Search results

The chapter aims at finding in a multitude, diversity and high dynamics of international relations the worldwide appearance of particular spatial patterns that could potentially lead to a nuclear war. It demonstrates how complex international relations might be and how important is to predict and prevent global conflicts with nuclear weapons owned by different countries, also providing the latest data on worldwide distribution of nuclear weapons. The chapter demonstrates how different patterns of relations between countries, which can potentially lead to nuclear conflicts, can be converted into high-level active patterns-scenarios in SGL. These scenarios are then regularly self-spreading and self-matching in parallel and fully distributed mode with worldwide international structures, in order to find the related emerging threats. SGT can also be effectively used for distributed simulation of evolution and spreading of possible world conflicts, nuclear ones including.

Purpose – This chapter examines the roles of the Unification Church (UC) in reconstructing the discourse of the gendered desire of Filipina marriage migrants and their Korean husbands, serving as an intermediary agency in the process of international marriage migration, and reinforcing heterosexual practices as part of a regime of normalization.

Methodology – The chapter is based on 1 year of ethnographic fieldwork that included a review of secondary sources, participant observation, and in-depth interviews with Filipinas and Korean men.

Findings – The chapter shows the ways in which the UC reinforces the dominant discourse of gendered desire that portrays marriage migrants as women who wish to migrate mainly to marry a man who can provide economic stability. Filipina migrants, however, infuse the cultural discourse of romantic love into their decisions about husbands and marriage migration. Lastly, as the UC delineates normative heterosexual practices based on its religious doctrines, the church becomes a “regime of normalization” for traditional patriarchal heteronormativity.

Social implications – The chapter contributes to the idea that gender and sexuality are socially constructed and constitutive of migration.

Originality/value of chapter – The chapter examines not only the matchmaking role of an intermediary agency that facilitates cross-border marriages but also the agency's role in re/constructing gendered desire. Further, the chapter contributes to an understudied area: the social process of reconstructing heteronormativity in a transnational context.

The essential message set forth here is that if we are to truly understand leadership processes, they need to be couched in the form of the organizational system within which they occur These organizational systems are understood to include the hierarchic (managerial), professional (specialized), task (entrepreneurial), and group (team). Research results reported in this chapter support the tie between leadership and organizational form, and a role motivation theory of leadership is proposed. Implications are drawn for charismatic/transformational theorizing and future research. On a number of grounds, it appears that these theories need to be tested in a much broader set of organizational types than has been the case to date.

This chapter describes a participatory case study undertaken at a museum in New Zealand, involving a varied range of museum stakeholders. The research investigated aspects of museum performance assessment in the context of public accountability from the perspectives of different communities of interest, including Maori, the indigenous people of New Zealand. The complex research design involved identifying key stakeholders, and then conducting focus groups with a diversity of stakeholder types. Through a brainstorming process, these groups co-created texts which formed the raw data for the study. The stakeholder-generated texts were interpreted at various stages to produce ‘Possible Performance Statements’ which reflected the understandings and concerns of the various stakeholders in relation to the case museum's performance. Adopting the concept mapping approach developed by Trochim, the focus group participants then sorted the statements into conceptual constructs which made sense to them, and also rated the statements according to their relative importance as criteria for assessing their museum's performance. Proprietary software that is used to analyse the sorting and rating data produced concept maps and pattern matches which facilitated interpretation of the participants’ perspectives. The visual representations of the quantitative analyses enabled qualitative consideration leading to the development of a framework for museum performance assessment which would be more holistic and locally relevant and which would address stakeholder concerns.

The application of this intricate hybrid research design provided lessons which suggested other ways to gain richer data and deeper insights from the concept mapping approach, especially in a cross-cultural context. Participatory approaches which allow collective, as opposed to individual, interpretation of the co-created texts may be more suitable in certain cultural contexts, in this instance among Maori participants. The approach adopted was resource-intensive, requiring tight organisation and flexibility, greatly assisted by piloting the processes and using a professional editor to prepare the texts for interpretation by the participants. To maximise the insights from the focus groups, audio-recording of the research participants’ discussions as they generated their texts relating to museum performance assessment should be considered, as well as involving participants in the interpretation of the concept maps.

A valuable, although little-used, case data analysis technique, degrees-of-freedom analysis (DFA), is the subject of Chapter 12. Given the richness of case data and its prevalence in business marketing research, DFA has the potential to become an important addition to one's “research workbench.” Donald Campbell (1975) first proposed this theory testing.

This chapter presents three business-to-business marketing applications; the first two involve use of the technique to compare the extent to which four theories of group decision making are manifested in organizations. The third application illustrates how the technique is useful for theory development in the context of manufacturer–distributor relationships. The contribution is in demonstrating how researchers can link “traditional” (i.e., logical positivistic) hypothesis testing procedures to examine theoretical propositions in case study research. This approach is one way of achieving a critical test (Carlsmith, Ellsworth, & Aronson, 1976), that is, testing the relative empirical strengths of competing theories. The chapter highlights the value of generalizing case data to theory versus the inappropriate attempt to generalize such data to a population (Yin, 1994). The explication and demonstration of this technique is not available elsewhere to the degree that Chapter 12 provides.

This chapter reviews literature in support of a model that predicts the effects of Appreciative Inquiry on physical health in the workplace. Studies that demonstrate the physiological correlates associated with the experience of appreciation are examined. A model of emotion is proposed that shows how the heart, in concert with the brain, nervous, and hormonal systems, are fundamental components of a dynamic network from which emotional experience emerges. The authors demonstrate how favorable affective experiences and appreciative processes go hand in hand – and suggest the need for further empirical investigations in the field of positive organizational change practices.

Distributed performance arrangements are increasingly used by organizations to structure dyadic and team interactions. Unfortunately, distributed teams are no panacea. This chapter reviews some of the advantages and disadvantages associated with the geographical and temporal distribution of team members. An extended discussion of the implications of distributed team performance for individual, team, and organizational decision making is provided, with particular attention paid to selected cultural factors. Best practices and key points are advanced for those stakeholders charged with offsetting the performance decrements in decision making that can result from distribution and culture.

Every second, vast amounts of data are generated and stored on the Internet. Data scraping makes these data accessible and usable for business and scientific purposes. Web-scraped data are of high value to businesses as they can be used to inform many strategic decisions such as pricing or market positioning. Although it is not difficult to scrape data, particularly when they come from public websites, there are six key steps that analysts should ideally consider and follow. Following these steps can help to better harness the business value of online data.