Policing and Muslim Communities in Germany : Structures, Workplace Cultures and the Threat of Islamophobia

In recognizing that today most organizations in modern societies have been confronted with the necessity of engaging with the processes of an intercultural interaction, this paper focuses on the police and the role police officers play in shaping the interaction between majority and minority ethnic populations in multi-ethnic societies. Empirical data of 727 serving police officers have been analysed emphasising interactions and contact with as well as attitudes towards Muslim members of society. Also police officers experience of their own role in managing policing is examined; and, in taking into account earlier empirical research the relationship between German police officers’ job satisfaction and their attitudes toward Muslim members of the population have been looked at to explore the role of professional identity and workplace cultures in shaping police officers responses to the challenge of policing a multi-ethnic society

DEVELOPMENT OF A SUPPLIER SEGMENTATION METHOD FOR INCREASED RESILIENCE AND ROBUSTNESS: A STUDY USING AGENT BASED MODELING AND SIMULATION

Supply chain management is a complex process requiring the coordination of numerous decisions in the attempt to balance often-conflicting objectives such as quality, cost, and on-time delivery. To meet these and other objectives, a focal company must develop organized systems for establishing and managing its supplier relationships. A reliable, decision-support tool is needed for selecting the best procurement strategy for each supplier, given knowledge of the existing sourcing environment. Supplier segmentation is a well-established and resource-efficient tool used to identify procurement strategies for groups of suppliers with similar characteristics. However, the existing methods of segmentation generally select strategies that optimize performance during normal operating conditions, and do not explicitly consider the effects of the chosen strategy on the supply chain’s ability to respond to disruption. As a supply chain expands in complexity and scale, its exposure to sources of major disruption like natural disasters, labor strikes, and changing government regulations also increases. With increased exposure to disruption, it becomes necessary for supply chains to build in resilience and robustness in the attempt to guard against these types of events. This work argues that the potential impacts of disruption should be considered during the establishment of day-to-day procurement strategy, and not solely in the development of posterior action plans. In this work, a case study of a laser printer supply chain is used as a context for studying the effects of different supplier segmentation methods. The system is examined using agent-based modeling and simulation with the objective of measuring disruption impact, given a set of initial conditions. Through insights gained in examination of the results, this work seeks to derive a set of improved rules for segmentation procedure whereby the best strategy for resilience and robustness for any supplier can be identified given a set of the observable supplier characteristics

A regional land use survey based on remote sensing and other data: A report on a LANDSAT and computer mapping project, volume 3

For abstract, see N78-17444

Ecotourism and Authenticity: Getting Away from It All?

Anthropologists have paid substantial attention to the environment and to tourism. However, they have paid less attention to their conjunction in ecotourism. This article focuses on Western ecotourism in relatively poor countries, approaching it as an expression of certain important Western values concerning the natural world and the people who live there. It places ecotourism within its broader political-economic context--neoliberalism and the institutions that reflect it, which foster its spread in the countries in question. Ecotourism may be seen as an exercise in power that can shape the natural world and the people who live in it in ways that contradict some of the values that it is supposed to express

Design research in the Netherlands 2010 : proceedings of the symposium held on 20-21 May 2010, Eindhoven University of Technology

Design Research in the Netherlands occurs every five years to take stock of the state-of-the-art in design research that takes place in all design disciplines in the Netherlands. How has our understanding of design developed through research on this phenomenon? What are the research and development methodologies used to acquire insight in design? What have we achieved in the past period, and what are out expectations for the coming period? Researchers and research groups outline their development over the past five years in position papers, addressing insights, methods, results, and problems. Design Research in the Netherlands 2010 is the fourth edition, following three symposia held in 1995, 2000, and 2005. The five-year cycle allows to take conceptual distance from everyday problems that are often project-specific, and to assess how the field is developing. The proceedings form a valuable cross-disciplinary overview of research on design

Virtual world commerce adoption (VWCA) : a case study of second life investigating the impacts of perceived affordances, trust, and need satisfaction

Virtual worlds are computer-simulated worlds in which multi-players can simultaneously interact in a rich graphical environment. The development of virtual worlds, along with the massive growth of users, creates opportunities for business organizations. This dissertation involves many studies regarding virtual world adoption in business by virtual consumers. Most of the research in Information Systems (IS) was conducted investigating factors influencing technology adoption, such as ease of use and usefulness, subjective norms and behavioral controls, self-efficacy, performance and effort expectancy, flow, etc. However, most of these research studies focused neither on design aspects related to affordances nor users\u27 goal-oriented behaviors, such as need satisfaction. This dissertation examines the effect of affordances, referring to a property of an object, animal, or environment that affords, or makes available certain actions. Particularly, this dissertation investigates the users\u27 perceived affordance of virtual products and environments, in which business transactions take place. In addition, relationship-based trust and need satisfaction are considered as crucial determinants of virtual world commerce adoption in this dissertation. There are three studies that were conducted in Second Life in this dissertation, which are two preliminary studies and a main study. The preliminary studies use multiple data collection methods, including user interviews, documentation, direct observations, and questionnaire surveys. The results of the preliminary studies suggest that trust, social influence, system security, system quality, and service quality are vital for users when they make purchase decisions. The initial measurement model containing valid and reliable measurement scales of the main research constructs was proposed. The main study, using a revised questionnaire survey from the preliminary studies, was conducted to develop the conceptual framework of Virtual World Commerce Adoption (VWCA). Covariance-based and PLS-based path analyses were employed based on the data obtained from the participants who have different experience levels with online business transactions. The final results show a significant relationship between perceived affordances and intention to purchase products in the virtual world. This relationship is mediated by need satisfaction. However, the mediating effect of relationship-based trust is not significant. This is due to more concern about trust related to technical aspects of the system rather than trust from social exchange process