‘An error is feedback’: the experience of communication error management in crisis negotiations

A range of studies have examined what should be said and done in crisis negotiations. Yet, no study to date has considered what happens when an error is made, how to respond to an error, and what the consequences of errors and responses might be on the negotiation process itself. To develop our understanding of errors, we conducted 11 semi-structured interviews with police crisis negotiators in the Netherlands. Negotiators reported making errors of three types: factual, judgment, or contextual. They also reported making use of four types of response strategy: accept, apologize, attribute, and contradict. Critically, the negotiators did not perceive errors as solely detrimental, but as an opportunity for feedback. They advocated for an error management approach, which focused on what could be learned from another person’s errors when looking back at them. Suggestions for improvement of the communication error management experience in crisis negotiations are discussed.     

大学生就业能力的现实考量与培养策略

大学生的就业能力是一种综合能力,它包括基础性能力、专业性能力和差异性能力三个方面。当前大学生就业能力存在诸多不足,如专业能力不足、学习能力不强、实践能力低下、品格养成欠缺、创业意识淡泊、职业目标不明等。通过改革高等教育体制和人才培养模式、完善以职业规划和就业咨询为核心的就业指导机制,提升大学生的专业能力、提高大学生的实践能力、发掘大学生的创新能力、培养大学生的竞争能力,从而可以从根本上提升大学生就业能力。     

扩大东盟留学生教育规模 推进广西高校国际化

留学生教育是推动高校向国际化迈进的重要因素。在中国一东盟合作背景下,扩大东盟国家留学生在广西的规模对推进广西高校的国际化具有重要意义。本文阐述了留学生教育与学校国际化的关系,分析了东盟留学生在广西高校的现状并就如何在良好的发展契机下进一步加大东盟留学生规模,推动广西高校的国际化进程提出了措施和构想。     

从教学改革看贵州高校少数民族大学生英语教育的困难因素及对策

本文采用问卷调查法、数理统计法、访问调查法、文献资料法等方法对贵州省高校少数民族大学生的英语学习情况进行了调查;分析了少数民族学生学习英语困难的现状;指出了问题形成的原因;并根据贵州省少数民族大学生的实际学习情况给出了教学改革的对策。     

试论民族地区电子政务建设的制约因素及对策

本文从少数民族地区发展相对落后的实际出发,阐述了民族地区加强电子政务建设的重要意义,分析了民族地区电子政务建设的现状及制约民族地区电子政务建设的主要因素,提出民族地区加强电子政务建设的主要途径及对策。     

Functioning strategies of the research groups' leaders in the context of funding and policy instabilities☆

We explore the strategies implemented by Research Groups' Leaders while coping with unstable contexts, characterized by incoherence and lack of coordination among different policy discourses and instruments, and scarce resources. We focus on a country where these conditions are present: Colombia. In doing so, we study two cases, one in nanotechnology and another one in biomedical engineering. Interviews, focus groups and workshops allowed us to identify and validate strategies grouped in four popular sayings, proper to local idiosyncrasy, highlighting the role of home institutions and principal investigators in facing such situations with resilience and resourcefulness, and even taking advantage of them. We find that Research Groups' Leaders use strategies such as: adapting, balancing agendas and funding sources, networking, and taking advantage of the support programs available at their home institution to continue functioning. These are setting the ground for a further survey which could pretend some generalization. However, policymakers could consider these findings when defining policy instruments or for assessing their effectiveness or impacts.     

Backloading to extinction: Coping with values conflict in the administration of Australia's federal biodiversity offset policy

Policy-makers are frequently required to consider and manage conflicting public values. An example of this in the environmental domain is biodiversity offset policy, which governments worldwide have adopted as a mechanism to balance environmental protection with socio-economic development. However, little work has examined administrative practices underpinning biodiversity offset policy implementation, and how the adoption of coping strategies to manage value conflicts may influence resulting policy outcomes. This study fills this research gap using a case study of Australia's federal biodiversity offset policy under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act 1999. Using data from 13 interviews of federal policy administrators, I show that the introduction of a new policy in 2012 enabled a shift from the use of precedent to a technical approach for setting offset requirements under the EPBC Act. Yet, multiple sources of policy ambiguity remain, and administrators have adopted post-approval condition-setting, or ‘backloading’—a form of cycling, facilitated by structural separation—to defer detailed assessments of offset requirements until after biodiversity losses are approved. Backloading thus undermines the effectiveness of environmental policy and will persist as coping strategy unless policy ambiguity is reduced via legislative amendments and adequate resourcing of biodiversity conservation.

Points for practitioners

• Biodiversity offset policy requires administrators to manage conflicting environmental and socioeconomic values.
• Technical decision tools reduce reliance on case-by-case decision-making, but multiple ambiguities persist.
• Backloading (post-approval condition-setting) defers values conflict, but reduces transparency, accountability, and policy effectiveness.
• Policy ambiguity must be reduced at the political level to facilitate effective biodiversity conservation.