RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN AN AGE OF GLOBALIZATION, INTERNATIONAL LAW AND HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISM

This study reveals the two dimensions of religious freedom – religious groups and individuals – with empirical data, and it offers theoretical arguments on how these two dimensions are different. Individual rights provision is less threatening to dominant societal factions and the state, but abusing these rights is also less visible; group rights provision is more threatening to dominant societal factions and the state, but abusing these rights is also more visible. International forces – international law, human rights organizations, and globalization - influence the protection of the two dimensions of religious freedom differently. Globalization as a general force is fueling nationalist backlash and challenging states’ authority, causing governments to impose new restrains on religious rights – particularly those at the group-level. However, the ratification of ICCPR leads to a better protection of religious rights for groups but not for individuals, because restrictions of groups are in the public and easier to be observed, thus imposing a bigger reputational cost on states under the international legal commitment. Similarly, the domestic presence of International Human Rights Organizations (HROs) improves rights protection for religious groups but not for individuals, because HROs are able to reduce the political repercussions religious groups face from social movement activism. Nevertheless, there is also a solution to the restrictions on religious individuals; naming and shaming campaigns provide new information to the international audience and expose the covert regulations on religious individuals, therefore, they increase reputational costs for rights violating states

Poster Introductions II--Learning Violence Young

Two geographically and culturally connected nations, the United States and Canada, have starkly contrasting violent crime rates. Comparable surveys show that American teenagers on average are three times as likely to engage in fights as their Canadian peers and that this cross-country violence gap exists even among children as young as 4-5 years old. Conventional arguments believed to account for this sharp contrast in violence rates prove to have limited explanatory power. The US violence premium remains a puzzle. Using rich information provided by large-scale individual level longitudinal survey data, this study performs a Canada-US comparative analysis with a special focus on the role of maternal work after birth in determining children’s violent anti-social behaviour. The fact that 1/3 of American mothers and only 5% of Canadian mothers start full time work within 3 months after giving birth explains a considerable portion of the US-Canada difference in violence rates both for boys and for girls. Lihui Zhang is an Assistant Professor in the Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Regina. Her primary research areas include labour economics, health economics, applied econometrics, crime economics, and economics of family and children. In particular, she is interested in policy-relevant empirical research on population health and well-being. An earlier version of her research titled Learning Violence Young was featured in the Vancouver Sun in June 2008. In 2008, Zhang was awarded a PhD fellowship by the Canadian Labour Market and Skills Researcher Network (CLSRN), funded by SSHRC

Application of Learning Strategies to Culture-Based Language Instruction

Learning strategy is one of the most important factors that determine the learning result. So, teaching learners to grasp certain kinds of strategies is a key factor which can promote the learning efficiency. This thesis discusses the learning strategies in the theoretical and pedagogical aspects, illustrates the significance of culture-based language instruction in second language teaching, and elaborates three ways to help students use appropriate strategies in their culture-based language learning

Policy Brief No. 18 - The Dynamics of Inequality among Canadian Children

This study characterizes income inequality and mobility of Canadian children between the ages of 4/5 and 14/15. There is considerable inequality of family income. Moreover, income position is especially persistent for children at the bottom and top of the distribution; this is unfair and may be perpetuated into adulthood. Finally, family structure is very important for children’s material well-being; for example, they experience a considerable drop in income position upon parental separation/ divorce. It is recommended that such children be protected, perhaps through advance maintenance payments

Exploring the Strategizing of a Human Resource Management Practice by Business Line Managers from a Middle Management Perspective

ABSTRACT Exploring the Strategizing of a Human Resource Management Practice by Business Line Managers from a Middle Management Perspective Lihui Zhang, Ph.D. Concordia University, 2023 This Ph.D. research explores the strategizing of a HRM practice from a middle management perspective. Adopting the Strategy-as-Practice perspective (Whittington, 2006) as a backdrop, this research studies both an organization’s practice and its practitioners’ praxis to enact HRM practices. In other words, it examines what middle managers (practitioners) do (praxis) to enact one new performance management practice, and how these activities and processes unfold within internal and external environments to result in specific outcomes. Adopting a grounded theory approach, this research conducts a single case study with a professional service firm (ABC Company) in mainland China. Data are collected mainly by conducting semi-structured interviews with business line middle managers, top management team members, and lower-level employees. Document analysis, observations and subject matter expert meetings are also utilized to complement interviews for data analysis. Applying Floyd and Wooldridge’s (1992) four types of middle managers’ strategic influence that are based on two dimensions (upward vs. downward influence and integrative vs. divergent relative to the strategic intent), middle managers in ABC Company are found to exhibit more divergent influence downward to employees, no obvious divergent influence upward to the TMT, and some degree of integrative influences both downward and upward. The strategizing processes are found to unfold over four phases. In each phase, middle managers’ sensemaking, the following actions and the consequent results reinforce each other to drive the process to evolve to the next phase. After a few years of implementation, ABC company had come to a strategic stalemate with two conflicting performance cultures coexisting, where the intended pay-for-performance culture was not fully established, and it was difficult to go back to its initial pay egalitarianism. The working mechanisms that explain middle managers’ activities and the strategizing processes in ABC Company are represented as four mismatches between: (1) its goals and strategy design, (2) its strategy and human capital, (3) its organization and strategy, and (4) sensemaking and sensegiving. This research has implications for strategic HRM in professional service firms. Firms need to build HRM infrastructure and human capital so as to better involve business line managers in HRM activities