Projective techniques: Are they a victim of clashing paradigms?

This paper reviews the concept and historical development of projective techniques. It considers why, given the importance of their psychoanalytical foundations to the underlying paradigms of management theory, they have been generally marginalised as a mainstream business and management research tool. Projective techniques are defined and their historical origins delineated. This is followed by an overview of projective ‘types’. Some of the general advantages and current issues associated with employing projective techniques are also presented. Thereafter a discussion of the reasons projective techniques have not been widely adopted by positivist academic management researchers is made. We put forward the central argument that since many of the challenges facing management research are due to the restrictions introduced by bounded rationality, projective techniques offer a possible alternative to traditional mixed methods.Projective Techniques; Management Research;

Asking the experts : developing and validating parental diaries to assess children's minor injuries

The methodological issues involved in parental reporting of events in children's everyday lives are discussed with reference to the development and validation of an incident diary, collecting concurrent data on minor injuries in a community study of children under eight years old. Eighty-two mothers participated in a comparison over nine days of daily telephone interviews and structured incident diaries. Telephone methods resulted in more missing data, and participants in both groups expressed a preference for the diary method. This diary was then validated on a sample of 56 preschool and school-aged children by comparing injury recording by a research health visitor with that of their mothers. Each failed to report some injuries, but there was good agreement overall, and in descriptive data on injuries reported by both. Parental diaries have the potential to provide rich data, of acceptable validity, on minor events in everyday life

Boxes, Boosts, and Energy Duality: Understanding the Galactic-Center Gamma-Ray Excess through Dynamical Dark Matter

Many models currently exist which attempt to interpret the excess of gamma rays emanating from the Galactic Center in terms of annihilating or decaying dark matter. These models typically exhibit a variety of complicated cascade mechanisms for photon production, leading to a non-trivial kinematics which obscures the physics of the underlying dark sector. In this paper, by contrast, we observe that the spectrum of the gamma-ray excess may actually exhibit an intriguing "energy-duality" invariance under $E_\gamma \rightarrow E_\ast^2/E_\gamma$ for some $E_\ast$. As we shall discuss, such an energy duality points back to a remarkably simple alternative kinematics which in turn is realized naturally within the Dynamical Dark Matter framework. Observation of this energy duality could therefore provide considerable information about the properties of the dark sector from which the Galactic-Center gamma-ray excess might arise, and highlights the importance of acquiring more complete data for the Galactic-Center excess in the energy range around 1 GeV.Comment: 13 pages, LaTeX, 5 figure

Lines and Boxes: Unmasking Dynamical Dark Matter through Correlations in the MeV Gamma-Ray Spectrum

Identifying signatures of dark matter at indirect-detection experiments is generally more challenging for scenarios involving non-minimal dark sectors such as Dynamical Dark Matter (DDM) than for scenarios involving a single dark particle. This additional difficulty arises because the partitioning of the total dark-matter abundance across an ensemble of different constituent particles with different masses tends to "smear" the injection spectra of photons and other cosmic-ray particles that are produced via dark-matter annihilation or decay. As a result, the imprints of the dark sector on these cosmic-ray flux spectra typically take the form of continuum features rather than sharp peaks or lines. In this paper, however, we identify an unambiguous signature of non-minimal dark sectors such as DDM which can overcome these issues and potentially be observed at gamma-ray telescopes operating in the MeV range. We discuss the specific situations in which this signature can arise, and demonstrate that this signature can be exploited in order to significantly enhance our ability to resolve the unique spectral features of DDM and other non-minimal dark sectors at future gamma-ray facilities.Comment: 21 pages, LaTeX, 4 figures, 1 tabl

New approaches to investigating the function of mycelial networks

Fungi play a key role in ecosystem nutrient cycles by scavenging, concentrating, translocating and redistributing nitrogen. To quantify and predict fungal nitrogen redistribution, and assess the importance of the integrity of fungal networks in soil for ecosystem function, we need better understanding of the structures and processes involved. Until recently nitrogen translocation has been experimentally intractable owing to the lack of a suitable radioisotope tracer for nitrogen, and the impossibility of observing nitrogen translocation in real time under realistic conditions. We have developed an imaging method for recording the magnitude and direction of amino acid flow through the whole mycelial network as it captures, assimilates and channels its carbon and nitrogen resources, while growing in realistically heterogeneous soil microcosms. Computer analysis and modeling, based on these digitized video records, can reveal patterns in transport that suggest experimentally testable hypotheses. Experimental approaches that we are developing include genomics and stable isotope NMR to investigate where in the system nitrogen compounds are being acquired and stored, and where they are mobilized for transport or broken down. The results are elucidating the interplay between environment, metabolism, and the development and function of transport networks as mycelium forages in soil. The highly adapted and selected foraging networks of fungi may illuminate fundamental principles applicable to other supply networks

Development and Validity of the Student-Run Outpatient Physical Therapy Experience Survey: A Pilot Study

Purpose: The preparation of professionals who are culturally sensitive and provide patient centered care is an expected outcome of physical therapist education. A review of the literature revealed that patient experience and outcome data regarding physical therapy student-led clinics are lacking. The purpose of this pilot study was to develop a valid patient experience survey that assessed patient centeredness and cultural competence in a gender-neutral manner. Methods: Questions for a new survey, Student-run Outpatient Physical Therapy Experience Survey (SOPTES) were generated using two validated surveys, the Questionnaire of Patient’s Experiences in Post-Acute Outpatient Physical Therapy Settings (PEPAP-Q) and the Tucker-Culturally Sensitive Health Care Provider Inventory Patient Form. The SOPTES was implemented with the validated PEPAP-Q in a student-led clinic and given to 88 patients at discharge. Correlation and exploratory factor analysis were performed. Results: The correlations of patient scores between the two surveys, revealed a significant moderate correlation based on 2-tail analysis (ρ =.396, p \u3c 0.001). Exploratory factor analysis revealed five themes for the PEPAP-Q (patient centered care, supportive environment, availability, invested interest, and adaptability) and three themes in the SOPTES (patient centered care, availability, cultural competence). Conclusion: These findings support the development and use of the SOPTES in a student-led physical therapy clinic to assess student cultural sensitivity and provision of patient centered care

Extreme managers, extreme workplaces: capitalism, organizations and corporate psychopaths

This paper reports on in-depth, qualitative research carried out in England in 2013 among five organizational directors and two senior managers who had worked with other senior directors or managers who were Corporate Psychopaths, as measured by a management psychopathy measure. The Corporate Psychopaths reported on in this research displayed remarkable consistency in their approach to management to the extent that they could be called “text book examples” of managerial psychopathy. They were seen as being organizational stars and as deserving of performance awards by those above them, while the Corporate Psychopaths simultaneously subjected those below them to extreme forms of behavior, including bullying, intimidation and coercion and also engaged in extreme forms of mismanagement; such as very poor levels of personnel management, directionless leadership, miss-management of resources and outright fraud

Threesomes destabilise certain relationships: multispecies interactions between wood decay fungi in natural resources

Understanding interspecific interactions is key to explaining and modelling community development and associated ecosystem function. Most interactions research has focused on pairwise combinations, overlooking the complexity of multispecies communities. This study investigated three-way interactions between saprotrophic fungi in wood and across soil, and indicated that pairwise combinations are often inaccurate predictors of the outcomes of multispecies competition in wood block interactions. This inconsistency was especially true of intransitive combinations, resulting in increased species coexistence within the resource. Further, the addition of a third competitor frequently destabilised the otherwise consistent outcomes of pairwise combinations in wood blocks, which occasionally resulted in altered resource decomposition rates, depending on the relative decay abilities of the species involved. Conversely, interaction outcomes in soil microcosms were unaffected by the presence of a third combatant. Multispecies interactions promoted species diversity within natural resources, and made community dynamics less consistent than could be predicted from pairwise interaction studies