Influence of organizational culture on knowledge transfer: Evidence from the Government of Dubai

In the current context of globalization and technological spread, the role of knowledge as an organizational resource is phenomenal. Knowledge management can be seen as an add-on to reform paradigms such as new public management, good governance, and smart government, which has generated significant interest for public sector reformists in recent years. The amount of literature on knowledge management in public the sector of the United Arab Emirates is relatively scanty. In the Government of Dubai (1 of 7 Emirates in the UAE), the journey towards knowledge management has started 2 decades or so ago and now has begun to take structural roots in many organizations. This study examines the relationship between organizational culture elements (i.e., trust, communication between employees, reward, leadership, and learning and development), organizational socialization, and knowledge transfer in the government organizations in Dubai. Based on a theoretical framework to measure the influence, this study conducted a questionnaire survey in the Government of Dubai entities. From 811 respondents representing these organizations, the survey results unfold positive relationship between knowledge transfer and the 4 selected organizational cultural elements (i.e., trust, communication between employees, reward, and leadership). Socialization is found to play a moderating role in all the hypothesized relationships except between reward and knowledge transfer. It also examines further research implications to support knowledge transfer processes and practices in the public sector of Dubai and the UAE.     

The Changing Politics of States' Reorganization

This essay highlights the change in altitude, among the Indianruling elite, in no longer treating states' reorganization asthe emergence of parochial identities. Different regions establishedtheir identity on the basis of language, culture, administrativecoherence, economic development, or lack of it. Gradually, ithas been recognized that the reorganization of states leadsto good governance if such reorganization stems from administrativeconvenience, economic viability, similarity in developmentalneeds of a subregion, and cultural-linguistic affinity.     

Contested National Identity and Political Crisis in Bangladesh: Historical Analysis of the Dynamics of Bangladeshi Society and Politics

This paper develops the theme that the ongoing political polarization and political crisis in Bangladesh since its independence from Pakistan in 1971 reflect the fundamental weaknesses of the pillars of Bangladeshi society and national identity. The paper adopts an historical approach to explain why and how Muslim nationalism, which was the basis for the establishment of Pakistan, has re-emerged in contemporary Bangladeshi society and politics and is competing against Bengali ethnicity, language, culture and secularism (‘Bengali nationalism’) within an emerging ‘two-party’ political system. However, instead of establishing a stable political system following the Hotelling–Downs principle of democracy, the Bangladeshi society/polity has been polarized and divided almost vertically on the question of national identity and political philosophy and created sustained political instability and uncertainty. This has stifled the formation and consolidation of a national identity based on ethnicity/language/culture or religion/territory/political history or that have elements of both. Neither ethnicity/language/culture/secularism-based nationalism (Bengali nationalism) nor predominantly Muslim-territorial nationalism (‘Bangladeshi nationalism’) alone can dominate and flourish in Bangladeshi society and polity; instead, the objective conditions in the country dictate that a competitive democratic system of politics which accommodates aspects of secularism, language, Muslim identity and Islamic ethical–moral codes remains the feasible political discourse for forming and consolidating the country's multi-racial, multi-religious national identity over the long run and its survival as a sovereign state.     

Signifyin' and Intertextuality: Killer of Sheep and Black Independent Film *

A Very British History—Without the Whingers * * Cf. the Oxford English Dictionary: whinge /winj/ colloq. v.intr. whine, grumble peevishly, vd. gripe.

Peter Hennessy, Never Again—Britain, 1945–1951 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993).

Industrial Cities and Their Working Class: Notes on a Time Gone By

Robert A. Catlin, Black Politics and Urban Planning: Gary, Indiana 1980–1989 (The University Press of Kentucky, 1993).

Andrew Hurley, Environmental Inequalities: Class, Race and Industrial Pollution in Gary, Indiana, 1945–1980 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1994).

Anthony M. Orum, City‐Building in America (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995).

Against Green Gloom

Gregg Easterbrook, A Moment on The Earth: The Coming Age of Environmental Optimism (New York: Viking, 1995).

Talking Class(room)

Frances A. Maher and Mary Kay Thompson Tetreault, The Feminist Classroom: An Inside Look at How Professors and Students are Transforming Higher Education for A Diverse Society (New York Basic Books, 1994).

Working Out

Stanley Aronowitz and William DiFazio, The Jobless Future: Scitech and The Dogma of Work (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994).     

Pakistan: Crisis of a Frontline State

For more than 50 years, Pakistan has functioned as imperialism's “frontline state.” The military has remained the country's dominant political player and the basic precepts of bourgeois democracy remain conspicuous by their absence. Since the military coup in October 1999, the configuration of power in Pakistan has become subject to serious internal contradictions, in large part because of the “war on terror” and the loss of public prestige of the military. These contradictions have intensified in the wake of a lawyer-led street movement sparked by the military top brass' dismissal of the country's chief justice in March 2007. Since then the country's most well-known politician, Benazir Bhutto, has been assassinated and her Pakistan People's Party has swept to power in general elections held in February 2008. However, the crisis of the frontline state has not ebbed, and the oligarchic system of power remains subject to rupture.     

New rice technology and comparative advantage in rice production in the Philippines

The aim of this study is to assess the comparative advantage in rice production in the Philippines for the past three decades since 1966. We have found that the country gained sharp improvement in comparative advantage in rice production in 1979, when yield rose remarkably due to the diffusion of pest‐ and disease‐resistant modern rice. Beginning in 1986 however, the country appears to have slowly lost its comparative advantage due to the decline in rice prices, stagnation in rice yield and rising cost of domestic factors. By 1990, the country completely lost its comparative advantage in rice production.     

Coping and Resilience during the Food,Fuel, and Financial Crises

This article aggregates qualitative field research from sites in 17 developing countries to describe crisis impacts and analyse how people coped with the food, fuel, and financial crises during 2008–2011. The research uncovered significant hardships behind the apparent resilience, with widespread reports of food insecurity, debt, asset loss, stress, and worsening crime and community cohesion. There were important gender and age differences in the distribution of impacts and coping responses, with women often acting as shock absorbers. The more common sources of assistance were family, friends, community-based and religious organisations with formal social protection and finance less important. The traditional informal safety nets of the poor became depleted as the crisis deepened, pointing to the need for better formal systems for coping with future shocks.