An empirical study of the effect of a merger on organisational climate.

Thesis (MBA)-University of Natal, Durban, 2002.The issue of mergers and, in particular, the effect of mergers on employees is an important one due to the alarming number of mergers taking place at present both globally and in South Africa. Only recently have researchers begun to study the impact of mergers on employees. Many authors argue that this element is critical in determining the success or failure of a merger. The study examines a company, which recently experienced a merger and attempts to establish whether or not the merger had a detrimental effect on organisational climate. The study achieves it's aim by reviewing the literature and administering a self-completion questionnaire to the entire operational staff at three hierarchical levels, namely; store manager, sales administrator and sales person of the organisation in the KwaZulu Natal region. The study thus constitutes a census of all employees at the aforementioned three levels. The questionnaire administered includes both an organisational climate measuring instrument (an existing eighteen item scale was used) and an attitude to mergers measuring instrument, made up of twelve items, which was constructed for this study. The data was then analysed utilising both descriptive and inferential statistics

Social movements, the European crisis, and EU political opportunities

Social movements in the wake of the financial crisis have shifted from the counter-summits and world social forums of the global justice movement to the camps of the anti-austerity mobilizations, and from a clear focus on building ‘another Europe’ to more domestically embedded issues. Among other reasons, this turn away from the EU can be linked to contracting political opportunities for social justice movements at the European level. This article addresses the closure of opportunities at the EU level for the work of social movement groups campaigning on specific EU policies. We reflect on the complexity of the EU’s political opportunity structure prior to the financial crisis, before examining changes to the EU’s architecture effected through responses to the crises and outlining arguments on how EU level opportunities around socio-economic issues in particular have shrunk as a result. We then show how the perception of other political opportunities at the EU level is affected by the austerity response by drawing on campaigns that sought to exploit new opportunities included in the Lisbon Treaty and designed to increase citizens’ input. Opportunities introduced by changes made in the Lisbon Treaty are perceived through the prism of contracted opportunities flowing from power shifts caused by the response to the financial crisis

“A few sparks of inspiration”?: Analysing the outcomes of European Union cultural policy coordination

This article examines the outcomes of cultural policy coordination in the European Union using a case study of one policy priority in the 2011–2014 Work Plan for Culture. The Open Method of Coordination brings Member States together to exchange and cooperate on key policy priorities. Drawing on interviews with key actors as well as participant observation material, the article demonstrates the limited influence of the culture OMC on domestic policy, showing that domestic usage tends to be on the scale of individuals and organisations rather than Member State-wide. The article finishes by contextualising the outcomes, highlighting the constraints and challenges of intergovernmental coordination in fields where the EU holds a supporting competence

The Zoning of Semi-Enclosed Bodies of Water According to the Sediment Pollution: The Bay of Algeciras as a Case Example

This paper reports a study of the occurrence and levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in a bay characterised by a chronic persistent impact. A total of 55 sediment samples were taken at different depths up to 111 m in two sampling campaigns. Chemical analyses were carried out by gas chromatography-mass spectroscopy. The results indicate that: (1) significant spatial variations exist, (2) levels of PAHs are related more strongly to the spatial distribution of sediments than to mineralogy/granulometry, (3) the sediments are slightly-to-moderately contaminated by PAHs, and (4) these PAHs derive from pyrolytic and petrogenic sources. Through use of an innovative data classification system (proposed according to depth and spatial location of sampling points), and using factorial and cluster techniques, five zones have been differentiated depending on the contamination level and source

Pharmacological screening using an FXN-EGFP cellular genomic reporter assay for the therapy of Friedreich ataxia

Copyright @ 2013 Li et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Friedreich ataxia (FRDA) is an autosomal recessive disorder characterized by neurodegeneration and cardiomyopathy. The presence of a GAA trinucleotide repeat expansion in the first intron of the FXN gene results in the inhibition of gene expression and an insufficiency of the mitochondrial protein frataxin. There is a correlation between expansion length, the amount of residual frataxin and the severity of disease. As the coding sequence is unaltered, pharmacological up-regulation of FXN expression may restore frataxin to therapeutic levels. To facilitate screening of compounds that modulate FXN expression in a physiologically relevant manner, we established a cellular genomic reporter assay consisting of a stable human cell line containing an FXN-EGFP fusion construct, in which the EGFP gene is fused in-frame with the entire normal human FXN gene present on a BAC clone. The cell line was used to establish a fluorometric cellular assay for use in high throughput screening (HTS) procedures. A small chemical library containing FDA-approved compounds and natural extracts was screened and analyzed. Compound hits identified by HTS were further evaluated by flow cytometry in the cellular genomic reporter assay. The effects on FXN mRNA and frataxin protein levels were measured in lymphoblast and fibroblast cell lines derived from individuals with FRDA and in a humanized GAA repeat expansion mouse model of FRDA. Compounds that were established to increase FXN gene expression and frataxin levels included several anti-cancer agents, the iron-chelator deferiprone and the phytoalexin resveratrol.Muscular Dystrophy Association (USA), the National Health and Medical Research Council (Australia), the Friedreich’s Ataxia Research Alliance (USA), the Brockhoff Foundation (Australia), the Friedreich Ataxia Research Association (Australasia), Seek A Miracle (USA) and the Victorian Government’s Operational Infrastructure Support Program

Real-time high-resolution heterodyne-based measurements of spectral dynamics in fibre lasers

Conventional tools for measurement of laser spectra (e.g. optical spectrum analysers) capture data averaged over a considerable time period. However, the generation spectrum of many laser types may involve spectral dynamics whose relatively fast time scale is determined by their cavity round trip period, calling for instrumentation featuring both high temporal and spectral resolution. Such real-time spectral characterisation becomes particularly challenging if the laser pulses are long, or they have continuous or quasi-continuous wave radiation components. Here we combine optical heterodyning with a technique of spatiooral intensity measurements that allows the characterisation of such complex sources. Fast, round-trip-resolved spectral dynamics of cavity-based systems in real-time are obtained, with temporal resolution of one cavity round trip and frequency resolution defined by its inverse (85 ns and 24 MHz respectively are demonstrated). We also show how under certain conditions for quasi-continuous wave sources, the spectral resolution could be further increased by a factor of 100 by direct extraction of phase information from the heterodyned dynamics or by using double time scales within the spectrogram approach

Independent policy learning: Contextual diffusion of active labour market policies

This chapter analyses in which ways diffusion based on interdependent policy learning explains the spread of active labour market policies (ALMP) in the OECD countries. By applying error correction models using multiplicative spatial Prais-Winsten regressions for analyzing the diffusion of ALMPs in 22 OECD countries from 1991–2013, we find evidence of governments adapting labour market policy strategies that have proven successful, that is, perform well in increasing labour market participation in other countries. However, interdependent learning is conditional on the institutional framework: policymakers rather learn from the experience of other countries in the same welfare regime. Even more importantly, the results bear witness to the importance of the European Employment Strategy (EES) as an international coordination framework facilitating policy learning

The Rise and Fall of "Respectable" Spanish Liberalism, 1808-1923: An Explanatory Framework

The article focuses on the reasons behind both the consolidation of what I have termed “respectable” liberalism between the 1830s and the 1840s and its subsequent decline and fall between 1900 and 1923. In understanding both processes I study the links established between “respectable” liberals and propertied elites, the monarchy, and the Church. In the first phase these links served to consolidate the liberal polity. However, they also meant that many tenets of liberal ideology were compromised. Free elections were undermined by the operation of caciquismo, monarchs established a powerful position, and despite the Church hierarchy working with liberalism, the doctrine espoused by much of the Church was still shaped by the Counter-Reformation. Hence, “respectable” liberalism failed to achieve a popular social base. And the liberal order was increasingly denigrated as part of the corrupt “oligarchy” that ruled Spain. Worse still, between 1916 and 1923 the Church, monarch, and the propertied elite increasingly abandoned the liberal Monarchist Restoration. Hence when General Primo de Rivera launched his coup the rug was pulled from under the liberals’ feet and there was no one to cushion the fall