An investigation of the effectiveness of Total Quality Management in the UK construction industry (an empirical study)

Abstract unavailable please refer to PD

The Prevent strategy and the UK ‘war on terror’: embedding infrastructures of surveillance in Muslim communities

The Prevent policy was introduced in the UK in 2003 as part of an overall post 9/11 counter-terrorism approach (CONTEST), with the aim of preventing the radicalisation of individuals to terrorism. In 2015, the Prevent policy became a legal duty for public sector institutions, and as such, its reach has extended much deeper into society. This article, based on ongoing ethnographic fieldwork—including interviews, focus groups and participant observations—seeks to uncover and analyse the function of surveillance at the heart of the Prevent strategy. Contrary to official denials, surveillance forms an essential feature of the Prevent strategy. It regards radicalisation as part of an overall conveyor belt to terrorism, and thus attempts to control the future by acting in the present. The article shows how the framing of the terror threat in the ‘war on terror’, as an ‘Islamic threat’, has afforded a surveillance infrastructure, embedded into Muslim communities, which has securitised relations with local authorities. Its intelligence products, as well as the affective consequences of surveillance, have served to contain and direct Muslim political agency. Such an analysis uncovers the practice of Islamophobia at the heart of the Prevent strategy, which accounts for its surveillance tendencies

A hybrid job-shop scheduling system

The intention of the scheduling system developed at the Fraunhofer-Institute for Material Flow and Logistics is the support of a scheduler working in a job-shop. Due to the existing requirements for a job-shop scheduling system the usage of flexible knowledge representation and processing techniques is necessary. Within this system the attempt was made to combine the advantages of symbolic AI-techniques with those of neural networks

Food Super Store Shopping Environment and Consumer Impulsive Buying Behavior

This study examines the impact of food super store shopping on impulsive buying behavior. The results highlight that discounted price, advertisement &promotion, visual merchandising and emotional attachment, have impact on consumer impulsive buying behavior but special occasions and companion’s influence donot impact consumer impulsive buying behavior. The study is based on a sample of food super store buyers from Rawalpindi and Islamabad. The exploration is useful for marketers to understand impulsive consumers and their choices. Food super stores are one of the growing businesses in Pakistan; therefore, this study will guide the marketers to understand this market segment effectively. The study also discovers the association between food super store shopping environment and types of consumer impulsive buying behavior which are cognitive impulsive buying and affective impulsive buying