Improving tourism and leisure: towards the Australian Olympics in the year 2000 - a focus on people development and the learning organisation

1998 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 403-408
Author(s):  
Francesco Sofo

There have been significant economic, political and technological changes in terms of globalisation, new policies, practices and laws that have impacted on the way organisations operate and offer their services and products. One major impact of globalisation has been the new focus by organisations on their people as the most valuable resource. All businesses are people businesses. People development is at the heart of business success. A company’s HR policy needs to cover every aspect of its operation from what it sells and to whom through to how it organises itself, its capital, equipment, its people, who it employs and where it operates. Over the past ten years managers have acknowledged their role for developing people by taking increased responsibility for improving the skills, knowledge and attitudes (training, education, development) of their people. Managers and employees are changing their relationship to achieve competitive advantage through increased commitment and focus on customers and managing value. This is a description of how one key provider of services to the Olympic Games to be held in Sydney, Australia in the year 2000, has been preparing its staff to optimise this opportunity. The description refers to a three phase change strategy that the organisation is currently implementing over a three year period so that it can maximise its contribution and competitiveness towards the year 2000. I have called the organisation, The Retail Company.

1979 ◽  
Vol 80 ◽  
pp. 793-805 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Yahuda

The rapid changes in China of the past few years have quite properly focused much attention on the problems of political succession at the top levels of Chinese politics. In part this is recognized as a generational issue because of the advanced age of the first set of leaders of the People's Republic. Indeed, this is still a question of contemporary significance. Teng Hsiao-p'ing, for example, is alleged to have said that he turned down the premiership in favour of Hua Kuo-feng because he was in his 70s whereas Hua was in his 50s. Therefore, unlike Teng, the latter could expect to guide the modernization programme through to the year 2000. One of the major problems overshadowing the current Chinese leadership (both at the levels of the Political Bureau and even the Central Committee) is that soon a new generation of leaders will replace the old. It is perhaps because of this that the current leadership has been so concerned to consolidate the new order and to set the new modernization programme upon what is hoped will be an irreversible course. At the same time one of the reasons for the reluctance of many officials at all levels of China's bureaucracies to implement the new policies with the enthusiasm and initiative expected in Peking is precisely the fear that the new policies may be reversed by a new set of leaders whose succession in the nature of things cannot be long delayed.


Author(s):  
Edward Bellamy

‘No person can be blamed for refusing to read another word of what promises to be a mere imposition upon his credulity.’ Julian West, a feckless aristocrat living in fin-de-siècle Boston, plunges into a deep hypnotic sleep in 1887 and wakes up in the year 2000. America has been turned into a rigorously centralized democratic society in which everything is controlled by a humane and efficient state. In little more than a hundred years the horrors of nineteenth-century capitalism have been all but forgotten. The squalid slums of Boston have been replaced by broad streets, and technological inventions have transformed people’s everyday lives. Exiled from the past, West excitedly settles into the ideal society of the future, while still fearing that he has dreamt up his experiences as a time traveller. Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward (1888) is a thunderous indictment of industrial capitalism and a resplendent vision of life in a socialist utopia. Matthew Beaumont’s lively edition explores the political and psychological peculiarities of this celebrated utopian fiction.


1999 ◽  
Vol 19 (3_suppl) ◽  
pp. 35-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ram Gokal

Over the past 25 years, peritoneal dialysis (PD) has steadily improved so that now its outcomes, in the form of patient survival, are equivalent to, and at times better than, those for hemodialysis. We now have a better understanding of the pathophysiology of peritoneal membrane function and damage and the importance of appropriate prescription to meet agreed-upon targets of solute and fluid removal. In the next millennium, greater emphasis will be put on prescription setting and subsequent monitoring. This will entail an increase in automated PD, especially for lifestyle reasons as well as for patients with a hyperpermeable peritoneal membrane. To improve outcomes, dialysis should be started earlier than is currently the case. It is easy to do this with PD, where an incremental approach is made easier by the introduction of icodextrin for long-dwell PD. In the future, solutions will be tailored to be more biocompatible and to provide improved nutrition and better cardiovascular outcomes. Finally, economic considerations favor PD, which is cheaper than in-centre hemodialysis. Thus, for many, PD has become a first-choice therapy, and with further improvements this trend will continue.


2010 ◽  
Vol 30 (6) ◽  
pp. 1055-1072 ◽  
Author(s):  
SHANNON MCDERMOTT

ABSTRACTOver the past 50 years, self-neglect among older people has been conceptualised in both social policy and the academy as a social problem which is defined in relation to medical illness and requires professional intervention. Few authors, however, have analysed the concept of self-neglect in relation to critical sociological theory. This is problematic because professional judgements, which provide the impetus for intervention, are inherently influenced by the social and cultural context. The purpose of this article is to use critical theory as a framework for interpreting the findings from a qualitative study which explored judgements in relation to older people in situations of self-neglect made by professionals. Two types of data were collected. There were 125 hours of observations at meetings and home assessments conducted by professionals associated with the Community Options Programme in Sydney, Australia, and 18 professionals who worked with self-neglecting older people in the community gave in-depth qualitative interviews. The findings show that professional judgements of self-neglect focus on risk and capacity, and that these perceptions influence when and how interventions occur. The assumptions upon which professional judgements are based are then further analysed in relation to critical theory.


2012 ◽  
Vol 94 (888) ◽  
pp. 1455-1479 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olivier Dubois ◽  
Katharine Marshall ◽  
Siobhan Sparkes McNamara

AbstractThe field of humanitarian action is far from static, and the ICRC has worked over the years to evolve and respond to changing needs and changing circumstances. The past several decades have seen a proliferation of humanitarian actors, protracted, complex conflicts, and the rapid rise of new technologies that have significantly impacted how humanitarian work is done. The ICRC has been continually challenged to adapt in this changing environment, and its core work of supporting separated families – through restoration of family links and through support to the families of the missing – provides insight into ways that it has met this challenge and areas in which it may still seek to improve.


Author(s):  
Wei Zhang ◽  
Phil McManus ◽  
Elizabeth Duncan

Assessing and mapping urban heat vulnerability has developed significantly over the past decade. Many studies have mapped urban heat vulnerability with a census unit-based general indicator (CGI). However, this kind of indicator has many problems, such as inaccurate assessment results and lacking comparability among different studies. This paper seeks to address this research gap and proposes a raster-based subdividing indicator to map urban heat vulnerability. We created a raster-based subdividing indicator (RSI) to map urban heat vulnerability from 3 aspects: exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity. We applied and compared it with a raster-based general indicator (RGI) and a census unit-based general indicator (CGI) in Sydney, Australia. Spatial statistics and analysis were used to investigate the performance among those three indicators. The results indicate that: (1) compared with the RSI framework, 67.54% of very high heat vulnerability pixels were ignored in the RGI framework; and up to 83.63% of very high heat vulnerability pixels were ignored in the CGI framework; (2) Compared with the previous CGI framework, a RSI framework has many advantages. These include more accurate results, more flexible model structure, and higher comparability among different studies. This study recommends using a RSI framework to map urban heat vulnerability in the future.


Author(s):  
Gulraiz Ahmed ◽  
Nektaria Koursari ◽  
Anna Trybala ◽  
Victor M. Starov

Wetting of deformable substrates has gained significant interest over the past decade due to its extensive applications and uses. This interest has developed due to technological advances which are able to capture interfacial behavior taking place when a liquid droplet is placed on a deformable substrate. Researchers have developed different theories to explain processes taking place in the process of wetting of deformable/soft substrates. For the scope of this review, we will consider the fluid to be Newtonian, partially wetting, and surface forces are incorporated with the help of disjoining/conjoining pressure acting in the vicinity of the apparent, three-phase contact line. The following subjects are briefly reviewed: (i) Equilibrium of droplets on soft substrates. It is shown that properties of the disjoining/conjoining pressure isotherm and properties of the deformable substrate determine both the shape of the liquid droplet and deformation of the substrate; (ii) Equilibrium conditions of droplets on deformable substrates. It is shown that for a droplet to be at equilibrium on a deformable substrate under consideration, Jacobi’s sufficient condition is satisfied; (iii) Hysteresis of contact angle of sessile droplets on deformable substrates. It is shown that as the elasticity of the deformable substrate is increased, both advancing and receding contact angles are reduced.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (5) ◽  
pp. 273-279 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophie Abrassart ◽  
Franck Kolo ◽  
Sébastian Piotton ◽  
Joe Chih-Hao Chiu ◽  
Patrick Stirling ◽  
...  

Frozen shoulder, a common and debilitating shoulder complaint, has been the subject of uncertainty within the scientific literature and clinical practice. We performed an electronic PubMed search on all (1559) articles mentioning ‘frozen shoulder’ or ‘adhesive capsulitis’ to understand and qualify the range of naming, classification and natural history of the disease. We identified and reviewed six key thought leadership papers published in the past 10 years and all (24) systematic reviews published on frozen shoulder or adhesive capsulitis in the past five years. This revealed that, while key thought leaders such as the ISAKOS Upper Extremity Council are unequivocal that ‘adhesive capsulitis’ is an inappropriate term, the long-term and short-term trends showed the literature (63% of systematic reviews assessed) preferred ‘adhesive capsulitis’. The literature was divided as to whether or not to classify the complaint as primary only (9 of 24) or primary and secondary (9 of 24); six did not touch on classification. Furthermore, despite a systematic review in 2016 showing no evidence to support a three-phase self-limiting progression of frozen shoulder, 11 of 12 (92%) systematic reviews that mentioned phasing described a three-phase progression. Eight (33%) described it as ‘self-limiting’, three (13%) described it as self-limiting in ‘nearly all’ or ‘most’ cases, and six (25%) stated that it was not self-limiting; seven (29%) did not touch on disease resolution. We call for a data and patient-oriented approach to the classification and description of the natural history of the disease, and recommend authors and clinicians (1) use the term ‘frozen shoulder’ over ‘adhesive capsulitis’, (2) use an updated definition of the disease which recognizes the often severe pain suffered, and (3) avoid the confusing and potentially harmful repetition of the natural history of the disease as a three-phase, self-limiting condition. Cite this article: EFORT Open Rev 2020;5:273-279.DOI: 10.1302/2058-5241.5.190032


2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 438-477
Author(s):  
Bryan R Early ◽  
Menevis Cilizoglu

Abstract Policymakers employ economic sanctions to deal with a wide range of international challenges, making them an indispensable foreign policy tool. While scholarship on sanctions has tended to focus on the factors affecting their success, newer research programs have emerged that explore the reasons for why sanctions are threatened and initiated, the ways they are designed and enforced, and their consequences. This scholarship has yielded a wealth of new insights into how economic sanctions work, but most of those insights are based on sanctions observations from the 20th Century. The ways that policymakers employ sanctions have fundamentally changed over the past two decades, though, raising concerns about whether historically derived insights are still relevant to contemporary sanctions policies. In this forum, the contributors discuss the scholarly and policy-relevant insights of existing research on sanctions and then explore what gaps remain in our knowledge and new trends in sanctions policymaking. This forum will inform readers on the state of the art in sanctions research and propose avenues for future research.


2002 ◽  
Vol 222 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Falk

SummaryThis paper provides empirical evidence on both the magnitude and determinants of unfilled positions for information technology workers using cross-sectional data on 4150 German firms. Vacancies are defined as unfilled positions excluding those created by replacement needs during the first half of the year 2000. The share of vacancies created by replacement needs is only about 20 percent, indicating that high turnover rates are not the main reason for high vacancy rates. The adjusted job vacancy rate for ICT workers varies between 5.7 percent in the ICT sector and 6.7 percent in the non-ICT sector. The results of a generalized tobit model show that the adjusted vacancy rate mainly depends on the firm size, the share of ICT workers and actions taken in the past to solve the ICT worker shortage, but not on the diffusion of ICT. In the ICT sector, the decision made in the past to train apprentices in the new ICT occupations seems to have reduced the current vacancy rate. In the non-ICT sector, a successful strategy to solve the ICT worker shortage appears to be increased internal training. Finally, in the non-ICT sector, the common practice of completely outsourcing software programming significantly reduces the probability of vacancies.


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