Search results for "contingency"

Performative Regional (dis)Integration: Transnational Markets, Mobile Commodities, and Bordered North–South Differences

2011

Being implicated in an ambivalent play of both border crossing and drawing, global commodity chains are an ideal organizational field to analyze the fundamental paradox of global connectivity. Approaching the contingency of borders from a perspective informed by the performativity approach to markets, this paper starts from the assumption that this paradox is particularly salient in the context of commodity chains which connect the Global South with the Global North. Taking the example of one single agrocommodity, the tomato, and two border regions (Morocco–EU and Mexico–USA), we follow the links and heterogeneous associations which stretch from the border to the fields, supermarket shelves…

Contingency factors on the success of services for social integration and job placement schemes

2009

The success of a strategy depends, to a large extent, on the contingency factors that condition the functioning of an organisation. This study presents empirical research to contrast the existence of a significant relationship between the implementation of a particular strategy (in this case, related to the management of job placement and social insertion schemes) and a set of given structural parameters or contingency factors, in particular, the organisational structure of the firm such as time with the firm, firm size, technology used and organisational culture. The empirical analysis is applied to the strategies used by local development and employment officers with regard to the managem…

Effects of COVID19 pandemic on the Italian power system and possible countermeasures

2021

Abstract The paper analyses the dramatic effects of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Italian power system, considering the impacts on load and generation, market issues and ancillary services provision. During the period between March and May 2020, the Italian scenario was considered as exemplary due to the large reduction of loads and thermal generation caused by the hard lockdown across the Country. Italy has experienced the most severe effects of pandemic in terms of increase of death rates and of pressure on the health system as well as severity of the countermeasures. As a domino effect, the total lockdown of one of the most industrialized countries in the world has creat…

Has palaeontology answers for some current environmental problems?

2021

History as an irreversible process has no role from a uniformitarian point of view in geology and palaeobiology. Contingency is another trait of history and particle palaeontology has its foundation on such principles. However, new approaches in physics and the theory of systems point out the need to consider a time arrow. Moreover, chance and necessity are interwoven in synergetics and self-organization theory and there may be some possibility of prediction. The global biota has a history resulting from a process of self-organization. A rich fossil record was produced during the Phanerozoic times and this fossil record shows us how life overcame several important crisis. A clear understand…

The Influence of Strategic and Organizational Factors as Concern the Relationship between Environmental Management Control and Organizational Learnin…

2020

This article examines the relationship between Environmental Management Control (EMC) and Organizational Learning (OL) by extending the theoretical model of Simons (1995) in a contingent perspective. Through strategic and organizational factors, this enriched model expounds the links between the Simons’s (1995) levers of control (diagnostic and interactive controls) and the Argyris and Schön’s (1978) levels of learning (simple loop learning and double loop learning). Based on the “revelatory case” of a missionary organization, eco-SME, this study highlights the influence of three contingency factors : strong core values, proactive strategy and activity life cycle in the four configurations …

Resisting Bodies: Power Crisis / Meaning Crisis in the Zombie Film from 1932 to Today

2011

Critics have repeatedly focused on the political subtexts of the living dead films of George A. Romero, revealing, notably, how they reflect specific social concerns. In order to determine what makes the zombie movie and the figure of the zombie so productive of political readings, this article examines, first, the classic zombie movies influenced by voodoo lore, then Romero’s initial living dead trilogy (1968-1985), and finally some of the most successful films released in the 2000s. Resorting to a post-structuralist framework including Althusser’s notions of state apparatuses, Foucault’s distinction between subjection and subjectification, and Butler’s analyses of subversive resignificati…

Occupational stress among Brazilian oral-maxillofacial surgeons

2009

Purpose: The aim of the present study was to assess the stress level of oral-maxillofacial surgeons, based on the Demand-Control Model. Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out with 128 oral-maxillofacial surgeons who participated in the Brazilian Congress of Oral-Maxillofacial Surgery held in the city of Florianópolis, State of Santa Catarina, Brazil. Data was obtained using a questionnaire that incorporated the Demand-Control Model (Job Content Questionnaire), which evaluates psychosocial experiences at work. Information on age, gender and professional qualification was also collected. The data was displayed in contingency tables. The following statistical tests were used with a 5…

Relative validity of a semi-quantitative food-frequency questionnaire in an elderly Mediterranean population of Spain

2010

The aim of the present study was to assess reproducibility and relative validity of a self-administered FFQ used in the PREDIMED Study, a clinical trial for primary prevention of CVD by Mediterranean diet in a population at high cardiovascular risk. The FFQ was administered twice (FFQ1 and FFQ2) to explore reproducibility at 1 year. Four 3 d dietary records (DR) were used as reference to explore validity; participants therefore recorded their food intake over 12 d in the course of 1 year. The degree of misclassification in the FFQ was also evaluated by a contingency table of quintiles comparing the information from the FFQ2 and the DR. A total of 158 men and women (aged 55– 80 years) were a…

Rieke Trimçev, Politik als Spiel. Zur Geschichte einer Kontingenzmetapher im politischen Denken des 20. Jahrhunderts. Baden-Baden: Nomos 2018, 398 p.…

2019

The roles of group potency and information and communication technologies in the relationship between task conflict and team effectiveness: A longitu…

2007

The effects of task conflict on group effectiveness are far from conclusive. In order to further clarify this relationship, a contingency approach has been suggested. In this context, the present study examines the roles of group potency and information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the relationship between task conflict and team effectiveness. The study involved 44 groups of 4 members each, working in two communication media. Twenty-two groups worked in a face-to-face condition, and the other 22 groups worked in a computer-mediated communication condition. The groups developed a project during four weekly sessions over a one-month period. The results showed that group potency mo…