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The purpose of this research is to highlight the impact of integrative leadership behaviors on network performance in local government networks.

The data were retrieved from a survey conducted on 362 local government network leaders in Italy. Their leadership behaviors were compared with the level of network performance anonymously self-reported.

The findings show that high frequency in the usage of a specific category of behavior does not always lead to high performance in local government networks. Moreover, leadership behaviors leading to highly performing networks are not always engaged most frequently by networks' leaders.

This research gives an empirical contribution to a neglected topic: network leadership. Moreover, the authors attempt to highlight how it is able to influence network performance.

Highlights the findings of a survey targeting UK and European wholesale and retail fruit buyers to discover factors which influence their adoption of apple and pear varieties. The research, performed from the perspective of the New Zealand pipfruit industry, reflects the growing importance of new variety development for the ongoing competitiveness of the New Zealand pipfruit industry. The research identifies that adoption of new varieties requires a strong performance in traditional areas such as product quality and supply. The need for appropriate launch support provided by the suppliers is highlighted and also that adoption is likely to be facilitated by strong buyer/supplier relationships.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the practice of comedians in relation to freedom of expression, so as to throw light on the issue of giving or avoiding offence.

The literature of comedy, newspaper coverage of comedy in the UK in 2008, observation of comedians in performance, and a small, informal interview programme with stand up comedians were used in the preparation of the paper.

Stand up comedians, despite their own sense that they defy restriction and popular perception of their material as often offensive, do monitor their material for potential offence. They assess the extent of offence and modify their performances in response. In some cases they apply personal formulae to this process.

The interview programme is too small to claim to be fully representative and is intended only to give an indicative view of the field.

Examination of comedians' practice has implications for information service institutions and the giving of access to potentially offensive content.

The paper may be the first study of comedy in an information science context and it contains implications for further studies that use comedy as an example of content, and creative practice to further develop understanding of information provision issues.

There has been extensive debate about the purpose and scope of appropriate management research. Many authors agree that management research does not operate a single agreed scientific paradigm and can be seen as a soft, applied area of study, showing features of both “engineering” and “craft” orientations. Nevertheless, the need for management theory to be made more relevant to the work of practice by explaining that it will be necessary to identify new ways of formulating and employing scientific knowledge to practical ends is the basis of this work. This article develops the methodology used in operationalising heuristic devices. Practitioners extend their use of the marketing mix in developing their strategic process. In this process they always face problems and the answers always cause concern. This article develops a model, which defines the use of the heuristic devices and allows action and review. The qualitative approach in action research was analysed in a series of case studies, which formed the basis of the research materials used.

Much attention has focused on the benefits of employee assistance programmes (EAPs) to companies. However, there has been little research and evaluation of how counselling affects employees who use an EAP. Focuses on a questionnaire study to evaluate present and former clients′ views of the counselling contract itself; the counsellor who dealt with the problem, and the outcome of the counselling.

The US origination of employee assistance programmes is described and then their essential features and a systemic framework and guidelines appropriate to UK adoption are set out.

Introduction Consider a hi‐fi loudspeaker manufacturing company acquired on the brink of insolvency by an American multinational. The new owners discover with growing concern that the product range is obsolete, that manufacturing facilities are totally inadequate and that there is a complete absence of any real management substance or structure. They decide on the need to relocate urgently so as to provide continuity of supply at the very high — a market about to shrink at a rate unprecedented in its history.

Powder coating in the car industry. “The future for powder coatings in the car industry is bright”, Chrysler Corporation's Ernie McLaughlin said in the keynote address at the recent Powder Coating '94 in Cincinnati.

Lectures can be digitally recorded and replayed to provide multimedia revision material for students who attended the class and a substitute learning experience for students unable to attend. Deaf and hard of hearing people can find it difficult to follow speech through hearing alone or to take notes while they are lip‐reading or watching a sign‐language interpreter. Notetakers can only summarise what is being said while qualified sign language interpreters with a good understanding of the relevant higher education subject content are in very scarce supply. Synchronising the speech with text captions can ensure deaf students are not disadvantaged and assist all learners to search for relevant specific parts of the multimedia recording by means of the synchronised text. Real time stenography transcription is not normally available in UK higher education because of the shortage of stenographers wishing to work in universities. Captions are time consuming and expensive to create by hand and while Automatic Speech Recognition can be used to provide real time captioning directly from lecturers’ speech in classrooms it has proved difficult to obtain accuracy comparable to stenography. This paper describes the development of a system that enables editors to correct errors in the captions as they are created by Automatic Speech Recognition.

Crises are moments when citizens are beckoning on the political leaders for necessary action. As a president, one is expected to change the narratives during the pandemic that split the world. This analysis aimed at investigating the American government’s response to the critical crisis of COVID-19 and its policy implementation.

The study explored a case point method using a narrative and qualitative analysis to diagnose the USA’s response to the COVID-19 crisis. An exploratory approach was further adopted to finetune the case study report.

The analysis demonstrates that Trump’s power dynamics were weak in the USA and lacked crisis control even as the President that the entire nations of the world were looking up to. The case study report also showed that Trump did not possess the audacity of resilience to manage the crisis. The analysis provides us with how presidential leadership under Trump placed the USA in a state of colossal failure enmeshed with high rates of COVID-19 cases, deaths and unending incapacity to create a fundamental consensus in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic today. This report shows Trump aged prolonged inability to drive governance mechanisms in the US and illustrated pockets of failures in decision analysis and information dissemination as a leader.

The study revealed how incompetent Trump was in responding to the crisis. This study has provided academia with an understanding of leadership dynamics and behaviour through a Nigerian scholar lens and a sociological perspective.