Valuable indulgence: a response to Schopenhauer and social pessimism

Submitted to Ian D. Dunkle for CAS PH 110 A1 Great Philosophers on Friendship and Solitude at Boston University, Spring 2019. Selected by classmates and the professor for publication in this special collection for the course in OpenBU

HR performance within Saudi Arabian organisations : is the relationship between 'job security and ill-treatment' and job satisfaction moderated by organisational support : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Business Studies in Management at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand

HR performance, particularly employees’ performance, has been well researched in Western countries. However, many Asian countries, including the region of the Arabic Gulf, are still under-researched in relation to this subject. This present study quantitatively investigated employees’ performance in one of the Gulf countries, Saudi Arabia. In addition, it took into consideration the religion (Islam) as well as the cultural characteristics that may affect performance in the workplace. Particularly, the type of society (collectivistic), losing face issue and power distance are the cultural characteristics discussed in this study. Furthermore, the study used four variables, which are considered important in relation to employees’ performance in the Saudi context: job security, ill-treatment (independent variables), perceived organisational support (POS) as a moderating variable and job satisfaction (dependent/outcome variable). The research question for this study is “Is the relationship between job security and ill-treatment, and job satisfaction, moderated by organisational support?” Previous research indicates that relationships between these variables vary in terms of how much they impact employees’ job satisfaction and, therefore, their performance. Some studies suggest that job security increases employees’ job satisfaction which can result in better performance. Others claim that ill-treatment can be a source of job dissatisfaction and lower the quality of job performance as ill-treatment impacts employees physically and psychologically. In addition, POS was found to have positive effects on job satisfaction as a higher level of support from organisations can lead to higher job satisfaction and performance. This cross-sectional, quantitative study used a questionnaire as the data collection method. Measurement scales used in the study were previously used in other studies, which strengthens the internal validity of this study. The 424 participants who completed the survey were Saudi employees who were required to have worked for at least six months for the same employer as full-time employees in Saudi Arabia. Results from this study suggest that, on an individual level, all three variables (job security, ill-treatment, POS) predicted job satisfaction in Saudi organisations. However, the regression analysis showed that job security had the biggest effect on job satisfaction followed by ill-treatment. Also, the moderation analysis revealed that the relationship between job security and job satisfaction was partially moderated by POS. However, POS did not appear to moderate the relationship between ill-treatment and job satisfaction

Comparison of the 2005 growth charts for Saudi children and adolescents to the 2000 CDC growth charts

Background and objectives: The 2000 CDC growth charts for the United States, a revision of the National Center for Health Statistics/World Health Organization (NCHS/WHO) growth charts, were released in 2002 to replace the NCHS/WHO charts. We evaluated the differences between the CDC growth charts and the Saudi 2005 reference to determine the implications of using the 2000 CDC growth charts in Saudi children and adolescents. Subjects and methods: The Saudi reference was based on a cross-sectional representative sample of the Saudi population of healthy children and adolescents from birth to 19 years of age. Measurements of the length/ stature, weight and head circumference were performed according to expert recommendations. The CDC charts from birth to 20 years were based on a cross-sectional representative national sample from five sources collected between 1963 and 1994. The data from the CDC study including the 3rd, 5th, 50th, 95th, and 97th percentiles were plotted against the corresponding percentiles on the Saudi charts for the weight for age, height for age, weight for height for children from 0 to 36 months and weight for age, stature for age and body mass index for children 2 to 19 years of age. Results: There were major differences between the two growth charts. The main findings were the upward shift of the lower percentiles of the CDC curves and the overlap or downward shift of the upper percentiles, especially for weight, weight for height, and BMI. Conclusions: The use of the 2000 CDC growth charts for Saudi children and adolescents increases the prevalence of undernutrition, stunting, and wasting, potentially leading to unnecessary referrals, investigations and parental anxiety. The increased prevalence of overweight and obesity is alarming and needs further investigation

Revisiting Norm Optimization for Multi-Objective Black-Box Problems: A Finite-Time Analysis

The complexity of Pareto fronts imposes a great challenge on the convergence analysis of multi-objective optimization methods. While most theoretical convergence studies have addressed finite-set and/or discrete problems, others have provided probabilistic guarantees, assumed a total order on the solutions, or studied their asymptotic behaviour. In this paper, we revisit the Tchebycheff weighted method in a hierarchical bandits setting and provide a finite-time bound on the Pareto-compliant additive $\epsilon$-indicator. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is one of few that establish a link between weighted sum methods and quality indicators in finite time.Comment: submitted to Journal of Global Optimization. This article's notation and terminology is based on arXiv:1612.0841