The Cane toad times

The Cane Toad Times was a satirical magazine, published in Brisbane. It was published over two periods. In the first period in the 1970s, 7 issues were produced. In the second period between 1983 and 1990, 15 issues were produced. In 1986 the company ToadShow evolved from the Cane Toad Times

Improving Business and ICT Ethics Education – the Potential of Positive Psychology and Appreciative Inquiry

Unethical behaviour is affecting societal behaviour and impacting business success. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is increasingly adopted across businesses and for personal use and insufficient attention is paid to the impact of unethical practices in the use of ICT on various stakeholders involved. ICT professionals are well positioned to provide guidance to ICT users and decision makers but they need help. While they have the knowledge and skills in ICT, they also need a sense of professional responsibility towards their stakeholders and a moral attitude to help them understand how unethical practices in ICT can affect others and the ability to make good decisions in the use of ICT. Ethics education has been shown to be effective for other professions and this research project builds and tests a model based on current good practices found to be effective in ethics education. More specifically, it adopts a Positive Psychology perspective, not previously used in ICT ethics education, looking at what is working well and examines the use of a Positive Psychology approach, namely Appreciative Inquiry (AI) which has been found elsewhere to be an effective method to motivate change. This research project tests the impact that an Appreciative Inquiry included in a computer ethics class has on the development of moral attitude. The project had a quasi-experiment design with a large sample of over 400 participants (undergraduate Information Technology Management students) using both a control and treatment group to determine the effect of AI on the changes in moral sensitivity and moral judgment of the participants. One well validated survey tool and one developed specifically for ICT, the Defining Issues Test 2 and the IMIS Survey, respectively, were used to test changes from the beginning to the end of each course. The study findings demonstrate that a well-developed ethics course, adopting good practices, produced significant changes in the moral attitudes of the participants. The adoption of AI in the treatment group produced significant changes in elements of the student’s moral judgment validated by both the pre-and post-analysis and instructor observations. Thus taking a Positive Psychology approach to ICT ethics is a useful innovation to ethics education. The project has also demonstrated that AI may have significant potential for ethical education across professions and business at large

Mount Vernon Democratic Banner October 13, 1882

Mount Vernon Democratic Banner was a newspaper published weekly in Mount Vernon, Ohio. Until 1853, it was published as the Democratic Banner

Mount Vernon Democratic Banner October 13, 1882

Mount Vernon Democratic Banner was a newspaper published weekly in Mount Vernon, Ohio. Until 1853, it was published as the Democratic Banner

Caesarian birth: conflict in maternity services.

This study investigates the history of caesarean section and women's experience of the operation today. There has been no systematic collection of historical data on caesarean section since 1944. This study now constitutes the most comprehensive compilation of the history of the operation to date. It illustrates the development of the medical ethos concerning women as patients and provides the background to the next phase of research: the experience of caesarean section. Previous research on caesarean section has exhaustively analysed the indications for the operation, reasons for the increasing rate and women's perceptions of abdominal delivery. This study differs in eliciting responses from women on a range of issues relating to caesarean birth in order to assess the quality of information given to women in hopital regarding the necessity for caesarean operations and analyse the effects of abdominal birth on women. Women's experiences were examined in a sample of 300 women who had delivered by caesarean section. Significant differences were found in reactions between women who had emergency operations and those whose caesareans were elective. The emergency caesarean women suffered more in all negative measures including increased feelings of pain and depression. Negative sequelae was found to relate to the unexpected nature of emergency operations and the use of general anaesthesia. Subjectively women report that they do not suffer as a result of caesarean birth, yet objectively it is clear that they do. This anomaly is attributed to the unequal relationship between women and doctors. Women feel grateful for the treatment offered by the doctors and therefore do not express dissatisfaction with their care. Recommendations are made suggesting practical ways in which maternity services, in respect of caesarean birth, can be improved

Orientation of the Practitioner in Correctional Work: Continuities in the Empirical Study of Professionalism and the Conditions of Practice

This study examines the relative influence of professional education, the conditions of practice and other factors on the social worker's orientation to the welfare of his clients. The hypothesis, that professionally trained social workers are more oriented to the welfare of their clients than are their untrained co-workers, is tested. The relationship between the extent of perceived organizational constraints and the worker's orientation is assessed to determine if functional autonomy is related to practitioner orientation. The study also examines whether professional education generates commitment to the professional norms of social work. When a worker agrees with a standardized prescription for practice, does agreement imply legitimation, or the usefulness, of the prescription--or both? Inter- and intra-positional consensus, on evaluations of the legitimacy and usefulness of practice prescriptions, is examined in order to locate formal and informal organizational sources of influence on practice orientation. One thousand seventy-five respondents from twenty-three geographically distributed state probation and/or parole agency system populations answered a questionnaire which included instruments treating practitioner orientation, functional autonomy, and the legitimacy and utility of a set of professional prescriptions for practice which were standardized on a national sample of "transmitters" of professional norms--casework teachers. As hypothesized, trained practitioners were more client welfare oriented than those who were not trained. When employing organization was held constant, this finding persevered in a majority, but not all, of the employing organizations. These findings held when status, tenure and experience were also held constant. Female practitioners with every type and at every level of education were more client welfare oriented than male practitioners. Sex, or its social concomitants, and professional education emerge as independent sources of client welfare orientation. Regardless of its sources, practitioner orientation was specified by organizational contingencies. Among these, two elements of caseload composition reduced differences between trained and untrained workers: (1) probation caseloads; (2) adult caseloads. In contrast to earlier findings, the practitioner's perception of his freedom to determine case decisions is not related to his practice orientation. Functional autonomy may be a function of the practitioner's visibility, which is related to organizational complexity. Practitioners with rural caseloads perceive themselves as having greater autonomy than those with urban caseloads. Although professional education exerts a powerful influence on the worker's orientation to the welfare of his clients, it isn't the influence which educators are likely to want. Workers who consistently agree with professional prescriptions for practice do not consistently legitimate them when they are required to consider both their legitimacy and their usefulness. When social workers must consider more than one implication of "agreement" at a time, they do not make judgements which are uniformly consistent with professional norms. Some of the evidence suggests that practitioners tend to legitimate what they believe to be useful. There is consensus, within and among organizational positions, on evaluations of legitimacy and utility of practice prescriptions. Workers' perceptions of supervisors' evaluations are accurate. The substantial consensus on punitive case actions includes legitimation of breaches of confidentiality, routinized forms of persecution of homosexuals, and the automatic response to initiate revocation proceedings for physically aggressive children or clients who engage in extended sexual affairs. Although professionally trained workers are differently oriented to these matters than untrained workers, a large proportion of trained practitioners contribute to the consensus on punitive case decisions. Finally, there is a minor trend in the data indicating somewhat greater consensus among workers than between workers and supervisors. Similarly, there is a greater worker-supervisor consensus than worker-top administrator consensus. This suggests that elective relationships among organizational peers may yield more powerful influences on practice orientation than formally defined hierarchically structured organizational relationships

Exploring Endogenous Livestock Development in Cameroon

Report on the ELD write shop at Yaounde, Cameroon, 12-18 June 200