Cultural Images of Labor Conflict and Coordination Literature and the Evolution of Industrial Relations Systems

Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands have different historical patterns of industrialization, but developed similar patterns of industrial coordination and cooperation. Theories accounting for industrial relations systems (economic structure, power resources, and party/electoral systems) have difficulty accounting for the similarities among these cases. Therefore, we explore the historical depictions of labor appearing in literature to evaluate whether cross-national distinctions in cultural conceptions of labor have some correspondence to distinctions between coordinated and liberal industrial relations systems. We hypothesize that historical literary depictions of labor are associated with the evolution of industrial systems, and apply computational text analyses to large corpora of literary texts. We find that countries (Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands) with coordinated, corporatist industrial relations in the 20th century share similar cultural constructions about labor relations dating back to at least 1770. Literary depictions found in modern coordinated/corporatist countries are significantly different from those found in Britain, a country with liberal/pluralist industrial relations systems. The research has significance for our understanding of the role of culture in the evolution of modern political economies.

Cyber-Physical System for Smart Grid

A smart grid is an advanced utility, stations, meters, and energy systems that comprises a diversity of power processes of smart meters, and various power resources. The cyber-physical systems (CPSs) can play a vital role boosting the realization of the smart power grid. Applied CPS techniques that comprise soft computing methods, communication network, management, and control into a smart physical power grid can greatly boost to realize this industry. The cyber-physical smart power systems (CPSPS) are an effective model system architecture for smart grids. Topics as control policies, resiliency methods for secure utility meters, system stability, and secure end-to-end communications between various sensors/controllers would be quite interested in CPSPS. One of the essential categories in CPSPS applications is the energy management system (EMS). The chapter will spotlight the model and design the relationship between the grid and EMS networks with standardization. The chapter also highlights some necessary standards in the context of CPSPS for the grid infrastructure.

White People Problems? White Privilege Beliefs Predict Attitudes Toward Confederate Symbols

Building upon Intergroup Threat Theory and research on group-level empathy, we tested the relationship between White privilege beliefs and White Americans’ attitudes toward Confederate symbols. In three experiments, participants induced to think about White privilege exhibited more opposition to Confederate symbols, perceived less realistic threat to their group’s power/resources and symbolic threat to their group’s values/identity from the prospect of these symbols being removed, and (in Study 2) felt more empathetic toward racial/ethnic minorities who may view these symbols. Further, a meta-analytic path analysis across studies demonstrated that the effect of White privilege reminders on opposition to Confederate symbols was driven by reduced realistic and symbolic threat, as well as greater outgroup empathy.

Toward Sustainability: Trade-Off Between Data Quality and Quantity in Crop Pest Recognition

The crop pest recognition based on the convolutional neural networks is meaningful and important for the development of intelligent plant protection. However, the current main implementation method is deep learning, which relies heavily on large amounts of data. As known, current big data-driven deep learning is a non-sustainable learning mode with the high cost of data collection, high cost of high-end hardware, and high consumption of power resources. Thus, toward sustainability, we should seriously consider the trade-off between data quality and quantity. In this study, we proposed an embedding range judgment (ERJ) method in the feature space and carried out many comparative experiments. The results showed that, in some recognition tasks, the selected good data with less quantity can reach the same performance with all training data. Furthermore, the limited good data can beat a lot of bad data, and their contrasts are remarkable. Overall, this study lays a foundation for data information analysis in smart agriculture, inspires the subsequent works in the related areas of pattern recognition, and calls for the community to pay more attention to the essential issue of data quality and quantity.

An analysis of Human Development Index and Economic Growth. A case study of Pakistan.

Economic growth is an important factor in the economic development of a country. There are some factors that can increase economic growth namely human development. The level of human development in a country array in the value of the Human Development Index (HDI). The growth rate of a country appears in the value of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per Capita. The influence of human power resources is shown in the value of HDI which is able to influence the level of economic growth in the value of its GDP. This study will examine the effect of HDI on economic growth in Pakistan during the period 1980-2018 against its economic growth in its GDP per capita. The result of this research indicates that each country has a strong and significant correlation between HDI and GDP. It is concluded that the level of HDI can affect the GDP per capita. Economic growth makes it possible to reach a high level of human development, on the one hand, increasing levels of human development leading to increase opportunities for economic growth. The causal relationship between economic growth and human development becomes a mutually influential relationship. So it is clear that the human development in the country relates to an influence of economic growth which is seen in per capita income (GDP per capita) which can be an indicator of welfare in the country.

Russia’s Soft Power

Russia has always been a country seeking the Great Power status. Even though it lost its importance after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the desire to return to the role of the creator of international order force it to introduce new strategy that will implement soft power resources. This represents a certain obstacle for Russia, which traditionally is accustomed to hard power resources like economic pressure or the use of armed forces. Culture is Russia’s soft power resource that is significant. Values can be more problematic for Russia, because in Moscow’s intentions they should be different from the Western values. Russia is trying to create an alternative soft power project, competitive to that of the West. Russia is trying to make good use of its diplomacy, including digital diplomacy, in order to show the use of its hard power to be seen as soft.

Systems methodologies for handling problem complexity

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine how holistic thinking and the use of systems methodologies can help organisations handle increased problem complexity. The paper provides a critical discussion of the development of applied systems thinking and examines how its main strands can deal with problem complexity, multiple perceptions of reality and the unequal access to power resources in organisations. Design/methodology/approach The paper uses social theory and a systems meta-theoretical framework to examine the different ontological and epistemological assumptions that each strand of applied systems thinking makes about the nature of problems and the way in which an intervention will be made. Findings Complex problems require joined-up thinking and the use of systems ideas. Viewing the problem situation from a holistic perspective and applying appropriate systems methodologies and tools can help managers handle the complexities that their organisations face. Originality/value The paper makes a clear link between systems approaches and social theory and emphasises the need to understand the different assumptions that theories, methodologies or people make when they intervene in complex problem situations.

Cost-Effective and Low Power IoT-Based Paper Supply Monitoring System: An Application Modeling Approach

IoT designers face the dual complexity of obtaining good application-level performance and user satisfaction under constraints on computing and power resources. We introduce a new IoT device for paper roll supply management in bathrooms and kitchens, both for homes and businesses, that is extremely cost effective and battery power-efficient. The device can be installed on practically any paper roll dispenser and makes use of existing Wi-Fi infrastructure. Despite Wi-Fi’s reputation as “unsupportive for power saving,” we introduce and experimentally validate a methodology for using Wi-Fi networks with low power utilization, resulting in a system that provides very good management of paper supplies while only requiring battery charging once every 3–4 months. The new device has the potential to provide more households and businesses with real-time, data-driven automated supply chains.

Regional security cooperation against hegemonic threats: Theory and evidence from France and West Germany (1945–65)

Why do some regional powers collectively threatened by a potential hegemon eagerly cooperate to ensure their security, while others appear reluctant to do so? I argue that robust security cooperation at the regional level is less likely when an unbalanced distribution of power exists between the prospective security partners. In such situations, regional security cooperation tends to be stunted by foot-dragging and obstructionism on the part of materially inferior states wary of facilitating the strategic expansion of neighbours with larger endowments of power resources, anticipating that much of the coalition's gains in military capabilities are likely to be achieved through an expansion of the materially superior neighbour's force levels and strategic flexibility. Evidence drawn from primary material and the latest historiography of France's postwar foreign policy towards West Germany provides considerable support for this argument. My findings offer important correctives to standard accounts of the origins of Western European security cooperation and suggest the need to rethink the difficulties the United States has encountered in promoting cooperation among local allies in key global regions.

Winning a battle against the odds: A cleaners’ campaign

This article analyses a campaign urging a British university to re-establish in-house cleaning services after years of outsourcing. The small independent union leading the campaign began from an extremely low level of power resources and managed to build enough associational and societal power to win the dispute on cleaners’ working conditions. The study is based on participant observation of the union’s activities, document analysis and interviews. The article argues that the strategy emerging from the study, centred around three key strategies (collectivization of individual grievances, education, and disruption of core business activities), can be articulated in a process following the main categories of Mobilization Theory: organization, mobilization and collective action. Additionally, the union managed to conciliate servicing and organizing strategies, as well as attention to class-oriented and migrant-specific issues.