Search results

This paper aims to synthesise the literature addressing opportunities for intervention and peacemaking in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea (PNG). It shows that peacebuilding in PNG is actively practised in a variety of different forms and by a range of actors. It relies heavily on local champions and coalitions working together with “bits of the state” in inventive but, ultimately, highly vulnerable ways. It argues that the way forward is to better understand how the multiple resources in and beyond the state can be networked more effectively to engineer peace at many different levels, from the clan to the nation state.

The paper is based on a thorough review of the scholarly and grey literature concerning peacebuilding and conflict resolution in PNG over the past 30 years.

The key insight is that peacemaking and non-violence interventions in PNG need to be understood as requiring three different categories of treatment: quick, short interventions; ongoing, slow peacebuilding; and development of community wellness to preventatively stave off violence through increased community cohesion.

The paper is the basis of original research.

This paper aims to discuss the scholarship over the past 30 years on what used to be called Melanesian warfare or “tribal fighting” and is termed in this paper “intergroup conflict” in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. The paper categorises the drivers of intergroup conflict that make up the landscape for conflict in the Highlands. It starts with cultural factors and the understandings about conflict that have long been used to explain such violence, then adds newer factors. It argues that while the individual existence of each driver is important, far more important is the way in which they interact with each other in reinforcing feedback loops that propel the actors involved towards violence.

The paper is based on a thorough review of the scholarly and grey literature on the topic, drawing from the fields of anthropology, criminology, political science, law, justice and peacebuilding.

The overall finding of the paper is that the nature of intergroup conflict, its scale and dynamics, has changed considerably over the past 30 years, most prominently in the entanglement of the state with local-level conflicts. This has significantly affected the nature of intergroup conflict today, deepening the attractors towards violence and conflict, while weakening the ability of existing state and non-state systems to prevent it. The picture that emerges is one in which the interconnectivity of factors promoting violence has intensified, the rate of change is accelerating and levels of violence are amplified.

This paper is an original work.

Violence against women and girls (VAWG) is a global policy issue with significant social, economic and personal consequences. The burden of VAWGs is distributed unequally, with rates of gender violence significantly higher in low- to middle-income countries of the Global South. Yet the bulk of global research on gender violence is based on the experiences of urban communities in high-income English-speaking countries mainly from the Global North. This body of research typically takes the experience of women from Anglophone countries as the norm from which to theorise and frame theories and research of gender-based violence. This chapter problematises theories that the privilege women in the Global North as the empirical referents of ‘everyday violence’ (Carrington et al., 2016). At the same time, however, it is important to resist homogenising the violence experienced by women across diverse societies in the Global South as oppressed subaltern Southern. This binary discourse exaggerates the differences and obfuscates the similarities of VAWG across Northern and Southern borders and reproduces images of women in the Global South as unfortunate victims of ‘other’ cultures (Durham, 2015; Narayan, 1997). This chapter contrasts three examples, the policing of family violence in Indigenous communities in Australia; Image-based Abuse in Singapore; and the policing of gender violence in the Pacific as a way of concretising the argument.

The religious tradition of male circumcision has come increasingly under attack across a number of European states. While critics of the practice argue that the problem is about children’s rights and the proper relationship between secular and religious traditions, Jews tend to see these attacks within the longer history of attempts to assimilate and remake them according to the norms of the majority. Using the 2012 German legal controversy concerning the issue as my vantage point, I explore how contemporary criticism of male circumcision remains entangled with ambivalence toward Judaism and the Jews as the “other.” Through a close reading of the arguments, I show how opponents use the seemingly neutral language of universal human rights to (re)make Jewish difference according to the norms of the majority. I conclude by arguing that such an approach to this issue runs the risk of turning Jews once again into strangers at a time when cultural anxieties are troubling European societies.

Private household insurance has been relatively uncommon among households in Samoa to date. Meanwhile, numerous other adaptation interventions are also being implemented, including community-based adaptation (CBA) projects which draw on the skills of the community to address the climate change-related hazards that are expected to affect local communities. Through semi-structured interviews with community members from the urban/peri-urban area around Apia (with and without insurance) and an insurance company representative, this research explores private household natural perils insurance uptake in Samoa and the effect that the uptake of this insurance has on household engagement in other climate change adaptation (CCA) strategies such as CBA projects. Findings suggest that individuals whose homes are already insured with natural perils insurance are more likely to express more individualistic values or beliefs than those without natural perils insurance. Insured homeowners commonly framed adaptation as a technical challenge, with insurance being part of the technical and expert-led approach to prepare for, manage and recover from extreme events. In contrast, householders without insurance perceived CCA as less of a technical task and more of a social process. Those individuals with private household natural perils insurance coverage (in keeping with their more individualistic values) reported that they were less engaged in CBA projects compared to participants without insurance (who held more communalistic values). Given the importance of household participation in CBA projects, an increased uptake of insurance may have problematic outcomes for the adaptive capacity of the broader community.

This study aims to clarify the relationship between ethical orientation and earnings management perception phenomenon in the organization. It discusses to what extent earnings management is considered as a strategic adaptation or deliberate manipulation in an organization. The study also aims to expand the domain of ethical perspective of earnings management by considering mediating and moderating role of investor sentiment and corporate social responsibility (CSR) as inward pressure and outward commitment surrounding the organization, adopting a combined perspective of strategic management and also accounting discipline than is normally found in the ethics and earnings management literature.

The study opted for literature synthesis to define key concepts surrounding ethics and earnings management perception in the organization. Besides, it attempted to identify influential mediators and moderators in explaining the earnings management phenomenon in the organization. Consequently, the study identified the gaps in current research to draw upon a more holistic conceptual framework. The rationale for the research was justified within the body of research.

The study suggested research propositions based on the literature synthesis in view of ethics and earnings management perception in the organization. More specifically, it has proposed a conceptual framework, explaining the relationship between ethical orientation and a multi-dimensional view of earnings management perception. It is envisaged that the mediating and moderating role of investor sentiment and CSR incorporated in this conceptual study will improve the predictive value of the proposed framework and offer additional insights about factors that inhibit or advance ethical orientation and earnings management practices in the organization.

This paper suffers from the obvious limitation of lacking empirical investigation. However, it does provide a theoretical rationale for the argument that alteration of earnings can be controlled if ethical orientation is emphasized in the organization apart from insulating internal and external pressures to manage such phenomenon from happening in the organization. Perhaps, the most important direction for future research is further extension and validation of this framework by performing an empirical investigation to produce newer insights into this phenomenon.

This conceptual study is different from previous studies on the grounds it has considered unexplored issues linking inward pressures and outward commitments in explaining this phenomenon further. To bridge the critical knowledge gap of earnings management phenomenon, a mediating effect of investor sentiment as an inward pressure and a moderating role of CSR as an outward commitment are also integrated within the model. The proposed model neither formulated nor tested empirically in previous studies locally or, perhaps, globally, therefore, stands out as an original contribution in the study of ethical orientation and earnings management perception.

This paper reports on the impact of perceived resource adequacy (PRA) and competence (PRC) on new service development (NSD) teams’ internal performance (IP). This study aims to explore the indirect effect of internal market orientation (IMO) adoption, as a dynamic capability, on both PRA and PRC through the shaping of the emerging dynamics within NSD teams.

Using a hierarchical research design, the authors use a meso-theory approach to test a path-analytic framework against 116 NSD managers (offering data at the macro- or organisational level) and 543 NSD team members (offering data at the micro- or team level).

Both PRA and PRC are important in explaining NSD teams’ IP at the organisational level, though their explanatory power varies. The adoption of IMO is also an important antecedent to this factor through the (indirect) effect on the team climate and degree of integration.

IMO is an important dynamic capability that allows management to transform the mindset of employees, even if they do not directly interact with customers. In NSD efforts, this reflects on the team’s perceptions of the adequacy of the resources they have to deliver the project through the managerial interventions at the team level, which (mainly) explains the team’s IP.

Adopting an IMO allows the development of a dynamic capability that carries wider benefits for the service organisation, as this has positive implications not just for frontline employees. Specifically, NSD efforts are likely to become more resource-efficient as a result of IMO adoption because of the interventions of management during the development effort.

This empirical study is the first to test the impact of IMO adoption as a dynamic capability and in a context other than frontline employees from a meso-theory perspective. This allows considering the different effects at the appropriate levels (macro and micro), thus enabling a more accurate definition of the mechanism through which companies benefit from IMO adoption.