Cultural discontinuities and the transfer of management philosophies and practices

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.The study was designed to examine the factors which affect the transferability of Western (contemporary British) philosophies and practices to the Arab culture of Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The general case of transferability was studied, but it was biased towards its application to management. The thesis opened with a short history of the area under consideration and highlighted the role of the West in the emergence of these modern Arab states. Arab way of life was discussed at some length to illustrate the existence of cultural discontinuities. Data for the research was obtained by distributing a questionnaire to Arab students from the countries concerned who were studying in British Universities and Polytechnics in the Spring of 1984. The students were adjudged to be fresh from their own culture and to be meeting the British educational system and way of life head on. The data was subjected to an extensive, but simple form of statistical analysis which searched for associations and factors relevant to transferability. Factor Analysis was used for the educational and cultural sections. Four main conclusions were drawn. (1) A simple framework, which emerged from the views of students on taught courses, can be used to classify the transferability of subjects, however it relies on judgement to quantify cultural discontinuities. (2) Seventy five percent of respondents experienced some degree of culture shock in Britain. (3) Students generally regarded Western education favourably, but felt that contact with the West would alter Arab society and hence they should take care about what aspects of Western life and culture to accept. (4) National factors as well as cultural factors affect transferability. Finally, future research could fruitfully be concentrated on examining the effectiveness or otherwise of ongoing cross national training programmes

An enquiry into the relationship between the synoptic record of the teaching of Jesus and the book of Isaiah, with especial reference to the Septuagint version.

In our study of the parables we have shown instances of the fact that Jesus has taken materials from the Greek version of the Book of Isaiah and worked them into his discourse. This shows a familiarity with the Greek of Isaiah which could have been gained only by unhurried study.But it is only as we approach those conceptions which were central in the thinking of Jesus that we see how real and vital was the influence of the Greek version of the Book of Isaiah upon him. His most vital interpretations of himself, and cf his mission were built solidly upon it. We shall take the space here for only three of them.We have shown, (P. 94) that the famous saying in regard to "turning the other cheek" not only gives us some insight into the interpretation of his mission as the teaching ministry of the CHILD of God, but that it rests solidly and quite unmistakably upon the Greek version of Isaiah.V,e have also shown, (p. 62), that the characteristic conception of "betrayal ", rests upon the Greek rather than the Hebrew of Isaiah.Put what seems to us the most important, as well as the - clearest indication that Jesus was under the dominance 226 of the Greek version of Isaiah is the supreme place in his spiritual life held by his conception of himself as the Child of God. This has been shown to have been phrased by Jesus himself in the words of Isaiah xlii: 1. This verse rang in his consciousness at the Baptism, the Temptation, and the Transfiguration.(See pp. 63, 67 -69). Although the gospel accounts have substituted the word "son ", for "child", indications are not lacking that the original form in which Jesus phrased his consciousness of himself was in the Isaianic terns, the CHILD of GOD. At least this seems to have been the earliest title applied to Jesus in the early church. It occurs in the speech of Peter delivered from Solomon's porch (Acts iii: 12), and in the words of the company to whom Peter and John reported what had befallen them, (Acts iv: 27, so). The translation of the Revised Version "Servant ", constitutes a reference to the Hebrew rather than to the Greek version, from which the tern: is taken. Put there is no evidence whatever that the conception of servant was applied to Jesus either in his own thinking, or in that of the early church. On the contrary the connotation of the underlying term is disregarded, if indeed, it be not non-existent, both Jesus and the early church. This title of Jesus maintained itself for some time, as may be seen from the sub -apostolic writings (Didaché ix: 2, Z., x: 2, 2; Parnabas vi: 1; I Clement lix: 2 -4; The Epistle to Diognetus viii: 9,11; and the Martyrdom of Folycarp xiv: 1, E). This phenomenon, which might seem strange to those unfamiliar with the facts we have been detailing, can be explained only as the persistence of a title quite naturally bestowed upon Jesus, and quite as naturally cherished greatly, by those who were close enough to him to know how greatly he had been affected by the Isaianic conception of the CHILD of God.We cannot help feeling that when all the facts are weighed the conclusion will be inevitable that Jesus knew with peculiar intimacy,and perhaps through a long period of time, the Greek version of the Hook of Isaiah; that he used it, if not to come to his own consciousness of his relationship to God, at least to make that relationship known to others. The indications are that his knowledge of the Hebrew version of the Book may have been limited. tit may at least say that if he knew it, he turned from it, and preferred to build the deepest ideas in his thinking and teaching solidly upon the Greek

Real option valuation of a decremental regulation service provided by electricity storage

This paper is a quantitative study of a reserve contract for real-time balancing of a power system. Under this contract, the owner of a storage device, such as a battery, helps smooth fluctuations in electricity demand and supply by using the device to increase electricity consumption. The battery owner must be able to provide immediate physical cover, and should therefore have sufficient storage available in the battery before entering the contract. Accordingly, the following problem can be formulated for the battery owner: determine the optimal time to enter the contract and, if necessary, the optimal time to discharge electricity before entering the contract. This problem is formulated as one of optimal stopping, and is solved explicitly in terms of the model parameters and instantaneous values of the power system imbalance. The optimal operational strategies thus obtained ensure that the battery owner has positive expected economic profit from the contract. Furthermore, they provide explicit conditions under which the optimal discharge time is consistent with the overall objective of power system balancing. This paper also carries out a preliminary investigation of the "lifetime value" aggregated from an infinite sequence of these balancing reserve contracts. This lifetime value, which can be viewed as a single project valuation of the battery, is shown to be positive and bounded. Therefore, in the long run such reserve contracts can be beneficial to commercial operators of electricity storage, while reducing some of the financial and operational risks in power system balancing.Randall Martyr expresses his gratitude to the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) for its financial support via grant no. EP/N013492/1, and partial support via grant no. EP/K00557X/2

Goal-orientated cognitive rehabilitation for dementias associated with Parkinson's disease―A pilot randomised controlled trial

OBJECTIVE: To examine the appropriateness and feasibility of cognitive rehabilitation for people with dementias associated with Parkinson's in a pilot randomised controlled study. METHODS: This was a single-blind pilot randomised controlled trial of goal-oriented cognitive rehabilitation for dementias associated with Parkinson's. After goal setting, participants were randomised to cognitive rehabilitation (n = 10), relaxation therapy (n = 10), or treatment-as-usual (n = 9). Primary outcomes were ratings of goal attainment and satisfaction with goal attainment. Secondary outcomes included quality of life, mood, cognition, health status, everyday functioning, and carers' ratings of goal attainment and their own quality of life and stress levels. Assessments were at 2 and 6 months following randomisation. RESULTS: At 2 months, cognitive rehabilitation was superior to treatment-as-usual and relaxation therapy for the primary outcomes of self-rated goal attainment (d = 1.63 and d = 1.82, respectively) and self-rated satisfaction with goal attainment (d = 2.04 and d = 1.84). At 6 months, cognitive rehabilitation remained superior to treatment-as-usual (d = 1.36) and relaxation therapy (d = 1.77) for self-rated goal attainment. Cognitive rehabilitation was superior to treatment as usual and/or relaxation therapy in a number of secondary outcomes at 2 months (mood, self-efficacy, social domain of quality of life, carers' ratings of participants' goal attainment) and at 6 months (delayed recall, health status, quality of life, carer ratings of participants' goal attainment). Carers receiving cognitive rehabilitation reported better quality of life, health status, and lower stress than those allocated to treatment-as-usual. CONCLUSIONS: Cognitive rehabilitation is feasible and potentially effective for dementias associated with Parkinson's disease

Markov risk mappings and risk-sensitive optimal stopping

In contrast to the analytic approach to risk for Markov chains based on transition risk mappings, we introduce a probabilistic setting based on a novel concept of regular conditional risk mapping with Markov update rule. We confirm that the Markov property holds for the standard measures of risk used in practice such as Value at Risk and Average Value at Risk. We analyse the dual representation for convex Markovian risk mappings and a representation in terms of their acceptance sets. The Markov property is formulated in several equivalent versions including a strong version, opening up additional risk-sensitive optimisation problems such as optimal stopping with exercise lag and optimal prediction. We demonstrate how such problems can be reduced to a risk-sensitive optimal stopping problem with intermediate costs, and derive the dynamic programming equations for the latter. Finally, we show how our results can be extended to partially observable Markov processes.Comment: 29 pages. New: extension of one-step ahead Markov property to entire "future", Markov property in terms of acceptance sets, VaR and AVaR examples, convex Markov risk mappings, application to optimal stopping with exercise lag. Notable changes: Stopping cost in the partially observable optimal stopping problem can depend on the unobservable stat