An evaluation of Internet use policies of Victorian local government

The Internet has provided employees and organisations with many benefits. However, employee misuse of Internet services has also become increasingly common. A solution to combating this problem is the implementation of an Internet Use Policy (IUP) within an organisation. This study developed IUP guidelines that were used to evaluate existing Victorian local government authority (LGA) IUPs. The number of LGAs without policies was then determined in February 2001. The findings revealed 36 per cent of Victorian LGAs did not have an IUP implemented. Fifty-one per cent of rural LGAs were found not to have IUPs. Furthermore, policies when compared with the IUP guidelines revealed deficiencies in many areas. A follow-up review was then conducted in 2004. It revealed that only 6 per cent of LGAs now lacked policies.     

A Paradigm Shift? Employee Relations in the Victorian Public Service Since 1992

When Jeff Kennett was swept into office on 3 October 1992, one of his first priorities was to reform the Victorian public sector as one part of his broad strategy to get 'Victoria on the Move'. Without losing much time, and with very little community or parliamentary debate, both the Public Sector Management Act 1992 (Vic) and the Employee Relations Act 1992 (Vic) were passed. These pieces of legislation have been the main instruments to regulate terms and conditions of employment for employees in the Victorian public service. Changes to the legislation will be examined in this paper and discussed in the context of whether a paradigm shift has occurred in managing employee relations in the Victorian public service.     

Women, urban governance and the public service ethos

This article considers gender and the public sector, examining the degree to which women make a ‘difference’ to public service. In reporting on a research project into the 30% seat reservation or quota system for local female politicians in the Indian Mega-City of Mumbai (formerly Bombay), consideration is given to the ways in which women and men manage and organise their daily lives and contribute to public governance, with particular attention given to the cultural specificities of the Indian context in the period of post-colonial rule. It is argued that women politicians and officers are held in high regard as valued and respected holders of public office, that their values and attitudes are more closely aligned to a public service ethos than men's and that their role in the processes of change affecting India at the present time may prove to be significant. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Mother teresa meets Genghis Khan: The dialectics of hierarchy-enhancing and hierarchy-attenuating career choices

We replicated and extended earlier work showing the connection between social dominance orientation and the perceived attractiveness of hierarchy-enhancing and hierarchy-attenuating careers using data from two large and independent samples of UCLA students. Consistent with expectations, the data from both studies showed that the greater the students' level of social dominance orientation, the more attractive hierarchy-enhancing careers such as criminal prosecutor, police officer, and FBI agent were perceived to be. Similarly, the greater the students' social dominance orientation, the less attractive they found hierarchy-attenuating careers such as public defender, civil rights lawyer, and human rights advocate. These conclusions held even after controlling for the effects of socioeconomic status and political conservatism. Canonical correlation analysis disclosed that the attractiveness of these career paths within the general domain of law made only one, bipolar and unidimensional projection within social dominance space. The nature of this bipolar dimension reproduced the hypothesized distinction between hierarchy-enhancing and hierarchy-attenuating social roles. Theoretical implications of the results are discussed.     

A Natural Experiment in Political Decentralization: Local Institutions and Citizens' Political Engagement in Uruguay

The potential democratizing effect of political decentralization reforms has been a matter of substantial theoretical and empirical debate. This article analyzes the effect of local democratic institution building on the political attitudes and behavior of citizens living in small towns in Uruguay. More specifically, using a natural experiment design, this research seeks to establish the causal impact of recently established elections of local authorities on individuals' political engagement. It develops a comparative case study analyzing the consequences of this institutional innovation in two towns. It shows that individuals from the town where citizens have the opportunity to elect their local authorities have more positive attitudes toward politics than those from the town without such elections.     

Emerging,and old,dilemmas for food security in Latin America

The present text offers a summary of some of the crucial food security problems in Latin American (LA) countries. This region, like many others in the globe, confronts such as food safety difficulties. The summary offers also an analysis of some technologically based solutions for LA food security issues. As a general call, the present review article calls for a collaborative and transdisciplinary approach to think deeper about how to solve food security problems, putting the focus on enabling technologies within a context of social, market, and global trends to achieve food and nutritional security. The review is positioned far from techno‐optimisms and, at the same time, away from purely economic‐based solutions. Conversely, this review embraces the whole complexity that brings economy‐nature‐technology triad. Embracing such complex relationships between technology, nature and the socio‐economy aspects of food security LA issues. Such complexity also triggers a need for a solution that considers a renewed approach to sustainability in the whole food value chain from production to consumption. Sustainability in the value chain opens up a much‐needed approach to LA food security that broadens, and refresh, our understanding of this fundamental socio‐economic and technical phenomena.     

Validation of Walkway Tribometers: Establishing a Reference Standard*

Abstract: Tribometers are mechanical devices used to measure walkway coefficient of friction (COF) for the purpose of assessing slip risk. The purpose of this study was to define a tribometer reference standard and use it to assess the performance of various tribometers. Eighty subjects were randomly assigned to walk across one of four wet walkway surfaces (polished black granite, porcelain, vinyl composition tile, and ceramic tile) to establish the relative slipperiness of each surface. Eleven tribometers were subsequently used to measure and rank the COF of all four surfaces. Our results revealed that only four of the 11 tribometers (Wessex pendulum, Sigler pendulum, Mark II, and Mark III) met our compliance criteria by both correctly ranking all four surfaces and differentiating between surfaces of varying degrees of slipperiness. Our protocol demonstrates that human gait‐based measures of slipperiness can be used to create reference standards against which tribometer measurements can be validated.