Monitoring the Peace?: Northern Ireland's 1975 Ceasefire Incident Centres and the Politicisation of Sinn Féin

During the Provisional IRA's (PIRA) 1975 ceasefire, two different sets of incident centres were established across Northern Ireland in order to monitor and avert escalation of violence between Republicans and Security Forces. While one group of offices was run by the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) and administered by clerks in the Northern Ireland Civil Service, very quickly Sinn Féin (taking advantage of their decriminalisation in 1974) established their own incident centres to coordinate their communication with the government. This article argues that the establishment of the Sinn Féin incident centres set a precedent for the future political activity of the Provisional Republican Movement; that their activity during the 1975 ceasefire played an important formative role in the evolution of the group's political strategy; and that this experience, acquired from the work done during the 1975 truce, was of far greater influence than is appreciated in current accounts.     

Toward managerial artistry: Appreciating and designing organizations for the future

This article suggest that change be taken seriously; that we accept environmental change as ubiquitous, as more differentially defined perceptually. A classification of contextual changes is offered which, since it includes discontinuous change, goes beyond conventional thinking. For each type of contextual change the associated archetypical organizational forms and thematic managerial concerns and competencies are outlined. We suggest that organizations in the future should be configurations of forms because of multiple contextual circumstances, and that such configurations will require a mix of managerial competencies and the meta-competency be termed managerial artistry.

In general, the human mind is conservative. Long after an assumption is outmoded, people tend to apply it to novel situations. ---Daniel J. Isenberg

One should never underestimate the stimulation of eccentricity. ---Neil Simon, Biloxi Blues

Change is thematic in the contemporary literature on organizing and management. This literature is anything if not prolific about the management of change. Until quite recently, research and advice about the management of organizations has reflected an ideology of gradualism. Effective organizational change was seen to proceed by small, incremental adjustments. The environments of organizations was presumed to be stable or growing. Lately, supposedly having entered what Drucker⁽¹⁾ termed the “age of discontinuity,” organizational change is seen as requiring managers to choose between organizational extinction or immediate and radical transformation.⁽²⁾ These two theses, incrementalism and transformation, however, no doubt oversimplify the circumstances facing contemporary and future managers. A somewhat more refined and encompassing model of change and its concomitants is surely needed so that more appropriate organizations are created and more responsive managerial competencies are developed.

We will not detail either the nature or the extent of change in the modern world for this has been done by so many others.^(3,4,5,6,7) Everything is supposedly changing more or less--globally, nationally, industries and organizations, people, everything! And as if that weren’t enough, we also hear repeatedly that the absolute rate of change in our world is likewise increasing. Of course, reflecting all of this change, the tasks and responsibilities of managers everywhere are also changing. For many of us, the constant drum beat of change, change, change has a numbing quality and it becomes difficult to retain the idea of change in our minds. For others of us the change refrain proves overwhelming and we retreat to the relative comfort of simplifying images and slogans. A certain amount of loose metaphorical talk prevails about “catching and riding the wave of change”⁽⁸⁾ or about having to cope with conditions of “permanent whitewater”⁽⁹⁾ or even “thriving on chaos” .⁽¹⁰⁾ Somehow the presumptions of stability has jump-shifted to quantum, revolutionary change.

What if we took change seriously? What if we believed that managing change really was at the core of management? These are the aims of this essay. We will argue that the simple, bipolar conceptions of environmental change are inadequate; that the environmental conditions in which organizations find themselves discontinuous change, and that they are neither homogenous nor absolutely objectively real. We will also argue that management's proclivity to believe there is a one best way to manage, once we know what we are up against, is even more fallacious than before, and that there are new as well as old ways of bundling managing. To take change seriously thus promotes managerial artistry, those competencies of appreciation and design and facilitation of appropriately refined organizational forms. Managerial artistry thus brings proactive choice to the forefront as executive become more aware of the possibilities in organizational environments and their associated structures and competencies.

This essay will proceed in four sections. In the first we will sketch the range and nature of four alternative organizational environments. Second, we will outline the organizational designs associated with each type of environmental circumstance. The third section then examines designs and the managerial competencies and concerns that seem to be needed for each environmental alternative. Last we will comment on the implications of what has been outlined for the managerial artistry of the future.     

Evaluation of police recruit training involving psychology

Abstract

Claims have been made that critical thinking is a necessary skill for constructing accurate offender profiles. However, in studies purporting to demonstrate this, critical thinking ability amongst participants has never been adequately assessed, making it impossible to draw any valid conclusions about the importance of this skill for profiling. In order to empirically examine the relationship between critical thinking ability and profile accuracy, participants (n=36) in the current study completed a mock profiling exercise and the Watson–Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal – Form S (WGCTA-S). Profile accuracy scores were calculated for each participant and correlated with his or her scores on the WGCTA-S. Although the majority of participants were found to be adequate critical thinkers, no significant relationship was found between critical thinking ability and profile accuracy. Potential explanations for this finding are discussed.     

When Are Women More Effective Lawmakers Than Men?

Previous scholarship has demonstrated that female lawmakers differ from their male counterparts by engaging more fully in consensus‐building activities. We argue that this behavioral difference does not serve women equally well in all institutional settings. Contentious and partisan activities of male lawmakers may help them outperform women when in a polarized majority party. However, in the minority party, while men may choose to obstruct and delay, women continue to strive to build coalitions and bring about new policies. We find strong evidence that minority party women in the U.S. House of Representatives are better able to keep their sponsored bills alive through later stages of the legislative process than are minority party men, across the 93^rd–110^th Congresses (1973–2008). The opposite is true for majority party women, however, who counterbalance this lack of later success by introducing more legislation. Moreover, while the legislative style of minority party women has served them well consistently across the past four decades, majority party women have become less effective as Congress has become more polarized.     

Potential Use of Hydrocarbons for Aging Lucilia sericata Blowfly Larvae to Establish the Postmortem Interval

Previous studies on Diptera have shown the potential for the use of cuticular hydrocarbons' analysis in the determination of larval age and hence the postmortem interval (PMI) for an associated cadaver. In this work, hydrocarbon compounds, extracted daily until pupation from the cuticle of the blowfly Lucilia sericata (Diptera: Calliphoridae), have been analyzed using gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS). The results show distinguishing features within the hydrocarbon profile over the period of the larvae life cycle, with significant chemical changes occurring from the younger larvae to the postfeeding larvae. Further interpretation of the chromatograms using principal component analysis revealed a strong correlation between the magnitudes of particular principal components and time. This outcome suggests that, under the conditions of this study, the cuticular hydrocarbons evolve in a systematic fashion with time, thus supporting the potential for GC–MS analysis as a tool for establishing PMI where such a species is present.     

Demographic and clinical characteristics of 1092 consecutive police custody mental health referrals

The 43 police forces in England and Wales have made over 13 million arrests in the last decade. Yet, despite this high volume criminal justice system activity, and evidence of substantial health morbidity across the criminal justice pathway, mental health services in police custody have only been patchily developed, and the literature in this area is limited. Referrals (n = 1092) to a pilot mental health service operating across two police stations in a London borough were examined over an 18-month period in 2012/2013. The referred group had high levels of mental health and substance misuse problems (including acute mental illness, intoxication and withdrawal), self-harm, suicide risk and vulnerability (including intellectual disability), with some important gender differences. Although this work has limitations, the findings are broadly consistent with the small existing literature and they confirm the need for services that are sufficiently resourced to meet the presenting needs.     

Autopsy radiography: digital radiographs (DR) vs multidetector computed tomography (MDCT) in high-velocity gunshot-wound victims

This study compared full-body digital radiography (DR) with multidetector computed tomography (MDCT) in the postmortem evaluation of gunshot wound (GSW) victims. Thirteen consecutive male GSW victims (mean age, 27 years) had full-body DR and MDCT prior to routine autopsy. DR successfully identified all metallic fragments, but MDCT was superior in its ability to precisely determine location because it provided 3-dimensional anatomic localization. In all cases, MDCT more accurately assessed organ injuries and wound tracks. Both DR and MDCT are limited in classifying multiple wounds and major vessel injury, but MDCT is generally superior to DR. MDCT shows significant advantages over DR in the forensic evaluation of GSW victims. This is particularly advantageous for the pathologist retrieving metallic fragments and for describing fracture detail accurately. Use of MDCT instead of radiographs will require medical examiners to become familiar with reading cross-sectional images.     

The new science and engineering management: cooperative research centers as government policies,industry strategies,and organizations

Cooperative research centers (CRCs) are key mechanisms for national and subnational governments and private industry for achieving social and economic outcomes with science and technology. Despite growing policy and scholarly interest in the management and productivity of CRCs, their complex and variegated nature has led to limited and inconsistent understanding of CRCs. In this introduction to this Special Issue of The Journal of Technology Transfer, we discuss the impetuses for and embodiment of CRCs as government policies, industry strategies, and organizations and thus address a number of unexplored aspects of CRCs that are important to decision making for both policy and management. Of note, we discuss the lack of definitional clarity regarding CRCs and introduce criteria for distinguishing CRCs from other organizations. We conclude by introducing the article contributions, which are international in scope and address CRCs from multiple theoretical perspectives and levels of analysis, and by discussing areas for future research.     

Addressing problems with traditional crime linking methods using receiver operating characteristic analysis

Purpose. Through an examination of serial rape data, the current article presents arguments supporting the use of receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis over traditional methods in addressing challenges that arise when attempting to link serial crimes. Primarily, these arguments centre on the fact that traditional linking methods do not take into account how linking accuracy will vary as a function of the threshold used for determining when two crimes are similar enough to be considered linked. Methods. Considered for analysis were 27 crime scene behaviours exhibited in 126 rapes, which were committed by 42 perpetrators. Similarity scores were derived for every possible crime pair in the sample. These measures of similarity were then subjected to ROC analysis in order to (1) determine threshold‐independent measures of linking accuracy and (2) set appropriate decision thresholds for linking purposes. Results. By providing a measure of linking accuracy that is not biased by threshold placement, the analysis confirmed that it is possible to link crimes at a level that significantly exceeds chance (AUC = .75). The use of ROC analysis also allowed for the identification of decision thresholds that resulted in the desired balance between various linking outcomes (e.g. hits and false alarms). Conclusions. ROC analysis is exclusive in its ability to circumvent the limitations of threshold‐specific results yielded from traditional approaches to linkage analysis. Moreover, results of the current analysis provide a basis for challenging common assumptions underlying the linking task.