Can Chinese grandparents say no? A comparison of grandmothers in two Asian cities

Author(s):  
Esther C.L. Goh ◽  
Sheng-li Wang

This chapter examines two dominant research constructs namely, ‘cultural obligation’ and ‘intergenerational reciprocity’ in caring for grandchildren in Chinese societies – Fuzhou and Singapore. Drawing on Social Relational Theory (SRT), it examines the agency of grandmothers through unpacking the rationales for their involvement or non-involvement in childcare, and the goals and meanings they ascribe to their decisions. Grandparents are viewed as agents: capable of setting goals, devising plans, strategies and taking actions to achieve their goals in the relational contexts with their adult children and grandchildren. The key research questions addressed in this chapter are : (1) to what extent do grandmothers in Fuzhou and Singapore are influenced in their decisions to provide childcare by similar yet diverse Confucian roots; (2) understanding the socio-cultural discourses of grandparenthood in Fuzhou and Singapore; and (3) whether such discourses will constrain or facilitate their sense of agency in decision making.

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 417-417
Author(s):  
Hyo Jung Lee ◽  
Jacobbina Jin Wen Ng

Abstract This study aims to investigate whether attitude and perception on late-life death and dying, end-of-life care plans and preferences could be better understood from current values shared between aging parents and their adult children in the multi-cultural city-bound country, Singapore. We are in the process of interviewing 20 aging parent-adult child dyads. Up to date, six semi-structured interviews were completed and transcribed. We performed Content analysis to analyze the transcripts. Preliminary findings showed that both aging parents and adult children rarely discussed this issue, although parents had their own plans or preferences. The major barriers against open conversations about death and dying of aging parents include: the perception of not-yet time to talk about this issue (without knowing when the right time is) and tendency to have conversations about death in tandem with finances, but not death itself. Although specific end-of-life care plans or arrangements were not thought out thoroughly, aging parents expressed a high level of trust and reliance on close family members’ decisions regarding their end-of-life care. They tended to agree on joint decision-making process within family, even though adult children had no or unmatched ideas about their aging parents’ end-of-life wishes. This did not necessarily align with previous findings in Western countries, underscoring individuals’ control over their own death and dying process. Open conversation within family, family-involved advance care planning, or joint decision-making processes may be warranted to promote quality of life and death in older Singaporeans and well-being of their family members of all ages.


Complexity ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Hao Qinxia ◽  
Shah Nazir ◽  
Ma Li ◽  
Habib Ullah ◽  
Wang Lianlian ◽  
...  

The influential stage of Internet of Things (IoT) has reformed all fields of life in general but specifically with the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) has drawn the attention of researchers into a new paradigm of life standard. This revolution has been accepted around the globe for making life easier with the use of intelligent devices such as smart sensors, actuators, and many other devices. AI-enabled devices are more intelligent and capable of doing a specific task which saves a lot of resources and time. Different approaches are available in the existing literature to tackle diverse issues of real life based on AI and IoT systems. The role of decision-making has its own importance in the AI-enabled and IoT systems. In-depth knowledge of the existing literature is dire need of the research community to summarize the literature in effective way by which practitioners and researchers can benefit from the prevailing proofs and suggest new solutions for solving a particular problem of AI-enabled sensing and decision-making for the IoT system. To facilitate research community, the proposed study presents a systematic literature review of the existing literature, organizes the evidences in a systematic way, and then analyzes it for future research. The study reported the literature of the last 5 years based on the research questions, inclusion and exclusion criteria, and quality assessment of the selected study. Finally, derivations are drawn from the included paper for future research.


2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lars Magnus Hvattum

AbstractThe increasing availability of data from sports events has led to many new directions of research, and sports analytics can play a role in making better decisions both within a club and at the level of an individual player. The ability to objectively evaluate individual players in team sports is one aspect that may enable better decision making, but such evaluations are not straightforward to obtain. One class of ratings for individual players in team sports, known as plus-minus ratings, attempt to distribute credit for the performance of a team onto the players of that team. Such ratings have a long history, going back at least to the 1950s, but in recent years research on advanced versions of plus-minus ratings has increased noticeably. This paper presents a comprehensive review of contributions to plus-minus ratings in later years, pointing out some key developments and showing the richness of the mathematical models developed. One conclusion is that the literature on plus-minus ratings is quite fragmented, but that awareness of past contributions to the field should allow researchers to focus on some of the many open research questions related to the evaluation of individual players in team sports.


Author(s):  
David Levi-Faur

This chapter focuses on Jack L. Walker’s 1969 paper “The Diffusion of Innovations among the American States,” which analyzes the phenomenon of diffusion as well as interdependent decision-making in a collective setting. The chapter summarizes Walker’s arguments and the reception of his work in, and its influence on, the field of political science. It then considers the research questions posed, such as why some states act as pioneers by adopting new programs more readily than others, and whether there are more or less stable patterns of diffusion of innovations. It also revisits Walker’s debate with Virginia Gray with regards to the latter’s seminal study “Innovation in the States: A Diffusion Study.” The chapter offers some suggestions on the future progress of diffusion scholarship and its potential to redefine our understanding of politics and policy.


2018 ◽  
Vol 140 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlye A. Lauff ◽  
Daria Kotys-Schwartz ◽  
Mark E. Rentschler

Prototyping is an essential part of product development in companies, and yet it is one of the least explored areas of design practice. There are limited ethnographic studies conducted within companies, specifically around the topic of prototyping. This is an empirical and industrial-based study using inductive ethnographic observations to further our understanding of the various roles prototypes play in organizations. This research observed the entire product development cycle within three companies in the fields of consumer electronics (CE), footwear (FW), and medical devices (MD). Our guiding research questions are: What is a prototype? What are the roles of prototypes across these three companies? Through our analysis, we uncovered that prototypes are tools for enhanced communication, increased learning, and informed decision-making. Specifically, we further refine these categories to display the types of communication, learning, and decision-making that occur. These insights are significant because they validate many prior prototyping theories and claims, while also adding new perspectives through further exploiting each role. Finally, we provide newly modified definitions of a prototype and prototyping based on this empirical work, which we hope expands designers' mental models for the terms.


Author(s):  
Tim D. Bauer ◽  
Kerry A. Humphreys ◽  
Ken T. Trotman

The COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally changed the ways auditors work and interact with team members and others in the financial reporting process. In particular, there has been a move away from face-to-face interactions to the use of virtual teams, with strong indications many of these changes will remain post-pandemic. We examine the impacts of the pandemic on group judgment and decision making (JDM) research in auditing by reviewing research on auditor interactions with respect to the review process (including coaching), fraud brainstorming, consultations within audit firms, and parties outside the audit firm such as client management and the audit committee. Through the pandemic lens and for each auditor interaction, we consider new research questions for audit JDM researchers to investigate and new ways of addressing existing research questions given these fundamental changes. We also identify potential impacts on research methods used to address these questions during the pandemic and beyond.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco Leotta ◽  
Massimo Mecella ◽  
Daniele Sora ◽  
Tiziana Catarci

A smart space is an environment, mainly equipped with Internet-of-Things (IoT) technologies, able to provide services to humans, helping them to perform daily tasks by monitoring the space and autonomously executing actions, giving suggestions and sending alarms. Approaches suggested in the literature may differ in terms of required facilities, possible applications, amount of human intervention required, ability to support multiple users at the same time adapting to changing needs. In this paper, we propose a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) that classifies most influential approaches in the area of smart spaces according to a set of dimensions identified by answering a set of research questions. These dimensions allow to choose a specific method or approach according to available sensors, amount of labeled data, need for visual analysis, requirements in terms of enactment and decision-making on the environment. Additionally, the paper identifies a set of challenges to be addressed by future research in the field.


Author(s):  
Laurent Dobuzinskis ◽  
Michael Howlett

The ILPA series of country studies displays some significant variation between jurisdictions in terms of the timing and purview of analysis and also shows how the movement towards the application of scientific precepts to policy questions continues to be moderated by adherence to older, more partisan political modes of decision-making and program planning. Despite a discernible trend toward the professionalization of policy advice in most countries, a variety of actors continue to contribute diverse ideas to policy debates, with policy advice systems, and their analytical components, taking diverse forms across nations, sectors and levels of government. In this volume, we present a more systematic and comparative up-to-date understanding of policy analysis practices in Canada than has hitherto been available. This introduction provides an overview of past research into the area and outlines a series of topics and research questions which are addressed in the other contributions to the book.


Author(s):  
Frederic Adam ◽  
Ciara Heavin

In such a complex and well-researched domain as decision support systems (DSS), with a long history of authors making insightful contributions since the 1960’s, it is critical for researchers, especially those less experienced, to have a broad knowledge of the seminal work that has been carried out by prior generations of researchers. This can serve to avoid proposing research questions which have been considered many times before, without having consideration for the answers which have been put forward by previous scholars, thereby reinventing the wheel or “rediscovering” findings about the life of organizations that have been presented long before. The study of human and managerial decision-making is also characterized by considerable depth and seminal research going back to the beginning of the 20th century, across a variety of fields of research including psychology, social psychology, sociology or indeed operations research. Inasmuch as decision-making and decision support are inextricably linked, it is essential for researchers in DSS to be very familiar with both stream of research in their full diversity so they are able to understand both what activity is being supported and how to analyze requirements for developing decision support artefacts. In addition, whilst the area of decision support has sometimes been characterized by technology-based hype, it is critical to recognize that only a clear focus on the thinking and actions of managers can provide decisive directions for research on their decision support needs. In this article, we consider first the characteristics of human cognition, before concentrating on the decision-making needs of managers and the lessons that can be derived for the development of DSS.


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