bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Control Self Assessment in the 1990s: The UK Perspective
Authors: Melville Robert 
Published: August 2003

This paper addresses the current state of the art of control self assessment (CSA) practice in the UK. Three key areas are used to provide a view of strategic, tactical and operational elements: a broad overview of the FT ‘Top 50’; a case study of audit practice in a university, and a review of the impact of group decision support systems (GDSS) on CSA.The overview was based on a survey of the ‘Top 50’ companies listed on the FTSE, while the other two elements were based on structured interviews. From this, three main research questions were developed to enable the research team to evaluate the impact of CSA at three management levels.The conclusions are that CSA is widely seen as a beneficial practice, although it may not be repeated after the first exercise. It was found that CSA is seen as a useful method of evaluating non‐financial systems, such as are found in universities. Finally, it was found that, while GDSS have a role to play in the implementation of CSA, the technological factor is not considered to be as important as effective facilitation skills by workshop leaders.
Outsourcing the Internal Audit Function: The British Government Experience with Market Testing
Authors: Rittenberg Larry E. , Covaleski Mark 
Published: August 2003

Internal auditing has historically functioned as an integral part of an organization's risk assessment, control, and governance structure. Recently, the internal audit world has been challenged by external firms, including the large professional services firms, who are marketing internal audit services (outsourcing). The market potential for internal audit services is large with some firms projecting internal audit services to be 25% of the total of external audit billings in the next few years.Many governments have also argued that they could improve both the cost and the efficiency of governmental services by subjecting individual governmental units to competition from the private sector. Internal auditing may be an ideal candidate for market testing because (1) it is usually organized as a separate, stand‐alone unit, and (2) there are many alternative providers of audit services.The authors had the opportunity to examine the ‘market testing’ of internal audit services within the British Government. We interviewed most of the major parties involved in a market test of internal audit services. Those interviewed included outsourcing providers, heads of internal audit departments, and a member of the Treasury who provided oversight of the process. Market testing led to some significant changes and challenges—some good and some not so good. This paper describes the market testing process in the UK and the potential benefits and costs associated with outsourcing governmental internal audit functions.
Relativity Without Relativism: Reflexivity in Post‐Paradigm Organization Studies
Authors: Hardy Cynthia , Clegg Stewart 
Published: August 2003

This paper shows how organization studies controls the subject through its use of representational devices. Different theoretical and methodological approaches may appear to offer epistemological guarantees concerning the validity of data about the research subject but they remain representations, beyond which we can know nothing except through representation. Research is not about wrenching truth from a recalcitrant ‘reality’: the devices it uses to represent its research subject create and control in the way they silence to give voice to aspects of that subject. All data are ‘collaborative products’ created in accordance with ‘the practical procedures and background assumptions of the participating actors’ (Knorr‐Cetina, 1981). Thus the relations between research subject, researcher and the protocols that comprise the research process both embody and obscure power. For this reason, it is important that theory strives for a high degree of reflexivity (Marcus, 1994) in accounting for its own theorizing, as well as whatever it is that it theorizes about.In this paper, we critically examine different research approaches, including those of Aston, to show the dangers that can arise when research is carried out without regard to reflexivity. We offer some criteria for carrying out reflexive research which, we believe, is one of the major challenges facing post‐paradigm organization studies. As we shall see, reflexivity shows us how far we have come in the thirty years since Aston.
La théorie économique dominante: une représentation fausse et immorale de la société
Authors: Mouchot Claude 
Published: August 2003

This paper argues that the dominant mainstream neo‐classical economic theory propounds a world‐view which is based not simply on half‐truths, but on straight lies. This is particularly significant since the influence of the economic world‐view reaches into every realm of social thought. Although overtly grounded in utilitarianism, the basis of neo‐classical thought has undergone two shifts of meaning which have converted the original self‐evident utilitarian presuppositions into an ideology.The first of these alters the utilitarian proposition that ‘we seek satisfaction’ into the statement that ‘we only seek satisfaction’. It follows that human action is motivated by nothing other than selfishness and greed, and that altruism therefore cannot exist: anything that looks like altruism is therefore nothing other than egoism in disguise, and there is no place for ethical reasoning in individual choice.The second shift alters the premise that our goal is ‘maximum satisfaction’ to the assertion that what we seek is ‘maximum monetary gain’. This shift is already present in the writings of Jeremy Bentham, and forms the basis of much subsequent work in economics. In particular, it has facilitated the emergence of what one might term ‘economic imperialism’, i.e. the use of economic theory to analyse social issues – family size, racial discrimination, marriage, education choices, among others. In all of these cases monetary gain is the paramount criterion. For business ethics the most obvious example here is the absolutisation of profit as the sole criterion of business achievements, and of salary as the sole criterion of work choice and worker satisfaction.Both of these premises are then used to demonstrate that it is free competition which will ensure maximum social welfare. This conclusion is both relativistic and reductionistic. In the first place, the necessary conditions for perfect competition can never exist. Nor can ‘optimum social welfare’ be translated into ‘optimum welfare for all’ in an economic world‐view which sees wealth and poverty as the ‘just deserts’ of hard work and laziness respectively.The dominant economic theory is thus explicitly immoral in that it enshrines the absolute sovereignity of the individual and the law of the jungle as social norms. The qualitative measure of human happiness is desire, the quantitative measure is money. From an ethical perspective we must reject the falsity of this world‐view.
A model of a decision support system based on case‐based reasoning for third‐party logistics evaluation
Authors: Yan Jianyuan , Chaudhry Peggy E. , Chaudhry Sohail S. 
Published: September 2003

Abstract:The social demands for third‐party logistics (3PL) are further developing the model of supply chain management. The analysis of an effective approach for 3PL service supplier evaluation is given in terms of its direct relation to the operational efficiency and benefit of the service‐demanding enterprise as well as its supply chain management. An analysis of the traditional academic theoretical results and practical methods for 3PL supplier selection indicates the deficiencies of this approach. In this paper, a case‐based reasoning model framework is postulated for a 3PL evaluation and selection system. This work further expands upon the theoretical basis of this system and its reasoning process by discussing the advantages and practical value of this framework.
Danto, History, and The Tragedy of Human Existence
Authors: Ankersmit F. R. 
Published: August 2003

AbstractPhilosophy of history is the Cinderella of contemporary philosophy. Philosophers rarely believe that the issues dealt with by philosophers of history are matters of any great theoretical interest or urgency. In their view philosophy of history rarely goes beyond the question of how results that have already been achieved elsewhere can or should be applied to the domain of historical writing. Moreover, contemporary philosophers of history have done desperately little to dispel the low opinion that their colleagues have of them. In this essay I argue that Arthur Danto is the exception confirming the rule, for Danto's philosophy of representation may help us understand how texts relate to what they are about. The main shortcoming of (twentieth‐century) philosophy of language undoubtedly is that it never bothered to investigate the philosophical mysteries of the text. The writing of history is a philosophical goldmine and we must praise Danto for having reminded us of this.
Fact, Truth, and Text: The Quest for a Firm Basis for Historical Knowledge Around 1900
Authors: Torstendahl Rolf 
Published: August 2003

AbstractThe object of this essay is to discuss two problems and to present solutions to them, which do not quite agree with what is generally said of them. The first problem concerns the history of methods for reaching firm historical knowledge. In three methodological manuals for historians, written by J. G. Droysen, E. Bernheim, and C.‐V. Langlois and C. Seignobos and first published in the late nineteenth century, the task of the historian was said to be how to obtain firm knowledge about history. The question is how this message should be understood. The second problem concerns the differences between the three manuals. If their common goal is firm historical knowledge, are there any major differences of opinion? The answer given in this article is yes, and the ground is sought in their theories of truth.
The “Trial” of Lee Benson: Communism, White Chauvinism, and The Foundations of the “New Political History” in the United States
Authors: Zahavi Gerald 
Published: August 2003

AbstractLee Benson was one of the first American political historians to suggest a “systematic” revision of traditional political history with its emphasis on narrow economic class analysis, narrative arguments, and over‐reliance on qualitative research methodologies. This essay presents Benson's contributions to the “new political history”—an attempt to apply social‐science methods, concepts, and theories to American political history—as a social, cultural, and political narrative of Cold War‐era American history. Benson belonged to a generation of ex‐Communist American historians and political scientists whose scholarship and intellectual projects flowed—in part—out of Marxist social and political debates, agendas, and paradigmatic frameworks, even as they rejected and revised them. The main focus of the essay is the genesis of Benson's pioneering study of nineteenth‐century New York state political culture, The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy, with its emphasis on intra‐class versus inter‐class conflict, sensitivity to ethnocultural determinants of political and social behavior, and reliance on explicit social‐science theory and methodology. In what follows, I argue that The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy has its roots in Benson's Popular Front Marxist beliefs, and his decade‐long engagement and subsequent disenchantment with American left‐wing politics. Benson's growing alienation from Progressive historical paradigms and traditional Marxist analysis, and his attempts to formulate a neo‐Marxism attentive to unique American class and political realities, are linked to his involvement with 1940s radical factional politics and his disturbing encounter with internal Communist party racial and ideological tensions in the late 1940s at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
The association between training and organizational commitment among white‐collar workers in Malaysia
Authors: Ahmad Kamarul Zaman , Bakar Raida Abu 
Published: August 2003

The exploration of the relationship between organizational commitment and training is still in its early stages. Although there have been several studies reported on training and organizational commitment in Western countries, very little has been done in respect of the local professionals in Malaysia. This research investigates the association between five training variables (availability of training, support for training, motivation to learn, training environment and perceived benefits of training), and various aspects of organizational commitment (affective commitment, normative commitment, continuance commitment and overall organizational commitment). The availability of training, support for training, motivation to learn, training environment, perceived benefits of training were all significantly correlated with affective commitment, normative commitment and overall organizational commitment. The training environment and perceived benefits were also significantly correlated with continuance commitment. However the availability of training, support for training and motivation to learn were not significantly correlated with continuance commitment. This suggests that despite other forms of commitment, Malaysian workers do not feel that they need to remain in an organization that has made available the training, given support for the training and were motivated to learn. Otherwise, results suggest that on the whole, training does seem to have an influence on organizational commitment. The practical implication of this is that managers, who are so desirous of enhancing organizational commitment among their subordinates, should pay more attention to training.Annual income was found to correlate positively with affective commitment and overall commitment. Age and tenure were not significant predictors of overall organizational commitment contradicting studies in the West. This demonstrated that Malaysians might have different attitudes towards organizational commitment. The older they are and the longer they stay within an organization do not imply that they will be committed towards their organization. This phenomenon can be attributed to the uncertain business environment in Malaysia.
Autism and Developmental Receptive Language Disorder—a Follow‐up Comparison in Early Adult Life. II: Social, Behavioural, and Psychiatric Outcomes
Authors: Howlin Patricia , Mawhood Lynn , Rutter Michael 
Published: August 2003

This paper focuses on general social functioning in two groups of young men, one with autism and one with developmental receptive language disorders, who were first assessed at the ages of 7–8 years. At that time, although matched for nonverbal IQ (mean 92–93) and expressive language, the Language group showed significantly fewer social and behavioural problems. At follow‐up, when aged on average, 23 to 24 years, the Autism group continued to show significantly more impairments in terms of stereotyped behaviour patterns, social relationships, jobs, and independence. However, problems in all these areas were also common in the Language group. Many still lived with their parents, few had close friends or permanent jobs, and ratings of social interaction indicated abnormalities in a number of different areas. On a composite measure of social competence only 10% of the Language group was assessed as having severe social difficulties compared to 74% of the Autism group. Nevertheless, 65% were rated as having moderate social problems and only 25% were rated as being of near/normal social functioning. Two individuals in the Language group, but none in the Autism group, had also developed a florid paranoid psychosis in late adolescence.As in the follow‐up of cognitive and linguistic functioning (see Mawhood et al., 2000, this volume, pp. 547–559), discriminant function analysis, which had clearly distinguished between the groups as children, now showed much greater overlap between them. Regression analysis indicated that although early language ability appeared to be related to outcome in the Autism group, there was little association between any measures of childhood functioning and prognosis in the Language group. Theoretically, these findings have implications for our understanding of the nature of autism and other pervasive language disorders, and of the relationship between them. Practically, they demonstrate the very persistent problems experienced by individuals with developmental language disorders, and their need for much greater help and support than is presently available.
The Five Minute Speech Sample in Children with Asthma: Deconstructing the Construct of Expressed Emotion
Authors: Wamboldt Frederick S. , O' Connor Wamboldt , Wamboldt Marianne Z. , Gavin Leslie A. , Klinnert Mary D. 
Published: August 2003

Objective: To use the Five Minute Speech Sample (FMSS) to assess Expressed Emotion (EE) in various samples of children with asthma in order to clarify (1) developmental and validity issues for the EE construct and (2) the use of the FMSS technique, specifically, in children with chronic medical illness. Method: Data were collected on a sample of 84 adolescents with severe, chronic asthma who had failed outpatient management. In addition, a sample of 30 children with asthma, ages 6–9, were recruited from an outpatient pediatric clinic. A comparison sample of 15 children without any chronic illness, ages 6–9, were recruited by notices posted in the community. The primary caregiver of each child was assessed using the FMSS. Results: FMSS interviews were reliability coded in all samples. Rates of high Criticism (FMSS CRIT), Emotional Overinvolvement (FMSS EOI), and EE were comparable to rates previously reported in child and adolescent samples. Although the validity for ratings of FMSS CRIT was well supported, the validity of FMSS EOI ratings and the overall EE construct were more problematic. Conclusions: The FMSS is a useful and largely valid measure in children with asthma. Ratings of FMSS CRIT were found to have strong validity. There was little problem shifting the context of FMSS administration from chronic mental to chronic medical illness, but a variety of developmental considerations arose, especially regarding FMSS EOI ratings. Although we raise concerns about viewing EE as a valid construct, it may remain a useful predictive index.
Maternal Expressed Emotion Related to Attachment Disorganization in Early Childhood: A Preliminary Report
Authors: Jacobsen Teresa , Hibbs Euthymia , Ziegenhain Ute 
Published: August 2003

Using a longitudinal sample of children, this study examined the relation between maternal Expressed Emotion (EE) and mother‐child attachment disorganization at age 6 years. A nonclinical sample of 33 children (at ages 12 months and 18 months) from Berlin, Germany participated with their mothers in Ainsworth's Strange Situation. Thirty‐two children were again observed with their mothers at age 6 years in a standard laboratory attachment observation. At the time of the 6‐year assessment, maternal EE was assessed based on a Five‐Minute Speech Sample. Mothers also completed the Life Events Questionnaire, a measure of family stress, and the Present State Examination, a measure of maternal depression.Maternal Expressed Emotion was significantly linked to mother‐child attachment security at age 6 years. Further analyses revealed that High EE was most closely linked to the disorganized attachment pattern at age 6 years, an at‐risk attachment pattern that has been associated with intrusive and hostile maternal behavior. The relationship was upheld when other relevant variables, including infant attachment disorganization and a measure of perceived family stress, were simultaneously considered. The study provides independent validation of Expressed Emotion as a measure of relationship quality in early childhood. It also provides a basis for the further investigation of the nature of the relation between maternal Expressed Emotion and attachment disorganization.
Mutations in the DNA Mismatch Repair Proteins MutS and MutL of Oxazolidinone-Resistant or -Susceptible
Enterococcus faecium
Authors: Willems Rob J. , Top Janetta , Smith Derek J. , Roper David I. , North Sarah E. , Woodford Neil 
Published: September 2003

ABSTRACT

Mutations in
mutS
and
mutL
, which encode DNA mismatch repair (MMR) proteins, can confer hypermutator phenotypes and may facilitate the emergence of mutational antibiotic resistance in bacteria. Linezolid-resistant enterococci (LRE) rarely emerge during therapy and contain mutations in 23S rRNA genes. As enterococci with defective MMR could be prone to the development of oxazolidinone resistance mutations, we investigated 13 clinical isolates of
Enterococcus faecium
, including 2 LRE, for mutations in
mutSL
. A 4,944-bp fragment spanning
mutSL
was sequenced from two pairs of linezolid-resistant (MICs, 64 μg/ml) and linezolid-susceptible (MICs, 2 μg/ml)
E. faecium
isolates (one pair from Austria and one pair from the United Kingdom) identical by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis. The pairs represented distinct strains in which linezolid resistance had emerged during therapy. The MutSL peptides of all four isolates had amino acid substitutions compared with the sequence of
E. faecium
strain DO (used for genome sequencing). These were Val352Ile (one pair of isolates only) and Met628Leu in MutS and Leu387Pro, Tyr406Phe, Thr415Ser, Phe427Leu, and Phe565Ile in MutL. The significance of these changes remains unknown; these isolates did not show a demonstrable hypermutator phenotype. The same substitutions were found in two of nine geographically diverse linezolid-susceptible enterococcal isolates; the other seven isolates had MutSL sequences identical to that of strain DO. Multilocus sequence typing revealed that all isolates with alternate MutSL peptides belonged to a distinct lineage of a prevalent
E. faecium
clonal complex, designated CC17. Further studies are needed to investigate the prevalence of these MutSL mutations and their possible roles in the emergence of
E. faecium
strains resistant to oxazolidinones and other antibiotic classes.