This essay aims to describe how the author began his career as a suicidologist and his style that made him so productive.
Abstract
Purpose
This essay aims to describe how the author began his career as a suicidologist and his style that made him so productive.
Design/methodology/approach
The author used autobiographical details to illustrate the elements of his career.
Findings
Childhood experiences include sleeping in air raid shelter from 1942 to 1945 in London (UK), while his style includes obsessiveness in reading everything on suicide, applying ideas from other fields (such as economics) to the study of suicide and obtaining academic freedom early in his career.
Originality/value
The essay offers guidelines for others who are in the early stages of a career as a researcher.
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Keywords
The main aim of this paper is to try and understand why our knowledge of why people take their own lives is so limited.
Abstract
Purpose
The main aim of this paper is to try and understand why our knowledge of why people take their own lives is so limited.
Design/methodology/approach
Methodological problems that have hindered our efforts to understand why people die by suicide are reviewed. Two solutions are proposed. The first describes a way of extrapolating from research on attempted suicides to those who die by suicide. The second solution is to develop a sound typology of suicides and search for causes for each type.
Findings
The piece provides a selective review of the literature on suicide.
Originality/value
This opinion piece is written by a researcher who has spent his entire career and much of his retirement studying the causes of suicide (Ed).
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Ahmed M. Abdel-Khalek, Ahmad Mohammad Alzoubi, David Lester and Salaheldin Farah Attallah Bakhiet
The purpose of this study is the same as those of the preceding 16 studies on happiness, health and religion, and they are as follows: to estimate the mean scores and the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is the same as those of the preceding 16 studies on happiness, health and religion, and they are as follows: to estimate the mean scores and the sex-related differences in the study scales; to examine the associations between the study scales; to investigate the principal components; and to compare the present results with the previous findings.
Design/methodology/approach
A non-probability sample of university students in the United Arab Emirates was selected by the “snowball” sample method. To overcome the issue of people refusing to participate in the study, this method was used in the selection process due to the challenge of sampling students in all the universities across the nation, which makes it difficult to choose a probability sample. The approval of the Ethics Committee was obtained from Ajman University to apply the study tools, and then the students were given the choice through open announcement to participate in the study and circulate it to other students at Ajman University.
Findings
Results showed that men had significantly higher mean ratings on mental health, physical health and happiness than did women. All the Pearson correlations between the scales were significant for men. Except for the correlations between religiosity and both happiness and mental health, all correlations between the scales for women were significant. A principal components analysis extracted one component for men which was labeled “Well-being and religiosity”, whereas two components were retained for the women which were labeled “Well-being” and “Religiosity and physical health”. Comparing the present sample’s mean happiness score to that of prior students from 16 other countries revealed that it was higher and consistent with other scores from rich Arab nations with a high GDP per capita (such as Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Oman). In conclusion, happiness was found to be associated with mental and physical health in both men and women, as well as religiosity in men.
Research limitations/implications
Despite the strengths of the current investigation, i.e. the large sample size and the good to high reliability and validity properties of the scales, some limitations have to be acknowledged. First, the convenience and non-probability sample. Second, university students are a special segment of any country. Their age range is limited, and they probably have greater intelligence and more education compared to the general population. Therefore, a replication of the present study using a probability sample from the general population is needed.
Practical implications
SPSS (2009) was used for data analysis. Means, standard deviations, t-tests, d for effect size, Pearson product moment correlation coefficients and principal components analysis were used. For the principal components analysis, the Kaiser criterion (i.e. eigenvalue > 1.0) and the scree plot were used to define the number of components to be retained.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study about happiness in United Arab Emirates.
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The purpose of this study is to examine why an attempt at suicide does not always indicate the beginning of a life with poor mental health.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to examine why an attempt at suicide does not always indicate the beginning of a life with poor mental health.
Design/methodology/approach
Case studies, supplemented by follow-up studies of attempted suicides.
Findings
One of the strongest predictors of a healthy life after the suicide attempt was found to be improvement in the appropriateness of behavior toward others and improved adult functioning.
Originality/value
The results suggest that behavioral coaching, in addition to traditional psychiatric treatment, could help attempted suicides move on with their lives productively.
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Kosheek Sewchurran, Lester Merlin Davids, Jennifer McDonogh and Camille Meyer
In the African context of business practice, the authors face two interrelated challenges. First, executives need to deal strategically and sustainably with growing levels of…
Abstract
Purpose
In the African context of business practice, the authors face two interrelated challenges. First, executives need to deal strategically and sustainably with growing levels of inequality, under-employment and declining levels of wellness and safety. Second, executive development needs to develop virtues to help executives to address these problems. This paper aims to articulate an integrated, sustainable business education approach that aims to prepare executives to practice integrative thinking while simultaneously cultivating virtues that enhance their lives, thereby enabling them to make ongoing sustainable impacts to their worlds.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses a mixed method analysis including both quantitative and qualitative data from student course feedback evaluations from Business Model Innovation (BMI) and Phronesis Development Practice courses run over four consecutive years between 2018 and 2021 at the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business as part of the Executive Masters of Business Administration degree.
Findings
The program’s pedagogical approach integrates a philosophical habituation process with a core course on BMI practice. This philosophical integration is one in which there is a sustainable focus on cultivating specific “process” and “practice” virtues which foster awareness amongst executives of their everyday mundane skilful coping in the world. This leads to candidates becoming attuned to ways, in which they can strive for more authenticity and to step into newer ways of being, that allow them to reflect their values and evolve cultural practices.
Originality/value
As the first business school in Africa to base a BMI course on the affordances of the phenomenon of being-in-the-world and a philosophical habituation process, the authors hope to inspire more business schools to adopt holistic, sustainable approaches to executive development that goes beyond the competence paradigm.
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The purpose of this paper is to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.
Design/methodology/approach
This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.
Findings
As success stories go, Toyota's is up there with the best of them. The company has posted record annual earnings for almost a decade and has become the most profitable car manufacturer on the planet. And in the market that matters most, the USA, its unbroken sequence of record sales stretches back even further. The Japanese automaker's success is even more remarkable given the problems elsewhere in the industry. While witnessing major players like Nissan and Fiat teetering on the brink has been sobering enough, it hardly compares to the plight of mighty GM, Ford and DaimlerChrysler where job cuts, factory closures and huge losses have become a way of life in recent years. Ford in particular has found the going tough and a $12.7 billion deficit in 2006 coupled with significant losses among its subsidiaries signals the most miserable year of the company's existence. Performance in Europe has been its only saving grace. So how has Toyota managed to buck the trend so dramatically?
Practical implications
Provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.
Originality/value
The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to‐digest format.
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The relationship between Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and productivity has been widely discussed in the past two decades, but little understood. Since the early…
Abstract
The relationship between Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and productivity has been widely discussed in the past two decades, but little understood. Since the early 1970s productivity growth in almost all of the world economies has slowed, while expenditure on ICT has risen. This raises the so‐called “productivity paradox” with some economists concluding that there is no relationship between spending on ICT and productivity. The study examines this relationship with time series tools in an attempt to identify whether there is a causal relationship in either direction, or whether there is a third factor affecting both ICT growth and productivity growth. Using the Granger causality procedure applied to Portuguese data from the period 1980‐2000, the paper attempts to understand better the paradox in order to recommend to managers how they might make better‐informed and more effective decisions about ICT investments.