Utilising 360‐degree feedback in the public sector: A case study of the Korean central government

The 360‐degree feedback involves all aspects of a group: managers, colleagues, subordinates, and customers. Recently, the Korean Civil Service Commission (CSC) supports the use of multiple raters as an effective method of assessing performance, both for developmental and appraisal needs. The 360‐degree feedback was officially adopted for employee promotion in the Korean central government in 1998. However, there are direct costs in designing 360‐degree feedback instruments and in training sessions for implementation, as well as human costs that include confusion and fear about 360‐degree feedback. Like many organisational change efforts, cultures and habits are slow to change. Autocratic managers can be reluctant to change the rules in any fashion that could pose a threat to their positions of power.     

Labour demand and Agroindustrial development: The evidence from Mexico

Agroindustrialisation, in contrast to assertions by Mexican policy‐makers, has had a negative employment‐generating effect in agriculture in the region known as El Bajío. The impact of widespread crop substitution and the wholesale transfer of technology promoted by transnational processing plants have both reduced the total labour employed and increased the instability of employment through heightened seasonality of labour demand. A decomposition analysis assesses the role played by various determinants of labour demand in the alteration of regional agricultural employment which has resulted from agro‐industrialisation.     

舍勒和弗兰克基督教人学理论比较

俄罗斯哲学家弗兰克与德国价值伦理学大师舍勒生活在同一个时代,又交往甚密。他们分别从不同角度给我们提供了重建基督精神气质的多重维度,并终生寻找着人的精神位格。在对待人的精神与生命、人与神的关系上,他们的观点有同有异。他们的基督教人学理论对于我们认识人的精神现象,进一步理解西方文化中的基督教和人道主义思想,思考人的生命意义、人的自由、人性善恶和道德等问题具有巨大的启发意义。     

弗兰克宗教哲学中的神人性思想

弗兰克认为人与神在精神上的那种无法分割的联系就是神人性。其核心思想是:当人清醒地意识到经验存在的不完善和人类个体在世界存在的悲剧性状态时,形而上学地理解存在是一种万物统一的和谐,存在是一种以绝对精神和绝对神圣为基础的结合,是人的一种本质性的设定。弗兰克坚持人格的独立性、人的价值和尊严的思想,不承认神的绝对超越性,也反对自我中心主义,认为神人之间的相似性具有绝对意义,它突出了人是作为一种尊严而存在的那种最高思想。     

The origins of the Korean War: Civil war or Stalin's Rollback?

This essay seeks to evaluate civil war theories on the origins of the Korean War by distinguishing between the permissive and efficient causes of war. These theories explain the causes of the war in terms of an extension of border clashes. To explain the efficient cause, Bruce Cumings advances the controversial 'second mosaic' thesis which argues that the war was sparked by the South's provocative actions on the Ongjin peninsula, and quickly spread to the thirty-eighth parallel with the mobilization of Northern troops. Yet new Soviet archival materials enable us to develop the hypothesis of the second mosaic in reverse since Kim Il Sung proposed the Ongjin occupation plan to Stalin. In testing Cumings's 'second mosaic' and the reversed second mosaic thesis, this article sees the origins of the war in Stalin's rollback strategy whose essence was using North Korean troops to cross the US containment line and displace the territories under the US sphere of influence for the first time since the inception of the Cold War.     

An Android Communication App Forensic Taxonomy

Due to the popularity of Android devices and applications (apps), Android forensics is one of the most studied topics within mobile forensics. Communication apps, such as instant messaging and Voice over IP (VoIP), are one popular app category used by mobile device users, including criminals. Therefore, a taxonomy outlining artifacts of forensic interest involving the use of Android communication apps will facilitate the timely collection and analysis of evidentiary materials from such apps. In this paper, 30 popular Android communication apps were examined, where a logical extraction of the Android phone images was collected using XRY, a widely used mobile forensic tool. Various information of forensic interest, such as contact lists and chronology of messages, was recovered. Based on the findings, a two‐dimensional taxonomy of the forensic artifacts of the communication apps is proposed, with the app categories in one dimension and the classes of artifacts in the other dimension. Finally, the artifacts identified in the study of the 30 communication apps are summarized using the taxonomy. It is expected that the proposed taxonomy and the forensic findings in this paper will assist forensic investigations involving Android communication apps.     

Factors that influence engagement in pre-proceedings practice: presenting the roles of professionals working within the family justice system through personal narratives

Public discourse around changes introduced as part of a drive to tackle spending on welfare, reflect a less than tolerant attitude towards welfare generally, but more specifically towards parents who require state involvement to care safely for their children. The introduction of a deadline of 26 weeks for the completion of care proceedings, together with a clear steer to resolve disputes wherever possible prior to making an application to court has introduced further instrumental approaches to working with parents. In this paper we explore practitioner experiences and understandings of working within the new legislative frameworks and consider the dominant cultural narratives they are working within. However, in some cases professionals felt able to challenge the economic narrative of the pre-proceedings protocol, and they experienced the legal and policy changes as an opportunity to engage in a helping alliance with families with the provision of support that otherwise they would not have been able to offer.     

A Preliminary Study of the Reliability of Anatomical Facial Landmarks Used in Facial Comparison

Anatomical landmarks are considered the most objective indicators for use in forensic facial comparisons. Therefore, accurately identifying and locating these landmarks is the beginning of reliable facial comparison. This study evaluated the accuracy with which facial landmarks are located and examined their reliability according to type of landmark, head posture, and image quality. Nine operators located a series of landmarks on prepared facial images used to produce comparison images. Then, the average distances between the reciprocal landmarks (ADRL) on the reference and the comparison images were measured as indicators of landmark reliability. We found that a set of landmarks had higher or lower reliability as a function of the head angle and image quality. More reliable landmarks were associated with certain head postures and degrees of image quality. These should be used for facial comparison analysis depending on various head and image conditions.