Candace Forbes Bright and Braden Bagley
Political elections, especially presidential elections, have a tendency to overshadow other events, including disasters. Response to disasters during elections, such as Hurricane…
Abstract
Purpose
Political elections, especially presidential elections, have a tendency to overshadow other events, including disasters. Response to disasters during elections, such as Hurricane Matthew and the Baton Rouge flooding in 2016, are often dependent on attention given to them from the media, as well as prominent political figures and political candidates candidates. The purpose of this paper is to explore how election cycles affect government response to disasters and ultimately demonstrate the dependency of crisis communication on media agenda-setting for presenting saliency of disaster risk and needs.
Design/methodology/approach
Responses from presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, as well as President Barack Obama, in regards to the Baton Rouge flooding and Hurricane Matthew, were observed using media reports and social media accounts. These results were matched with key events from the presidential election timeline.
Findings
There is a positive relationship between news exposure and attention, and also between attention and civic response. In regards to the 2016 presidential election, news coverage of the release of the Donald Trump-Billy Bush tape distracted national attention from the approach, landfall, and recovery of Hurricane Matthew. Information subsidies provided by the candidates directed the media agenda away from the needs of the communities and individuals impacted by these disasters.
Originality/value
Disasters are often assumed to be value-free because they are “blind to politics.” Here, it is argued that this was not the case in relation to these two disasters. Thus, the authors encouraged more research be conducted to clarify the impact that political elections have on strategic news coverage of disasters and ultimately on disaster response.
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Keywords
Samia M. Siha and Richard W. Monroe
Telecommuting continues to be a topic of interest for practitioners and researchers alike. There are significant numbers of employees currently involved in telecommuting around…
Abstract
Purpose
Telecommuting continues to be a topic of interest for practitioners and researchers alike. There are significant numbers of employees currently involved in telecommuting around the globe. Organizational implications, global workforce implications and the scarcity of scholarly publications make this research topic one that warrants our further investigation. The purpose of this paper is to explore the literature to identify the substantive work, examine the state of this phenomenon as of to date, particularly the failure and success factors, provide valuable insight to the practitioners and research directions to researchers
Design/methodology/approach
An extensive literature review was conducted in an effort to identify the significant, substantive work to date. We reviewed two major business data bases and limit our review to refereed journals because of the rigorous review process that these articles go through before publication.
Findings
A schema was identified to help categorize topics found in the literature. A framework model is proposed to further explore the relationships between the motivating factors for telecommuting and the resulting outcomes from telecommuting programs.
Practical implications
The literature review and the model should be useful information for both practitioners and researchers in a variety of disciplines including management, communication, and information technology.
Originality/value
Few published papers have attempted to thoroughly review the telecommuting literature. Many of the articles concentrate solely on the individuals who telework. This review, looks at many facets of the telecommuting phenomenon like the workers, their managers, the organization as well as the technological and environmental issues.
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Kenneth A. Kavale and Steven R. Forness
Problems and issues surrounding the use of discrepancy in identifying learning disability are reviewed. Since 1976, discrepancy has been the primary criterion for defining…
Abstract
Problems and issues surrounding the use of discrepancy in identifying learning disability are reviewed. Since 1976, discrepancy has been the primary criterion for defining learning disability in practice. In a psychometric and statistical sense, however, issues about the best means for calculating a discrepancy remain unresolved. Another problem involves divergent findings about how systematically and rigorously the discrepancy criterion has been applied in practice. The problems and issues have resulted in questions about the status of learning disability as an independent category of special education. It is possible, however, to demonstrate that learning disability can be reliably differentiated from other conditions and that discrepancy is a major factor in demonstrating the differences. Consequently, it is concluded that discrepancy is a legitimate theoretical concept and should be considered as a necessary criterion for the identification of learning disability.