Contingency and Institutional Perspectives within the Liberal Professional Organisation

This developmental paper will argue the necessity of drawing on both the contingency and institutional theories when researching the professional organisation. It is based on a doctoral thesis that addresses the barriers to acceptance and application of marketing within accountancy and law firms. The paper briefly presents the relevant definitions of the professions and the role of the marketing function within the organisation. The Contingency approach and its relevance to theory building and research in marketing have been identified. Conversely, the Institutional approach has been identified as relevant to the professions. The two approaches are separately outlined and their theoretical foundations traced. Finally, two theoretical models are proposed for discussion. The theoretical model that has been further developed for the thesis explains the barriers to marketing as a result of organisational conflict between the need for response to contingency pressures and the internal and external institutional isomorphic pressures of maintaining professional legitimacy with the implications of forfeiting organisational efficiency

Misunderstood or lacking legitimacy?

In spite of the rising interest in marketing within professional service firms in the last twenty years, past research has identified a reluctant acceptance and application of marketing within these organisations. The present paper will debate whether this is due to lack of understanding of the role of marketing, lack of acceptance as a valid management discipline suitable for professional services or lack of legitimacy as a profession in its own right. A brief overview of the role of marketing will be followed by a discussion on the professions, professional legitimacy and the professional organisation. Qualitative research was done in the form of in-depth interviews with marketing executives and accountancy and law professionals in fourteen firms across the UK. The research has revealed generational differences, misconceptions and outright conflict leading to resistance in the introduction and application of marketing, although the professionals have individually practiced a wide variety of marketing activities in their pursuit of gaining and maintaining clients. There has been a conspicuous resistance to the acceptance of marketing as a management tool within certain firms. The findings have opened up the spectre of inter-professional competition on legitimacy grounds

Fuzzy stability analysis of regenerative chatter in milling

During machining, unstable self-excited vibrations known as regenerative chatter can occur, causing excessive tool wear or failure, and a poor surface finish on the machined workpiece. Consequently it is desirable to predict, and hence avoid the onset of this instability. Regenerative chatter is a function of empirical cutting coefficients, and the structural dynamics of the machine-tool system. There can be significant uncertainties in the underlying parameters, so the predicted stability limits do not necessarily agree with those found in practice. In the present study, fuzzy arithmetic techniques are applied to the chatter stability problem. It is first shown that techniques based upon interval arithmetic are not suitable for this problem due to the issue of recursiveness. An implementation of fuzzy arithmetic is then developed based upon the work of Hanss and Klimke. The arithmetic is then applied to two techniques for predicting milling chatter stability: the classical approach of Altintas, and the time-finite element method of Mann. It is shown that for some cases careful programming can reduce the computational effort to acceptable levels. The problem of milling chatter uncertainty is then considered within the framework of Ben-Haim's information-gap theory. It is shown that the presented approach can be used to solve process design problems with robustness to the uncertain parameters. The fuzzy stability bounds are then compared to previously published data, to investigate how uncertainty propagation techniques can offer more insight into the accuracy of chatter predictions

A direct approach to co-universal algebras associated to directed graphs

We prove directly that if E is a directed graph in which every cycle has an entrance, then there exists a C*-algebra which is co-universal for Toeplitz-Cuntz-Krieger E-families. In particular, our proof does not invoke ideal-structure theory for graph algebras, nor does it involve use of the gauge action or its fixed point algebra.Comment: 9 pages; V2: the definition of a Toeplitz-Cuntz-Krieger $E$-family has been correcte

Organochloride Pesticides Present in Animal Fur, Soil, and Streambed in an Agricultural Region of Southeastern Arkansas

Animals in agricultural settings may be subject to bioaccumulation of toxins. For the last several years, we collected hair samples from bats and rodents in an agricultural area near Bayou Bartholomew in Drew County, Arkansas. Samples were submitted to the Center of Environmental Sciences and Engineering at the University of Connecticut for wide-screen toxin analysis. Several of these samples contained measurable amounts of organochloride pesticides or their metabolites, including some that have been banned for decades, such as dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) and chlordane. In addition, we collected several samples of soil from within an agricultural field, from adjacent edge habitat, from alongside the bank of the Bayou, and from the bed of the Bayou itself. Although none of these samples tested positive for DDT or chlordane, all of the samples except one contained measurable amounts of metabolites from these pesticides. This study raises questions about environmental persistence of DDT/DDE and other organochlorides. There may be risk to wildlife populations, warranting further investigation into effects of long-term exposure to these toxins

Wakefulness affects synaptic and network activity by increasing extracellular astrocyte-derived adenosine

Loss of sleep causes an increase in sleep drive and deficits in hippocampal-dependent memory. Both of these responses are thought to require activation of adenosine A1 receptors (adorA1Rs) and release of transmitter molecules including ATP, which is rapidly converted to adenosine in the extracellular space, from astrocytes in a process termed gliotransmission. Although it is increasingly clear that astrocyte-derived adenosine plays an important role in driving the homeostatic sleep response and the effects of sleep loss on memory (Halassa et al., 2009; Florian et al., 2011), previous studies have not determined whether the concentration of this signaling molecule increases in response to wakefulness. Here, we show that the level of adorA1R activation increases in response to wakefulness in mice (Mus musculus). We found that this increase affected synaptic transmission in the hippocampus and modulated network activity in the cortex. Direct biosensor-based measurement of adenosine showed that the net extracellular concentration of this transmitter increased in response to normal wakefulness and sleep deprivation. Genetic inhibition of gliotransmission prevented this increase and attenuated the wakefulness-dependent changes in synaptic and network regulation by adorA1R. Consequently, we conclude that wakefulness increases the level of extracellular adenosine in the hippocampus and that this increase requires the release of transmitters from astroctyes

A Study Techniques For The Improvement Of Written Composition In The O.L. Price School, Taylor, Texas

Nature of the Problem Changes in society in this Atomic Age call for reconsideration of the teachers\u27 techniques in teaching composition. Lou LaBrant states: It was often sufficient that a man should write his own name, and reading requirements were almost equally elementary. In the recent war before acceptance, prospective soldiers had to demonstrate what we\u27re roughly considered fourth-grade language skills. Those who passed were considered literate. College teachers have found that students are not given enough writing experiences to write adequately. Some colleges are offering courses in elementary composition for credit and non-credit. Since one learns to write by writing, the student should have sufficient writing experiences to develop skill. Many educators realize that English is the core of the curriculum; the social foundation of all education, including social studies. A revelation as this makes the English teacher aware of growing needs for improving written composition, and students at Price School in Taylor, Texas, have many deficiencies. Every workable technique should be used. No technique will be successful unless the students have an idea to express and a desire to express it. Therefore, there is a necessity for making clear to the student specific objectives and requirements. According to Cross and Carney, the teacher should arrange situations through which pupils may develop the power to express themselves clearly. The pupils should be led to think logically and to weigh and investigate experience

Prison Housing Policies for Transgender, Non-binary, Gender-non-conforming, and Intersex People: Restorative Ways to Address the Gender Binary in the United States Prison System

“[I]t was the end of the last quarter of 2019 where I was able to drop the lawsuit against the correctional officer who had sexually harmed me when I knew . . . that the carceral state is not the way for me to find healing . . . . I was not going to seek my transformation and restoration through this system.” Each year, rhetoric and legislation attacking transgender, non-binary, gender non-conforming and intersex individuals seemingly grows louder. Many political institutions in the United States perpetuate and enable the oppression of these individuals, one of which is the United States prison system. In the quotation above, Dominique Morgan, the Executive Director of Black and Pink, a prison abolitionist organization, describes her process of coming to terms with the harms she experienced in prison as a transgender woman. Morgan, originally charged with murder, lived eighteen months in solitary confinement, six of those on death row. This quotation from Morgan not only illustrates how the prison system failed to ensure her safety (as a person convicted of a crime), but it also expresses her reckoning with the failure of the justice system to provide her with a process through which she could heal (as someone who survived a crime). Morgan’s story represents just one of the dangers people face in prisons, especially the vulnerability often heightened for people historically marginalized by society. Transgender, non-binary, gender-non-conforming, and intersex (“TNGI”) individuals experience violence, sexual assault, social stigmatization, and discrimination from society and, in particular, the United States prison system. Despite some efforts to make housing in prisons safer for TNGI people, the system still fails to protect them. TNGI people face harms in prison that cisgender people do not because of the “hyper-gendered” structure of the prison system. For example, prison staff often misgender TNGI people, and prison housing policies regularly result in placing TNGI people in prisons according to their sex at birth instead of their gender identity. In addition, TNGI people are ten times more likely to be sexually assaulted in prison than the general prison population. This Comment seeks to center the experiences of TNGI people living in prisons to shed light on the harms they incur from the United States prison system. Because of the gendered structure of the prison system, TNGI people face additional harms that cisgender prisoners do not experience, and the reforms to prison housing policies have failed to fully address the root of the problem. Restorative justice, through mechanisms used in place of prisons as well as through values-based policymaking, can better account for TNGI people’s well-being by breaking away from the gender binary in prisons and focusing on the diversity of human experiences and methods of relationship-building. Part I seeks to illuminate the experiences of TNGI people in the United States and, more specifically, in prison. I also introduce the current prison housing policies and practices in the United States. In Part II, I provide a preview of restorative justice, which will be combined with the theories in Part III to form the rest of the argument. The first section of Part III introduces theories concerning the gendered structure of prisons and how this perpetuates the gender binary. I then expand upon these theories and apply them to the experiences of TNGI people in prison. Next, I explain how the theory of relational restorative justice can help move past the gender binary in prisons and create a more equitable response to wrong-doings. Last, I discuss the current movements concerning prison housing reform and explain why these are lacking

Phoenix from the Ashes—The 1999 Pacific Salmon Agreement

The United States and Canada have found a solution to their century long salmon war over how many salmon can be taken by each side\u27s fishing fleets from the once-bountiful Pacific salmon runs. Each country felt entitled to an equitable portion of the salmon, but no agreed means existed to calculate the shares. Canada felt that the prodigious U.S. fleet often caught more than its share. Substantial peace first came under the 1985 Pacific Salmon Treaty, but dwindling salmon populations, the expiration of the original management regimes, and flaws in those regimes threatened to doom the 1985 Treaty by the mid-1990s. The lack of harvest agreements left each country scrambling for the fish, putting unsustainable pressure on an already delicate resource. After half a decade of infighting and argument, Canada and the United States signed a new agreement under the treaty in 1999. On the surface, the genius of the new Agreement lies in the new Abundance Based Management scheme and the multimillion dollar Endowment Funds earmarked for conservation. The flexible, resource-based management programs considered the yearly strength of the salmon runs before and during the harvest season. These new regimes, and the 1999 Agreement as a whole, were subject to review under the Endangered Species Act, completed by NMFS in 1999. The Endowment Funds provided a financial base to undertake substantial conservation initiatives. With the understanding that an imperfect agreement was better than no agreement, the Canadians effectively set aside their longstanding equity demands to achieve consensus. As part of the overall compromise, the United States agreed to fully finance the Endowment Funds for a total of (U.S.) $140 million. The sea change in Canadian negotiation posture reflected a renewed emphasis on resource conservation and a willingness to pioneer new avenues for success