Getting Ratees to Accept Performance Feedback: A Relational Approach

This paper seeks to understand the association between ratees’ relational justice perceptions and their feedback acceptance, both directly and through leader–member exchange (LMX). The paper also examines the moderated mediation effect of supervisory trust. The paper presents the findings of two studies. Study 1 utilized two data sets collected through an online survey from 280 part-time students working full-time (Sample 1) and 292 working professionals (Sample 2) in Pakistan. Study 2 utilized data collected from N?=?167 students recruited for a scenario-based experiment that manipulated whether a manager was fair or unfair. Results revealed that relational justice positively predicted feedback acceptance in Studies 1 and 2. LMX positively mediated the above-mentioned relationship in both studies. As expected, supervisory trust negatively moderated the relational justice–feedback acceptance relationship in Study 2. The present study contributes to performance management theory and practice by illuminating that raters can stimulate performance partnership by employing a relational justice approach that increases the likelihood that employees accept performance feedback.

     

Chinese debate on military strategy: Trends & portents

The 1980s have witnessed an intense debate by China’s strategic community over a military strategy in response to what Beijing sees as a shifting, but still complex and potentially troublesome, security environment. though the debate is yet to conclude, the broad contours of the new doctrine have been sketched out. Acknowledging that both superpowers are increasingly constrained by economic, political, and military factors in their contest for supremacy, Chinese analysts continue to warn against lowering armed guard at a time when the focus of the arms race is shifting to new frontiers: outer space and oceans. They would like China to strengthen its national defense rather than rely an arms control to mitigate threats to its security. China is continuing its defense modernization program, which will reshape its force structure and enhance its conventional and nuclear capabilities. and the author ofChinese National Security and Nuclear Arms Control [M. E. Sharpe, forthcoming].     

Bite mark documentation and analysis: the forensic 3D/CAD supported photogrammetry approach

Bite mark identification is based on the individuality of a dentition, which is used to match a bite mark to a suspected perpetrator. This matching is based on a tooth-by-tooth and arch-to-arch comparison utilising parameters of size, shape and alignment. The most common method used to analyse bite mark are carried out in 2D space. That means that the 3D information is preserved only two dimensionally with distortions. This paper presents a new 3D documentation, analysis and visualisation approach based on forensic 3D/CAD supported photogrammetry (FPHG) and the use of a 3D surface scanner. Our photogrammetric approach and the used visualisation method is, to the best to our knowledge, the first 3D approach for bite mark analysis in an actual case. The documentation has no distortion artifacts as can be found with standard photography. All the data are documented with a metric 3D measurement, orientation and subsequent analysis in 3D space. Beside the metrical analysis between bite mark and cast, it is possible using our method to utilise the topographical 3D feature of each individual tooth. This means that the 3D features of the biting surfaces and edges of each teeth are respected which is--as shown in our case--very important especially in the front teeth which have the first contact to the skin. Based upon the 3D detailed representation of the cast with the 3D topographic characteristics of the teeth, the interaction with the 3D documented skin can be visualised and analysed on the computer screen.     

Spousal Rejection as a Risk Factor for Parental Rejection of Children

Limited information is available about the international generalizability of the common conclusion that marital discord tends to be associated with problematic parenting. Pakistan is a sociocultural context known for a high frequency of marital distress. Accordingly, this study draws from a sample of 270 Pakistani families with children between the ages of 9 to 13 years (M?=?11.21 years). In this study we explore the question: Are Pakistani children’s perceptions of maternal and/or paternal rejection related to their parents’ perceptions of spousal rejection? Results of a hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that wives’ perceptions of husbands’ rejection predicted children’s perceptions of maternal rejection, as well as—but to a significantly lesser extent—children’s perceptions of paternal rejection. Similarly, husbands’ perceptions of wives’ rejection predicted children’s perceptions of paternal rejection, as well as—but to a significantly lesser extent—children’s perceptions of maternal rejection. Results of this research, along with the slim body of prior international research, suggests that the concept of “spillover effect” used to explain the association between spousal rejection and parental rejection may have widespread international applicability.     

Religion and attitudes towards corruption in India: a collective action problem?

This paper argues that religion influences the ways that people think and speak about corruption, typically leading to condemnation. However, it is also argued that, in a systemically corrupt country, such condemnation is unlikely to influence actual corrupt behaviour. Based on fieldwork in India, the paper finds that existing anti-corruption policies based on a principal-agent understanding of corruption, even if they incorporate religious organisations and leaders, are unlikely to work, partly because people consider “religion” to be a discredited entity. Instead, the paper argues that if corruption were to be seen as a collective action problem, anti-corruption practice would need significant rethinking. Despite its current lack of influence, revised policies and practices may see a role for religion.     

Constitutional reform and new patterns of electoral violence: evidence from Kenya’s 2013 elections

In places prone to electoral violence, what effects can constitutional changes have on elites’ incentives to organise conflict? This article develops two hypotheses to address the above question. It proposes that in places where national reforms find sub-national resonance, national and local politicians’ incentives regarding the electoral utility of conflict will align. However, in places where national-level changes fail to be locally relevant, these incentives will deviate from one another. The research illustrates these logics through a controlled comparison of two Kenyan counties: one that experienced electoral violence and the other that maintained peace around the 2013 elections.     

Contested modernity: divided rule and the birth of sectarianism,nationalism, and absolutism in Bahrain

This study argues that political mobilization based on ethnosectarian identities in Bahrain is a modernist product of the contestations that occurred in the period of increasing British colonial involvement in the early twentieth century. Two concepts are utilized. The first is the colonial ‘ethnosectarian gaze’, marked primarily by its underlying epistemology that saw ethnosectarian cleavages as the main analytic units for approaching local political power, practice, and discourse. The second is ‘contested and divided rule’. With the advent of Curzon’s ‘forward policy’ in the Gulf, Britain actively divided sovereignty between itself and the local ruler, with actors on the island faced with two conflicting sources of jurisdiction. The British viewed issues of jurisdiction primarily through an ethnosectarian lens, and increasingly so did other actors, creating an inter-feeding dynamic between ethnosectarianism, nationalism, and divided rule. Two emergent forms of political mobilization are emphasized. The first mobilized based on ethnosectarian identity-specific demands and grievances. The other took an overtly nationalist, trans-sectarian, anti-colonial tone, having its roots in the al-Nahda renaissance that swept the Arab world in the nineteenth century. Thus, colonialism, absolutism, ethnosectarianism, and nationalism went hand in hand, products of a similar period of divided rule, their lingering effects still felt today.     

Transformation and Decay: the de-institutionalisation of party systems in South America

This article surveys the evolution of party systems in South America in terms of their level of institutionalisation. In recent times political competition in much of South America has become less structured by political parties proper and has moved in the direction of candidate-centred movements and electoral vehicles led by political entrepreneurs. Most countries in South America (Brazil, Chile and Uruguay are exceptions) have experienced party system de-institutionalisation during the 1990s and 2000s, as voters have systematically punished traditional parties, often rendering them marginal or forcing their disappearance. The scale of decomposition varies across cases but it has affected countries with historically well institutionalised party systems (Colombia, Venezuela) and those with inchoate party systems (Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia) alike.