An investigation into formal and functional characteristics of qualifications in legislative writing and its application to English for academic legal purposes.

The present investigation is based on a linguistic analysis of the 'Housing Act 1980' and attempts to examine the role of qualifications in the structuring of the legislative statement. The introductory chapter isolates legislative writing as a "sub-variety “of legal language and provides an overview of the controversies surrounding the way it is written and the problems it poses to its readers. Chapter two emphasizes the limitations of the available work on the description of language-varieties for the analysis of legislative writing and outlines the approach adopted for the present analysis. This chapter also gives some idea of the information-structuring of legislative provisions and establishes qualification as a key element in their textualisation. The next three chapters offer a detailed account of the ten major qualification-types identified in the corpus, concentrating on the surface form they take, the features of legislative statements they textualize and the syntactic positions to which they are generally assigned in the statement of legislative provisions. The emerging hypotheses in these chapters have often been verified through a specialist reaction from a Parliamentary Counsel, largely responsible for the writing of the ‘Housing Act 1980’• The findings suggest useful correlations between a number of qualificational initiators and the various aspects of the legislative statement. They also reveal that many of these qualifications typically occur in those clause-medial syntactic positions which are sparingly used in other specialist discourse, thus creating syntactic discontinuity in the legislative sentence. Such syntactic discontinuities, on the evidence from psycholinguistic experiments reported in chapter six, create special problems in the processing and comprehension of legislative statements. The final chapter converts the main linguistic findings into a series of pedagogical generalizations, offers indications of how this may be applied in EALP situations and concludes with other considerations of possible applications.

A linguistic and semantic approach to the theory and practice of literary translation

This work explores the relevance of semantic and linguistic description to translation, theory and practice. It is aimed towards a practical model of approach to texts to translate. As literary texts [poetry mainly] are the focus of attention, so are stylistic matters. Note, however, that 'style', and, to some extent, the conclusions of the work, are not limited to so-called literary texts. The study of semantic description reveals that most translation problems do not stem from the cognitive (langue-related), but rather from the contextual (parole-related) aspects of meaning. Thus, any linguistic model that fails to account for the latter is bound to fall short. T.G.G. does, whereas Systemics, concerned with both the 'Iangue' and 'parole' (stylistic and sociolinguistic mainly) aspects of meaning, provides a useful framework of approach to texts to translate. Two essential semantic principles for translation are: that meaning is the property of a language (Firth); and the 'relativity of meaning assignments' (Tymoczko). Both imply that meaning can only be assessed, correctly, in the relevant socio-cultural background. Translation is seen as a restricted creation, and the translator's encroach as a three-dimensional critical one. To encompass the most technical to the most literary text, and account for variations in emphasis in any text, translation theory must be based on typology of function Halliday's ideational, interpersonal and textual, or, Buhler's symbol, signal, symptom, Functions3. Function Coverall and specific] will dictate aims and method, and also provide the critic with criteria to assess translation Faithfulness. Translation can never be reduced to purely objective methods, however. Intuitive procedures intervene, in textual interpretation and analysis, in the choice of equivalents, and in the reception of a translation. Ultimately, translation, theory and practice, may perhaps constitute the touchstone as regards the validity of linguistic and semantic theories.

Leisure at work in Britain, West Germany, France and Japan : a cross-cultural comparative study

The aim of this thesis was to investigate the impact of changing values and attitudes toward work and the workplace in Britain, West Germany, France and Japan. A cross-national approach was adopted in order to gain a better understanding of differences and similarities in behaviour and to identify aspects specific to each society. Although the relationship between work and leisure has been thoroughly examined and there is a growing body of literature on changes in the values associated with these two phenomena, little research has been carried out into leisure at work. Studies of work time have tended to consider it as a homogeneous block, whereas recent research suggests that more attention should be devoted to unravelling the multiple uses of time at the workplace. The present study sought to review and analyse this new approach to the study of work time, and special attention is devoted to an examination of definitions of leisure, recreation, free time and work within the context of the workplace. The cross-cultural comparative approach gave rise to several problems due to the number of countries involved and the unusual combination of factors being investigated. The main difficulties were differences in the amount and quality of literature available, the non-comparability of existing data, definitions of concepts and socio-linguistic terms, and problems over access to organizations for fieldwork. Much of the literature generalizes about patterns of behaviour and few authors isolate factors specific to particular societies. In this thesis new empirical work is therefore used to ascertain the extent to which generalizations can be made from the literature and characteristics peculiar to each of the four countries identified. White-collar employees in large, broadly comparable companies were studied using identical questionnaires in the appropriate language. Respondents selected were men and women, aged between 20-65 years and either managers or non-managers. Patterns of leisure at work were found to be broadly similar in the national contexts, but with the Japanese and the West Germans experiencing the least leisure at work, and the British and the French perceiving the most. The general trend seems to be toward convergence of attitudes regarding leisure at work in the four countries. Explanations for variations in practice were sought within the wider societal contexts of each country.

Leadership and the negotiation of order in small groups

This thesis is focussed on the role differentiationhypothesis as it relates to small groups (Bales, 1958). The hypothesis is systematically examined, both conceptually and empirically, in the light of the Equilibrium Hypothesis (Bales, 1953) and the Negotiated Order Theory of leadership (e.g. Hosking, 1988). Chapter 1 sketches in a context for the research,which was stimulated by attempts during the 60s and 70s to organise small groups without leaders (the leaderless group, based on isocratic principles). Chapter 2 gives a conceptual and developmental overview of Bales' work, concentrating on the Equilibrium Hypothesis. It is argued that Bales' conceptual approach, if developed, can potentially integrate the disparate small groups and leadership literatures. Chapters 3 and 4 examine the concepts `group', `leader' and `leadership' in terms of the Negotiated Order perspective. In chapter 3 it is argued that two aspects of the concept group need to be taken separately into account; physical attributes and social psychological aspects (the metaphysical glue). It is further argued that a collection of people becomes a group only when they begin to establish a shared sense of social order. In chapter 4 it is argued that leadership is best viewed as a process of negotiation between those who influence and those who are influenced, in the context of shared values about means and ends. It is further argued that leadership is the process by which a shared sense of social order is established and maintained, thus linking the concepts `leadership' and `group' in a single formulation. The correspondences with Bales' approach are discussed at the end of the chapter. Chapters 5 to 8 present a detailed critical description and evaluation of the empirical work which claims to show role differentiation or test the hypothesis, both Bales original work and subsequent studies. It is argued here, that the measurement and analytical procedures adopted by Bales and others, in particular the use of simple means as summaries of group structures, are fundamentally flawed, and that role differentiation in relation to particular identifiable groups has not been demonstrated clearly anywhere in the literature. Chapters 9 to 13 present the empirical work conducted for the thesis. 18 small groups are examined systematically for evidence of role differentiation using an approach based on early sociometry (Moreno, 1934). The results suggest that role differentiation, as described by Bales, does not occur as often as is implied in the literature, and not equivocally in any case. In particular structures derived from Liking are typically distributed or weak. This suggests that one of Bales' principal findings, that Liking varies independently of his other main dimensions, is the product of statistical artifact. Chapter 14 presents a general summary of results and presents some considerations about future research.

Marketing in indigenous and Asian small firms in the West Midlands.

This study is concerned with examining the application of marketing during the start-up, development and growth of small firms in the West Midlands. As an exploratory study, it provides evidence to support the central hypothesis of the thesis that whilst many small firms have the potential to progress through to the successful growth stage of development, they fail to do so because of their owner-managers' orientation towards production and selling and because they do not apply formal marketing during the initial stages of business development. A comparative approach to studying marketing in indigenous and Asian firms is adopted in an attempt to fill a gap in the literature on the characteristics and differences in the formation and development processes of these two groups of enterprises. The study has three main objectives and is based on qualitative research techniques of in-depth interviews, case studies and longitudinal studies among sixty-six firms representing the key activities of the small firms sector of the local economy. Firstly, it investigates owner-managers' orientation in developing and managing new and established businesses and explores the sources of, and changes in their orientation during the various stages of development. Secondly, it assesses the owner-manager's awareness and understanding of what constitutes the marketing function and investigates what aspects of marketing are applied during the different stages of business development. Finally, the study monitors and evaluates the outcomes and implications of applying formal marketing techniques in a small sample of firms over a period of two years. The thesis concludes by using the findings of the study to contribute additions to existing models of growth and by proposing new models of evolution and application of marketing in small firms.

Scholarly publishing and argument in hyperspace

The World Wide Web is opening up access to documents and data for scholars. However it has not yet impacted on one of the primary activities in research: assessing new findings in the light of current knowledge and debating it with colleagues. The ClaiMaker system uses a directed graph model with similarities to hypertext, in which new ideas are published as nodes, which other contributors can build on or challenge in a variety of ways by linking to them. Nodes and links have semantic structure to facilitate the provision of specialist services for interrogating and visualizing the emerging network. By way of example, this paper is grounded in a ClaiMaker model to illustrate how new claims can be described in this structured way.

Knowledge elicitation and knowledge representation in a large domain with multiple experts

This paper describes the knowledge elicitation and knowledge representation aspects of a system being developed to help with the design and maintenance of relational data bases. The size algorithmic components. In addition, the domain contains multiple experts, but any given expert's knowledge of this large domain is only partial. The paper discusses the methods and techniques used for knowledge elicitation, which was based on a "broad and shallow" approach at first, moving to a "narrow and deep" one later, and describes the models used for knowledge representation, which were based on a layered "generic and variants" approach. © 1995.

Advancing theory and research and the British journal of management

In an ecosystem of management journals dominated by US heavyweights, the British Journal of Management (BJM) assumes a unique role. There is no other European business and management journal of the standing and stature of this journal that seeks both to be multidisciplinary and to appeal to a general readership of business and management scholars. This is a tribute to the efforts of previous editorial teams. At the same time, the journal faces the challenge of remaining relevant both to the immediate British Academy of Management community and to the wider scholarly one, while raising its own game in pioneering and leading debates, and in global esteem. © 2014 British Academy of Management.

Religious compliance in Islamic financial institutions

The central goal of this research is to explore the approach of the Islamic banking industry in defining and implementing religious compliance at regulatory, institutional, and individual level within the Islamic Banking and Finance (IBF) industry. It also examines the discrepancies, ambiguities and paradoxes that are exhibited in the individual and institutional behaviour in relation to the infusion and enactment of religious exigencies into compliance processes in IBF. Through the combined lenses of institutional work and a sensemaking perspective, this research portrays the practice of infusion of Islamic law in Islamic banks as being ambiguous and drifting down to the institutional and actor levels. In instances of both well-codified and non-codified regulatory frameworks for Shariah compliance, institutional rules ambiguity, rules interpretation and enactment ambiguities were found to be prevalent. The individual IBF professionals performed retrospective and prospective actions to adjust the role and rules boundaries both in the case of a Muslim and a non-Muslim country. The sensitizing concept of religious compliance is the primary theoretical contribution of this research and provides a tool to understand the nature of what constitutes Shariah compliance and the dynamics of its implementation. It helps to explain the empirical consequences of the lack of a clear definition of Shariah compliance in the regulatory frameworks and standards available for the industry. It also addresses the calls to have a clear reference on what constitute Shariah compliance in IBF as proposed in previous studies (Hayat, Butter, & Kock, 2013; Maurer, 2003, 2012; Pitluck, 2012). The methodological and theoretical perspective of this research are unique in the use of multi-level analysis and approaches that blend micro and macro perspectives of the research field, to illuminate and provide a more complete picture of religious compliance infusion and enactment in IBF.

Models@run.time:foundations, applications, and roadmaps

Traditionally, research on model-driven engineering (MDE) has mainly focused on the use of models at the design, implementation, and verification stages of development. This work has produced relatively mature techniques and tools that are currently being used in industry and academia. However, software models also have the potential to be used at runtime, to monitor and verify particular aspects of runtime behavior, and to implement self-* capabilities (e.g., adaptation technologies used in self-healing, self-managing, self-optimizing systems). A key benefit of using models at runtime is that they can provide a richer semantic base for runtime decision-making related to runtime system concerns associated with autonomic and adaptive systems. This book is one of the outcomes of the Dagstuhl Seminar 11481 on models@run.time held in November/December 2011, discussing foundations, techniques, mechanisms, state of the art, research challenges, and applications for the use of runtime models. The book comprises four research roadmaps, written by the original participants of the Dagstuhl Seminar over the course of two years following the seminar, and seven research papers from experts in the area. The roadmap papers provide insights to key features of the use of runtime models and identify the following research challenges: the need for a reference architecture, uncertainty tackled by runtime models, mechanisms for leveraging runtime models for self-adaptive software, and the use of models at runtime to address assurance for self-adaptive systems.

How organizational cognitive neuroscience can deepen understanding of managerial decision-making:a review of the recent literature and future directions

There is growing interest in exploring the potential links between human biology and management and organization studies, which is bringing greater attention to bear on the place of mental processes in explaining human behaviour and effectiveness. The authors define this new field as organizational cognitive neuroscience (OCN), which is in the exploratory phase of its emergence and diffusion. It is clear that there are methodological debates and issues associated with OCN research, and the aim of this paper is to illuminate these concerns, and provide a roadmap for rigorous and relevant future work in the area. To this end, the current reach of OCN is investigated by the systematic review methodology, revealing three clusters of activity, covering the fields of economics, marketing and organizational behaviour. Among these clusters, organizational behaviour seems to be an outlier, owing to its far greater variety of empirical work, which the authors argue is largely a result of the plurality of research methods that have taken root within this field. Nevertheless, all three clusters contribute to a greater understanding of the biological mechanisms that mediate choice and decision-making. The paper concludes that OCN research has already provided important insights regarding the boundaries surrounding human freedom to act in various domains and, in turn, self-determination to influence the workplace. However, there is much to be done, and emerging research of significant interest is highlighted.

Towards the strategic adoption of Lean in aviation Maintenance Repair and Overhaul (MRO) industry:an empirical study into the industry's Lean status

Purpose - Despite many Maintenance Repair and Overhaul (MRO) organisations alluding their positive business performances to the adoption Lean initiatives, there is a paucity of direct literature that validates this assertion. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to study empirically via the use of an industry-wide survey to establish and extent of Lean adoption and to verify its suitability in mitigating prevalent MRO challenges. Design/methodology/approach - The empirical study contained in this paper is facilitated by an industry-wide survey to collect data from several firms across the MRO spectrum. The analysed responses from industry leaders, professionals and executives synthesised with existing literature was used in ascertaining the extent of Lean adoption within the operational framework of the industry. Findings - The empirical study helped in validating the suitability of Lean in MRO context. However, it was also observed that the focus of its application was skewed towards its production-orientated functions more than its service-orientated functions. Nonetheless, this paper presents results of the positive influence of Lean in MRO context. Research limitations/implications - This empirical study presented in this paper was carried out within a framework of key characteristics of operation. Although this approach is sufficient in assessing the industry's Lean status, further assessment can also be achieved within the context of relevant performance metrics which was not included in this paper. Practical implications - By exploring the industry's Lean status within the context of operational characteristics of operation, this study provides MRO practitioners with more awareness into some of the critical factors required for successful holistic Lean realisation. Social implications - The state-of-the-art of Lean within the aviation MRO context established through this research also contributes to the wider product-centric service environment by providing a platform that facilitates strategy development which ensures Lean success within this environment. Originality/value - Apart from validating the suitability of Lean in MRO contexts, by establishing the extent of Lean adoption within the context of the operational framework, this paper provides a clearer insight as to how successful Lean implementation can be achieved via a holistic implementation strategy balanced between the product-centric and service-centric aspects of the industry.