Female Bystander Intervention in Incidents of Workplace Sexual Harassment

The current study addresses the prevalence of sexual harassment in the workplace and explores the roles of bystanders, or those who witness these encounters, during and after events of workplace sexual harassment. It qualitatively investigates how perceptions of organizational sexual harassment situations influence bystander intervention. It places particular focus on female bystanders’ impressions of female victims. It also considers the role that stigmatization of a victim plays in the intervention of these female bystanders in incidents of workplace sexual harassment. This investigation explores the repercussions of associating with a stigmatized female victim and how the ramifications of females getting involved in a situation of workplace sexual harassment can prevent a bystander from intervening. It closely examines the role that gender plays in an individual’s likelihood to intervene or to stigmatize and ostracize a victim. Findings from the current study indicate that ramifications of intervention, particularly threats to job security, was related to female bystanders’ likelihood to intervene in instances of sexual harassment in the workplace. Findings from the current study also indicate that workplace power dynamics, especially perceptions of male leaders in power, influenced female bystanders’ empowerment to intervene. Additionally, the current study finds that social relationships play a role in the likelihood of intervention as well as the likelihood to serve as support for victims. These findings are important in knowing and understanding the range of implications that intervention can have on employees

Understanding Employee Perceptions of Fraudulent Activities and Their Propensity to Report Those Activities Using Anonymous Tip Lines: The Influence of Fraud Type, Perpetrator Gender, and Observer Demographics

Jane E. Baird, Ph.D., is a professor of accounting, Department of Accounting and Business Law, Minnesota State University, Mankato, Mankato, Minnesota 56001. Robert C. Zelin II, Ph.D., is a professor of accounting, Department of Accounting and Business Law, Minnesota State University, Mankato, Mankato, Minnesota 56001

Heritage Treasures And Gifts: Improving Controls And Systems In A Not For Profit Environment

Not-for-profit organizations often rely heavily on volunteers to help them achieve their goals on very limited budgets. Often, these organizations are especially in need of volunteers with specific skills not possessed by the average volunteer. Such is the case with the County Historical Society (The Society), which is in need of help with certain aspects of its museum gift shop operations. Most of the volunteers and staff of the organization are avid history buffs, but know little about running a business and even less about accounting and systems related processes. Therefore, the organization has approached your professor to ask for your assistance. The Society would like to seek the benefit of your knowledge of accounting systems and internal controls to help it improve operations and financial reporting for the gift shop. A previous group of students has documented the operations in narrative form as part of a class project. The Society would now like specific recommendations for ways to improve internal controls. It would also like to begin to upgrade its systems for inventory tracking, starting with its records for consignment inventory

Training Faculty To Use Technology In The Classroom

Universities across the globe have in recent years been presented with unparalleled opportunities associated with advances in technology, but these opportunities are paired with numerous challenges. One such challenge is to ensure that faculty and staff are adequately trained in the new technologies. This paper describes the efforts of one College of Business in the Midwestern United States to prepare its faculty to operate in a technologically advanced environment in which both faculty and students use laptop computers in the classroom. This paper details the process the College went through to design and implement the training program and discusses the challenges and accomplishments of the program

Using Freewrites To Increase Learning InAccounting Information Systems Courses

This study reports on the use of short, informal writing activities as a means to improve learning in Accounting Information Systems (AIS) courses. Students in a junior-level AIS course completed 10 short writing activities in class during one academic quarter. Student evaluations of the activities indicate that they found the assignments useful in a variety of ways, but especially in helping them integrate concepts, recognize important points, and retain knowledge learned in the course

Academic Major, Gender, Personal Values, And Reactions To An Ethical Dilemma

Recent corporate scandals have increased public interest in the area of business ethics.  This study examines the relationship of gender and choice of academic major to personal values and to ethical choices, and the relationship of personal values to ethical choices.  Two hundred fifty three subjects read a case that presented a tax evasion dilemma.  The subjects responded to a series of action statements related to the ethical dilemma and completed a personal values survey.  The responses to the action statements were used to calculate a tax compliance score.  Participants were also asked to make a choice as to whether the taxpayer should or should not report all of the taxable income.  The results indicate that both the tax compliance score and the tax payment choice differed by gender and academic major.  Furthermore, gender differences were found on five of the ten personal value constructs and academic major differences were found on four of the ten personal value constructs.  With regard to the relationship of personal values to ethical choices, it was found that three of the personal value constructs were correlated with the compliance score and the tax payment decision

Poverty Levels And County E-Government Services In The United States

The purpose of this study was to examine E-Government services for citizenry at the county level. The study involved data collection from a random sample of 346 counties in the United States. The collected data included county website presence, twelve E-Government factors, median household income and poverty percentage. The results indicated that less affluent counties were more likely to not have a web presence or offer fewer E-Government services than more affluent counties

Dermoscopic and Clinical Response Predictor Factors in Nonsegmental Vitiligo Treated with Narrowband Ultraviolet B Phototherapy: A Prospective Observational Study

Introduction: Few data on possible local factors that can influence the achievement of response in nonsegmental vitiligo (NSV) treated with narrowband ultraviolet B (Nb-UVB) phototherapy are available. Our objective is to evaluate possible correlations between therapeutic outcomes and dermoscopic and local (lesional) clinical findings of vitiligous lesions undergoing Nb-UVB phototherapy to find positive and/or negative response predictor factors to such treatment. Methods: For each target patch, we calculated the extension area using a computer-aided method and assessed dermoscopic and local (lesional) clinical findings at baseline. After 30 phototherapy sessions (twice weekly), surface area of the lesions was reevaluated to assess clinical improvement, correlating the therapeutic outcome with initial clinical and dermoscopic features. Results: A total of 70 lesions were finally included in the study. At the end of therapy, 18 patches (25.7%) achieved improvement, and the presence of perifollicular pigmentation on baseline dermoscopic examination was found to be associated with a 12-fold higher probability of having a positive therapeutic outcome. Similarly, face localization was also correlated with clinical amelioration, with a sevenfold higher probability for improvement. No association (p > 0.05) between therapeutic outcomes (either good or poor) and other dermoscopic or local clinical variables (including leukotrichia) was observed. Conclusions: Therapeutic response of vitiligo to Nb-UVB phototherapy may be positively affected by local features of the lesions, i.e., face localization and presence of perifollicular pigmentation on baseline dermoscopic examination, which might be considered as positive response predictor factors to optimize treatment of vitiligo

Predominant and Substoichiometric Isomers of the Plastid Genome Coexist within Juniperus Plants and Have Shifted Multiple Times during Cupressophyte Evolution

Most land plant plastomes contain two copies of a large inverted repeat (IR) that promote high-frequency homologous recombination to generate isomeric genomic forms. Among conifer plastomes, this canonical IR is highly reduced in Pinaceae and completely lost from cupressophytes. However, both lineages have acquired short, novel IRs, some of which also exhibit recombinational activity to generate genomic structural diversity. This diversity has been shown to exist between, and occasionally within, cupressophyte species, but it is not known whether multiple genomic forms coexist within individual plants. To examine the recombinational potential of the novel cupressophyte IRs within individuals and between species, we sequenced the plastomes of four closely related species of Juniperus. The four plastomes have identical gene content and genome organization except for a large 36 kb inversion between approximately 250 bp IR containing trnQ-UUG. Southern blotting showed that different isomeric versions of the plastome predominate among individual junipers, whereas polymerase chain reaction and high-throughput read-pair mapping revealed the substoichiometric presence of the alternative isomeric form within each individual plant. Furthermore, our comparative genomic studies demonstrate that the predominant and substoichiometric arrangements of this IR have changed several times in other cupressophytes as well. These results provide compelling evidence for substoichiometric shifting of plastomic forms during cupressophyte evolution and suggest that substoichiometric shifting activity in plastid genomes may be adaptive

Predominant and Substoichiometric Isomers of the Plastid Genome Coexist within Juniperus Plants and Have Shifted Multiple Times during Cupressophyte Evolution

Abstract Most land plant plastomes contain two copies of a large inverted repeat (IR) that promote high-frequency homologous recombination to generate isomeric genomic forms. Among conifer plastomes, this canonical IR is highly reduced in Pinaceae and completely lost from cupressophytes. However, both lineages have acquired short, novel IRs, some of which also exhibit recombinational activity to generate genomic structural diversity. This diversity has been shown to exist between, and occasionally within, cupressophyte species, but it is not known whether multiple genomic forms coexist within individual plants. To examine the recombinational potential of the novel cupressophyte IRs within individuals and between species, we sequenced the plastomes of four closely related species of Juniperus. The four plastomes have identical gene content and genome organization except for a large 36 kb inversion between approximately 250 bp IR containing trnQ-UUG. Southern blotting showed that different isomeric versions of the plastome predominate among individual junipers, whereas polymerase chain reaction and high-throughput read-pair mapping revealed the substoichiometric presence of the alternative isomeric form within each individual plant. Furthermore, our comparative genomic studies demonstrate that the predominant and substoichiometric arrangements of this IR have changed several times in other cupressophytes as well. These results provide compelling evidence for substoichiometric shifting of plastomic forms during cupressophyte evolution and suggest that substoichiometric shifting activity in plastid genomes may be adaptive