Window-conflicts in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey: visual privacy,materiality and right to the city

This article focuses on the visual privacy rights as practised in the urban settings in the late Ottoman Empire (1850–70) and in contemporary Turkey (1980–2010). The analysis draws on the detailed examination of the legal conflicts on the overlooking windows between neighbouring houses in both periods. A hundred legal cases from the Ottoman context and 35 parallel cases from the last decades in Turkey were covered to understand the everyday practices of visual privacy and to compare them with the official privacy rules in the Ottoman and Republican contexts. First, the cases suggest that even today many citizens, including some lower court judges, confidently defend the urban right to be unseen from the neighbour's window despite the contrary decisions of the Supreme Court. Second, the in-depth analysis of the window-conflicts showed that the radical separation of the material world from the human world in both Islamic law and the Republican Civil Law was challenged by popular claims to visual privacy thanks to their exclusive focus on windows. It is argued that popular privacy rights were not about individual private space but about the urban built environment. Hence, windows were targets of the claims of the right to the city.     

Performance appraisal in the Maldives public service: challenges and issues

A structured method of evaluating and rewarding the performance of employees in the Maldives public service did not exist before 1996. Personnel decisions, such as employee promotions, were subjective and based merely on the recommendation of the heads of departments. Hence, in 1996, the Government of Maldives introduced a performance appraisal system, based on rewarding employees through the assessment of several factors such as quality of work, job knowledge and performance. The reward came in the form of annual salary increments. In reviewing this system, the article finds that human resource units or divisions within departments now need to be strengthened for the effective implementation of the system; more training has to be provided to public service employees in terms of raising their awareness as to the objectives of the performance appraisal exercise; and the performance appraisal framework needs to be more flexible in differentiating very high performers, at the same time devising a strategy for the improvement of employees who slack in performance. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Membership Organization’s Social Capital and the Impact on Nonprofit Sector Management

Social capital depicts the extent of mutual trust in a jurisdiction. This study examines the impact of organizational social capital (OSC) on nonprofit (NP) density. Prior studies have argued that OSC positively impacts the community and the organization itself. These studies are either theory- based or survey based. Few available empirical studies also do not examine the OSC of all the counties of the United States. This study overcomes these limitations and finds from the US county-level empirical study that social capital advanced in membership organizations is positively associated with the growth of NP density.     

A scientific approach to measure public political participation in Pakistan

Public political participation is an exhaustive subject in the democratic system that is contributing as a tilled land since the birth of democracy. It has a wide range of frequency, but voting is one of the easiest among all forms of public participation. Despite the easiness of voting, Pakistan ranks 164th in terms of voter turnout among 169 countries of the world. The voter turnout of the second largest Muslim democracy and the fifth largest among all the democratic states was recorded as 45.3% in the 2013 general election, which was less than India’s (59.4%) and even Bangladesh’s (58.2%). More than half of the population in Pakistan does not think it is its duty to cast its vote. The present study is an effort to investigate public political participation through six independent variables: democratic political party, party mobilization, security, accessibility, leadership image and moderating factor citizen distrust, and a useful sample size of 1884 was collected across the country. SPSS version 24.0 was used to measure the data. The results show significant and positive relations among the dependent and independent variables, while citizen distrust negatively moderates the dependent and independent variables of the study.     

Cynicism about Change,Work Engagement,and Job Satisfaction of Public Sector Nurses

This paper uses the job demands‐resources theory to examine the consequences of changes on nursing work. Data were collected from 220 public sector nurses in Australia to test the model. We conducted a two‐wave data collection process where independent variables (organisational change, workload, job control, nursing administrative stressors, cynicism about organisational change, and demographic variables) were collected in Time 1. The dependent variables (nursing work engagement and job satisfaction) were collected 6 months later. Changes to nursing work were found to cause high workload and an increase of administrative stressors that leads to an increase in nurses’ change cynicism. Job control was needed to cope with the increase in workload and reduction in cynicism about change. Cynicism about organisational change was found to have a direct negative effect on nurses’ engagement which in turn was found to negatively impact job satisfaction. Our contribution to theory and practice arises from the discovery that the connections between organisational change, work environment variables, and job outcomes of nurses are more complicated than previous research suggests. Theoretical and practical implications will be discussed.     

Evaluating Transport Infrastructure Projects in Low Data Environments: An Application to Nigeria

Transport infrastructure consumes a large fraction of the development assistance envelope. Yet procedures for evaluating transport infrastructure projects are typically ad-hoc. This paper proposes an approach to assess the differential impacts of alternative investment proposals in data constrained environments where conducting reliable impact analyses is difficult. We first demonstrate a technique for estimating the cost of transporting products to markets. We then estimate the impact of improving the road network on economic activity. Finally, we perform simulations to demonstrate a methodology for prioritising alternative investments. The analysis demonstrates a pragmatic, though rigorous, approach for assessing transport infrastructure benefits.     

Eating Regulation Styles, Appearance Schemas, and Body Satisfaction Predict Changes in Body Fat for Emerging Adults

Obesity and high body fat percentages are a major public health issue. The percentage of obese and overweight Americans has increased over the past 30 years. On average, overweight individuals with higher percent body fat than normal weight individuals are at increased risk for numerous negative outcomes both physically and mentally. A prime time to investigate changes in body composition and associated psychological influences on decision making is during the emerging adulthood period. The first few years of college are a time when adolescents begin to regulate for themselves their own eating behaviors. Previous research shows that freshmen gain weight and increase in percent body fat during their first year of college. The current study addresses the limitations of previous research by investigating (1) individual growth in percent body fat over a longer period of time in college than previous available research and (2) important psychological and sex differences in this growth. This study measures percent body fat across the first 3 years of college at 8 time points for 542 undergraduates (351 females, 65 %; 191 males, 35 %). Longitudinal data analysis was conducted to identify changes in percent body fat, psychological predictors of those changes, and how changes differ for males and females. Our study found that significant increases exist in percent body fat during undergraduates' college years and that change differs for males and females. In addition, through the use of nested hierarchical models, eating regulation style (autonomous or controlled regulation), appearance schema (self-evaluative salience or motivational salience), and body satisfaction were identified as influential predictors of change in percent body fat. For example, young females, who do not feel in control of their physical appearance yet spend a great deal of time maintaining their appearance, have the highest initial body fat percentage and the steepest increase in percent body fat. Overall, males and females with high autonomous regulation and high motivational salience are likely to maintain (instead of increase) percent body fat over the college years. Knowing the influence of these predictors can be useful for promoting health and intervening with young adults in the college setting and other emerging adults who are not enrolled in postsecondary institutions.     

Assessing Public Participation Initiatives in Local Government Decision-Making in Malaysia

Increased public participation in government decisions contributes significantly to the enhancement of grass-roots democracy. This article assesses the level of involvement of local citizens in local government decisions in Malaysia. Public participation was assessed using questionnaires on the range and extent of initiatives used by local government. The questionnaires also probed citizens’ perceptions of these initiatives and expectations for greater citizen empowerment. Data were gathered from 206 local citizens randomly selected from six local authorities in the northern region of Malaysia. The findings reveal a desire on the part of local citizens to participate in their local government decision-making process.     

Countering piracy through private security in the Horn of Africa: prospects and pitfalls

Employing secondary research and semi-structured interviews, this article examines the use of private maritime security companies (PMSC) in providing maritime security services in the Horn of Africa. It consists of four parts. The first part explains the origins and development of the use of PMSC in the Horn of Africa. The second section discusses the regulation of the private security industry, paying particular attention to the maritime context. Part three examines the challenges associated with the use of maritime PMSC in the Horn of Africa, including negative human rights implications, compromising the innocent passage of commercial ships, and creating confusion in the hierarchical control of ships. Finally, the paper analyses the findings and concludes that PMSC, despite their apparent short-term effectiveness, cannot be regarded as a long-term solution to the piracy phenomenon in the Horn of Africa.