In recent years, there has been a noticeable increase in organizational trends to hire irregular workers. This inclination, in a time of great flux and uncertainty, exacerbates human resource issues faced by firms. We argue that corporate social responsibility can be an important antecedent to improve the workplace attitudes of irregular workers and as a result reduce the negative impact on organizations of the increased use of an irregular workforce. Hence, we explore the relationship between perceived CSR and unfairness perception (...) and social relations of subcontracted workers with regular workers. We further attempt to explain these relationships through the mediating effects of psychological contract violation and organizational identity, respectively. Our analysis supports a negative effect of composite and external CSR on unfairness perception and positive effect on social relations. Additionally, our results support partial mediating roles of psychological contract violation and organizational identity. Theoretical and practical implications of the results are also discussed. (shrink)

This work underscores the importance of answering the question: who are organizational stakeholders? It argues that stakeholder theory is a normative management theory, and there is a need to differentiate between stakeholder and non-stakeholder firms. It further argues that the overall organizational stakeholder orientation indicates how narrowly or broadly organizations define their stakeholders. Therefore, this work attempts to provide a stakeholder salience scheme for stakeholder organizations, i.e., organizations with accommodative and proactive stakeholder orientations. In the process, this work reviews key (...) scholarly contributions and points out some potential weaknesses in these contributions with an aim to develop a new stakeholder typology. This work contributes to the existing literature by: introducing a contingent variable, i.e., organizational strategy, in a stakeholder typology scheme; reaffirming the normative aspect of stakeholder theory by placing normative considerations at the center of stakeholder salience typology; and improving the descriptive validity of stakeholder theory by adding a new stakeholder variable, i.e., organization, in the presented stakeholder salience typology scheme. (shrink)

The increase in the volume of research conducted in Low and Middle Income Countries (LMIC), has brought a renewed international focus on processes for ethical conduct of research. Several programs have been initiated to strengthen the capacity for research ethics in LMIC. However, most such programs focus on individual training or development of ethics review committees. The objective of this paper is to present an approach to institutional capacity assessment in research ethics and application of this approach in the form (...) of a case study from an institution in Africa. (shrink)

Introduction The goal of this project was to develop and validate a new tool to evaluate learners' knowledge and skills related to research ethics. Methods A core set of 50 questions from existing computer-based online teaching modules were identified, refined and supplemented to create a set of 74 multiple-choice, true/false and short answer questions. The questions were pilot-tested and item discrimination was calculated for each question. Poorly performing items were eliminated or refined. Two comparable assessment tools were created. These assessment (...) tools were administered as a pre-test and post-test to a cohort of 58 Indian junior health research investigators before and after exposure to a new course on research ethics. Half of the investigators were exposed to the course online, the other half in person. Item discrimination was calculated for each question and Cronbach's α for each assessment tool. A final version of the assessment tool that incorporated the best questions from the pre-/post-test phase was used to assess retention of research ethics knowledge and skills 3 months after course delivery. Results The final version of the REKASA includes 41 items and had a Cronbach's α of 0.837. Conclusion The results illustrate, in one sample of learners, the successful, systematic development and use of a knowledge and skills assessment tool in research ethics capable of not only measuring basic knowledge in research ethics and oversight but also assessing learners' ability to apply ethics knowledge to the analytical task of reasoning through research ethics cases, without reliance on essay or discussion-based examination. These promising preliminary findings should be confirmed with additional groups of learners. (shrink)

We describe and evaluate FABTP and the efforts of its trainees. Our data show that since 2001, the 28 former FABTP trainees have auth.

The manufacturing industry is evolving rapidly, becoming more complex, more interconnected, and more geographically distributed. Competitive pressure and diversity of consumer demand are driving manufacturing companies to rely more and more on improved knowledge management practices. As a result, multiple software systems are being created to support the integration of data across the product life cycle. Unfortunately, these systems manifest a low degree of interoperability, and this creates problems, for instance when different enterprises or different branches of an enterprise interact. (...) Common ontologies (consensus-based controlled vocabularies) have proved themselves in various domains as a valuable tool for solving such problems. In this paper, we present a consensus-based Additive Manufacturing Ontology (AMO) and illustrate its application in promoting re-usability in the field of dentistry product manufacturing. (shrink)

Luck (2009) argues that gamers face a dilemma when it comes to performing certain virtual acts. Most gamers regularly commit acts of virtual murder, and take these acts to be morally permissible. They are permissible because unlike real murder, no one is harmed in performing them; their only victims are computer-controlled characters, and such characters are not moral patients. What Luck points out is that this justification equally applies to virtual pedophelia, but gamers intuitively think that such acts are not (...) morally permissible. The result is a dilemma: either gamers must reject the intuition that virtual pedophelic acts are impermissible and so accept partaking in such acts, or they must reject the intuition that virtual murder acts are permissible, and so abstain from many (if not most) extant games. While the prevailing solution to this dilemma has been to try and find a morally relevant feature to distinguish the two cases, I argue that a different route should be pursued. It is neither the case that all acts of virtual murder are morally permissible, nor are all acts of virtual pedophelia impermissible. Our intuitions falter and produce this dilemma because they are not sensitive to the different contexts in which games present virtual acts. (shrink)

The inconsistent findings of past board diversity research demand a test of competing linear and curvilinear diversity–performance predictions. This research focuses on board age and gender diversity, and presents a positive linear prediction based on resource dependence theory, a negative linear prediction based on social identity theory, and an inverted U-shaped curvilinear prediction based on the integration of resource dependence theory with social identity theory. The predictions were tested using archival data on 288 large organizations listed on the Australian Securities (...) Exchange, with a 1-year time lag between diversity (age and gender) and performance (employee productivity and return on assets). The results indicate a positive linear relationship between gender diversity and employee productivity, a negative linear relationship between age diversity and return on assets, and an inverted U-shaped curvilinear relationship between age diversity and return on assets. The findings provide additional evidence on the business case for board gender diversity and refine the business case for board age diversity. (shrink)

To determine the attitude of general practitioners towards continuing medical education and reasons motivating or hindering them from attending CME procedures, we conducted a cross-sectional survey from November 2013 to April 2014 in Karachi. Three hundred general practitioners who possessed a medical license for practice in Pakistan filled a pre-designed questionnaire consisting of questions pertaining to attitudes towards CME. Data was entered and analyzed using SPSS v16.0. 70.3% of the participants were males. Mean age was 47.75 ± 9.47 years. Only (...) 67.33% knew about CME and only 52% had attended a CME session. Reasons for attending CME procedures reported were: need for updating knowledge, skills and competencies, opportunity to meet colleagues and presenting scientific papers. Mean Likert score was 1.67 for those who thought CME is worthwhile and 1.44 for those who consider their clinical duties as the major hurdle in attending CME procedures. Most common cause for not attending CME was lack of knowledge followed by time constraint. Most physicians were not sufficiently informed about the potential benefits of CME and had never attended a CME session. Most common reason for attending CME procedures reported was need for updating knowledge, skills and competencies while reasons hindering physicians from attending CME were lack of knowledge and time constraint. (shrink)

Recent studies from Western countries indicate significant levels of questionable research practices, but similar data from low and middle-income countries are limited. Our aims were to assess the prevalence of and attitudes regarding research misconduct among researchers in several universities in the Middle East and to identify factors that might account for our findings. We distributed an anonymous questionnaire to a convenience sample of investigators at several universities in Egypt, Lebanon, and Bahrain. Participants were asked to a) self-report their extent (...) of research misconducts, as well as their knowledge of colleagues engaging in similar research misconducts and b) provide their extent of agreement with certain attitudes about research misconduct. We used descriptive, bivariate, and multivariate logistic regression statistics to analyze the data. Data from 278 participants showed a high prevalence of misconduct, as 59.4% of our respondents self-reported to committing at least one misbehaviors and 74.5% reported having knowledge of any misbehaviors among any of their colleagues. The most common type of self-report misconduct was “circumventing research ethics regulations” followed by “fabrication and falsification”. A significant predictor of misconduct included a lack of “prior ethics training”. Scientific misconduct represents a significant issue in several universities in the Middle East. The demonstration that a lack of “prior ethics training” was a significant predictor of misconduct should lead to educational initiatives in research integrity. Further studies are needed to confirm whether our results can be generalized to other universities in the Middle East. (shrink)

Although scholars have long known that entrepreneurship involves the interaction of countless individuals beyond the entrepreneur, traditional performance metrics are limited to capturing the economic value that is created for shareholders. Multiple scholars have suggested that it should be possible to develop a more complete assessment that is able to simultaneously capture both the economic and non-economic consequences of entrepreneurship that exist for the broader network of firm stakeholders. The purpose of this paper is to provide a more nuanced understanding (...) of entrepreneurial performance by operationalizing the concept of stakeholder capabilities. Building on concepts from stakeholder theory and the human development and capability approach in welfare economics, we argue that the pursuit of entrepreneurial opportunities can either create or destroy value for multiple stakeholders, and that this value is best conceived in terms of increases and decreases in individual capabilities. Approaching entrepreneurial performance from a stakeholder capabilities lens has implications for how we view entrepreneurs’ impact on society, what we mean by the creation and destruction of “value,” and how we define failure and success in entrepreneurship. (shrink)

By shedding light on accounts from unaccompanied Afghan asylum-seeking minors in Sweden who were child soldiers in Syria, this thesis explores and examines their narratives and their involvement in the civil war in Syria. The research aims to create a deeper understanding of how these children themselves made sense of their participation in the war by answering the following questions: How were the children approached by the recruiters? What kind of reasons for joining the war are put forward by the (...) recruiters and what strategies do the children encounter: a) economic; b) identity formation; c) social deprivation; d) feeling of vulnerability; e) militarization; f) mental development; g) ideology/ religious-sectarian; or all together? How do the children perceive these encounters and make sense of their recruitment to the Shiite Fatemiyoun Brigade? To which extent has the ideology of Shi’ism played an important role for them in joining the Syrian War? This is a qualitative study based on in-depth interviews which combines procedures from two approaches and techniques: an ethnographic approach and a narrative approach that explores the interviewees’ experiences in a period of time and also generates detailed insights. Despite the fact that none of the respondents testified for being recruited at gunpoint or having been ill-treated, the respondents emphasized that they were forced to join due to the bad circumstances they were living in. In addition, many similarities with other cases regarding child soldiering in several countries have been explored in this thesis, for instance factors related to the socio- economic context and the experiences that are related to the children’s development processes. Differences can be located in various details regarding ideologies and indoctrination since the respondents did not share the politico-religious purposes of the recruiters. (shrink)

Rationale The holistic aspect of stroke rehabilitation to include psychological well-being is currently neglected, with more emphasis placed on physical recovery despite anxiety and depression being common poststroke. From the limited amount of current literature, it seems that creative strategies such as art therapy can be beneficial in reducing isolation and anxiety among stroke patients.Methods Stroke patients in a hospital rehabilitation unit were invited to participate in two weekly AT sessions for 6 weeks, facilitated by an art psychotherapist using paints, (...) crayons, clay, a camera and an iPad. Hospital anxiety and depression scales and therapy outcome measures were measured at the beginning and end of the study.Results Six male patients were recruited, average age 69 years . Group discussions allowed patients to express openly feelings of frustration as well as hope for physical and emotional recovery: ‘fight like a ferret’, an expression used by a group member. The group produced several art objects and photographic images that were collated using stop-frame animation to produce a 10 min film. Median HAD score for the group was eight points upon entering the study and six points on finishing the study.Key conclusions There is little attention to the emotional needs of stroke patients in rehabilitation. Properly designed research studies exploring the role of AT in addressing anxiety and depression poststroke are needed. Our study showed that AT was a feasible intervention that helped patients explore the sequel of stroke in an open supportive environment. (shrink)

I begin by contending that an absolute prohibition to avoid resorting to shoot-to-kill, under any circumstances, does not adequately address the considerable negative consequences that could follow. In opening up the question for debate, I seek to alert us to the risks of moral corruption in both thought and practice, but I do not take these to be unassailable. Next, I pose a set of questions in order to interrogate unsafe assumptions and to disambiguate critical language in the shoot-to-kill scenario. (...) (1) How might shoot-to-kill be analogous to self-defence? (2) Should we not distinguish between reasons which could explain from those which do not justify why a suicide bomber acted as they did? (3) Must we avoid entertaining any charges of complicity on the suicide bombers’ behalf? (4) How, if at all, does racial profiling adulterate the grounds for police suspicion? (5) Does “reasonability” differ from “absolute necessity” as a precondition for enacting shoot-to-kill? And, (6), prompted by the injustice of the Jean Charles de Menezes case, can we assess the moral consequences of relocating the moment of decision from the firearms officer to their operational commander? After taking stock of the results of these enquiries, I conclude that resort to 'Kratos' rules of engagement unjustifiably raises the risk of shooting dead an innocent person, compared to the risk from harm that the general population may be reasonably expected to shoulder. (shrink)

We describe a knowledge representation and inference formalism, based on an intensional propositional semantic network, in which variables are structures terms consisting of quantifier, type, and other information. This has three important consequences for natural language processing. First, this leads to an extended, more natural formalism whose use and representations are consistent with the use of variables in natural language in two ways: the structure of representations mirrors the structure of the language and allows re-use phenomena such as pronouns and (...) ellipsis. Second, the formalism allows the specification of description subsumption as a partial ordering on related concepts (variable nodes in a semantic network) that relates more general concepts to more specific instances of that concept, as is done in language. Finally, this structured variable representation simplifies the resolution of some representational difficulties with certain classes of natural language sentences, namely, donkey sentences and sentences involving branching quantifiers. The implementation of this formalism is called ANALOG (A NAtural LOGIC) and its utility for natural language processing tasks is illustrated. (shrink)

This paper discusses the positions held by two opposing camps—the traditionalists and the positivists regarding the presence or absence of ethics in Indian philosophy. It subsequently offers a way ahead of the impasse where I consider some inputs inherent in the method of dialogue in pre-modern Indian philosophy for imagining an ethics of and ethics for plurality. Such an ethics, I argue, cannot be imagined without involving the category of ‘Other,’ which has otherwise remained elusive in the Indian philosophical debates. (...) The diverse nature of Indian societies demands Other-centric ethics to assess and evaluate the enduring moral crisis pervading contemporary times. (shrink)

Research ethics remains a cornerstone of the scientific enterprise as it defines the boundaries of responsible conduct of research. Our aim was to systematically identify, review and test online training courses in research ethics which could be considered most appropriate for future training at the University of Botswana. We used an evaluative tool that included both descriptive and evaluative criteria for assessing the strengths, weaknesses and appropriateness of 10 online research ethics courses which are publicly accessible. We then assembled Focus (...) Group Discussions to engage the UB community to select the best 2–3 online courses that are considered most suited for use in future training of research ethics at UB. Twenty respondents participated in three FGDs. Our findings show that there is limited research ethics training capacity in low resourced academic institutions like UB. Online training opportunities could be used to address this challenge. Our analysis reveal that out of the 10 online courses reviewed, CITI program, Family Health International, and Training and Resource in Research Ethics Evaluation have characteristics that would make them suitable for utilization in Botswana. We believe the findings from this case study will be of value to other similarly situated research institutions. (shrink)

SummaryTwo administrations of the Coloured Progressive Matrices in Egypt were compared. The first was administered to a large, representative national sample between 2011 and 2013. The second was administered to primary school pupils in villages in Menoufia in northern Egypt in 2017. Adjusting for the Flynn Effect, the IQ of the rural northern Egyptians was shown to be statistically significantly higher than the national average. It is demonstrated that this is consistent with regional socioeconomic differences in Egypt, which strongly imply (...) that northern Egypt has a higher average IQ than southern Egypt. (shrink)

This paper presents a unifying framework for the study of artificial life, intelIigence and reality. By providing this framework we can give a clear and concise introduction to the fundamental arguments of all three artificial sciences and facilitate the translation of arguments from any one domain to the other two. The framework is based on a variant of functionalism that does not exclude the role of the observer.

A training physician has his first interaction with a pharmaceutical representative during medical school. Medical students are often provided with small gifts such as pens, calendars and books, as well as free lunches as part of drug promotion offers. Ethical impact of these transactions as perceived by young medical students has not been investigated in Pakistan before. This study aimed to assess the association of socio-demographic variables with the attitudes of medical students towards pharmaceutical companies and their incentives.

To determine the attitude of general practitioners towards continuing medical education and reasons motivating or hindering them from attending CME procedures, we conducted a cross-sectional survey from November 2013 to April 2014 in Karachi. Three hundred general practitioners who possessed a medical license for practice in Pakistan filled a pre-designed questionnaire consisting of questions pertaining to attitudes towards CME. Data was entered and analyzed using SPSS v16.0. 70.3% of the participants were males. Mean age was 47.75 ± 9.47 years. Only (...) 67.33% knew about CME and only 52% had attended a CME session. Reasons for attending CME procedures reported were: need for updating knowledge, skills and competencies, opportunity to meet colleagues and presenting scientific papers. Mean Likert score was 1.67 for those who thought CME is worthwhile and 1.44 for those who consider their clinical duties as the major hurdle in attending CME procedures. Most common cause for not attending CME was lack of knowledge followed by time constraint. Most physicians were not sufficiently informed about the potential benefits of CME and had never attended a CME session. Most common reason for attending CME procedures reported was need for updating knowledge, skills and competencies while reasons hindering physicians from attending CME were lack of knowledge and time constraint. (shrink)

Most countries, including Botswana, have established Institutional Review Boards to provide oversight of research involving human beings. Although much has been published on the structure and function of IRBs around the world, there is less literature that empirically describes the perspectives of stakeholders in low- and middle-income country settings regarding IRB processes. In this study, we employed primarily quantitative methods to examine the perceptions of researchers at the University of Botswana about the review of research protocols by local IRBs. Data (...) were collected using a web-based survey. This was a preliminary effort to document some of the emerging experiences of researchers with ethics review in a context where both research and research oversight are relatively new. Findings from 85 researchers indicate that researchers recognized the need for an IRB to review all human research protocols, expressed the need for research ethics training, experienced hig... (shrink)

Cochrane has developed a linked data infrastructure to make the evidence and data from its rich repositories more discoverable to facilitate evidence-based health decision-making. These annotated resources can enhance the study and understanding of biomarkers and surrogate endpoints.

Deferred sale, in the Islamic Banking and Financeworld widely known as Bai’ bi thaman ajil, is used as an extension toProfit-sale ; both sales complement each other. The Profitsalesells the commodity with profit over the cost price, and BBA plays the roleof receiving that payment on deferred or instalment basis. BBA has becomethe “premier consumer financing facility” for the Islamic financial institutions. This paper deals with deferred sale precisely. It looks into its origin andits transition from void to valid sale. (...) Its application as trade contract and itsmodern application as financing tool is analysed in the light of the maqāṣidSharīʿah. (shrink)

v. 1. Introduction to the study of Qurʼan -- v. 2. Surat ul-Faateha to Surat-ul-Baqarah (sections 1-21) -- v. 3. Surat-ul-Baqarah (sections 22 to 37) -- v. 4. Surat-ul-Baqarah (sections 38-40), Surat Aal-e-Imran, Surat-un-Nisa (sections 1 and 2) -- v. 5. Surat-un-Nisa (sections 3 to 24), Surat Al-Maaʼidah (complete), Surat Al-Anʼaam (sections 1-5) -- v. 6. Surat Al-Anʼaam (sections 6-20) -- v. 7. Surat Yunus to Surat Ibrahim -- v. 8. Surat al-Hijr to Surat al-kahf -- v. 9. Surat Maryam (...) to Surat-ul-Moʼminoon -- v. 10. Surat-un-Noor to Surat-ul-Qasas -- v. 11. Suratul Ankaboot to Surat Faatir -- v. 12. Surat Yaaseen to Surat-ush-Shoora -- v. 13. Surat Zukhruf to Surat Toor -- v. 14. Surat-un-Najm to Surat-ul-Munafiqoon -- v. 15. Surat-at-Taghaabun to Surat-al-Infitaar -- v. 16. Surat-at-Tateef to surat-an-Naas. (shrink)