Effects of Talent Development Practices on Leadership Quality among Financial Regulatory Institutions in Kenya

Abstract: Leadership quality is treated as both a specialized role and a social influence process and today’s business environment requires executives who are able to operate on a global scale. Talent development includes mobility between business units domestically and abroad. It is essential that job shifts and production structure be fundamentally aligned because developing large pool of talent could lead to oversupply and the developed team would simply have no place to go. The study was focused to establish effects of talent development practices on leadership quality of financial sector regulatory institutions in Kenya through explanatory and cross-sectional survey design. A total population of 636 employees in the six financial sector regulatory institutions in Kenya were targeted. Stratified random sampling was embraced thus deriving 127 employees as the sample population. Both primary and secondary data was used where Primary data was collected using questionnaires which was analysed used SPSS software and presented as percentages, frequencies, means, charts and standard deviations. The study established that employee assessment, employee sourcing, leadership grooming and employee development programmes affect leadership quality. Human resource department needs to step up and play a critical role on employees’ talent development. There is need for management to have employee assessment on regular basis as this will help in identifying the skills they have and those they require, hence improving leadership quality. Over and above, the management need to have clear policies on employee assessment, sourcing, development and leadership grooming with an aim of improving

The Strategic Nature of the Employment Relationship

The strategic nature of employment relationship provides HRM professionals with information and direction that culminate into understanding, evaluating, and applying current thinking regarding the new employment relationships. In the current days, academic researchers have more and more extension with regard to the modern organizational dynamics. The significant focal point of this article is an examination concerning the degree to which there is an agreement in empirical literature in regard to strategic nature of employment relationship by procedurally evaluating the substance of applicable and comparable articles. The discussion herein integrates empirical conclusions from other studies, interprets the similitude and contrasts between the articles against those established in corporate period publications, thereby providing conclusions for the modern Human resource experts while also, suggesting areas of improvement for the modern business organizations. Keywords: Human resource practices, Strategic nature of employment relationship, Employer, psychological contract, organizations. DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/11-12-15 Publication date: April 30th 201

The Impact of Policies on International Graduate Students’ Adaptation in China

In China, the number of international students has been increasing. These students are from different parts of the world, with Asians comprising the largest bulk and Americans and Europeans tailing behind. A stratum of the population is composed of those taking up graduate degrees. The present study probes the psychological and socio-cultural adaptation of international graduate students in the cities of Shanghai and Wuhan in China. Specifically, it examines the influence of national and institutional policies on their adaptation. Using mixed methods design, the study had 302 foreign graduate students as survey participants. Fourteen of them participated in the interviews. Correlation results showed that policies have a significant influence on adaptation. The interviews also illuminated insights on how policies have affected their adaptation in different ways. Given these findings, the study implicates the need to review and formulate policies to facilitate the adaptation of international graduate students.

The Carboxyl-Terminal Amino Acids Render Pro-Human LC3B Migration Similar to Lipidated LC3B in SDS-PAGE

LC3 is widely used marker for macroautophagy assays. After translation pro-LC3 is processed by Atg4 to expose C-terminal glycine residue for downstream conjugation reactions to accomplish the conversion of LC3-I to LC3-II. SDS-PAGE based Western blot (Wb) is generally utilized to quantify LC3-II levels where the LC3-I band migrates slower than LC3-II. We found that pro-human LC3B migrated at similar rate as LC3B-II in SDS-PAGE. The carboxyl-terminal five amino acids, particularly Lysine122 and Leucine123 of human LC3B play a major role in the faster migration of unprocessed LC3B, rendering it indistinguishable from LC3B-II in Wb assays. The unique faster migration of unprocessed LC3B than LC3B-I is also revealed in mouse LC3B, rat LC3B and rat LC3 but not in human LC3C. Our findings for the first time define pro-LC3 migration patterns for LC3 family member from human, mouse and rat species in SDS-PAGE. These findings provide a reference for pro-LC3 band patterns when Atg4 function is inhibited. © 2013 Wang et al

Management of Water Resources in Shanshan, China: A System Dynamic Approach

Shanshan County, located in Xinjiang, China, has severe problems of water scarcity, overexploitation of groundwater. In need of efficient water resources management strategies, this study proposes a System Dynamics (SD) approach to simulate the water resource allocation, which can assist in providing a better understanding of the dynamic water supply and demand system and exploring different water resources management and allocation scenarios

Correlation between resistance of eggplant and defense-related enzymes and biochemical substances of leaves

14 eggplant cultivars were inoculated by Verticillium dahliae to screen their resistance against verticillium wilt. The resistances were shown as the disease incidence and disease index, and eggplant cultivars were classified into resistant type (R), moderate resistant type (MR), tolerant type (T), moderate susceptible (MS) and susceptible type (S), according to the final disease index. To find out the correlated physiological and biochemical indexes for evaluating the resistance of eggplant to verticillium wilt, the activities of defense-related enzymes, and the contents of some biochemical substances of leaves were investigated. The results show that the activities of polyphenol oxidase (PPO) and phenylalanine ammonia lyase (PAL) were significantly positively correlated with resistance (P <0.01) and the resistance was significantly positively correlated with the activity of peroxidase (POD) and the content of total chlorophyll (P<0.05), but significantly negatively correlated with the relative electric conductivity and the content of malondialdehyde (MDA) (P<0.05). The correlations between resistance and catalase (CAT) activity, the contents of sucrose, soluble protein and proline, were not detected.Keywords: Verticillium wilt, eggplant, disease resistance, defense-related enzyme, biochemical substanc

Analgesia for total knee arthroplasty: a meta-analysis comparing local infiltration and femoral nerve block

Patients frequently experience postoperative pain after a total knee arthroplasty; such pain is always challenging to treat and may delay the patient’s recovery. It is unclear whether local infiltration or a femoral nerve block offers a better analgesic effect after total knee arthroplasty.We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials to compare local infiltration with a femoral nerve block in patients who underwent a primary unilateral total knee arthroplasty. We searched Pubmed, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Library through December 2014. Two reviewers scanned abstracts and extracted data. The data collected included numeric rating scale values for pain at rest and pain upon movement and opioid consumption in the first 24 hours. Mean differences with 95% confidence intervals were calculated for each end point. A sensitivity analysis was conducted to evaluate potential sources of heterogeneity.While the numeric rating scale values for pain upon movement (MD-0.62; 95%CI: -1.13 to -0.12; p=0.02) in the first 24 hours differed significantly between the patients who received local infiltration and those who received a femoral nerve block, there were no differences in the numeric rating scale results for pain at rest (MD-0.42; 95%CI:-1.32 to 0.47; p=0.35) or opioid consumption (MD 2.92; 95%CI:-1.32 to 7.16; p=0.18) in the first 24 hours.Local infiltration and femoral nerve block showed no significant differences in pain intensity at rest or opioid consumption after total knee arthroplasty, but the femoral nerve block was associated with reduced pain upon movement

Leadership Ostracism Behaviors From the Target’s Perspective: A Content and Behavioral Typology Model Derived From Interviews With Chinese Employees

Leadership ostracism denotes a severe work stressor, potentially entailing more serious negative effects than other types of workplace ostracism. However, scholars have paid relatively little attention to ostracism carried out by leaders, leaving the phenomenon insufficiently accounted for in the literature. Hence, the present study aims to explore the content and typology of leadership ostracism behavior by in-depth interviews and inductive analyses based on grounded theory, in order to give a thorough presentation and description of the leadership ostracism concept as perceived and construed by Chinese subordinates. Respondents were invited using a snowball sampling technique, and the final sample consisted of 26 individuals employed in different Chinese firms. Based on the reported experience of the interviewees, 11 concrete leadership ostracism behaviors emerged from the data. Further analyses revealed a leadership ostracism behavioral typology model reflecting five core categories, i.e., general ignoring, neglect, exclusion, differential treatment, and undermining. These findings appear to partly replicate and partly expand on previous conceptualizations of workplace ostracism, indicating that leadership ostracism may reflect a distinct variant of the phenomenon, eligible to be studied in its own right. The present study also discusses certain culture-specific aspects of leadership ostracism that can be taken into consideration in future studies

DESIGN AND EXPERIMENTS FOR SHOVEL-FINGER AND CYLINDER PEANUT-PICKING DEVICE

ABSTRACT Two-stage harvesting is the main method for performing the mechanized harvesting of peanuts, and the picking device is a core part of the combined harvester in China. In order to solve the problem of pod loss caused by the "stacking", "impact" and "throwing up" of peanut plants by a traditional cam-slide spring-finger cylinder picking device, the shovel-finger and cylinder peanut-picking device was developed and used in a picking-up performance test based on the study of peanut-plant strip-picking characteristics. The mathematical model of the mechanism was established by analyzing the structure of the mechanism and the peanut-plant strip-picking characteristics, and the parameters of the mechanism were optimized using the objective function method. The prototype was developed and tested. The experiments in which the prototype was used to collect peanut plants indicated that the phenomenon of peanut plants being stacked and thrown disappeared. Through a response surface analysis and prototype test, the optimal working parameters of the picking device were obtained: the forward speed V was 48.0 m/minute, the rotational speed N was 45.3 r/minute and the ground height H was -18 mm. The peanut-plant picking rate was 98.9% and the fruit loss rate was 2.8% under two different harvesting conditions for which the peanut-plant moisture content was 15~17%