Managerial Work in a Practice-Embodying Institution - The role of calling, the virtue of constancy

What can be learned from a small scale study of managerial work in a highly marginal and under-researched working community? This paper uses the ‘goods-virtues-practices-institutions’ framework to examine the managerial work of owner-directors of traditional circuses. Inspired by MacIntyre’s arguments for the necessity of a narrative understanding of the virtues, interviews explored how British and Irish circus directors accounted for their working lives. A purposive sample was used to select subjects who had owned and managed traditional touring circuses for at least 15 years, a period in which the economic and reputational fortunes of traditional circuses have suffered badly. This sample enabled the research to examine the self-understanding of people who had, at least on the face of it, exhibited the virtue of constancy. The research contributes to our understanding of the role of the virtues in organizations by presenting evidence of an intimate relationship between the virtue of constancy and a ‘calling’ work orientation. This enhances our understanding of the virtues that are required if management is exercised as a domain-related practice

Do residents’ perceptions of being well-placed and objective presence of local amenities match? A case study in West Central Scotland, UK

Background:<p></p> Recently there has been growing interest in how neighbourhood features, such as the provision of local facilities and amenities, influence residents’ health and well-being. Prior research has measured amenity provision through subjective measures (surveying residents’ perceptions) or objective (GIS mapping of distance) methods. The latter may provide a more accurate measure of physical access, but residents may not use local amenities if they do not perceive them as ‘local’. We believe both subjective and objective measures should be explored, and use West Central Scotland data to investigate correspondence between residents’ subjective assessments of how well-placed they are for everyday amenities (food stores, primary and secondary schools, libraries, pharmacies, public recreation), and objective GIS-modelled measures, and examine correspondence by various sub-groups.<p></p> Methods:<p></p> ArcMap was used to map the postal locations of ‘Transport, Health and Well-being 2010 Study’ respondents (n = 1760), and the six amenities, and the presence/absence of each of them within various straight-line and network buffers around respondents’ homes was recorded. SPSS was used to investigate whether objective presence of an amenity within a specified buffer was perceived by a respondent as being well-placed for that amenity. Kappa statistics were used to test agreement between measures for all respondents, and by sex, age, social class, area deprivation, car ownership, dog ownership, walking in the local area, and years lived in current home.<p></p> Results:<p></p> In general, there was poor agreement (Kappa <0.20) between perceptions of being well-placed for each facility and objective presence, within 800 m and 1000 m straight-line and network buffers, with the exception of pharmacies (at 1000 m straight-line) (Kappa: 0.21). Results varied between respondent sub-groups, with some showing better agreement than others. Amongst sub-groups, at 800 m straight-line buffers, the highest correspondence between subjective and objective measures was for pharmacies and primary schools, and at 1000 m, for pharmacies, primary schools and libraries. For road network buffers under 1000 m, agreement was generally poor.<p></p> Conclusion:<p></p> Respondents did not necessarily regard themselves as well-placed for specific amenities when these amenities were present within specified boundaries around their homes, with some exceptions; the picture is not clear-cut with varying findings between different amenities, buffers, and sub-groups

Predicting language learners' grades in the L1, L2, L3 and L4: the effect of some psychological and sociocognitive variables

This study of 89 Flemish high-school students' grades for L1 (Dutch), L2 (French), L3 (English) and L4 (German) investigates the effects of three higher-level personality dimensions (psychoticism, extraversion, neuroticism), one lower-level personality dimension (foreign language anxiety) and sociobiographical variables (gender, social class) on the participants' language grades. Analyses of variance revealed no significant effects of the higher-level personality dimensions on grades. Participants with high levels of foreign language anxiety obtained significantly lower grades in the L2 and L3. Gender and social class had no effect. Strong positive correlations between grades in the different languages could point to an underlying sociocognitive dimension. The implications of these findings are discussed

Marxism Lost and Found: Alasdair MacIntyre and the Contemporary Debate

This paper examines the changing nature of debates that focus on the philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre. Whilst outlining the history of MacIntyre’s engagement with Marxism and some of his key ideas, it argues that it is only recently that such debates have begun to rightfully recognise the continued relevance of Marxism to such discussions. I note that crucial aspects of MacIntyre’s politics and philosophy, particularly his opposition to capitalism, are now integral to the contemporary debate which helps in generating a shared vision of radical politics. Nevertheless, I point out that key disagreements still remain as to the role of Marxism within such debates, the validity of MacIntyre’s critique of Marxism, as well as the potentially problematic post-Marxist practice that MacIntyre advocates in After Virtue and beyond

Electron mobility in surface- and buried- channel flatband In_0.53Ga_0.47As MOSFETs with ALD Al₂O₃ gate dielectric.

In this paper, we investigate the scaling potential of flatband III-V MOSFETs by comparing the mobility of surface and buried In<sub>0.53</sub>Ga<sub>0.47</sub>As channel devices employing an Atomic Layer Deposited (ALD) Al<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub> gate dielectric and a delta-doped InGaAs/InAlAs/InP heterostructure. Peak electron mobilities of 4300 cm<sup>2</sup>/V·s and 6600 cm<sup>2</sup>/V·s at a carrier density of 3×1012 cm<sup>-2</sup> for the surface and buried channel structures respectively were determined. In contrast to similarly scaled inversion-channel devices, we find that mobility in surface channel flatband structures does not drop rapidly with electron density, but rather high mobility is maintained up to carrier concentrations around 4x10<sup>12</sup> cm<sup>-2</sup> before slowly dropping to around 2000 cm<sup>2</sup>/V·s at 1x10M<sup>13</sup> cm<sup>-2</sup>. We believe these to be world leading metrics for this material system and an important development in informing the III-V MOSFET device architecture selection process for future low power, highly scaled CM

Time trends in survival and readmission following coronary artery bypass grafting in Scotland, 1981-96: retrospective observational study

Improvements in coronary revascularisation techniques and an increase in the use of percutaneous interventions1 have led to a rise in the number of coronary artery bypass grafting operations in older patients with more severe cardiac disease and worse comorbidity and who have previously undergone revascularisation procedures. 2 3 Advances in surgical and anaesthetic techniques have prevented a worsening risk profile from being translated into an increase in perioperative deaths. 2 3 The aim of our study was to examine time trends in major outcomes up to two years after coronary artery bypass grafting

Diagnosis by Documentary: Professional Responsibilities in Informal Encounters

Most work addressing clinical workers' professional responsibilities concerns the norms of conduct within established professional-patient relationships, but such responsibilities may extend beyond the clinical context. We explore health workers' professional responsibilities in such "informal" encounters through the example of a doctor witnessing the misdiagnosis and mistreatment of a serious long-term condition in a television documentary, arguing that neither internalist approaches to professional responsibility (such as virtue ethics or care ethics) nor externalist ones (such as the "social contract" model) provide sufficiently clear guidance in such situations. We propose that a mix of both approaches, emphasizing the noncomplacency and practical wisdom of virtue ethics, but grounding the normative authority of virtue in an external source, is able to engage with the health worker's responsibilities in such situations to the individual, the health care system, and the population at large

Childhood IQ and marriage by mid-life: the Scottish Mental Survey 1932 and the Midspan Studies

The study examined the influence of IQ at age 11 years on marital status by mid-adulthood. The combined databases of the Scottish Mental Survey 1932 and the Midspan studies provided data from 883 subjects. With regard to IQ at age 11, there was an interaction between sex and marital status by mid-adulthood (p = 0.0001). Women who had ever-married achieved mean lower childhood IQ scores than women who had never-married (p < 0.001). Conversely, there was a trend for men who had ever-married to achieve higher childhood IQ scores than men who had never-married (p = 0.07). In men, the odds ratio of ever marrying was 1.35 (95% CI 0.98–1.86&#59; p = 0.07) for each standard deviation increase in childhood IQ. Among women, the odds ratio of ever marrying by mid-life was 0.42 (95% CI 0.27–0.64; p = 0.0001) for each standard deviation increase in childhood IQ. Mid-life social class had a similar association with marriage, with women in more professional jobs and men in more manual jobs being less likely to have ever-married by mid-life. Adjustment for the effects of mid-life social class and height on the association between childhood IQ and later marriage, and vice versa, attenuated the effects somewhat, but suggested that IQ, height and social class acted partly independently

'We don't learn democracy, we live it!' : consulting the pupil voice in Scottish schools

As the education for citizenship agenda continues to impact on schools, there is a need to begin the discussion around examining the kind of initiatives that can push it forward. In Scotland the proposals should, it is argued, permeate the curriculum throughout the school. Yet there is the fear that the responsibility of all can become the responsibility of none. This paper examines, through case study research carried out by the authors, initiatives in schools designed to take forward the citizenship agenda in the light of children's rights. The first two relate to firstly the impact of pupil councils in primary schools and secondly the impact of discussing controversial issues in the primary classroom. The third outlines the impact on values and dispositions of developing more participatory, democratic practice in the classroom. The paper concludes by calling for both more initiatives of this type and more evaluation of their worth

Sharing a different voice: Attending to stories in collaborative writing

Through three stories, we hope to reveal how sometimes contradictory or unrecognizable aspects of our lives, selves, and stories can create tensions in the collaborative writing endeavor. We begin with a story that illuminates some of the narrative tensions that surface during a decade of writing collaboratively. In an effort to navigate these tensions, we explore two further stories in dialogue as a way to reveal how dominant narratives shape our lives and the stories we might tell. One aim of sharing these stories is to reveal how problematic ways of being are often inseparable from one’s cultural legacy. Making previously obscured narratives visible paves the way for imaginary leaps that are necessary for change. We hope these insights are useful for other writers and collaborators and those who seek caring, responsive, and nurturing writing relationships yet realize this journey can be problematic