National security: A propositional study to develop resilience indicators as an aid to personnel vetting

Within the National Security domain there is a convergence of security responsibility across the national security agencies, law enforcement and private security sectors. The sensitivity of this environment requires individuals operating in the domain to be honest, trustworthy and loyal. Personnel vetting is a formal process used to determine an individual’s suitability for access to this domain. Notwithstanding this process, significant breaches of trust, security, and corruption still occur. In psychology, resilience is a well researched phenomenon that is considered a multidimensional construct where individual attributes, family aspects and social environment interact in aiding individuals to deal with vulnerability. There are many understandings and definitions of resilience based on theorists’ different perspectives; however, most agree that resilience is represented by a minimum of two aspects. The first is adversity and second, how the individual deals with adversity that demonstrates situational adaptation in a positive manner. The study is a work in progress and proposes the use of a recently developed Lifespan Resilience Scale. This scale will use resilience markers as an aid to National Security by providing vetting agencies with an additional tool for proactive intervention. The Lifespan Resilience Scale is currently undergoing reliability and validity testing within a student population. Once validated within this population, the scale will be adjusted and tested within the vetting environment using cross validated cohorts and expert opinion. Such a tool will assist National Security through better personnel risk management

Do corporations have a duty to be trustworthy?

Since the global financial crisis in 2008, corporations have faced a crisis of trust, with growing sentiment against ‘elites and ‘big business’ and a feeling that ‘something ought to be done’ to re-establish public regard for corporations. Trust and trustworthiness are deeply moral significant. They provide the ‘glue or lubricant’ that begets reciprocity, decreases risk, secures dignity and respect, and safeguards against the subordination of the powerless to the powerful. However, in deciding how to restore trust, it is difficult to determine precisely what should be done, by whom, and who will bear the cost, especially if any action involves a risk to overall market efficiency and corporate profitability. The paper explores whether corporations have a moral duty to be trustworthy, to bear the cost of being so and thus contribute to resolving the current crisis of trust. It also considers where the state and other social actors have strong reason to protect and enforce such moral rights, while acknowledging that other actors have similar obligations to be trustworthy. It outlines five ‘salient factors’ that trigger specific rights to trustworthiness and a concomitant duty on corporations to be trustworthy: market power, subordination (threat and intimidation), the absence of choice, the need to preserve systemic trust, and corporate political power which might undermine a state’s legitimacy. Absent these factors and corporations do not have a general duty to be trustworthy, since a responsible actor in fair market conditions should be able to choose between the costs and benefits of dealing with generally trustworthy corporations

What Matters to Whom? Managing Trust Across Multiple Stakeholder Groups

Trust has been widely recognized as a key enabler of organizational success. Prior research on organizational trust, however, has not distinguished between the potentially varying bases of trust across different stakeholder groups (e.g., employees, clients, investors, etc.). We develop a framework that distinguishes among organizational stakeholders along two dimensions: intensity (high or low) and locus (internal or external). The framework also helps to identify which of six potential antecedents of trust (benevolence, integrity, competence, reliability, transparency, and identification) will be relevant to which type of stakeholder. We test the predictions of our framework using survey responses from 1,296 respondents across four stakeholder groups from four different organizations. The results reveal that different antecedents of trust are indeed relevant for different stakeholder types, and provide strong support for the validity of the intensity and locus dimensions. This publication is Hauser Center Working Paper No. 39. The Hauser Center Working Paper Series was launched during the summer of 2000. The Series enables the Hauser Center to share with a broad audience important works-in-progress written by Hauser Center scholars and researchers

Building governance and anti-corruption in the Philippines'conditional cash transfer program

The Philippine social protection notes series aims to summarize the good practices and key findings from the Philippines on the topics related to social protection, covering a variety of types of issues including Conditional Cash Transfers (CCT) and targeting, broadening the social protection policy dialogue, analysis on social protection and service delivery. The Philippines is implementing a CCT program, which is called the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (PPPP). CCT program provides cash to poorest households as long as the beneficiary households comply with the conditions of the program. Health grants are provided for beneficiary households with children 0-14 years old and/or with pregnant women with the conditions that all children 0-5 years old and the pregnant women visit health centers and receive services according to Department of Health (DOH) protocol, all children 6-14 years old undergo de-worming protocol at schools, and the household grantees (mainly women) attend family development sessions at least once a month. Education grants are provided for beneficiary households with children 6-14 years old with the conditions that the children are enrolled in primary or secondary school and maintain a class attendance rate of 85 percent every month.Public Sector Corruption&Anticorruption Measures,National Governance,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Poverty Monitoring&Analysis,Governance Indicators

On the Computational Complexity of Vertex Integrity and Component Order Connectivity

The Weighted Vertex Integrity (wVI) problem takes as input an $n$-vertex graph $G$, a weight function $w:V(G)\to\mathbb{N}$, and an integer $p$. The task is to decide if there exists a set $X\subseteq V(G)$ such that the weight of $X$ plus the weight of a heaviest component of $G-X$ is at most $p$. Among other results, we prove that: (1) wVI is NP-complete on co-comparability graphs, even if each vertex has weight $1$; (2) wVI can be solved in $O(p^{p+1}n)$ time; (3) wVI admits a kernel with at most $p^3$ vertices. Result (1) refutes a conjecture by Ray and Deogun and answers an open question by Ray et al. It also complements a result by Kratsch et al., stating that the unweighted version of the problem can be solved in polynomial time on co-comparability graphs of bounded dimension, provided that an intersection model of the input graph is given as part of the input. An instance of the Weighted Component Order Connectivity (wCOC) problem consists of an $n$-vertex graph $G$, a weight function $w:V(G)\to \mathbb{N}$, and two integers $k$ and $l$, and the task is to decide if there exists a set $X\subseteq V(G)$ such that the weight of $X$ is at most $k$ and the weight of a heaviest component of $G-X$ is at most $l$. In some sense, the wCOC problem can be seen as a refined version of the wVI problem. We prove, among other results, that: (4) wCOC can be solved in $O(\min\{k,l\}\cdot n^3)$ time on interval graphs, while the unweighted version can be solved in $O(n^2)$ time on this graph class; (5) wCOC is W[1]-hard on split graphs when parameterized by $k$ or by $l$; (6) wCOC can be solved in $2^{O(k\log l)} n$ time; (7) wCOC admits a kernel with at most $kl(k+l)+k$ vertices. We also show that result (6) is essentially tight by proving that wCOC cannot be solved in $2^{o(k \log l)}n^{O(1)}$ time, unless the ETH fails.Comment: A preliminary version of this paper already appeared in the conference proceedings of ISAAC 201

Girlhood and Ethics: The Role of Bodily Integrity

Our concern is with the ethical issues related to girlhood and bodily integrity—the right to be free from physical harm and harassment and to experience freedom and security in relation to the body. We defend agency, positive self-relations, and health as basic elements of bodily integrity and we advocate that this normative concept be used as a conceptual tool for the protection of the rights of girls. We assume the capability approach developed by Martha Nussbaum as an ethical framework that enables us to evaluate girls’ well-being and well-becoming in relation to the potential, and often subtle, threats they face. The capability approach can be understood as a theory of justice, and, therefore, as an ethical and political approach. An enriched concept of bodily integrity can help in the design of better policies to address gender biases against girls because it could contribute to seeing them as active agents and valid participant

Children’s rights law and human rights law : analysing present and possible future interactions

Following the development of different categorical and thematic human rights regimes, human rights scholarship has become increasingly specialised and departmentalised. Academics too rarely look beyond their niche of expertise. This book shows, however, that much can be learnt from taking off our blinkers and widening our gaze. Realising human rights – both in general and with respect to particular groups – may be well served by analysing more in depth the conceptual and practical developments in certain/other subfields of international human rights law. This does not imply that innovative concepts or distinctive approaches should be blindly transposed to other fields. It does mean that carefully analysing the benefits and drawbacks of the particularities of one human rights regime, may contribute to the enhanced effectiveness of human rights law as a whole and also lead to a more integrated experience of human rights

Delivery as a traumatic event: prevalence, risk factors, screening & treatment

This review looks at the evidence for postnatal posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Postnatal traumatic stress responses are divided into: appraisal of birth as traumatic, traumatic stress responses (severe symptoms of intrusions and avoidance that do not fulfil criteria for PTSD), and PTSD. Evidence is examined for the prevalence of these types of responses after birth, and for prenatal, perinatal, and postnatal vulnerability and risk factors. Screening tools that could be used are outlined and possible intervention and treatment approaches considered. Various conceptual and methodological issues are also raised. It is concluded that up to 10% of women have severe traumatic stress responses to birth although only 1-2% of women actually develop chronic postnatal PTSD. The limited research available suggests that a history of psychiatric problems, mode of delivery, and low support during labour put women at increased risk of postnatal PTSD, although there is unlikely to be a simple relationship between mode of delivery and traumatic stress responses. A model of the possible pathways between vulnerability/risk factors and postnatal PTSD is proposed. Current evidence suggests that brief cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) interventions should be used with women who have a severe traumatic stress response, and longer CBT interventions with women with postnatal PTSD. More research is needed to further explore and confirm prenatal, birth, and postnatal risk factors

A call for resilience index for health and social systems in Africa

This repository item contains a single issue of Issues in Brief, a series of policy briefs that began publishing in 2008 by the Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. This paper is part of the Africa 2060 Project, a Pardee Center program of research, publications and symposia exploring African futures in various aspects related to development on continental and regional scales. The views expressed in this paper are strictly those of the author and should not be assumed to represent the views of the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future or of Boston University.This policy brief explores the concept of resilience as it applies to health and social systems in Africa, and suggests that development of a multi-dimensional resilience index may help to understand and formulate policy in settings of complex emergencies. This paper is part of the Africa 2060 Project, a Pardee Center program of research, publications and symposia exploring African futures in various aspects related to development on continental and regional scales