Desk; Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland Organizations

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Grand Street Boys' Association (New York, N.Y.) Records, undated, 1907-1968, bulk 1940-2000.

The Grand Street Boys' Association began in 1916 as a reunion of men who had grown up on or near Grand Street in the Lower East Side neighborhood of Manhattan and quickly grew into an active club, open to all men (and eventually women) regardless of religion, ethnicity, or social class. The Association promoted welfare projects, acts of fellowship and tolerance, scholarships, youth employment, war efforts, and the elimination of discrimination in sports, among other projects. The collection documents the activities of the Association, as well as the Grand Street Boys' Foundation, its financial arm established in 1945, and its Hobbycraft Program, a charitable program tasked with collecting and redistributing donated items to charitable and nonprofit organizations. Materials include administrative records, financial records, correspondence, minutes, membership records, newsletters, yearbooks, artifacts, speeches, and photographs relating to both the New York Grand Street Boys' Association and the Association's Grand Street House in England. Series I, comprising the majority of the collection, contains the records of the Grand Street Boys' Association. In it are extensive membership records, meeting minutes, annual yearbooks, financial records, administrative material, newsletters, and artifacts. Series II documents the Grand Street Boys' Foundation and contains administrative records and financial records. Some overlap of material will be found in Series I and II such as material pertaining to the relationship between the Association and Foundation. Series III consists of photographs documenting both the Association and Foundation. The photographs show members and highlight the activities of the Grand Street Boys.

Combat sports analytics: Boxing punch classification using overhead depth imagery

In competitive combat sporting environments like boxing, the statistics on a boxer's performance, including the amount and type of punches thrown, provide a valuable source of data and feedback which is routinely used for coaching and performance improvement purposes. This paper presents a robust framework for the automatic classification of a boxer's punches. Overhead depth imagery is employed to alleviate challenges associated with occlusions, and robust body-part tracking is developed for the noisy time-of-flight sensors. Punch recognition is addressed through both a multi-class SVM and Random Forest classifiers. A coarse-to-fine hierarchical SVM classifier is presented based on prior knowledge of boxing punches. This framework has been applied to shadow boxing image sequences taken at the Australian Institute of Sport with 8 elite boxers. Results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, with the hierarchical SVM classifier yielding a 96% accuracy, signifying its suitability for analysing athletes punches in boxing bouts.

The Sports Demonstration Project – An initiative of the Australian Sports Commission: An Evaluation

The Sport Development Project (SDP) was a comprehensive youth strategy for sport in the Northern Territory aimed at diversion from ‘at-risk’ behaviours, improvement of life choices and outcomes, and strengthening youth service infrastructure through engagement in positive (sport) activities. There were five Remote Service Delivery sites that were involved in the trial of this ‘best practice’ model for delivering sport-focused diversion activities. These include: Gapuwiyak, Wadeye, Yuendumu, Gunbalunya and Nguiu.

The impact of Indigenous Community sports programs: The case of surfing

The objective of this research project was to consider the social impact of sport and physical activity on the lives of Indigenous Australians and their communities. There has been strong research interest in the links between sport and recreation programs and various health and social outcomes and a well-established body of literature exists on the use of sport to address social issues in mainstream society (A Thomson, Darcy and Pearce 2010). The consensus is that physical activity is an important contributor to health for all people (Nelson, Abbott and Macdonald 2010). While there is strong research interest, what remains unclear is the value and impact of sport and physical activity on Indigenous communities (Cairnduff 2001). Nelson (2009) drawing on the work of Jonas and Langton (1994) indicates that an ‘Aboriginal person is a descendant of an Indigenous inhabitant of Australia, identifi es as an Aboriginal, and is recognised as Aboriginal by members of the community in which he or she lives’ (p. 97). Even this defi nition has the potential to be politically charged. At a general level, the collective terms ‘Indigenous’ (capitalised) and ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander’ people (title capitalised) appear to be broadly acceptable terms. Indigenous groups cannot be considered to be homogenous as there is much diversity between and within groups (Nelson et al. 2010; Parker et al. 2006). It is therefore important this report is not viewed as taking an essentialist view of who Indigenous people are and how they develop. Rather, this paper attempts to describe and discuss the experiences of some individuals and their communities in site-specifi c surfi ng programs.

Relationship between quality certification and financial and non-financial performance of organizations

At present, many countries have either embraced ISO9001 or used it as the basis of their national quality certification systems. However, few studies have been conducted to examine the benefits companies’ gain from achieving and implementing ISO9001 standards (Chikuku et al. 2012; Psomas et al. 2013; Sampaio et al. 2011a,b). Analysis has brought much more confused and uneven results across the countries. Turning to the experience of Malaysia, this country has witnessed a spectacular growth at an average rate of 9.89% per annum of ISO certificates issued to companies operating within its borders (ISO Survey 2012). While many companies rush to be ISO 9001 certified whether this brings about better benefits (both the financial and the non-financial) is still an open question. In this study, the research problems were first formulated from the literature and then a questionnaire survey was conducted to test the hypotheses. A survey was administered to chief executives officers and managers across manufacturing and service organizations in Malaysia. Multivariate analysis and SPSS macro developed by Preacher and Hayes were used as statistical techniques to the financial and non-financial benefits of ISO9001 certification. The survey instrument was a two-page questionnaire comprising three sections. The first section of the questionnaire covered the company’s profile. The second section consisted of 25 items on internal benefits and third section consisted of 7 items on external benefits measured on 1–5 Likert scale to assess the benefits of ISO9001 certification. Total 201 valid responses were received. Results of the study indicate that there was no significant direct relationship between ISO9001 certification and organizational financial performance, while strong statistical evidence was found to support the direct relationship between ISO9001 certification and non-financial performance. The findings of the study discovered that financial performance is actually directly related to two non-financial measures, namely quality performance and local and international business performance, which are directly and significantly influenced by ISO9001 certification. Therefore non-financial performance measures are involved in the mediational process. The findings will assist practitioners in taking right courses of action that make the implementation of this standard more effective. For example, the study findings study suggests that companies should put emphasize on nonfinancial factors to improve their financial performance.

How can evaluative thinking and practice inform performance models for organizations and personnel

In the world today there are many ways in which we measure, count and determine whether something is worth the effort or not. In Australia and many other countries, new government legislation is requiring government-funded entities to become more transparent in their practice and to develop a more cohesive narrative about the worth, or impact, for the betterment of society. This places the executives of such entities in a position of needing evaluative thinking and practice to guide how they may build the narrative that documents and demonstrates this type of impact. In thinking about where to start, executives, project and program managers may consider this workshop as a professional development opportunity to explore both the intended and unintended consequences of performance models as tools of evaluation. This workshop will offer participants an opportunity to unpack the place of performance models as an evaluative tool through the following: · What shape does an ethical, sound and valid performance measure for an organization or personnel take? · What role does cultural specificity play in the design and development of a performance model for an organization or for personnel? · How are stakeholders able to identify risk during the design and development of such models? · When and where will dissemination strategies be required? · And so what? How can you determine that your performance model implementation has made a difference now or in the future?

Bayesian estimation of small effects in exercise and sports science

The aim of this paper is to provide a Bayesian formulation of the so-called magnitude-based inference approach to quantifying and interpreting effects, and in a case study example provide accurate probabilistic statements that correspond to the intended magnitude-based inferences. The model is described in the context of a published small-scale athlete study which employed a magnitude-based inference approach to compare the effect of two altitude training regimens (live high-train low (LHTL), and intermittent hypoxic exposure (IHE)) on running performance and blood measurements of elite triathletes. The posterior distributions, and corresponding point and interval estimates, for the parameters and associated effects and comparisons of interest, were estimated using Markov chain Monte Carlo simulations. The Bayesian analysis was shown to provide more direct probabilistic comparisons of treatments and able to identify small effects of interest. The approach avoided asymptotic assumptions and overcame issues such as multiple testing. Bayesian analysis of unscaled effects showed a probability of 0.96 that LHTL yields a substantially greater increase in hemoglobin mass than IHE, a 0.93 probability of a substantially greater improvement in running economy and a greater than 0.96 probability that both IHE and LHTL yield a substantially greater improvement in maximum blood lactate concentration compared to a Placebo. The conclusions are consistent with those obtained using a ‘magnitude-based inference’ approach that has been promoted in the field. The paper demonstrates that a fully Bayesian analysis is a simple and effective way of analysing small effects, providing a rich set of results that are straightforward to interpret in terms of probabilistic statements.

Organizing (with) Thirdness. A Dialogic Understanding of Bicultural Interactions in Organizations

This conceptual paper examines bicultural interactions in organizations as they are experienced by the involved individuals. Notions from Bakhtinian dialogism are used in order to conceptualize the sensemaking opportunities provided by the encounter with a cultural otherness. It is argued that in such bicultural situations, because of the lack of intimate understanding of the other culture, the third element in the dialogic relation - ‘thirdness’, i.e. the relation itself, without which there would be no sensemaking potential - may be lacking as a result of the distorting combination of projected similarity and stereotyping, added to certain counterproductive organizational dynamics. Therefore, it is suggested that, to make the bicultural work interaction the rewarding relation it could be, thirdness should be coordinated by management in a way that can transcend the spontaneous negative dynamics of the confrontational situation. If management was to fail to organize (with) thirdness appropriately, bringing in a third party could be a possible alternative in order to initiate the necessary mutual understanding that should eventually lead to a fruitful work interaction.

Sensemaking in the Third Space - Essays on French-Finnish Bicultural Experiences in Organizations and Their Narratives (summary section only)

Research on cross-cultural and intercultural aspects in organizations has been traditionally conducted from an objectivist, functionalist perspective, with culture treated as an independent variable, and often the key explanatory factor. In order to do justice to the ontological relativity of the phenomena studied, more subjectivist research on intercultural interactions, and especially on their relationships with the dynamics of cultural identity construction, is needed. The present research seeks to address this gap by focusing on bicultural interactions in organizations, as they are experienced by the involved individuals. It is argued that such bicultural situations see the emergence of a space of hybridity, which is here called a ‘third space’, and which can be understood as providing ‘occasions for sensemaking’: it is this individual sensemaking that is of particular interest in the empirical narrative study. A first overall aim of the study is to reach an understanding of the dynamics of bicultural interactions in organizations; an understanding not only of the potential for learning and emancipatory sensemaking, but also of the possibility of conflict and alienatory ordering (this is mainly addressed in the theoretical essays 1 and 2). Further, a second overall aim of the study is to analyze the reflexive identity construction of four young French expatriates involved in such bicultural interactions in organizations in Finland, in order to examine the extent to which their expatriation experiences have allowed for an emancipatory opportunity in their cases (in essays 3 and 4). The primary theoretical contribution in this study lies in its new articulation of the dynamics of bicultural interactions in organizations. The ways in which the empirical material is analyzed bring about methodological contributions: since the expatriates’ accounts are bound to be some kind of construction, the analysis is made from angles that point to how the self-narratives construct reality. There are two such angles here: a ‘performative’ one and a ‘spatial’ one. The most important empirical contributions lie in the analysis of, on the one hand, the alternative uses that the young expatriates made of the notion of ‘national culture’ in their self-narratives, and, on the other hand, their ‘narrative practices of the third space’: their politics of escape or stabilization, their exploration of space or search for place, their emancipation from their origin or return to home as only horizon.

The struggle for protection of environmental refugees: who's responsibility? Discourses from the United Nations and Non-governmental organizations

This thesis identifies, examines and problematizes some of the discourses that have so far come to light on the issue of protection for environmental refugees. By analyzing the discourses produced by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and two non-governmental organizations - the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) and Equity and Justice Working Group Bangladesh (EquityBD), I examine the struggling discourses that have emerged about how protection for environmental refugees has been interpreted. To do this, I rely on Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe's theory and method of discourse analysis. The results show that responsibilization is the main point of struggle in the discussions on the protection of environmental refugees. As a floating signifier, it was utilized by the discourses produced by the UNCHR and the selected NGOs in contingent ways and with different political objectives. The UNHCR discourse responsibilized both the environmental refugees for their own protection and the individual states. The EJF and EquityBD, by contrast, allocated responsibility for the protection of environmental refugees to the international community. These contingent understandings of responsibilization necessitated different justifications. While the EJF discourse relied on humanitarianism for the assistance of environmental refugees, the EquityBD discourse constructed a rights based, more permanent solution. The humanitarian based discourse of the EJF was found to be inextricably linked with the neoliberal discourse produced by the UNHCR. Both these discourses encouraged environmental refugees to stay in their homelands, undermining the politics of protection. Another way in which protection was undermined was by UNHCR's discourse on securitization. In this context, climate change induced displacement became threat to developed countries, the global economy and transnational classes. The struggling discourses about who/what has been allocated responsibility for the protection of environmental refugees also meant that identities of the displaced be constructed in specific ways. While the UNHCR discourse constructed as voluntary migrants and predators, the EJF and EquityBD discourses portrayed them as victims. However, even though the EJF discourse constructed them as victims, their reliance on humanitarianism could also be interpreted as a way of giving the environmental refugee a predator like identity. These discourses on responsibilization and identity formation clashed with each other in the aim of achieving a hegemonic position in discussions and debates about the protection of environmental refugees.

Elämänmuutoksen, jännityksen ja asiantuntijuuden representointi Veikkaus Oy:n mainonnassa vuosina 1970— 2006

Aim of this master's thesis paper for consumer economics, is to research gambling advertisements in Finland over a period of 35 years, from 1970 to 2006. Veikkaus Oy (later Veikkaus), was founded in 1940, as one of the three licensed gambling organizations in Finland. Material for the current research comprised 1494 advertisements published by Veikkaus in newspapers and magazines at that time. Veikkaus has the exclusive licence to organize lotto games, sport games, instant games and other draw games in Finland. The other two operators, The Finnish Slot Machine Association RAY and Fintoto (on-track horse betting), were not included in the current analysis. This study has been completed according to research contract and grand by the Finnish Foundation for Gaming Research (Pelitoiminnan tutkimussäätiö). In general, advertisements reflect surrounding culture and time, and their message is built on stratified meanings, symbols and codes. Advertising draws the viewer's attention, introduces the advertised subject, and finally, affects the individual's consumption habits. However, advertisements not only work on individual level, but also influence public perception of the advertised product. Firstly, in order to assess gambling as a phenomenon, this paper discusses gambling as consumer behaviour, and also reviews history of gambling in Finland. Winning is a major feature of gambling, and dreaming about positive change of life is a centre of most gambling ads. However, perceived excitement through risk of losing can also be featured in gambling ads. Secondly, this study utilizes Veikkaus’ large advertising archives, were advertising data is analyzed by content analysis and the semiotic analysis. Two methods have been employed to support analyzing outcome in a synergistic way. Content analysis helps to achieve accuracy and comprehensiveness. Semiotic analysis allows deeper and more sensitive analysis to emerged findings and occurrences. It is important to understand the advertised product, as advertising is bound to the culture and time. Hence, to analyze advertising, it is important to understand the environment where the ads appear. Content analysis of Veikkaus data discovered the main gambling and principal advertisement style for each.period. Interestingly, nearly half of Veikkaus’ advertisements promoted topic other than “just winning the bet”. Games of change, like Lotto, typically advertised indirectly represented dreams about winning. In the category of skill gambling, features were represented as investment, and the excitement of sporting expertise was emphasized. In addition, there were a number of gambling ads that emphasize social responsibility of Veikkaus as a government guided organization. Semiotic methods were employed to further elaborate on findings of content analysis. Dreaming in the advertisements was represented by the product of symbols, (e.g. cars and homes) that were found to have significance connection with each other. Thus, advertising represents change of life obtained by the winning. Interestingly, gambling ads promoting jackpots were often representing religious symbolisms. Ads promoting social responsibility were found to be the most common during economical depression of the 90’s. Deeper analysis showed that at that time, advertisements frequently represented depression-related meanings, such as unemployment and bank loans. Skill gaming ads were often represented by sports expertise – late 90’s, their number started sky rocketing, and continued increasing until 2006 (when this study ended). One may conclude that sport betting draws its meanings from the relevant consumer culture, and from the rules and features of the betted sport.

The struggle for protection of environmental refugees: who's responsibility? Discourses from the United Nations and Non-governmental organizations

This thesis identifies, examines and problematizes some of the discourses that have so far come to light on the issue of protection for environmental refugees. By analyzing the discourses produced by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and two non-governmental organizations - the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) and Equity and Justice Working Group Bangladesh (EquityBD), I examine the struggling discourses that have emerged about how protection for environmental refugees has been interpreted. To do this, I rely on Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe's theory and method of discourse analysis. The results show that responsibilization is the main point of struggle in the discussions on the protection of environmental refugees. As a floating signifier, it was utilized by the discourses produced by the UNCHR and the selected NGOs in contingent ways and with different political objectives. The UNHCR discourse responsibilized both the environmental refugees for their own protection and the individual states. The EJF and EquityBD, by contrast, allocated responsibility for the protection of environmental refugees to the international community. These contingent understandings of responsibilization necessitated different justifications. While the EJF discourse relied on humanitarianism for the assistance of environmental refugees, the EquityBD discourse constructed a rights based, more permanent solution. The humanitarian based discourse of the EJF was found to be inextricably linked with the neoliberal discourse produced by the UNHCR. Both these discourses encouraged environmental refugees to stay in their homelands, undermining the politics of protection. Another way in which protection was undermined was by UNHCR's discourse on securitization. In this context, climate change induced displacement became threat to developed countries, the global economy and transnational classes. The struggling discourses about who/what has been allocated responsibility for the protection of environmental refugees also meant that identities of the displaced be constructed in specific ways. While the UNHCR discourse constructed as voluntary migrants and predators, the EJF and EquityBD discourses portrayed them as victims. However, even though the EJF discourse constructed them as victims, their reliance on humanitarianism could also be interpreted as a way of giving the environmental refugee a predator like identity. These discourses on responsibilization and identity formation clashed with each other in the aim of achieving a hegemonic position in discussions and debates about the protection of environmental refugees.