Different rooms, different voices: double-breasting, multi-channel representation and the managerial agenda

Double-breasting has been identified as where companies run union voice and non-union voice mechanisms across different plants. While research has focused on the incidence of such arrangements, there is a dearth of evidence into the dynamics of it. This article seeks to complement existing research by examining the contours of double-breasting in a case study organisation. The findings suggest that more research is necessary into the dynamics of double-breasting in terms of how voice in sites affects each other and the extent to which running different regimes affects the managerial agenda.

Non-union employee representation, union avoidance and the managerial agenda

Non-union employee representation is an area which has attracted much interest in the voice literature. Much of the literature has been shaped by a dialogue which considers NERs as a means of union avoidance. More recently however scholars have suggested that for NERs to work in such contexts, they may need to be imbued with a higher set of functionalities to remain viable entities. Using a critical case study of a union recognition drive and managerial response in the form of an NER, this article contributes to a more nuanced interpretation of the literature dialogue than hitherto exists. A core component of the findings directly challenge existing interpretations within the field; namely that NERs are shaped by a paradox of managerial action. It is argued that the NER failed to satisfy for employees because of a structural remit, rather than through any paradox in managerial intent.

Robust visual tracking based on online learning sparse representation

Handling appearance variations is a very challenging problem for visual tracking. Existing methods usually solve this problem by relying on an effective appearance model with two features: (1) being capable of discriminating the tracked target from its background, (2) being robust to the target's appearance variations during tracking. Instead of integrating the two requirements into the appearance model, in this paper, we propose a tracking method that deals with these problems separately based on sparse representation in a particle filter framework. Each target candidate defined by a particle is linearly represented by the target and background templates with an additive representation error. Discriminating the target from its background is achieved by activating the target templates or the background templates in the linear system in a competitive manner. The target's appearance variations are directly modeled as the representation error. An online algorithm is used to learn the basis functions that sparsely span the representation error. The linear system is solved via ℓ1 minimization. The candidate with the smallest reconstruction error using the target templates is selected as the tracking result. We test the proposed approach using four sequences with heavy occlusions, large pose variations, drastic illumination changes and low foreground-background contrast. The proposed approach shows excellent performance in comparison with two latest state-of-the-art trackers.

Understanding Racial Tensions in Northern Ireland: Threat, Paranoia and the Fear of Loss

This paper will explore the development of increased group tensions in Northern Ireland
over the past decade with a special emphasis being placed upon rising racial tensions in cities such
as Belfast and Lisburn. The paper will analyse why Northern Ireland has been described as the new
race-hate capital of Europe and, through a case-study of Loyalism, will argue that if this growth in
racist sentiment is to be prevented, more needs to be done to understand the causes of such feeling,
particularly within loyalist working-class areas. I will argue that society as a whole needs to address
the fears and anxieties of those that perceive themselves to be under threat from the recent increase
in immigration or else we risk creating a new cause célèbre for those that would seek to extend the
lifetime of our paramilitary organisations. Moreover, at a time when loyalist communities feel politically
alienated and lacking representation, there is a real danger of British far-right groups exploiting the
situation and making long-term political capital.

Every Situation has its Rhythm: Acoustic Mimesis and Sonic Exoticism in Tambours Sur La Digue.

This article examines the soundscapes of Ariane Mnouchkine’s Tambours Sur La Digue and explores the concept of acoustic mimesis located in the performance as a dramaturgical strategy to create, aurally, an imagined Far East. In Tambours, mimesis is the performative principle exemplified by the presentation of the mise en scène, and most distinctly Mnouckine’s decision to adapt the Japanese performance tradition of Bunraku through a process of 'reversed' mimicry (in which human bodies simulate the wooden marionettes of the Japanese style). Mimesis pervades the acoustemologies of the performance as it is heard in the extracted sounds, styles, and rhythms of Asian musical modes and movements that consequently become dislocated from context; the sounds become imitated, iconicised and exoticised as sonic signatures as they reify the Orientalist spectacle. The 'oriental' soundscape, reverberating with exotic overtones, becomes the means by which the production creates an imaginary Orient – one in which the Orient Other is silenced, and is resounded only through the musical sensibilities of the Occidental Self.

Regulating for mutual gains? Non-union employee representation and the Information and Consultation Directive

Interest in ‘mutual gains’ has principally been confined to studies of the unionised sector. Yet there is no reason why this conceptual dynamic cannot be extended to the non-unionised realm, specifically in relation to non-union employee representation (NER). Although extant research views NER as unfertile terrain for mutual gains, the paper examines whether NER developed in response to the European Directive on Information and Consultation (I&C) of Employees may offer a potentially more fruitful route. The paper examines this possibility by considering three cases of NER established under the I&C Directive in Ireland, assessing the extent to which mutual gains were achieved.

Simplifying the representation of complex free-energy landscapes using sketch-map

A new scheme, sketch-map, for obtaining a low-dimensional representation of the region of phase space explored during an enhanced dynamics simulation is proposed. We show evidence, from an examination of the distribution of pairwise distances between frames, that some features of the free-energy surface are inherently high-dimensional. This makes dimensionality reduction problematic because the data does not satisfy the assumptions made in conventional manifold learning algorithms We therefore propose that when dimensionality reduction is performed on trajectory data one should think of the resultant embedding as a quickly sketched set of directions rather than a road map. In other words, the embedding tells one about the connectivity between states but does not provide the vectors that correspond to the slow degrees of freedom. This realization informs the development of sketch-map, which endeavors to reproduce the proximity information from the high-dimensionality description in a space of lower dimensionality even when a faithful embedding is not possible.