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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the psychological contracts (PCs) of international volunteers (IVs) in international aid and development organizations (IADS). Specifically, it explores four questions: how IVs form PCs; what the content of these PCs is; how IVs’ PCs are maintained; and how they are fulfilled or breached.

The study used an inductive analysis of qualitative data: interviews with 27 IVs from a range of IADS.

The findings take the form of research propositions: RP1: IVs’ PCs, like those of domestic volunteers, include relational, transactional and, especially, values-based elements, but the balance of these is influenced by their values-based PC; the self-directed way IVs join their organizations; and reliance on peers rather than the organization’s management hierarchy. RP2: the PCs of IVs working for faith-based organizations have an additional element: spiritual support. RP3: the values-based PC means many transactional elements can be “adjusted away”, making it difficult to breach these PCs. RP4: experienced volunteers have very minimal PCs, but are more likely than inexperienced volunteers to expect basic safety and adequately skilled colleagues.

The authors suggest areas of new inquiry and specific ways each research proposition could be tested empirically.

To alleviate IVs’ expatriation and repatriation adjustment problems, international aid organizations could facilitate the ways IVs already help each other. This would also help fulfill IVs’ PCs.

IVs are a growing but underexplored group and aspects of their PCs may be unique.

This paper aims to demonstrate how a librarian at a liberal arts college partnered with a professor of rhetoric and media studies to teach students methods to classify sources using Bizup’s BEAM.

Students in rhetorical criticism, read the Bizup article on BEAM. The library instruction included a discussion of the article and an application exercise where students classified cited references in a peer-reviewed journal article using BEAM.

BEAM was a valuable addition to the rhetorical criticism course. The application exercise used in the library instruction session introduced BEAM as a tool to be used in reading and evaluating sources. Students were able to apply what they learned as they selected, deciphered and interpreted sources of information for use in their academic writing.

Librarians teaching in a variety of academic disciplines may use or adapt BEAM as a tool for helping students learn to critically evaluate information sources, as they read texts and as they engage in research-based writing assignments.

This work showcases how librarians using BEAM can extend library teaching beyond traditional bibliographic instruction and into the realm of critical inquiry. It also demonstrates how librarians can use BEAM to initiate conversations with academic faculty about information literacy. It also contributes to an emerging area of scholarship involving the use of BEAM to teach source evaluation.

It is useful to distinguish, very broadly, three contrasting approaches to organizational design. The first of these argues, straightforwardly and persuasively, that to design for organizational efficiency, one must begin from a knowledge of the properties of the individual person. The assumption that lies behind the approach is that to the extent that the individuals who work in an organization are committed to its goals, so will they find ways to work effectively towards those goals. The problem for the designer is how to remove the obstacles that prevent commitment. Since, so the argument continues, individuals are similar with respect to the factors that blunt or sharpen their commitment, then it should be possible to produce a common design procedure for all organizations. I refer to this approach as the ‘human relations’ approach.

Illustrates the growth of foreign investment in China, which is most often dealt with through Chinese‐foreign equity joint ventures and discusses the business issues involved. Traces the development of the Chinese accounting system, which is now largely in line with international standards, and identifies four accounting issues for foreign partners in joint ventures. Warns that the evaluation of a proposition must take into account the different accounting standards applied to previous accounts, the time needed to get an investment running effectively and possible legal problems in the home country from personal favour. Points out that the consolidation of joint venture accounts is not straightforward and recommends that the accounting rules which apply to contracts should be specified.

Ronald Ellis examines a diverse range of management theories and practices concerned with organisational development. “In essence,” he says, “managers are required to achieve a ‘fit’ between the organisation characteristics and the nature of the task to be done.”

As more and more people decide to commit their lives to print, autobiographies constitute a significant resource to explore stories of harm, violence and crime. Published autobiography, however, presents a unique form of storytelling, unavoidably entailing the accumulation and (re)telling of a mass of stories; about oneself, others, contexts and cultures. Relatedly, paratexts – or the elements that surround the central text, such as covers, introductions and prologues – demonstrate how these texts are both individually and collectively shaped. Taking the co-constructed nature of all narratives, including self-narratives, as its starting point, this chapter seeks to demonstrate how terrorists who have authored autobiographies understand the world and their actions within it. In doing so, this chapter provides a practical demonstration of how insight derived from literary criticism can profitably be brought to bear in systematically breaking down and analysing an autobiography – that of a notable American jihadist, Omar Hammami – including its paratextual elements. In particular, I argue that considerations of genre, the inclusion of different types of events and stories collected from others all provide valuable strategies for the ‘doing’ of narrative criminology using autobiographies.

Although there have been extensive studies on the hydrological and erosional impacts of logging, relatively little is known about the impacts of conversion into agricultural plantation (namely rubber and oil palm). Furthermore, studies on morphological impacts, sediment-bound chemistry and forensic attribution of deposited sediment to their respective sources are scarcer. This chapter introduces the potential for using the multi-proxy sediment fingerprinting technique in this context. Featuring pilot projects in two major flood-prone river systems in Malaysia, the studies explore application of geochemistry-based sediment source ascription. The geochemical signatures of sediment mixtures on floodplains were compared to sediments from upstream source tributaries. The tributaries were hypothesised to have different geochemical signatures in response to dominant land management. The first case study took place in the Segama River system (4,023 km²) of Sabah, Malaysian Borneo where a mixture of primary forest, logged-forests and oil palm plantations were predominant. The second case study was in the Kelantan River Basin (13,100 km²) with two major tributaries (Galas River and Lebir River) where logged-forests and rubber and oil palm plantations are dominant land-uses. Both case studies demonstrated the applicability of this method in ascribing floodplain deposited sediment to their respective upstream sources. Preliminary results showed that trace elements associated with fertilisers (e.g. copper and vanadium) contribute to agricultural catchment signatures. Alkaline and alkaline-earth elements were linked to recently established oil palm plantations due to soil turnover. Mixing model outputs showed that contributions from smaller, more severely disturbed catchment are higher than those from larger but milder disturbed catchments. This method capitalises on flood events to counter its adverse impacts by identifying high-priority sediment source areas for efficient and effective management.

Personnel specialists often bear the brunt of organisational change. Whether through the painful experiences of managing a redundancy, or as company representatives negotiating the introduction of new technology with trade unions, the shock waves of organisational change permeate most aspects of the personnel function sooner or later. Over recent years, much effort has been directed towards understanding the processes and problems of organisational change and of developing ways of more satisfactorily dealing with it. Much of these efforts have been drawn together into a body of techniques, ideas, case studies and more general wisdom which has acquired a distinctive identity.