7,295 research outputs found

    A Phenomenological Study of How Active Engagement in Black Greek Letter Sororities Influences Christian Members\u27 Spiritual Growth

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    This phenomenological study explored how being part of a Black Greek Letter. Organization (BGLO) sorority impacts the spiritual growth of its Christian members. One of the issues explored was the influence relationships within these sororities have on members striving to be like Christ. There is a dichotomy of perspectives regarding Black Greek Letter Organizations (BGLOs). They have a significant role in the Black community as organizations that foster leadership, philanthropy, and sisterhood and promote education. They are admired on and off college campuses and in the broader community in graduate chapters. The objective of phenomenology is to describe phenomena of spiritual growth among Christian sorority members from the life experiences of those who live them; that premise guided the interviews conducted for this study. The results found that active engagement in a BGLO sorority positively impacts its members\u27 spiritual growth. From the emotional stories of sisterhood, service, and devotion to prayer, their experiences evidenced strengthened walks of faith. This study contrasts the Anti-BGLO narrative as a testament to these organizations\u27 legacy and practices deeply grounded in the church

    The International Political Economy of Land Reform and Conflict in Colombia 1936-2018

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    Why did land reforms attempted in 1936, 1961 and 1994 not lead to more equality, stability, and peace in Colombia? Using a theoretical framework informed by Gramscis theory of passive revolution, this study examines the origin of inequality and the propagation of conflict in Colombia by exploring the relationship between international political economy, production relations and class conflict surrounding three cases of land reform (1936, 1961 and 1994). I argue that land reforms have failed to address inequality and have exacerbated class conflicts for three interrelated reasons: 1) though campesinos demanded the redistribution of large estates, pro-capitalist land reforms left productive plantations intact and instead promoted access to lands in frontier areas where the state had little effective control over property rights; 2) demands for reforms emerged during 'commodity booms', when a bourgeois-peasant alliance in favour of capitalist expansion was possible, but during phases of subsequent crisis and price collapse, agrarian reforms were coopted by landlord-bourgeois alliances that pushed the consolidation of larger, more productive holdings; 3) the failure of reforms to address popular demands for land contributed to an atmosphere of instability in which reactionary elites used popular unrest as a pretext for repression against opponents of capitalism with the support of international financial and military power. The result has been the intensification of land conflicts and several waves of landlord-led dispossession, popular resistance, and counterinsurgency in the 1940s-50s, 1960s-1970s and 1980s-2000s. Political instability in Colombia is indicative of the dynamics of passive revolution as the case lends itself to a Gramscian analysis of uneven development in the 20th century Latin American context. Colombia's experience shows the limits of "passive revolutionary" land reforms which may unite diverse constituencies under certain conditions, but which leave the material and social foundations of conflict fundamentally unchanged, leaving campesinos vulnerable to shifts in global market conditions. This leads me to the conclusion that there will be no stable peace in Colombia without redistributive land reform. Redistribution has been the demand of the agrarian social movement since the 1930s but has been consistently denied in land reforms during broader processes of passive revolution that favour large-scale corporate farming, natural resource development and the debasement and exploitation of labour through dispossession in a context of unevenly expanding capitalism

    B/order work: recomposing relations in the seamful carescapes of health and social care integration in Scotland

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    As people, ageing and living with disabilities, struggle with how care is enacted through their lives, integrated care has gained policy purchase in many places, especially in the United Kingdom. Accordingly, there have been various (re)forms of care configurations instigated, in particular, promoting partnership and service redesign. Despite integrations apparent popularity, its contribution to improved service delivery and outcomes for people has been questioned, exposing ongoing uncertainties about what it entails and its associated benefits. Nonetheless, over decades, a remarkably consistent approach to integrated care has advanced collaboration as a solution. Equally, any (re)configurations emerge through wider infrastructures of care, in what might be regarded as dis-integrated care, as complex carescapes attempt to hold and aporias remain. In 2014, the Scottish Public Bodies (Joint Working) (Scotland) Act mandated Health and Social Care Integration (HSCI), as a means to mend fraying carescapes; a flagship policy epitomising public service reform in Scotland, in which normative aspirations of collaboration are central. What then are the accomplishments of this ambitious legislation? From the vantage point of 2021, HSCI has been assessed as slow and insubstantial, but this is not the complete picture. Narratives about failing to meet expectations obscure more complicated histories of cooperation and discord, successes and failures, and unintended consequences. Yet given collaborative ubiquity, if partnerships are contested how then are they practiced? To answer this question, I embarked on an interorganisational ethnography of the enactment of a Health and Social Care Partnership (HSCP), which went ‘live’ on April 1st, 2016; in a place I call ‘Kintra’. I interrogate what happened when several managers (from the NHS and Council) endeavoured to implement HSCI according to the precepts of the Act; working to both (re)configure and hold things together behind care frontiers; away from the bodywork of direct care, immersed in everyday arrangements in the spaces of governance and operations. I chart their efforts to comply with regulations, plan, and build governance apparatuses through documents. I explore through coalescent objects how distributed forms of governance, entwined in policy implementation, were subsequently both sustained, and challenged. I observed for seven months actors struggling to (re)configure care services embedded in a collaborative approach, as well as establish the legitimacy of the HSCP; exemplified through the fabrication of what was understood as a 'must-do' commissioning plan. In tracing documents, I show the ways in which HSCI was simultaneously materialised and constituted through documentation. I reveal how, in the mundane mattering of document manufacturing, possibilities for (re)forming the carescape emerged. By delving into inconspicuous, ‘seamful’ b/order work that both sustained distinctions between the NHS and Council and enabled b/order crossings, I expose how actors were knotted, and how this shaped efforts to recompose the contours of the carescape. While ‘Kintra’s story might be familiar, situated in concerns that may resonate across Scotland; I reveal how collaboration-as-practice is tangled in differing organisational practices, emerging from quotidian intra-actions in meeting rooms, offices, car parks and kitchenettes. I deploy a posthuman practice stance to show not only the way in which public administration ‘does’ care, but it’s world-making through a sociomaterial politics of anticipation. I was told legislation was the only way to make HSCI in ‘Kintra’ happen, nevertheless, there was resistance to limit the breadth and depth of integrating. Consequently, I show how the (re)organising of b/orders was an always-ongoing act of maintenance and repair of a (dis)integrating carescape; as I learnt at the end of my fieldwork, ‘it’s ‘Kintra, ‘it’s aye been!

    Internet of Things 2.0: Concepts, Applications, and Future Directions

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    Applications and technologies of the Internet of Things are in high demand with the increase of network devices. With the development of technologies such as 5G, machine learning, edge computing, and Industry 4.0, the Internet of Things has evolved. This survey article discusses the evolution of the Internet of Things and presents the vision for Internet of Things 2.0. The Internet of Things 2.0 development is discussed across seven major fields. These fields are machine learning intelligence, mission critical communication, scalability, energy harvesting-based energy sustainability, interoperability, user friendly IoT, and security. Other than these major fields, the architectural development of the Internet of Things and major types of applications are also reviewed. Finally, this article ends with the vision and current limitations of the Internet of Things in future network environments

    Blogs in Language Learning Enhancing Students’ Writing Skills through Blogs

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    Unlike receptive skills, such as reading and listening, writing has received relatively little attention in second language learning. The reason for this lack of attention is that reading and listening are assumed to create competence in second language learning since they form the input on which learning is based. Moreover, a number of studies in several English as a foreign language (EFL) contexts have indicated that second language learners consider writing skills as the most difficult skills to master. A number of studies also promote the use of educational technologies in teaching the English language, and blogging, in particular, is considered to be one of the promising educational media that can be used as a genuine tool to teach EFL in a way that enables the learners to use English for authentic and day-to-day life situations. The use of blogging has been shown to enable the students to learn English for real-life situations and purposes which eventually will enhance the EFL learners’ English language competence in general and their writing skills in particular. Therefore, the main aim of this study is to examine the extent to which this new technology can enhance EFL Omani writing. In this study, multiple qualitative methods were used within an interpretivist approach and a case study methodology to gather the required data. Therefore, after choosing the study context and working with foundation students at the Institute of Health in Oman, the following methods were applied. First, an open-ended questionnaire was used to establish baseline perceptions and to select the six students for in-depth examination. Second, a student blog was created and implemented, in which each participant had to write three original essays plus an edited version of each one based on peers’ comments on their work. Subsequently, field notes were applied within the participants’ writing class, and finally, the participants and their teacher were interviewed. The study obtained the following findings. The use of blogging as a new medium in teaching writing skills enabled Omani students to have a new learning experience where several changes occurred: 1. A change in understanding of being a writer, 2. A change in understanding of a text, 3. A changing pedagogy for the writing classroom and 4. A changing classroom culture in the EFL writing classes. This study is characterised by its original design and approach, by its context within the Arab world and its findings are likely to influence teaching L2 writing skills while applying new educational technology. The study offers compelling evidence that blogging facilitates interaction with peers and teachers and that this interaction changes both the understanding and practice of writing

    Building a Generic Value Creation Model For the Sri Lankan National Education System

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    This research was an attempt to build a generic value creation model architecture which can be used by any organisation without business v. public or profit v non-profit differences, by way of: a synthesis of literature in 6 streams of management related to value creation; operationalise it using data collected through an exploratory study in the System of General School Education in Sri Lanka; and, test the operationalised model in the same context through a confirmatory study. The study was a mixed-method one, using in its exploratory phase interviews as its data collection instrument, and in its subsequent confirmatory phase, questionnaires as its data collection instruments. Data analysis methodologies used to test hypotheses were structured equation modelling and multiple regression analysis. The operationalisation validated the model building assumptions, and the final research results showed that the proposed model can be used in a national-scale public education context to measure value creation

    Analysing approaches to specify automated manufacturing systems

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    Automating manufacturing systems can achieve competitive advantage leading to growth in profits through efficiency gains and other advantages including safety of workers and quality of produced products. However, without accurate specification there is no guarantee of realising return on investment. Automated systems are becoming more complex as the need for customisability and variability of products increases and can only be satisfied through flexibility of production processes. To aid companies in specifying automation and mitigate the risks of project failure an approach is needed that guides users choices. The aim of the research was to investigate approaches to specify automated manufacturing systems to provide a basis for a methodology that would aid practitioners in this difficult task. The objectives were in two phases. Firstly to categorise and criticise conclusions of other researchers resulting in identification of themes and criteria for an approach. Secondly to experiment empirically with promising approaches in a company producing of automated manufacturing systems (AMS) and compare the results of the experiments with those found in literature and provide a ranking of themes and criteria to aid future researchers in designing new approaches to specify AMS. The methodology used was literature review followed by mini case studies in a host company to test theory. The results from literature and the experiments were classified into four themes quantitative modelling and simulation (QM&S), database decision aids (DDA), flowcharts and consultancy. These were compared using analytical hierarchy process (AHP) against the identified criteria; rapid application, usability by managers, considering costs and benefits other than financial ones, reducing required resources, being applicable to engineer to order products and usable at the early stage of planning. The results were the strengths and weaknesses of each theme defined by the identified criteria and showed that none of the themes fulfilled all of the criteria for an approach to specify AMS. For this reason a hybrid approach was proposed beginning with a flowchart group session to make an outline plan, followed by a database decision aid to provide options and guidance in creating a detailed plan. Finally, an optional simulation stage could test the planned system for suitability. It is hoped that the comparison of approaches will aid future researchers in the creation of new approaches to assist engineers in specifying automated manufacturing systems in a rapidly changing world

    Changing ideas about corporate social responsibility CSR and development in Context: The case of Mauritius

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    The idea of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has risen to prominence with remarkable rapidity in recent years. Although the literature on contemporary CSR has concentrated almost exclusively on advanced capitalist countries, CSR is increasingly being promoted in a developing country context as an important mechanism for furthering economic and social development goals. Yet, there is currently very limited research about whether contemporary CSR can in fact assist in development. This thesis seeks to contribute to the body of knowledge in this area. The first, theoretical, part of the thesis explores changing ideas about the nature of CSR, and argues that contemporary ideas of CSR are ameliorative in nature, marking a fundamental shift from the original, transformative, idea of the `socially responsible corporation', which emerged in the 1920s and 30s. The thesis also argues that with their emphasis on self-regulation and voluntarism, contemporary ideas about CSR are very much part and parcel of contemporary neo-liberal ideas about economic and social organisation. The second, empirical, part of the thesis seeks to investigate whether the model of CSR being deployed in the developing world is indeed a conservative one and, if so, whether this conservatism is likely to render it ineffectual. It explores how CSR is understood by its practitioners - company executives and other key players - in Mauritius, focusing on the impact of the concept on executive opinion by examining their rhetorical commitment to CSR as well as what that entailed in practice. The research suggests that executives in Mauritius tend to equate CSR with corporate philanthropy, which casts doubt on its ability to make a significant contribution to development. In light of the arguments developed in the thesis, one of its main conclusions is that a return to the earlier, more radical, conception of CSR is needed if CSR is really to make an important contribution to development
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