Digital Commons Network^™

Improving Software Practice Through Education: Challenges And Future Trends, Jorge Diaz-Herrera, Richard Leblanc Jr., Timothy Lethbridge

Articles

We argue that the software engineering (SE) community could have a significant impact on the future of the discipline by focusing its efforts on improving the education of software engineers. There are some bright spots such as the various projects to codify knowledge, and the development of undergraduate SE programs. However, there remain several key challenges, each of which is addressed in this paper: The challenges are 1) making programs attractive to students, 2) focusing education appropriately, 3) communicating industrial reality more effectively, 4) defining curricula that are forward-looking, 5) providing education for existing practitioners, 6) making SE education more …

Developing An Entrepreneurial Typology: The Roles Of Entrepreneurial Alertness And Attributional Style, Jintong Tang, Zhi Tang, Franz Lohrke

Articles

This study develops an entrepreneurial typology employing two dimensions, high versus low entrepreneurial alertness and internal versus external attributional styles that helps illustrate why entrepreneurs start new businesses. The resulting 2×2 typology of entrepreneurs identifies four entrepreneur types based on these two dimensions: the true believer, clueless, practical, and reluctant. Using a representative sample of 315 nascent entrepreneurs from the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics, we found that some types differed across three key entrepreneurial characteristics, need for achievement, risk-taking propensity, and commitment, thereby providing some preliminary empirical support for the typology’s validity. We conclude by discussing future research avenues.

Innovation-Supportive Culture: The Impact Of Organizational Values On Process Innovation, Shalini Khazanchi, Marianne Lewis, Kenneth Boyer

Articles

For managers, innovation is vital, but paradoxical, requiring flexibility and empowerment, as well as control and efficiency. Increasingly, studies stress organizational culture as a key to managing innovation. Yet innovation-supportive culture remains an intricate and amorphous phenomenon. In response, we explore how organizational values – a foundational building block of culture – impact a particular process innovation, the implementation of advanced manufacturing technology (AMT). To unpack this scarcely studied construct, we examine three-dimensions of organizational values: value profiles, value congruence and value– practice interactions.

Transitory Price Changes In The Chinese Stock Markets, Zhaohui Zhang, Howard Nemiroff, Jiamin Wang

Articles

This paper examines opening and closing return patterns on the Chinese stock markets. We find that open-to-open returns are significantly more volatile than close-to-close returns. In addition, the correlation of the overnight return with the following daytime return is significantly negative, while the correlation of the daytime return with the following overnight return is strongly positive. The results show strong price continuation around the close and strong price reversal at the open, and the findings are not sensitive to trading volume. The findings are less likely to be caused by price limits. Our results are inconsistent with previous findings from …

The Immanent Word: Introduction, Katie Terezakis

Articles

This is the introduction of the book, The Immanent Word: The Turn to Language in German Philosophy, 1759-1801

The Next Generation: With Ceos Accepting Fewer Directorship Slots, Who's Filling Their Shoes?, Eugene Fram, William Stevenson

Articles

For decades, CEOs were natural candidates for outside directorships and filled the majority of open board positions. Then came Surbanes-Oxley, which heaped added responsibilities, as well as new liabilities, on board directors. Now CEO candidates are rejecting most new directorship offers in droves. Other are stepping down from many of their current boardroom positions in the face of mounting workloads and increased risks.

The Relationship Of Achievement Motivation And Risk-Taking Propensity To New Venture Performance: A Test Of The Moderating Effect Of Entrepreneurial Munificence, Jintong Tang, Zhi Tang

Articles

New venture start-up is an interactive process between individual and their environments. We thus propose and empirically test a model of the entrepreneurial process that examines the dynamic relationships between entrepreneurial process that examines the dynamic relationship between entrepreneurs' personality characteristics and environmental conditions. Findings reveal the entrepreneurs' achievement motivation significantly and positively relates to performance regardless of the munificence level in environment. However, risk-taking propensity is only negatively associated with performance at low munificence level.

Worse Than Death, Matthew Campbell, Sandra Saari

Articles

No abstract provided.

An Equality Perspective On Residential Child Care, Niall Hanlon

Articles

An equality perspective on residential child care is one which places the issues of power and oppression as central concerns of practice. This requires more than an understanding and appreciation of the nature of the inequalities that children in care experience. The residential practitioner must appreciate egalitarian values and develop the skills, competences and knowledge base to evolve programmes and strategies that promote equality. Fundamentally, equality practices require significant changes in relationships of power. This paper will outline a means of conceptualising inequalities by discussing the way that they often have an impact on children and young people in residential …

John David Bourchier: An Irish Journalist In The Balkans, Michael Foley

Articles

No abstract provided.

Censorship And Secrecy: The Political Economy Of Communication And The Military, Tom Clonan

Articles

No abstract provided.

Journalism Education In Ireland, Nora French

Articles

No abstract provided.

Waging A Private War: Us Security Contractors In Iraq, Tom Clonan

Articles

Iraq’s Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki has repeatedly expressed grave misgivings about the activities of US ‘Private Military Company’ (PCM) Blackwater Security and has cited at least seven shooting incidents involving the company’s security contractors which have led to the deaths of dozens of Iraqi citizens. Headquartered in Moyock, North Carolina, Blackwater – which is under contract to the US State Department - is currently operating in Iraq without an Iraq Interior Ministry licence. This absence of Iraqi oversight is compounded by a 2004 Coalition Provisional Authority law signed by Paul Bremer which grants Blackwater immunity from prosecution under Iraqi law. …

The Falklands War: Closer Fought Than Commonly Understood, Tom Clonan

Articles

Close Run Thing Twenty five years ago, this week, over three days of a desperately fought battle for control of the skies over the Falklands, the Argentine Air Force sank four British ships – HMS Ardent, HMS Antelope, HMS Coventry and the MV Atlantic Conveyor – in San Carlos Waters. The British Task Force eventually won the air-war by a whisper and managed to establish a beachhead at San Carlos. After the battle for the Falklands was over, Admiral John ‘Sandy’ Woodward, commander of the 1982 British taskforce admitted that the conflict was ‘a lot closer run than many would …

In The Line Of Fire: War Correspondents In Action, Tom Clonan

Articles

As of the 1st of December of this year, 171 journalists and other media workers have been killed – most of them murdered – in 35 different countries across the world. Sixty four of this number were killed in Iraq. Many others were killed covering conflict in Afghanistan and elsewhere making 2007 the worst year on record for deaths among journalists and media workers worldwide. Most foreign, development and war correspondents believe that a sea-change has taken place in the opening decade of the 21st Century in the manner in which wars are being waged, with journalists being deliberately targeted …

Naomi Klein: The Shock Doctrine: Review, Tom Clonan

Articles

Naomi Klein, the award-winning Guardian columnist and best-selling author of the seminal ‘No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies’ (2000) has just completed her most ambitious project to date. With the publication of ‘Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism’, Klein may have achieved what many political leaders, economists and journalists the world over have failed to do during the tumultuous tenure of the current Bush Administration – namely to forensically prove that a ‘rolling coup’ has taken place within the United States that has subordinated its domestic and foreign policy imperatives to corporate interests and naked greed by …

Thunderbirds: Female Combat Pilots Us Air Force, Tom Clonan

Articles

The United States Air Force Air Demonstration Squadron, the USAF Thunderbirds Squadron has performed aerobatic manoeuvres worldwide since its inception in 1953. This year, for the first time in the unit’s history, the Thunderbirds will fly to Ireland to perform at the Salthill Air Show on Sunday the 24th of June. The Thunderbird’s performance at Salthill will be its first ever in Ireland and the unit’s first deployment to Europe since the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and the subsequent invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The Thunderbirds Squadron consists of six F-16 C fighter jets flown by experienced combat pilots chosen …

The Need For Wider Supply Chain Management Adoption: Empirical Results From Ireland, Bernd Huber, Edward Sweeney

Articles

Purpose - Empirical results are provided which suggest that there is a need for more widespread adoption of supply chain management among Irish firms.

Design/methodology/approach - The Republic of Ireland is a small, open, trade-dependent economy and is one of the fastest growing economies in the developed world. However, due to rising costs, there is an increasing trend in Ireland to outsource lower function manufacturing processes to lower cost locations but to retain high skill functions (such as R&D). This trend, together with other factors such as its peripheral location, suggests that supply chain management is critical from an Irish …

The Need For A Speech Corpus, Dermot Campbell, Ciaran Mcdonnell, Marty Meinardi, Bunny Richardson

Articles

This paper outlines the ongoing construction of a speech corpus for use by applied linguists and advanced EFL/ESL students. The first section establishes the need for improvements in the teaching of listening skills and pronunciation practice for EFL/ESL students. It argues for the need to use authentic native-to-native speech in the teaching/learning process so as to promote social inclusion and contextualises this within the literature, based mainly on the work of Swan, Brown and McCarthy. The second part addresses features of native speech flow which cause difficulties for EFL/ESL students (Brown, Cauldwell) and establishes the need for improvements in the …

Loving Art, Tim Stott

Articles

No abstract provided.

Webs Of Power: Multiple Ownership In Tourism Destinations, Ziene Mottiar, Hazel Tucker

Articles

It has been widely noted in the tourism small business literature that collaboration between groups of businesses operating within clusters contributes both to business development and the success of destinations and regions. This paper aims to contribute to the research on tourism destination networks by focusing on multiple ownership, or portfolio entrepreneurship, when more than one small or micro business within a specific destination are owned by the same entrepreneur. Courtown, in Ireland and Göreme in Turkey are presented as two case studies in which the existence of multiple owners was identified. The implications of multiple ownership on tourism operation …

Broadening The Entrepreneurial Perspective, Ziene Mottiar, Sarah Ingle

Articles

In this paper entrepreneurial literature is combined with industrial district literature to try and explain regional success in an Irish industrial sector. A new approach called interpreneurship is introduced as an explanatory concept for regional success in an Irish case study. A number of conclusions are drawn regarding the extent to which the interpreneurship approach is valid and the authors recommend that this is an important concept for further research.

Lifestyle Entrepreneurs And Spheres Of Inter-Firm Relations: The Case Of Westport Co. Mayo, Ireland, Ziene Mottiar

Articles

A relatively small body of literature in tourism which concentrates on the issues of small firms and entrepreneurs and ‘this area of inquiry is vastly under-researched’ (Thomas, 2004, p.1). A key piece of research (Rimmington et al, 1999) classifies entrepreneurs in the tourism sector and one category which has received research attention has been that of lifestyle entrepreneurs. This article outlines the literature on lifestyle entrepreneurs and concludes that much of the focus to date has been on the individual entrepreneur. This current paper investigates how lifestyle entrepreneurs interact with other entrepreneurs in the destination in which they operate, and …

Need For Social Policy To Recognise That People Are Excluded When They Cannot Afford To Give Their Children A Holiday, Bernadette Quinn

Articles

This research investigated how access to an annual holiday can benefit children living in poverty and their families. It studied children who had the opportunity to avail of a child-centred, structured group holiday provided by three NGOs. Study participants were drawn from a cross-section of disadvantaged areas in Dublin, comprising two inner-city and four suburban areas. Data collection involved 75 children and 35 guardians in the first stage, and 27 children and 16 guardians in subsequent stages. In total, 16 families participated in all stages of the research process, which used qualitative methods, including focus groups, in-depth interviews and observation. …

An Optimized Macrobending Fiber Based Edge Filter, Pengfei Wang, Gerald Farrell, Qian Wang, Ginu Rajan

Articles

An optimized all-fiber edge filter is developed, based on a one-turn macrobending bare fiber structure. The discrimination range (DR) is 16.32 dB over a wavelength range from 1500 to 1600 nm, which can be employed for wavelength measurement applications. It offers a simpler structure compared to the previously developed macrobending fiber loss edge filters, without an increase in the polarization dependent loss (PDL).

An Optimized Macrobending Fiber Based Edge Filter, Pengfei Wang, Gerald Farrell, Qian Wang, Ginu Rajan

Articles

An optimized all-fiber edge filter is developed, based on a one-turn macrobending bare fiber structure. The discrimination range is 16.32 dB over a wavelength range from 1500 to 1600 nm, which can be employed for wavelength measurement applications. It offers a simpler structure compared to the previously developed macrobending fiber loss edge filters, without an increase in the polarization-dependent loss.

Concerns Of Custom Harvesters, R W. Steffen, Kyle W. Frazier, Dennis G. Watson, Tony V. Harrison

Articles

This study elicited the perceptions and concerns of custom harvesters regarding safety and health issues faced in their operations, self‐perceived knowledge of selected regulations, and self‐perceived ability to train employees on the safe operation of equipment. The average age of custom harvesters' (CH) employees was 22 to 25 years (47.2%). The most common length of the harvest season was 5 to 6 months (70.9%). The most common responses to length of work day were 9 to 11 hours (34.5%) and 12 to 14 hours (54.5%). In general, CH ranked combine operation experience as most important when hiring employees. The CH …

Concerns At The Margins Of Supervised Access To Children, Elizabeth Brandt

Articles

No abstract provided.

Exciting Initiatives In Environment And Natural Resources Law At The University Of Idaho College Of Law, Donald L. Burnett Jr.

Articles

No abstract provided.

City Break Motivation: The Case Of Dublin, A Successful National Capital, Gerard Dunne, Sheila Flanagan, Joan Buckley

Articles

This paper investigates why people take city break trips. The main objective of the study was to reveal the underlying push and pull motivational factors associated with taking a city break holiday to Dublin. In-depth interviews with 40 city break visitors uncovered six push factors and eight pull factors. The main push motives involved were, ‘escape,’ ‘socialising,’ and ‘self esteem (gift giving).’ City breaks were generally viewed as active or ‘doing’ holidays, with the ‘relaxation’ motive hardly featuring at all as a reason to visit. Pull factors were found to be particularly important in terms of the travel decision. Factors …