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Software is now being developed which will allow non‐expert programmers to analyse complex images.
A vision system has been installed on the fully automated framing line at Ford, Southampton to check for incorrect body configurations.
Kristin L. Cullen-Lester, Caitlin M. Porter, Hayley M. Trainer, Pol Solanelles and Dorothy R. Carter
The field of Human Resource Management (HRM) has long recognized the importance of interpersonal influence for employee and organizational effectiveness. HRM research and practice…
Abstract
The field of Human Resource Management (HRM) has long recognized the importance of interpersonal influence for employee and organizational effectiveness. HRM research and practice have focused primarily on individuals’ characteristics and behaviors as a means to understand “who” is influential in organizations, with substantially less attention paid to social networks. To reinvigorate a focus on network structures to explain interpersonal influence, the authors present a comprehensive account of how network structures enable and constrain influence within organizations. The authors begin by describing how power and status, two key determinants of individual influence in organizations, operate through different mechanisms, and delineate a range of network positions that yield power, reflect status, and/or capture realized influence. Then, the authors extend initial structural views of influence beyond the positions of individuals to consider how network structures within and between groups – capturing group social capital and/or shared leadership – enable and constrain groups’ ability to influence group members, other groups, and the broader organizational system. The authors also discuss how HRM may leverage these insights to facilitate interpersonal influence in ways that support individual, group, and organizational effectiveness.
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The provisions of the Fertilisers and Feeding Stuffs Act, 1926, which came into force on July 1st, are based upon the recommendations of two committees which sat during 1923–25…
Abstract
The provisions of the Fertilisers and Feeding Stuffs Act, 1926, which came into force on July 1st, are based upon the recommendations of two committees which sat during 1923–25, the first of which suggested the general lines of the Act, while the second prepared the schedules of articles coming within its scope. Although the Act received Royal Assent in December, 1926, it has not been practicable to bring it into operation until the regulations governing such matters as methods of sampling and analysis, methods of marking parcels, and limits of variation, had been prepared and published. These regulations were published in draft form in February, 1928, and in their final form during May. The general purpose of the Act, like that of the Act of 1906 which it repeals, is to provide civil remedies in cases of misdescription of, and to prevent fraud in, fertilisers and feeding stuffs. Its scope is defined by means of schedules which may be extended or varied, whenever the need arises, by regulations. One of the principal objects in replacing the Act of 1906 by new legislation was to separate, as far as possible, civil proceedings and criminal proceedings, in order to encourage farmers to exercise their civil rights without involving their suppliers in police court proceedings. The “civil provisions” of the Act are those which enact that buyers of the fertilisers and feeding stuffs in common use shall be furnished with a warranty covering certain important points, and which, further, afford them the means of testing these warranties with a view to formulating a claim where they are not fulfilled. The first requirement of the Act is that every person who sells for use as a fertiliser or as a feeding stuff for cattle or poultry any article included in either the First or the Second Schedule to the Act shall give the purchaser a written statement (called the “ statutory statement”) showing :—
The Equal Pay Act 1970 (which came into operation on 29 December 1975) provides for an “equality clause” to be written into all contracts of employment. S.1(2) (a) of the 1970 Act…
Abstract
The Equal Pay Act 1970 (which came into operation on 29 December 1975) provides for an “equality clause” to be written into all contracts of employment. S.1(2) (a) of the 1970 Act (which has been amended by the Sex Discrimination Act 1975) provides:
The purpose of this paper is to read a selection of Dixon's library collection in conjunction with his published work in an effort to make his book collection and research speak…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to read a selection of Dixon's library collection in conjunction with his published work in an effort to make his book collection and research speak to contemporary scholars who should be exposed to Dixon's writings.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper adopts a viewpoint approach.
Findings
A case is made that Dixon's work is characterised by a concern with the historical sedimentation and structuration of marketing theory and practice.
Originality/value
Calls attention to Dixon's work for scholars who might otherwise have bypassed it by linking it with contemporary interpretive and critical marketing approaches.
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This paper aims to provide a critical discussion and re-evaluation of the Personal Growth (PG) model of English, noting that the summer of 2016 marks 50 years since the Dartmouth…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to provide a critical discussion and re-evaluation of the Personal Growth (PG) model of English, noting that the summer of 2016 marks 50 years since the Dartmouth Conference and the publication of John Dixon’s seminal response to the conference in Growth Through English (1967). The influence of the London School of English was reaching its height at the time with its emphasis on the development of the individual student, the importance of identity, the fundamental role of talk and the rejection of the importance of studying only the traditional literary canon. Dixon argued that PG needed to replace the previous “models” of English, one being “skills”, and the other “cultural heritage”. So strong was that influence that in 1988, the model of “Personal Growth” was one of the five identified by the authors of the first National Curriculum for English in England; it was placed first in the list, but the authors argued the five models were “equal” (the other four were “Adult Needs”, “Cultural Heritage”, “Cross-curricular” (CC) and “Cultural Analysis”.
Design/methodology/approach
Survey-style research begun in 1990, then throughout the next 25 years, mostly in England but also in the USA. It has investigated the views principally of the classroom teachers of English about their beliefs about the subject and also their views of official versions.
Findings
These investigations have demonstrated the importance of all the models (except CC, considered by English teachers to be a model for all teachers), but always the primacy of PG as the key model that matches English teachers’ beliefs about the purpose and value of English as a school subject and argues for the demonstrable, yet problematic, centrality of PG.
Research limitations/implications
Any survey has limitations in terms of the sample, the number of returns and in the constraining nature of questionnaires. However, these surveys provide consistent results over nearly 30 years and have always encouraged respondents to offer qualitative comments. Surveys always have a value in providing an overview of attitudes and feelings.
Practical implications
English teachers remain convinced that student-centred progressive education offers the most valuable form of English for all students and they find themselves profoundly at odds with official prescriptions. This unquestionably has a damaging effect on teachers’ motivations and can lead them to leave their profession.
Originality/value
The paper provides a careful rereading of Growth Through English, so often simply taken for granted, and represents its key, neglected arguments in the more balanced 1975 edition. It provides research-based evidence of why the PG model remains central to English teachers and how the international discussions of the Dartmouth seminar still stimulate new thinking, for example, at the 2015 International Federation for the Teaching of English (IFTE) conference. The paper outlines why PG has been so resilient, and also, partly based on data from the 2015 IFTE conference, argues for a future model of English, which is based on PG but with a more critical and social dimension.
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It is undoubtedly the case that advertising plays a significant part in modern economic life in most societies and many view it as an essential part of the operation of a free…
Abstract
It is undoubtedly the case that advertising plays a significant part in modern economic life in most societies and many view it as an essential part of the operation of a free market system. Yet it is also the case that our knowledge of how exactly it works and whether the vast amounts spent on it are justified is still uncertain. Lord Leverhulme, the founder of Lever Brothers, is credited with the famous aphorism — ‘one half of advertising does not work but nobody knows which half’ and that perhaps sums up the situation very well. One thing that is generally accepted is that some protection must be provided both to consumers and trade competitors from false or misleading advertising which can lead to market distortions and economic loss to purchasers. Increasingly controversial, however, is the scope and extent of legal and voluntary controls on advertising. In the advertising industry fears are rising about the volume of both national and EEC proposals to restrict or limit advertising and as we move from the '80s, a decade of conspicuous consumption in which advertising flourished, to the caring '90s where environmental issues are to the fore, the advertising industry faces major challenges. Advertising as a whole is facing severe economic and legal challenges after the massive expansion of the 1980's — it is estimated that there was a 4% fall in real terms in UK advertising expenditure in the first quarter of 1990 and an estimated 5% fall in the second quarter. Clients are becoming more demanding and the cosy cartel arrangement whereby advertising agencies made a 15% standard commission on a client's expenditure has gone — commissions are down to 12%‐13% or being replaced by fixed fees. It has been estimated by the Advertising Association that proposed legal restrictions could lead to a loss of £1 bn in revenue for the industry. Multi‐farious pressure groups are campaigning against drink advertising, cigarette advertising and sexism in adverts. The advertising industry's concerns are reflected in a recent report by the Advertising Association — ‘A Freedom Under Threat — Advertising in the EC’. The report indicates a number of areas where legislative controls have been introduced or are proposed to be introduced over the next few years and expresses the fear that controls may be going too far in limiting freedom of ‘commercial speech’. Martin Boase, chairman of the Advertising Association writes in his introduction to the report:
Rafael Saulo Marques Ribeiro, John S.L. McCombie and Gilberto Tadeu Lima
The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the literature on demand-driven Keynesian growth in open economies by developing a formal model that combines Dixon and Thirlwall’s…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the literature on demand-driven Keynesian growth in open economies by developing a formal model that combines Dixon and Thirlwall’s (1975) export-led growth model and Thirlwall’s (1979) balance-of-payments constrained growth model into a more general specification. Then, based on the model developed in this paper, the authors analyse more broadly some important issues concerning the net impact of currency depreciation on the short-run growth.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors build upon Dixon and Thirlwall’s (1975) export-led growth model and Thirlwall’s (1979) balance-of-payments constrained growth model in order to develop the theoretical framework. The authors also run numerical simulations to illustrate the net impact of devaluation on the short-run growth rate in different scenarios.
Findings
The authors demonstrate that the net impact of currency devaluation on growth can go either way, depending on some structural conditions such as the average share of imported intermediate inputs in prime costs of domestic firms and the institutional capacity of trade unions to set nominal wages through the bargaining process. The model also shows that the effectiveness of a competitive real exchange rate to promote growth is higher in countries where the share of labour in domestic income is also higher.
Research limitations/implications
This paper provides a coherent formal starting-point for further theoretical developments on the interrelatedness between currency devaluation, income distribution and growth. These findings provide empirically testable hypothesis for future research.
Originality/value
The present study proposes an alternative formal solution for the theoretical problem of imposing a balance-of-payments constraint on the process of cumulative causation often incorporated in Kaldorian growth models. In terms of policy, the framework sheds further light on the relevance of income distribution and the labour market institutional framework for the dynamics of the exchange rate pass-through mechanism and allows us to map out related conditions under which currency devaluation can promote growth.
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