Your Sewing Machine - Its Care and Adjustment

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Common Binder Head and Knotter Head Troubles

PDF pages: 4

Top leaders’ experiences of learning

This qualitative grounded theory study explores how ten top leaders experienced their learning, whether there were any commonalities in their learning and how that learning could be applied to leadership development and coaching. Four military generals, three corporate chief executives and three academic leaders were interviewed on learning experiences that they judged as being influential. These interviews were transcribed and analysed according to social constructivist grounded theory through a process of initial, focused and clustered coding followed by individual theme development and common theme construction. A tentative theory emerged from the data. At each stage findings were referred back to the ten research participants for their validation. Finally a ‘reflective conversation’ was held with each leader, during which they were asked to rate the level of their identification with 11 characteristics and tools that were identified from the common themes. The results showed considerable common identification and use across the entire sample. Findings indicate that, very early in their lives, these top leaders developed a navigational stance based on their exploration of early relationships (Bowlby, 1988), which assumes a ‘partnering’ relationship with their world. This navigational stance is strengthened by the consistent and compound application of a navigation template consisting of 11 identified tools and characteristics. These are: navigation (finding a way through), pragmatism (doing the best possible), three-way challenges, socialised decision-making, no attachment to failure (but to holding accountable), an acute sense of reality (no wishful thinking), holism (seeing linkages within and between contexts), alertness to constituents, a sense of direction (with no dogma), use of mentors and the use of the tools as a composite template. Three innovative insights emerge: a) that the individuals in this research who go on to be successful organisational heads, experience their relationship with their world as a manageable partnership at an early age, b) that because this partnership relationship is perceived to be effective, they reinforce and refine it by the consistent application of a navigation template, and c) that the consistent application of the navigation template may cause these leaders to be in default transformative learning mode. The developing theory and model is articulated and applied to leadership coaching

Calidad de Vida: An Exploratory Investigation of Latino Breast Cancer Survivors and Intimate Partners

Advances in addressing psychosocial issues related to cancer treatment and prevention are not reaching all survivors equally. Latina breast cancer survivors and intimate partners are underrepresented in psychosocial interventions, and there is a scarcity of research on the influence of cancer on Latino couples’ quality of life. The purpose of this manuscript is to present findings from a trans-linguistic, dyadic qualitative research study aimed at exploring the influence of cancer on quality of life for Latina breast cancer survivors and their intimate partners. Results highlight several areas that are helpful and hindering to supporting survivorship

Optical and UV spectroscopy of the peculiar RS CVn system, RT Lacertae

Spectra in the H-alpha and H-beta regions of the peculiar double-lined RS CVn binary, RT Lacertae, were obtained in the fall of 1984. Limited International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) long wavelength low and high resolution spectra were obtained concurrently. The ground based spectra have shown an asymmetry with orbital phase in the H-alpha profile. The H-beta profiles were consistent with the same effect. One hemisphere showed excess emission and the other excess absorption, with a broad Gaussian emission component superposed upon the excess H-alpha line. An improved radial velocity curve, giving a better determined mass ratio and geometry was derived. This combined with the radii implied by the rotational broadening of the spectra, showed one component to be 80 to 90% filling the equilibrium Roche surface. The two-faced nature is, therfore, very likely due to mass transfer from the contact component impacting upon its companion. Low resolution ultraviolet data showed that the supposed cooler component is bluer than its companion. High resolution ultraviolet data taken during secondary eclipse showed Mg II emission strength which decreased more slowly than the area visible. The phase behavior of the low resolution data support the former situation, indicating traditional chromospheric activity

Trust, Organizational Controls, Knowledge Acquisition from the Foreign Parents, and Performance in Vietnamese International Joint Ventures

Successful adaptation in strategic alliances "calls for a delicate balance between the twin virtues of reliability and flexibility" [Parkhe 1998]. On one hand, the joint venture must be flexible enough to respond to the uncertainties of competitive business environments because it is not feasible to plan for every possible contingency. Yet, on the other hand, unfettered flexibility invites dysfunctional behavior, such as opportunism and complacency. This delicate balance accompanies a parallel balance between trust and control of the joint venture. The primary goal of this study is to empirically examine this relationship in the context of Vietnamese international joint ventures (IJVs) by building on the model of knowledge acquisition and performance in IJVs established by Lyles and Salk [1996]. This study makes three major contributions to the literature. First it confirms several findings of the original Lyles and Salk study [1996]. Second, we strengthen Lyles and Salk's original model by incorporating multiple measures of both interorganizational trust and control as independent variables. Finally, this study represents one of the first in-depth examinations of business in the emerging Vietnamese economy.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39713/3/wp329.pd

Exploring dyslexia, literacies and identities on Facebook

This paper examines the role of identities in underpinning and activating literacies learning in a small class of adolescent students labelled with dyslexia. It derives from a project in which teacher-researcher and student-participants co-constructed a Facebook group page about the students’ scaffolded research into dyslexia. The study investigated an apparent paradox: that although literacy demands are often cited as barriers to learning and participation for students labelled with dyslexia, social networking technologies seem to motivate at least some such students to willingly undertake significant amounts of reading and writing. Two interrelated potential explanations are investigated to attempt to resolve this paradox. Firstly, that the social and collaborative nature of Facebook literacy events and practices, which promotes a sense of shared identity amongst the participants, is itself motivating. Secondly, that identity strongly influences engagement with texts. Three intertwined strands of identity work emerged from analysis of the data. These three strands underpinned the students’ literacy events and practices. Each strand is elaborated, through reference to interview data and classroom dialogue. The study concludes that Facebook offered an affinity space in which the students inhabited projective identities which reciprocally shaped their literacy practice