David R. Riley, Corinne E. Thatcher and Elizabeth A. Workman
This paper aims to disseminate an innovative approach to sustainability education in construction‐related fields in which teaching, research, and service are integrated to provide…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to disseminate an innovative approach to sustainability education in construction‐related fields in which teaching, research, and service are integrated to provide a unique learning experience for undergraduate students, faculty members, and community partners.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper identifies the need for sustainability education in fields related to construction and describes an interdisciplinary course at Penn State that addresses this need. The goals, research, and applications of the course are detailed, as is the sustainable construction technology employed in course projects. Finally, the results from two course assessments are summarized to support the authors' hypothesis that knowledge best occurs and develops in an arena of negotiation, collaboration, and creation.
Findings
Students who participate in the course experience well‐rounded growth that includes, but is not limited to, increased research, design, communication, and collaboration skills, a finding that underscores the effectiveness of the course's holistic approach to engineering and architecture education.
Practical implications
The paper demonstrates that engaged approaches to architecture and engineering education contribute to a heightened awareness among students of the importance of sustainability. It encourages other educators to adopt similar approaches to sustainability education in their courses.
Originality/value
The paper addresses the need for sustainability education in construction‐related disciplines by detailing an innovative course developed at Penn State to raise environmental and social awareness among architecture and engineering students. The engaged approach utilized in the course is replicable in any discipline and promises to have a significant impact on the commitment of today's students to creating a tomorrow in which sustainability is the norm rather than an anomaly.
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There are ten universal principles of United Nations Global Compact in four areas namely human rights, labour, environmental and anti-corruption, and this chapter will explore the…
Abstract
Purpose
There are ten universal principles of United Nations Global Compact in four areas namely human rights, labour, environmental and anti-corruption, and this chapter will explore the sixth principle of labour standard on elimination of discrimination in employment and occupation, in particular the doctrine of constructive dismissal in Malaysian labour relations. Constructive dismissal is creating a new challenge in labour relation in Malaysia.
Methodology/approach
This chapter specifically analyses some of the constructive dismissal awards and its implication to labour relations in Malaysia. The methodology employed in this chapter is the analysis of case laws using criterion-based sampling from the Industrial and Superior Court awards on constructive dismissal.
Findings
There has been an increasing number of awards on constructive dismissal made by the Malaysian Industrial Court over the last nine years. From the year 2009–2013, the Industrial Court has made 663 awards on constructive dismissal, mostly against employers. With compensation awarded to each employee amounted to as much as 24 months of back-pay salary plus a month’s pay for every year of service, employers can no longer neglect this pressing issue.
Research limitations/implications
The concept of constructive dismissal falls within the purview of section 20 of the Industrial Relations Act 1967 in Malaysia. Constructive dismissal is a ‘deemed dismissal’ if an employer is guilty of a breach of the employment contract which goes to the root of the contract. It arises when a workman terminates his/her contract of employment and considers himself/herself discharged from further obligations because of the employer’s conduct.
Practical implications
With a good understanding of the constructive dismissal awards, it is expected that organizations will manage and treat their human resources as their greatest assets and prevent constructive dismissal claims from taking place. This will eventually help to improve and maintain harmonious labour relations. This chapter is likely to provide insights into the Malaysian labour relations environment for international business operations.
Originality/value
In the context of Malaysian labour relations, studies on constructive dismissal are limited as it is considered as a new area and a specific area of study. This chapter therefore hopes to fill the existing gap in the literature, to highlight some of the recent awards and lessons to prevent constructive dismissal claims from taking place and generally to contribute to the constructive dismissal literature.
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This paper examines employee silence, namely, the causes of silence and how it might be overcome.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper examines employee silence, namely, the causes of silence and how it might be overcome.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing from academic research and work with organizations, the author explains that workplace diversity is insufficient to guarantee the contributions of diverse voices. The author then provides an overview of why individuals choose to remain silent and explores aspects of organizational culture and climate that contribute to silencing behaviors. Finally, the author offers suggestions on how organizational leaders can overcome silence.
Findings
The findings suggest that employee voice can be activated through a psychologically safe working environment in which leaders adopt a learning mindset, practice humility, create opportunities for all team members to contribute, treat people with fairness and respect, and hold others accountable to do the same. The findings also indicate that leaders can support safe and inclusive working environments by challenging basic assumptions and accepting vulnerability.
Originality/value
This paper makes an important contribution to the field of organization development and change by providing suggestions for how organizations can address workplace concerns and enhance performance by removing the inhibitors of “employee voice”.
Abby McLeod and Victoria Herrington
The purpose of this paper is to examine Australian efforts to promote gender equality in policing, suggesting that future police leaders will be confronted with the challenge of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine Australian efforts to promote gender equality in policing, suggesting that future police leaders will be confronted with the challenge of ensuring that their organisations are not only demographically diverse, but more importantly, that they are inclusive.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper utilises current Australian efforts to promote gender equality (case study), as a means of examining the way in which the conceptual distinction between diversity and inclusion plays out in practice.
Findings
The paper finds that current efforts to promote gender equality are being used as a proxy for diversity more broadly and are overly focussed upon demographic diversity. Less attention is being paid to the development of inclusive work environments, which will present a challenge to future leaders who are required to manage more heterogenous workforces.
Research limitations/implications
Research into the efficacy of existing strategies, which will further theoretical debate, is proposed, with a call for research by those from a wider range of disciplines, in addition to psychology and management studies, being made.
Practical implications
It is recommended that policing organisations utilise language focussed upon inclusion rather than diversity and foster cultures of learning, beginning at the academy.
Originality/value
The paper contributes to the global debate on workforce diversity by drawing on a Southern Hemisphere perspective on contemporary efforts in policing. This complements extant studies on diversity which emanate primarily from the UK and USA, and provides an important reflection for police organisations across the world as they proceed with good intentions around creating much needed cultures of difference in thinking and operating.
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Sarah Longstaff, Jeni Rees, Elizabeth Good and Elizabeth Kirby
In a novel approach, two part-time “Link Nurses” within an NE Hampshire practice of 16,500 patients were funded by a local charity, to assess and manage unmet needs of isolated…
Abstract
Purpose
In a novel approach, two part-time “Link Nurses” within an NE Hampshire practice of 16,500 patients were funded by a local charity, to assess and manage unmet needs of isolated frail elderly patients at home. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
Patients in this vulnerable group with no recorded healthcare contact for a prolonged period were identified from practice computer records. One group was to be assessed at home, and appropriate interventions effected. Follow-up visits or telephone contacts also offered support to carers as well as isolated individuals. A matching quasi control group was identified but not visited, to assess the overall impact on the patients, GP and other healthcare contacts. Difficulties with the control group were encountered and addressed.
Findings
Important unmet healthcare needs were found amongst the visited patients, which the nurses were able to address themselves, or refer to the GPs or appropriate agencies. The control group demonstrated greater demand for out-of-hours, GP and district nurse contacts, and more unplanned hospital admissions.
Practical implications
Besides dealing with unmet needs at home, ongoing support by local GP nurses may reduce bed-blocking by moving away from “crisis management” of patients in this vulnerable group.
Originality/value
Few other trials have employed practice nurses to see and manage frail elderly patients in their homes.
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John Andrews Fitch spent a year studying labor conditions in the steel industry around Pittsburgh during 1907 and 1908. The results of his research became The Steel Workers, one…
Abstract
John Andrews Fitch spent a year studying labor conditions in the steel industry around Pittsburgh during 1907 and 1908. The results of his research became The Steel Workers, one of six volumes in the Pittsburgh Survey, a groundbreaking 1910 analysis of conditions faced by working people in a modern industrial city. Introducing his discussion of common employment practices in the steel industry, Fitch declared, “A repressive regime…has served since the destruction of unionism, to keep the employers in the saddle.” He traced the origins of management’s arbitrary power to the Homestead lockout of 1892, when Carnegie Steel destroyed the last stronghold of organized labor in the mills of western Pennsylvania. During his stay in Pittsburgh, Fitch saw the results of fifteen years of management domination. “The steel worker,” he wrote, “sees on every side evidence of an irresistible power, baffling and intangible. It fixes the conditions of his employment; it tells him what wages he may expect to receive and where and when he must work. If he protests, he is either ignored or rebuked. If he talks it over with his fellow workmen, he is likely to be discharged” (Fitch, 1989, pp. 206, 232–233).
The people of the Union of South Africa have established on a sound and satisfactory basis the beginnings of what we hope and believe will develop in due course into a very great…
Abstract
The people of the Union of South Africa have established on a sound and satisfactory basis the beginnings of what we hope and believe will develop in due course into a very great industry of fruit canning. The industry already meets the demands of the home market, but the people of South Africa are not great eaters of canned fruit, and about 60 per cent. of the total production is at present exported mainly to this country. The growth of the canned and bottled fruit industry has been exceedingly rapid, the output having steadily risen from about 1,500,000 lbs. in 1916–17 to over 7½ million lbs. in 1929–30. The fruit has attained a deservedly high reputation. The Fruit Export Control Acts of 1914, 1925, and 1929 are concerned in maintaining the high standard for fresh fruit, and cooperation among fruit growers themselves is a second important factor. Both of these exert an indirect but favourable influence on the fruit canning industry. It is hardly necessary to mention the physical influences which so greatly aid production of first‐class fruit. In the south‐west of the Cape Province, for example, rains are distributed. Excellent soil and bright sunlight does the rest. In spite of what has just been said, the development of the canned fruit industry has not proceeded as rapidly as might have been expected. An increase of five hundred per cent. in production in the course of fifteen years is excellent, but the value of the last figure quoted is but 156 thousand pounds sterling. It would be unfair perhaps to point out that this is but one‐tenth of the value of fresh fruit exported from the Union during the same period. Fresh fruit is the staple article of the export trade, and is likely to remain so. It is, however, but half the value of the dried fruits and two‐fifths that of the jam production of the Union. Perhaps the reasons for this relatively lower development of the canned fruit industry in South Africa at the present time is to be found in the fact that the people of South Africa are not great eaters of canned fruits, nor are they ever likely to be. In so saying, not the slightest reflection of an unfavourable kind is thrown on the canned fruit of South Africa, but the fact remains and will ever do so that so long as people are able to readily obtain an abundant supply of cheap and good fresh fruit—and the people of South Africa are in this happy position—they will turn to the orchard rather than the tin. It appears then that South Africa's market for canned fruit is the overseas market, and this as the canned fruit trade develops will claim an ever greater proportion of the canned fruit. However, the drop in prices and drop in demand in the world's markets has unfavourably affected every commodity, and canned fruit is no exception. Fruit canneries have already been established at Durban, Port Elizabeth, Cape Town—this last‐named port being the outlet for the wonderfully rich fruit grounds of the south‐west district of the Cape Province—at Paarl, Worcester, and other places. Last autumn a new cannery was established at Belleville, Cape Colony, with a present daily capacity it has been stated of 30,000 cans and a future possible output of 150,000 per day. Some five hundred fruit growers in the district are interested. It has been officially stated that over‐production and insufficient means of transport and distribution has led to great wastage of raw fruits in certain districts, so much so in fact that in many cases the fruit was not even gathered but left to rot on the ground, as transport costs were prohibitive. This is where the cannery “comes in.” Assuming an excess of the right kinds of fruit, existing markets can be supplied and new markets — for example, the Far Eastern markets—developed. The United States has at present a very considerable proportion of the world's markets. In 1931 the total imports of canned fruit into Great Britain amounted to 2,198,000 cases, and out of these the United States sent 1,888,000, Canada 25,000, Australia 109,000, and South Africa 5,000, or about quarter per cent. There seem to be no special regulations governing the trade. The Acts already referred to control the fresh fruit market. The Weights and Measures Act states that the name and address of the manufacturer and the nett weight of the contents shall be stated on the label of can or package, but the elaborated regulations of the United States and Canada have, at present at least, no counterpart in South Africa. The reason for this may be that the overseas trade in canned fruit is at present comparatively small when compared with that of certain other countries, and trade competition has not at present become particularly acute. This and the home market would seem to be controlled so far as the purity of the products is concerned by the Act, No. 13, of 1929, and the Regulations framed under sections 13, 14, 19, 33 and 44 of this Act.
“All things are in a constant state of change”, said Heraclitus of Ephesus. The waters if a river are for ever changing yet the river endures. Every particle of matter is in…
Abstract
“All things are in a constant state of change”, said Heraclitus of Ephesus. The waters if a river are for ever changing yet the river endures. Every particle of matter is in continual movement. All death is birth in a new form, all birth the death of the previous form. The seasons come and go. The myth of our own John Barleycorn, buried in the ground, yet resurrected in the Spring, has close parallels with the fertility rites of Greece and the Near East such as those of Hyacinthas, Hylas, Adonis and Dionysus, of Osiris the Egyptian deity, and Mondamin the Red Indian maize‐god. Indeed, the ritual and myth of Attis, born of a virgin, killed and resurrected on the third day, undoubtedly had a strong influence on Christianity.
Halimin Herjanto, Muslim Amin, Elizabeth Purinton and Edward L. Lindle II
Based on the learning and attitudinal theories, this study aims to investigate the direct effect of two type of experiences, attitude and the indirect impact of fashion…
Abstract
Purpose
Based on the learning and attitudinal theories, this study aims to investigate the direct effect of two type of experiences, attitude and the indirect impact of fashion innovativeness, materialism and financial pressure on Generation Z’s secondhand clothing (SHC) purchase intention.
Design/methodology/approach
A total of 180 usable surveys were gathered from Generation Z participants and analyzed by a partial least-square-structural equation model.
Findings
The results show that attitude (SHC hygiene vs SHC fashion style) and past experiences (daily use occasion vs particular use occasion) directly affect SHC purchase intention. Furthermore, materialism, financial pressure and innovativeness drive attitudes toward SHC fashion style.
Originality/value
This study extends the current SHC literature by integrating two dimensions of experience (daily use occasion vs particular use occasion) and attitude (attitude toward SHC hygiene vs attitude toward SHC style).
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In a world in which “England's green and pleasant land” sets the standard for garden excellence, gardeners in much of the United States will struggle in vain to adapt the British…
Abstract
In a world in which “England's green and pleasant land” sets the standard for garden excellence, gardeners in much of the United States will struggle in vain to adapt the British style to their own volatile climates. American regional gardening literature offers a new vision to help gardeners throughout the United States select plants suited to their climates (especially native plants) and use techniques to prevent losses to cold, heat, humidity, or drought. The resulting gardens may not always resemble the traditional English her baceous border, but their beauty and vigor will enhance the often monotonous American suburban landscape.