The role of communication in managing the safety climate of construction site environments

Managers in the construction sector are met with a critical charge: they are responsible for the safety of employees in one of the most notoriously dangerous industries in the world. In terms of managing the safety climate of construction site environments, no recommendations have been made in the literature that truly elucidate the role of organisational communication therein. The aim of this research was to fill this void by enriching the seminal work of Mohamed (2002) which focusses on the nature of the safety climate in construction organisations, and the factors it is comprised of. To this end, the research comprised a data-triangulated qualitative and quantitative empirical study undertaken at nine different construction sites in South Africa, which allowed for the reformulation of the model for safety climate management in construction environments, with an added understanding of the role of communication therein. The findings indicated that communication is conducive to a positive safety climate when it is managed to be strategic, holistic, relational and symmetrical. The model put forward in this article offers an empirical application of the four identified constructs of communication, which gives way to data-driven recommendations for use in construction organisation settings.     

不动产登记申请的法理与规则

登记申请是不动产登记的主要启动机制。申请行为本质上为有相对人的表意行为,但不属于法律行为,具有程序法行为的特质。登记申请应当实行到达生效主义,不能撤销但可以撤回,撤回登记申请须在登记完成前进行。登记申请的主要效力在于对登记机关的形成力、对登记程序的启动力、对物权变动的彰显力、对登记顺位的预定力。因虚假的登记申请资料引致的登记错误,登记机关应当对受害人承担赔偿责任,尔后向登记申请人追偿。     

Party system dynamics and the making and breaking of Italian governments

This paper explores the dynamics of the highly fluid Italian legislative party system. It uses the same theoretical approach as the paper by Laver and Kato (this issue) to explore the making and breaking of governments in Italy following electoral reform. Under office-seeking motivational assumptions, the electoral system provides incentives for parties to band together into cartels in order to fight elections, with the winning cartel forming a government coalition. Inter-electoral legislative party competition, however, within a structure of permissive rules on the formation of legislative party groups, provides incentives for at least some members of the winning cartel to defect. The facility with which legislative parties can split and combine in Italy creates a highly dynamic decisive structure underpinning the making and breaking of governments. This cannot usefully be analysed with traditional models that take parties as unitary actors and assume that the party system is essentially fixed for the entire inter-electoral period.     

Determinants of popular financial reporting: Evidence from Swedish municipalities

This paper investigates popular financial reporting, to determine how contextual factors can favour or hinder its development. A balanced panel dataset from 289 Swedish municipalities spanning the period 2015–2021 is utilised for the empirical analysis, which is based on bivariate correlations and logistic regression models. The results are interpreted through the lens of legitimacy theory, integrated with innovation and diffusion models. The findings suggest that, while political factors play a certain role, it is primarily the local accounting networks, which enable the exchange of experiences among neighbouring municipalities within the same regional area, that are the most influential factor. These results may prove to be helpful in various contexts, contributing to the academic debate on the relevance of institutional and contextual factors in explaining the voluntary decision to prepare popular financial reports.     

Where Have All the Ministers Gone?

The relationship between ministers and public servants has been a longstanding topic among students of Australian public administration. Recent debate has centred on issues of supposed politicisation and excessive responsiveness in the Australian Public Service (APS), caused, in part, by the weakened tenure of department heads (secretaries). The recent Moran report has little to say on this relationship. It endorses changes to the appointment processes for secretaries which are presumably designed to strengthen secretaries’ independence from their political masters. It adopts a view of citizen‐centred service and strategic leadership that appears to marginalise ministers. Its approach to public sector leadership is taken from international management theory that works well in a business context and in the United States (US) government system. It is less well‐suited to Westminster‐style systems.     

短时交通流预测模型综述

交通流预测在智能交通系统中一直是一个热闹的研究领域，几十年来，专家和学者们用各种方法建立了许多相对而言精确的预测模型。本文在提出来交通流短期预测模型应具备的特性的基础上，讨论了几类主要模型的结果和精确度，并对交通流预测领域今后的发展趋势作出展望。     

试论我国期货市场监管模式的选择

期货市场是所有金融市场中风险最大 ,最需要进行监管的市场。从期货市场发展看 ,它同监管是密不可分的 ,没有政府的监管 ,就没有当今世界健康的期货市场。我国期货市场起步晚发展快 ,因此 ,建立适合我国的期货市场监管体系是非常必要的。这一体系的目标模式应该是 :在政府集中统一监管下 ,充分发挥市场自律组织的作用 ,即把政府监管与市场自律监管结合起来。     

Livestock livelihoods compromised: the dilemma of the Fast Track Land Reform and Resettlement Programme in Matabeleland South,Zimbabwe

This article attempts to unravel the rubric of livestock rearing in Southern Matabeleland in the aftermath of the Fast Track Land Reform and Resettlement Programme (FTLRRP). It also shows how livestock rearing has been placed high in livelihood rankings in this region. The article is based on a detailed ethnographic study of the impact of the FTLRRP in the decade 2000 to 2010 in Gwanda and Umzingwane districts, and is an extract of my PHD thesis entitled ‘Visible hectares, Vanishing livelihoods’. The broad argument of the thesis is that the land reform programme has achieved change of commercial land ownership patterns from ‘white’ to ‘black’ Zimbabweans. The programme however has not coupled that with the support necessary to improve the livelihoods of the majority of people in the region. One of the impediments is that the state-crafted ‘one size fits all’ resettlement model failed to take cognisance of the socio-economic and ecological conditions of different provinces in the country. Hence the argument in this article is that the FTLRRP could have improved livelihoods of people in this region if livestock rearing was given priority and support by the state.     

Ageing and generational effects on vote choice: Combining cross-sectional and panel data to estimate APC effects

This paper examines how ageing and generational formative experiences affect vote choices in Britain. Using a combination of panel data and assumptions about party fortunes we estimate ageing effects. These are then entered into a model using cross-sectional data from 1964 to 2010 to estimate generational differences in vote choice. Ageing increases the likelihood of a Conservative vote substantially, but there is no trend towards lower rates of Conservative voting among newer generations. There are however identifiable political generations corresponding with periods of Conservative dominance: voters who came of age in the 1930s, 1950s and 1980s are ceteris paribus somewhat more Conservative. Our method therefore lends some support to theories of political generations, but also demonstrates the considerable impact of ageing on vote choice.     

Beyond assimilation and contrast: Information effects,ideological magnification,and the vote

Spatial voting models assume that parties and candidates advertise their ideological positions to maximize electoral support. Voters, however, view party locations through a distorted lens. The presence of these assimilation and contrast effects has been extensively described by the existing literature. Yet while many studies acknowledge the importance of information biases in survey responses, we lack the tools to explicitly incorporate them into existing spatial models of voting. This paper proposes a strategy that incorporates information effects in existing spatial models of the vote, using a heteroscedastic proximity model. We test the proposed model on data from eighteen democracies. Results demonstrate how information stretches or compresses the ideological space and open up new avenues for future work.