The status of child offenders under international criminal justice: lessons from Sierra Leone

This article analyses the status of child offenders under international criminal justice. International criminal proceedings, especially those in the African continent, have recently highlighted the significance of children and young people as perpetrators of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. It has been suggested by one commentator that there exist international prohibitions on the prosecution of children for international crimes. It will be argued here that this claim is not substantiated in respect either of customary or treaty-based international obligations.

Aesthetic dimensions of educational administration and leadership

The Aesthetic Dimensions of Educational Administration and Leadership provides an aesthetic critique of educational administration and leadership. It demonstrates the importance of aesthetics on all aspects of the administrative and leadership world: the ways ideas and ideals are created, how their expression is conveyed, the impact they have on interpersonal relationships and the organizational environment that carries and reinforces them, and the moral boundaries or limits that can be established or exceeded.

The book is divided into three sections.
Section I examines various philosophical traditions in aesthetics as they inform administrative life, focussing on major modern traditions arising from Kant, romanticism and Nietzsche, Collingwood, the pragmatic school, and critical theory.
Section II explores four aesthetic sources for administrative critique - architecture, literature, film, and movement - as they serve both to understand the social construction of administration and leadership and provide a critique of values, roles, power and authority.
Section III examines more topical and applied problems of charisma, heroism, and authority in practice, concluding with a discussion of the aesthetic analysis of politics and power within the context of contemporary educational administration and leadership theory.

While presenting a significant departure from conventional studies in the field, the international contributors reflect a continuity of thought on the creation, use and abuse of administrative and leadership authority from the writings of Plato through to contemporary theory. This book should appeal to school administrators and leaders and those aspiring to these roles.

Multifactorial influences on and deviations from medication administration safety and quality in the acute medical/surgical context

Background and Aims: Although numerous factors influence medication administration, our understanding of the interplay of these factors on medication quality and safety is limited. The aim of this study was to explore the multifactorial influences on medication quality and safety in the context of a single checking policy for medication administration in acute care.

Approach: An exploratory/descriptive study using non-participant observation and follow-up interview was used to identify factors influencing medication quality and safety in medication administration episodes (n = 30). Observations focused on nurses’ interactions with patients during medication administration, and the characteristics of the environment in which these took place. Confirmation of observed data occurred on completion of the observation period during short semi-structured interviews with participant nurses.

Findings: Findings showed nurses developed therapeutic relationships with patients in terms of assessing patients before administering medications and educating patients about drugs during medication administration. Nurses experienced more frequent distractions when medications were stored and prepared in a communal drug room according to ward design. Nurses deviated from best-practice guidelines during medication administration.

Implications: Nurses’ abilities and readiness to develop therapeutic relationships with patients increased medication quality and safety, thereby protecting patients from potential adverse events. Deviations from best-practice medication administration had the potential to decrease medication safety. System factors such as ward design determining medication storage areas can be readily addressed to minimise potential error.

Conclusions: Nurses displayed behaviours that increased medication administration quality and safety; however, violations of practice standards were observed. These findings will inform future intervention studies to improve medication quality and safety.

Developing and validating an overall international marketing performance scale

The purpose of this chapter is to develop and validate a scale of the overall international marketing performance. Based on a review of the existing literature, the scale constructed to measure international marketing performance used in this study included three factors; namely, finance, strategic and brand performance.

A total of 315 Australian firms involved in international marketing were surveyed. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were undertaken to validate the scale.

Findings support the conceptualization that the overall international marketing construct consists of three factors.

The present study contributes to the understanding of the measurement of the overall international marketing performance by empirically testing the dimensionality of this construct.

America’s challenges in the Greater Middle East: the Obama administration's policies

The Middle East has been the centerpiece of American foreign policy for decades. As President Barack Obama faces continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the nuclear debate in Iran, and the ever-present Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the future of this region is once again firmly in the international spotlight. America's Challenges in the Greater Middle East charts US policy towards key Middle Eastern states and evaluates the impact of the current administration's policies. This edited volume brings together scholarly opinion from a diverse range of world-recognized experts and is the definitive text on the Obama administration's engagement with this volatile, yet politically vital, part of the world.

US policy toward rogue states: Comparing the Bush administration's policy toward Iraq and North Korea

The George W. Bush administration resorted to war to respond to the threat of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, whereas it virtually ruled out the use of force to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue. By utilizing various strands of realist international relations theories, we trace motivations behind the administration's divergent foreign-policy choices toward rogue states. That the United States rushed to war against Iraq while procrastinating on North Korea presents a puzzle to conventional realism, which postulates that great powers observe changes in relative capabilities and respond accordingly. We argue that policy differences should be embedded in discussion of the administration's foreign-policy grand strategy, which sought to sustain the hegemonic status of the United States in the world. Iraq and North Korea had different implications for Bush's grand strategy, thereby calling for different approaches. By tracing the strategic design of the Bush administration, we attempt to provide a more complete account of policy differences toward rogue states, as well as indicate the significant changes in US policy during the George W. Bush administration and since.

A climate-compatible approach to development practice by international humanitarian NGOs

If current climate-change predictions prove accurate, non-linear change, including potentially catastrophic change, is possible and the environments in which international humanitarian NGOs operate will change figuratively and literally. This paper proposes that a new approach to development is required that takes changing climate into account. This 'climate-compatible approach' to development is a bleak shift from some of the current orthodox positions and will be a major challenge to international humanitarian NGOs working with the most vulnerable. However, it is necessary to address the challenges and context such NGOs face, and the need to be resilient and adaptive to these changes.

Seeing like PISA: a cautionary tale about the performativity of international assessments

PISA is an extremely influential large-scale assessment, and its ‘policy lessons’ are being incorporated in a range of nations all over the world. In this paper I argue that not only is PISA influencing policies and practices, but also that ‘seeing like PISA’ is becoming a widespread phenomenon. Globally, education administration is now characterized by an intense focus onoutput measurement, a highly competitive environment heightened by national and international rankings, and an economic and instrumentalist approach to education and education reform. Using James Scott’s account of 18th Century German forestry practices as a parable, this paper suggests that ‘seeing like PISA’ could have far reaching and damaging effects. The paper proposes the following: first, understanding PISA as a ‘project of legibility’ enhances our appreciation of its purposes and possibilities. Second, PISA is much more than a ‘representation’ of existing conditions, but is creating new conditions – in other words, it is not descriptive but performative; and, finally, ‘seeing like PISA’ is bringing about deep-rooted changes, and it is likely that the effects will be very long-term. Some of these effects may only manifest themselves in the next fifteen or twenty years; and, by then, the possibilities of redressing some of the ill effects may be very limited.

Book review : Community development in theory and practice : an international reader

Book review of Community Development in Theory and Practice: An International Reader. Edited by G. Craig, K. Popple and M. Shaw.