The role of business manager attitudes and perceptions in driving climate change risk action in the agricultural sector in Uganda

Much is already known about climate change risk mitigation and adaptation globally. However, much needs to be done to make this knowledge cascaded down to a business manager in the agricultural sector in Uganda. This study aimed to understand the role of business manager perceptions and attitudes in influencing climate change risk action in business organizations in the agricultural sector in Uganda with its particular climatic, social and economic circumstances. An assessment was made of whether and how the climate change risk perceptions of business managers from 16 companies engaged in downstream agricultural processing differ from 15 managers engaged in commercial agricultural production in Uganda. The study utilized a phenomenological approach using comparative case study method. The respondents were selected purposively from managed agriculture processor and producer companies. It is believed that the study of perceptions and beliefs involves uncovering tacit knowledge, knowledge in the minds of managers which cannot easily be articulated and documented. The study therefore made use of George Kelly’s Personal Construct theory and its repertory grid analysis technique for data collection, a very useful tool for making tacit knowledge explicit. The study examined nine risks as elements for the repertory grid exploring how business managers perceive there risks and how such perceptions influence their climate change risk action in the agriculture sector in Uganda. The study also intended to identify if there are variations in climate change risk perception between the agriculture producers and processors in Uganda. The personal constructs generated from respondents during the grid interviews are the units of analysis. The results were analyzed using Content analysis, and Honey’s data analysis procedures. The results indicate that as long as business managers perceive climate change risks to have an effect on their business continuity or survival, their production capacities, their profitability, their marketing decisions, affect their cost of production, influence their investment decisions, there are available response options, and consider that they have the capacity to manage those risks, they will take immediate action to put in place strategies to respond to those climate change risks. There is no appreciable variation in climate change risk perception between producers and processors. The study results provide policy makers an opportunity to understand what concerns business owners along the agriculture value chain for them to respond to climate change risks and also informs business owners the areas of key concern that they have to reflect on as they consider climate change risk strategies

The antecedent roles of personal constructs and culture in the construing of psychological contracts by staff in a Czech financial services company

The modern conceptualisation of the psychological contract recognises a tacit mental representation or schema, spanning all aspects of an employee’s perception of work. Reciprocity is a normative force in contract functioning. For over 500 years, the Czech Republic was subject to the rule of other nations. The failed totalitarianism of the most recent Soviet hegemony precipitated the Velvet Revolution and Czech adoption of the market economy in 1989. Some commentators have argued that unproductive work attitudes remain as a legacy of the command system. Following the phenomenological paradigm and constructivist epistemology, the research uses concepts from Personal Construct Psychology to compare the work constructs of Czech and non-Czech staff within the Czech and UK subsidiaries of the same company, examining antecedent effects of culture and individual experiences on psychological contract formation and development. The findings show that the two nationalities construe work along broadly similar lines, prioritizing its social qualities. Czech constructs seem to be simpler than those of non- Czechs, apparently lacking the value placed on personal ambition and achievement by the comparator group. Czechs do, however, appear to value independence much more than non-Czechs, with young Czechs also seemingly expecting social justice and the right to self-determination. The findings make a strong case for suggesting that these values have their origins in Czech culture and history, implying that both influence the work dispositions of Czechs and may plausibly be psychological contract antecedents. The conclusions call for a wider conceptualisation of the psychological contract, specifically in its anticipatory (pre-work) form, and suggest that existing theory might benefit from giving greater consideration and prominence to the social properties of work. Suggestions for further research and business applications are included

Paradoxos vivenciados pelo uso das tecnologias móveis no processo individual de tomada de decisão

O crescimento do uso das Tecnologias da Informação Móveis e Sem Fio (TIMS) nas organizações tem viabilizado cada vez mais o trabalho móvel, trazendo tanto benefícios quanto desafios aos processos de trabalho. O objetivo desta pesquisa foi compreender quais são os paradoxos vivenciados com o uso de TIMS na tomada de decisão individual em contexto de mobilidade. Foi realizada uma pesquisa qualitativa por meio de um grupo focal e entrevistas semiestruturadas, com um total de 26 participantes (executivos e gestores de nível intermediário) que tomam decisões nesse contexto. Os resultados corroboram paradoxos já identificados na literatura, e que se manifestam nos processos de tomada de decisão em contexto de mobilidade: Ocupado e Disponível, Planejamento e Improvisação, Engajamento e Desengajamento, Competência e Incompetência. Além disso, novos paradoxos foram identificados: Pessoal e Profissional, Maior Colaboração e Menos Face a Face, Decisões mais Ágeis e Decisões com Maior Exposição ao Erro

Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator Perceptions of Practice and Potential: Investigating Education and Health Care Plan Implementation in Early Years and Primary Education

The Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) Code of Practice (DfE and DoH, 2015) aimed to reform provision for children and young people with additional and complex learning needs. Its intention was to place such children and their families at the centre of practice and introduce Education and Health Care Plans (EHCPs) to bring together support from different disciplines. Special Educational Needs Co-ordinators (SENCos) are the key implementers of the Code of Practice within their settings. This requires them to recognise complex needs, to interface with setting staff, families and expert professionals, and to apply for and implement EHCPs. However, differences in leadership, training and educational phase have created a confusing situation in which knowledge, status and priorities vary. This mixed-methods, close-to-practice research sought to identify, describe and explain key features of the role, implementation and SENCo identity, as perceived and experienced by SENCo practitioners working in either the early years or primary phase of education. A conceptual framework that encompassed micro-level influences (identity theory) and external ecological influences (Bronfenbrenner, 1979, 1982) was utilised to do this. Following a pilot study, eight SENCos working in the early years phase and seven SENCos working in the primary phase from a variety of settings in one local authority area in the Midlands region of England participated in two stages of data collection. Each completed a work-line, a critical event narrative interview, and a repertory grid interview, then ranked a group repertory grid. Descriptive and numerical analysis of the data sets was conducted, with findings and results being integrated to discover the salient external and internal influences on EHCP implementation. This process revealed seven themes, with accompanying sub-themes. Detail about SENCo identity (including their perceptions of collective and professional identity and of positive and negative impacts on their personal identity) emerged, including that the experience and outcomes for individual children were central to SENCo purpose. Key relationships became apparent, as did institutional issues (availability of consistent information and communication and liaison), and organisational issues (setting ethos, impact on SENCo status, teamwork and evidence collation). Knowledge and skills (of processes, developmental norms, SEND and of individual children) were also important, and all of these themes influenced the quality of evidence provided for EHCPs and so outcomes. A model was developed to illustrate these, then recommendations relating to purpose, support resources, communities of learning, and relationships were made. Finally, potential impact and dissemination platforms were detailed

Sharing understandings of information systems development methodologies : a critical reflexive issue for practice and curriculum

Most contemporary organizations make use of computer-based information systems to support their management activities. There is considerable evidence that many of these systems experience problems during the development phases and a large proportion of these systems may, using specific criteria, be classed as failures. The reported high level of such failure in the development of computer-based information systems is not a new phenomenon for business, having been present almost from the inception of these systems. The frameworks that guide developers through the process can be labelled as information systems development methodologies, or ISDMs.For an educator involved with the teaching of some or all aspects of the development process this perceived high level of failure of systems development and implementation in practice raises some significant concerns. If there is a 'silver bullet' approach that students need to be equipped with to become successful systems developers we need to identify it and ensure that they are proficient with it. If there is no silver bullet we need to acknowledge this in our teaching and equip the students with the critical thinking skills to help them appreciate this in their later practice.This thesis takes as its central theme the view that there is currently no 'silver bullet' and one may never be found to fit all development projects and environments. Under such a constraint our students, as would-be practitioners, need to be helped to approach practice unfettered by a naïve belief that there is a single approach that offers guaranteed success in the development of information systems. Flexible, contingent and possibly creative approaches need to be fostered so that students can both work in the field and can contribute to both the overall understanding of that field and to their own personal development. The thesis considers the role of multiple perspectives, constructivism, language, communication and reflection as vehicles to allow the building and sharing of accessible understanding of information systems development methodologies in a tertiary education setting. The issues are explored through the design and development of a Masters course titled 'Information Systems Development Methodologies' that was designed and implemented at the University of South Australia in the period 1999 to 2008. The course was initially designed within an interpretivist paradigm and rather than following a traditional systems analysis and design path could be viewed more as a liberal arts course. However, as the course moved towards the end of its life it began to take on a more positivistic flavour.The story of the course emerged from a series of action learning cycles and is told from the perspective of the author who was both the researcher and the subject of the research.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Blended EAP professionals in corporatized higher educational institutions: a critical grounded theory

As momentous changes continue to sweep across higher education, tertiary-level English for Academic Purposes (EAP) has experienced a time of challenging and sometimes painful professional transition. In many Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) around the world, EAP units have been transferred from academic departments to administrative offices responsible for international student recruitment and entrepreneurial talent development. The new locus of conflict for many teachers of EAP has centered on the significant disconnect between them and their new administrative managers about the purposes of second language pedagpgy. This thesis is a qualitative grounded theory study situated within these restive dynamics. Drawing from in-depth interviews of over ninety informants at eleven higher educational institutions in the UK, Japan and the United States, I focus upon the new middle managers of EAP units, referred to in this thesis as Blended EAP Professionals (BLEAPs). I develop a Critical Grounded Theory about the processes and strategies BLEAPs use to survive in corporatized HEIs while working with international students and Teachers of EAP (TEAPs). It was discovered during the course of analysis that, even while BLEAPs are often responsible for teaching EAP classes, those who succeed in corporatized HEIs dedicated most of their energies to processes identified as Hunting & Gathering , Weighing & Measuring, and Molding & Shaping. All of these are linked to a basic social process, which is theorized to be that of Struggling to Manage and to Lead. This thesis discusses each of these processes in detail, and after explaining how the data used in this grounded theory study was philosophically construed, methodologically structured and theoretically analyzed, I consider the implications of this theory for Tertiary EAP as the profession approaches the middle of the 21st century

Rethinking the risk matrix

So far risk has been mostly defined as the expected value of a loss, mathematically PL (being P the probability of an adverse event and L the loss incurred as a consequence of the adverse event). The so called risk matrix follows from such definition. This definition of risk is justified in a long term “managerial” perspective, in which it is conceivable to distribute the effects of an adverse event on a large number of subjects or a large number of recurrences. In other words, this definition is mostly justified on frequentist terms. Moreover, according to this definition, in two extreme situations (high-probability/low-consequence and low-probability/high-consequence), the estimated risk is low. This logic is against the principles of sustainability and continuous improvement, which should impose instead both a continuous search for lower probabilities of adverse events (higher and higher reliability) and a continuous search for lower impact of adverse events (in accordance with the fail-safe principle). In this work a different definition of risk is proposed, which stems from the idea of safeguard: (1Risk)=(1P)(1L). According to this definition, the risk levels can be considered low only when both the probability of the adverse event and the loss are small. Such perspective, in which the calculation of safeguard is privileged to the calculation of risk, would possibly avoid exposing the Society to catastrophic consequences, sometimes due to wrong or oversimplified use of probabilistic models. Therefore, it can be seen as the citizen’s perspective to the definition of risk