using the structural equation modeling technique in Amos.

Results demonstrated that perceived organizational politics has a direct positive effect on WCB perpetration. Moreover, results indicated that perceived organizational politics evokes anger among employees that, in turn, triggers WCB perpetration. Results of a multigroup analysis revealed that the positive effect of perceived organizational politics on WCB perpetration was not significantly different between men and women. However, the positive relationship between perceived organizational politics and anger was significantly stronger for men than for women. Likewise, this study found a significantly stronger relationship for men than for women between anger and WCB perpetration. Anger partially mediated the relationship between perceived organizational politics and WCB perpetration only among men.

This study contributes to the literature by demonstrating that perceived organizational politics triggers WCB perpetration directly and indirectly through its impact on anger. Moreover, this study identified gender differences in the experience and expression of anger in response to perceived organizational politics.

This paper describes part of a research project into personnel management as an occupation, and argues for the study of personnel managers in the context of the organisations in which they work. The research draws on Kelly's personal construct theory by examining the way 20 personnel specialists in four organisations interpret and make meaningful the roles of others encountered in their working world. These ‘interpretations’ or constructs were discovered by using a repertory grid technique, and the results are compared between each of the four organisations. Some possible explanations are offered of the ways in which the personnel specialists studied cope with values that conflict with their own, and of how they are able to integrate within their organisations' cultures.

This study aimed to understand the agri-entrepreneurial traits of undergraduate university students using machine learning (ML) algorithms.

This study used a conceptual framework of individual-level determinants of entrepreneurship and ML. The Google Survey instrument was prepared on a 5-point scale and administered to 656 students in different sections of the same class during regular virtual classrooms in 2021. The datasets were analyzed and compared using ML.

Entrepreneurial traits existed among students before attending undergraduate entrepreneurship courses. Establishing strong partnerships (0.359), learning (0.347) and people-organizing ability (0.341) were promising correlated entrepreneurial traits. Female students exhibited fewer entrepreneurial traits than male students. The random forest model exhibited 60% accuracy in trait prediction against gradient boosting (58.4%), linear regression (56.8%), ridge (56.7%) and lasso regression (56.0%). Thus, the ML model appeared to be unsuitable to predict entrepreneurial traits. Quality data are important for accurate trait predictions.

Further studies can validate K-nearest neighbors (KNN) and support vector machine (SVM) models against random forest to support the statement that the ML model cannot be used for entrepreneurial trait prediction.

This research is unique because ML models, such as random forest, gradient boosting and lasso regression, are used for entrepreneurial trait prediction by agricultural domain students.

The purpose of this paper is to critique the role of homeless hostels in contemporary society, examining their role and legitimacy as sites of discipline and regulation of behaviors, ideas and aspirations.

The research draws upon in-depth qualitative interviews and supplementary observations undertaken in two homeless hostels in Stoke-on-Trent.

The research finds that even the most benign interventions enacted in homeless hostels are infused with disciplinary and regulatory techniques and suggests that the author needs to consider the legitimacy and efficacy of such approaches when seeking to understand the role of the hostel in assisting residents in (re)developing their autonomy.

While there are legitimate reasons for the deployment of such techniques in some cases, legitimacy can be undermined where expectations go unmet or where developing residents’ and service user’s needs are not necessarily the main object of the interventions.

Hostel providers need to consider the ethicality and legitimacy of the interventions in place when seeking to help service users and residents to (re)develop their autonomy and ensure that efforts are focused in an effective and meaningful way.

Homeless people are among the most vulnerable and excluded in society. The paper seeks to draw attention to the disciplinary and regulatory techniques to which they are subject in order to ensure that approaches employed to support homeless individuals have a clear, ethical and legitimate basis.

The research draws upon original data collected as part of a doctoral research project into wider experiences of unemployment.