Suchergebnisse

This study aims to examine the relationship between power distance and autocratic and democratic tendencies. Participants in the study were research assistants pursuing graduate degrees in the Sciences and Social Sciences Institutes of Balikesir University and prospective teachers pursuing undergraduate teaching degrees at Necatibey Education Faculty of Balikesir University in 2009 to 2010 academic year; a total of 278 people. The study is designed quantitatively and the "power distance scale" and democratic tendencies scale were used for data collection. Findings of the study showed that both research assistants and prospective teachers have low power distance and autocratic tendency scores and high democratic tendency scores. In addition, a positive and significant relationship was found between power distance and autocratic tendency, and a negative and significant one between power distance and democratic tendency.

Purpose
There is a view that strong preventative contracts are essential to control supplier opportunism and delivery during an outsourcing implementation. The purpose of this paper is to test the proposition that contractual project environments, typical of outsourcing engagements, are essentially conflictual and that context and circumstance can act to overwhelm formal contractual and project control and lead to poor outcomes.


Design/methodology/approach
The paper reports on a supply case study focussed on the outsourced delivery of an application development in the defence sector. Data were gathered by a participant observation in situ for a period of three years. A grounded analysis from observations, diaries, semi-structured interviews, focus groups, documentary analysis, and e-mails was carried out with six case organisations within the extended supply chain.


Findings
Collaboration between suppliers and buyers can be blocked by preventative fixed price contracts and as a result when requirements are incomplete or vague this adversely impacts success.


Practical implications
Strong contractual control focussed on compliance may actually impede the potential success of outsourcing contracts especially when collaborative approaches are needed to cope with variability in demand.


Originality/value
The research raises the important practical and conceptual notion that an outsourcing can be a conflictual inter-firm phenomenon especially where multiple actors are involved and business uncertainty is present.

This article examines Chinese civil-military relations using a bottom-up analytical approach and hitherto untapped sources, including interviews with military personnel in active service. It argues that traditional approaches to political control, which generally interpret the changing political-military relationship through military professionalism and institutional autonomy, miss out on important aspects and may generate erroneous conclusions. Here, focus is instead on the professional autonomy of the Chinese officer corps. Through an empirical study of the organization of military work at two of China's top military education institutes, the article illustrates how professional autonomy and direct political control vary, both between hierarchical levels and issue areas. This highlights the multidimensionality of both control and professional manoeuvrability and underlines the fruitfulness of including an intra-organizational perspective in order to reach better informed conclusions about political control and civil–military relations in today's China. (China Q/GIGA)

Organic farming is a fast growing market segment in the global food industry. Ecological and health benefits of organic farming are frequently emphasized. In addition, we have recently witnessed the promotion of its role in the development of rural areas by means of creating jobs and strengthening ties with local economies. This paper analyzes the relationship between the presence of organic farming and the main characteristics of agricultural holdings in the case of European Union countries. The objective is to identify factors which have a significant relationship with the organic farming sector and which can affect its future development. The results have shown that large farms are dominant in farm land management in the EU, which is related to the fact that there is a significant correlation between the availability of agricultural areas and the economic value of farms (r = 0.881**). There is a positive and significant correlation between the economic value of a holding and the number of livestock units on the farm (r = 0.940**), which indicates that animal husbandry has strong economic potential. When it comes to the relationships between the structural and economic indicators of agricultural holdings and the presence of organic farming, the results have shown that the number of organic producers is positively and significantly correlated with the available agricultural areas (r = 0.675**), and a strongly positively correlated with the economic value of farms (r = 0.810**). The areas under organic farming are also directly correlated with the utilized agricultural area (r = 0.836**), as well as with the number of livestock units (r = 0.793**), but they are slightly negatively correlated with livestock density (r = -0.211). Therefore, high livestock density can be a limiting factor for the further intensive growth of organic farming areas, considering the significant impact of animal husbandry on the environment.