How do you fear? Examining expatriates’ perception of danger and its consequences

Purpose  The purpose of this paper is to investigate the differing perceptions of fear of expatriates operating in terror-exposed Nairobi and the high-crime environment of Johannesburg and its impact on stress and well-being. It illustrates how expatriates cope with the challenges associated with these two regions.   Design/methodology/approach  Following an interpretative and inductive research approach, qualitative content analyses were conducted using evidence from in-depth interviews with 12 expatriates in senior management or officer positions within a large global organisation, with respondents based in South Africa and Kenya.  Findings  Data suggest that expatriates in the more terrorism-exposed context perceive fear less strongly than expatriates in environments categorised by high degrees of conventional crime. Fear seems to relate to physical well-being via restricted freedom of movement, but there is little evidence that fear affects mental well-being. The study finds that respondents in terror-exposed Nairobi tend to engage more in avoidance-oriented coping strategies, whereas their counterparts in the high-crime environment of Johannesburg predominantly rely on problem-focused coping.   Practical implications  The qualitative design allows practitioners to better understand expatriates’ perceptions of fear, its consequences for stress, and well-being and potential coping strategies expatriates employ. It discusses a set of practical recommendations focussing on the deployment of expatriates assigned to dangerous locations.   Originality/value  This study develops a distinction between terror and conventional crime and contributes with practical insights for assignments into dangerous work environments. The geographic lens of the study provides an in-depth look at expatriation challenges in an arguably neglected regional context

Expatriate management in hostile environments from a multi-stakeholder perspective: a systematic review

Purpose The successful management of business expatriates and their families in hostile environments (HE) is a current concern for academics and human resources (HR) practitioners alike. Terrorism and other forms of violent crime have become salient topics on the public agenda, and international organizations are increasingly affected. Hence, scholarly interest in the HR implications for organizations sending staff to HEs has recently grown, and a nascent research area has emerged. This paper is the first systematic review synthesizing emerging literature in the field of expatriate management in HEs and its theoretical foundations, applying a multi-stakeholder perspective. Design/methodology/approach Following accepted review procedures, systematic searches were conducted across three major databases. Manual search in target journals provided additional scrutiny. Findings After analysing 28 articles, four main stakeholders were identified as follows: environments, expatriates, assigning organizations and the expatriates' social networks. Findings reveal the ways of how all stakeholders can affect expatiation success or be affected so that the success of the assignment is jeopardised. Originality/value Our paper illustrates how these diverse articles can be linked within a comprehensive multi-stakeholder framework and provides avenues for future research. We also shift attention to neglected theoretical perspectives that might further improve the understanding of expatriates in HEs while offering actionable guidance for managerial and organizational practices

Towards a new paradigm of healthcare: Addressing challenges to professional identities through Community Operational Research

Healthcare worldwide faces severe quality and cost issues, and the search for sustainability in healthcare establishes a grand challenge. Public interest is growing in a systemic re-conceptualizing of healthcare, from primarily a consumerist problem of individual need for treatment to a need for communities themselves to become more effective in systemic prevention, coping and caring. In community led approaches, scarce resources are moved away from ever-increasing consumerist services to empower, develop and enable communities to plan their own health and community improvements in mutually interdependent patterns of care often seen as ‘co-production’. This approach is exemplified by the innovative NUKA system of community led healthcare which originated in Alaska and which was trialled in Scotland in 2012, where it did not achieve similar acclaim as in the United States. In the Scottish NUKA trial opposition from professionals meant the trial was ended early. Our research found that omitting to account for the strong professional identity of GPs and other practice staff was instrumental in the failure of the trial. Beyond deficiencies inadequately considering professional identities, the trial also failed to engage the community and its patients as owners and architects of the system. We argue that the root cause of these problems, was a more general critical systemic failure to manage participatory boundaries and associated identities. Community Operational Research practitioners have developed relevant theories, methodologies and methods to address issues of participation and identity, so could make a significant contribution to opening up new solutions for community led healthcare

Designing a recovery-orientated system of care: A community operational research perspective

Theory suggests health focused Community Operational Research (COR) projects and their participants can benefit from balancing a “glass half empty” concern for deficits, problems and weaknesses with a “glass half full” concern for identifying health assets and bringing them into use. We present a COR systemic intervention in the care of persons with addiction and substance use/ misuse problems in Clydeplace, Scotland (anonymised). Our research reveals how the Whole Person Recovery System is situated within a wider General Community Recovery System that offers a variety of health assets that can be mobilised to create and increase recovery capital. The project involved 20 semi-structured interviews, two asset mapping workshops, a certificated “health issues” course completed by seven “champions”, and action planning and implementation. In the interviews participants found gaps were more easily identified than assets. During the workshops participants identified 388 discrete assets and gaps, prioritised these using a simple voting system and developed a series of actions to mobilise health assets including bringing into use local facilities and amenities and involving a number of individuals and groups in local events and activities. Our study suggests that even in the impoverished system of Clydeplace, a “Community Catalyst” in the form of a Community Operational Researcher can act to stimulate the co-development of health assets, build relationships and enable the creation of social capital. It is not clear though when such systems become “self-catalysing.

Neutrinos and Cosmic Rays Observed by IceCube

The core mission of the IceCube Neutrino observatory is to study the origin and propagation of cosmic rays. IceCube, with its surface component IceTop, observes multiple signatures to accomplish this mission. Most important are the astrophysical neutrinos that are produced in interactions of cosmic rays, close to their sources and in interstellar space. IceCube is the first instrument that measures the properties of this astrophysical neutrino flux, and constrains its origin. In addition, the spectrum, composition and anisotropy of the local cosmic-ray flux are obtained from measurements of atmospheric muons and showers. Here we provide an overview of recent findings from the analysis of IceCube data, and their implications on our understanding of cosmic rays.Comment: Review article, to appear in Advances in Space Research, special issue "Origins of Cosmic Rays

Does It Really Work? Re-Assessing the Impact of Pre-Departure Cross-Cultural Training on Expatriate Adjustment

Cultural adjustment is considered to be a prerequisite for expatriate success abroad. One way to enhance adjustment is to provide employees with knowledge and awareness of appropriate norms and behaviors of the host country through cross-cultural training (CCT). This article analyzes the impact of pre-departure CCT on expatriate adjustment and focuses on variations in participation, length and the comprehensiveness of training. Unlike previous research, the study focuses on the effectiveness of pre-departure CCT for non-US employees expatriated to a broad range of host country settings. Employing data from 339 expatriates from 20 German Multinational Corporations (MNCs) the study finds CCT has little if any effect on general, interactional or work setting expatriate adjustment. However, a significant impact of foreign language competence was found for all three dimensions of expatriate adjustment. We used interviews with 20 expatriates to supplement our discussion and provide further implications for practice

Neutrino interferometry for high-precision tests of Lorentz symmetry with IceCube

We acknowledge the support from the following agencies: USA—US National Science Foundation–Office of Polar Programs, US National Science Foundation–Physics Division, Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, Center for High Throughput Computing (CHTC) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Open Science Grid (OSG), Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), US Department of Energy–National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, Particle astrophysics research computing centre at the University of Maryland, Institute for Cyber-Enabled Research at Michigan State University and Astroparticle physics computational facility at Marquette University; Belgium—Funds for Scientific Research (FRS-FNRS and FWO), FWO Odysseus and Big Science programmes, and Belgian Federal Science Policy Office (Belspo); Germany—Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF), Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), Helmholtz Alliance for Astroparticle Physics (HAP), Initiative and Networking Fund of the Helmholtz Association, Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron (DESY), and High Performance Computing cluster of the RWTH Aachen; Sweden—Swedish Research Council, Swedish Polar Research Secretariat, Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (SNIC), and Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation; Australia—Australian Research Council; Canada—Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Calcul Québec, Compute Ontario, Canada Foundation for Innovation, WestGrid and Compute Canada; Denmark—Villum Fonden, Danish National Research Foundation (DNRF); New Zealand—Marsden Fund; Japan—Japan Society for Promotion of Science (JSPS) and Institute for Global Prominent Research (IGPR) of Chiba University; Korea—National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF); Switzerland—Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF); UK—Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) and The Royal Society

Simulation of SVPWM Based Multivariable Control Method for a DFIG Wind Energy System

This paper deals with a variable speed device toproduce electrical energy on a power network based on adoubly-fed induction machine used in generating mode(DFIG) in wind energy system by using SVPWM powertransfer matrix. This paper presents a modeling and controlapproach which uses instantaneous real and reactive powerinstead of dq components of currents in a vector controlscheme. The main features of the proposed model comparedto conventional models in the dq frame of reference arerobustness and simplicity of realization. The sequential loopclosing technique is adopted to design a multivariable controlsystem including six compensators for a DFIG wind energysystem to capture the maximum wind power and to inject therequired reactive power to the generator. In this paperSVPWM method is used for better controlling of converters.It also provides fault ride through method to protect theconverter during a fault. The time-domain simulation of thestudy system is presented by using MATLAB Simulink to testthe system robustness, to validate the proposed model and toshow the enhanced tracking capability