Cocaine: a European Union perspective in the global context

Excerpts

Cocaine: a European Union perspective in the global context     

Corporate Security: Identifying and Understanding the Levels of Security Work in an Organisation

The study undertook an examination of corporate security through the lens of the broader socio-organisational literature to understand its organisational stratum, seating, and function. The methodology applied a survey questionnaire to security practitioners, incorporating two measurement tools to assess work level and time-span of discretion. Findings identified work levels across the corporate security function. These work levels indicate that the corporate security function operates at the operational and tactical strata, with limited strategic executive impact. Furthermore, the corporate security function is positioned within the technostructure, providing analytical support to business operations. The study identified a significant disconnect between the corporate security literature—as written by security practitioners and academia—and the socio-organisational literature, with many points of divergence. These findings suggest the need for study replication and a review of the security literature in regards to executive influence.     

Assessing a Child’s Experience of Multiple Maltreatment Types: Some Unfinished Business

Available research indicates that maltreated children frequently experience multiple types of maltreatment, although relatively few studies examine this issue directly. Review of existing studies also shows that, when investigated, maltreatment types are often correlated. However, from study to study the strength of associations among maltreatment types varies considerably, apparently due to methodological differences, such as differences in operational definitions of the maltreatment types, composition of samples and/or method of scaling used. Failure to account for overlap among maltreatment types can result in a misleading picture of a child’s trauma history. This in turn can lead to an inaccurate evaluation of the relationship between a child’s victimization experiences and later developmental outcomes. The wide variation in correlations among the maltreatment types from study to study raises questions about the validity of the different operational definitions used. Improving the construct validity of the maltreatment type measures is proposed as the means to obtaining more consistent results. Steps by which to achieve this objective are outlined. This project (1 RO1 HD049767-01A2) is co-funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR). The authors wish to thank M. Jean Russo for reviewing a draft of this paper.     

FANTASY OR FICTION: MARCHING OF THE DRAGON IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA

This article looks at the South China Sea dispute and its impact in international relations. It analyses why the Southeast Asian states are highly sovereignty sensitive, and how such sensitivity has made non-intervention the bedrock of managing their foreign policies. China has long viewed the near seas as regions of geostrategic interest, and thus the SCS is not an exception. On the one hand it brings hope and prosperity, and on the other uncertainty and threat. At the end, the article argues whether China’s assertive position regarding other countries’ sovereignty claims in the Arctic might undermine its own position in contested areas like the SCS, and suggests that China will at least have to learn how to share and bear (term coined by the author) as a member of the international community.     

Assessing swings in multi-party systems: The Indian experience

India has a single member, first-past-the-post system. Owing to the importance of wasted votes in a multi-party system, the relation between votes and seats cannot be explained by traditional swing analysis. In this paper a measure of vote-splitting¹ is developed and used to decompose changes in margins into the ‘swing’ and the ‘split’. This method of analysis is applied to the study of electoral change in India and its usefulness for prediction is examined.     

Teaching Negotiation and Dispute Resolution in Colleges of Business: The State of the Practice

Tracing the history of how the study of dispute resolution came into the mainstream of behavioral science courses in business schools, the author gives a positive assessment of the appropriateness of the content and pedagogy of negotiation courses currently taught in business schools for the challenges of the next decade. He proceeds to make recommendations for improving the definition and acquisition of negotiation skills.