Evaluating Communication for Development : A Framework for Social Change

Evaluating Communication for Development presents a comprehensive framework for evaluating communication for development (C4D). This framework combines the latest thinking from a number of fields in new ways. It critiques dominant instrumental, accountability-based approaches to development and evaluation and offers an alternative holistic, participatory, mixed methods approach based on systems and complexity thinking and other key concepts. It maintains a focus on power, gender and other differences and social norms. The authors have designed the framework as a way to focus on achieving sustainable social change and to continually improve and develop C4D initiatives. The benefits and rigour of this approach are supported by examples and case studies from a number of action research and evaluation capacity development projects undertaken by the authors over the past fifteen years. Building on current arguments within the fields of C4D and development, the authors reinforce the case for effective communication being a central and vital component of participatory forms of development, something that needs to be appreciated by decision makers. They also consider ways of increasing the effectiveness of evaluation capacity development from grassroots to management level in the development context, an issue of growing importance to improving the quality, effectiveness and utilisation of monitoring and evaluation studies in this field. The book includes a critical review of the key approaches, methodologies and methods that are considered effective for planning evaluation, assessing the outcomes of C4D, and engaging in continuous learning. This rigorous book is of immense theoretical and practical value to students, scholars, and professionals researching or working in development, communication and media, applied anthropology, and evaluation and program planning.

Improving communication and increasing adoption of innovations in the beef industry

Agriculture has adopted many scientific innovations that have improved productivity. The majority of innovations in agriculture have been communicated to end users through a simple diffusion and dissemination model. However, as the science underpinning the innovations becomes more complex, research and development organizations need to look at better ways to communicate their innovation to end users. This paper examines innovations in the beef industry in Australia and investigates how complex innovations are being communicated and identifies the nature and level of communication with end users and the role of intermediaries. The findings support the need for greater involvement of end users in the innovation development process and a more vibrant two-way communication process between scientists, intermediaries and end users. The results also suggest that the traditional diffusion processes are insufficient to ensure high levels of awareness and adoption.

Communication ethics in public health

As new diseases and medical conditions emerge, new community groups appear in the public health arena as consumer advocates or lobby groups seeking to affect policy or to represent ‘communities’ formed around these new diseases and conditions. The role of these groups in public health, their political status, and the extent to which they are actually representative are highly problematic for public health. These new constellations of social groups and activities challenge traditional ideas about public health decision-making and demand a rethinking of the constituency and limits of public health. Using discourse theory, symbolic interactionism, and ethological theory, the authors examine one case, exploring the perspectives of various communities on hepatitis C, and explore some issues that this raises for public health.

Conflict and communication among engineers

The trend of cultural diversity is increasing in all organizations, especially engineering ones, due to globalization, mergers, joint ventures and the movement of the workforce. The collaborative nature of projects in engineering industries requires long-term teamwork between local and international engineers. Research confirms a specific culture among engineering companies that isassumed to have a negative effect on collaboration and communication among co-workers. Multicultural workplaces have been reported as challenging environments in the engineering work culture, which calls for more research among engineering organizations. An everyday challenge for co-workers, especially in culturally diverse contexts, is handling interpersonal conflict. This perceived conflict among individuals can happen because of actual differences in tasks or relationships. Research demonstrates that task conflict at the group level has some positive effects on decision-making and innovation, while it has negative effects on employees’ work attitude and performance. However, relationship conflict at the individual level has only negative effects including frustration, tension, low job satisfaction, high employee turnover and low productivity. Outcomes of both task and relationship conflict at individual level can have long-term negative consequences like damaged organizational commitment. One of the most important sources of differences between individuals, which results in conflict, is their cultural backgrounds. First, this thesis suggests that in culturally diverse workplaces, people perceive more relationship conflict than task conflict. Second, this thesis examines interpersonal communication in culturally diverse work places. Communicating effectively in culturally diverse workplaces is crucial for today’s business. Culture has a large effect on the ways that people communicate with each other. Ineffective communication can escalate interpersonal conflict and cause frustration in the long term. Communication satisfaction, defined as enjoying the communication and feeling that the communication was appropriate and effective, has a positive effect on individuals’ psychological wellbeing. In a culturally diverse workplace, it is assumed that individuals feel less satisfied with their interpersonal communications because of their lack of knowledge about other cultures’ communication norms. To manage interpersonal interactions, many authors suggest that individuals need a specific capability, i.e., cultural intelligence (some studies use cultural competence, global intelligence or intercultural competence interchangeably). Some authors argue that cultures are synergic and convergent and the postmodernist definition of culture is just our dominant beliefs. However, other authors suggest that cultural intelligence is the strongest and most comprehensive competency for managing cross-cultural interactions, because various cultures differ so greatly at the micro level. This thesis argues that individuals with a high level of cultural intelligence perceive less interpersonal conflict and more satisfaction with their interpersonal communication. Third, this thesis also looks at individuals' perception of cultural diversity. It is suggested that level of cultural diversity plays a moderating role on all of the proposed relationships (effect of cultural intelligence on perception of relationship conflict/ communication satisfaction) This thesis examines the relationship among cultural diversity, cultural intelligence, interpersonal conflict and communication by surveying eleven companies in the oil and gas industry. The multicultural nature of companies within the oil and gas industry and the characteristics of engineering culture call for more in-depth research on interpersonal interactions. A total of 286 invitation emails were sent and 118 respondents replied to the survey, giving a 41.26 per cent response rate. All the respondents were engineers, engineering managers or practical technicians. The average age of the participants was 36.93 years and 58.82 per cent were male. Overall, 47.6 per cent of the respondents had at least a master’s degree. Totally, 42.85 per cent of the respondents were working in a country that was not their country of birth. The overall findings reveal that cultural diversity and cultural intelligence significantly influence interpersonal conflict and communication satisfaction. Further, this thesis also finds that cultural intelligence is an effective competency for dealing with the perception of interpersonal relationship conflict and communication satisfaction when the level of cultural diversity is moderate to high. This thesis suggests that cultural intelligence training is necessary to increase the level of this competency among employees in order to help them to have better understanding of other cultures. Human resource management can design these training courses with consideration for the level of cultural diversity within the organization.

Slotted cooperative communication in half duplex relay networks

In cooperative communication systems, several wireless communication terminals collaborate to form a virtual-multiple antenna array system and exploit the spatial diversity to achieve a better performance. This thesis proposes a practical slotted protocol for cooperative communication systems with half-duplex single antennas. The performance of the proposed slotted cooperative communication protocol is evaluated in terms of the pairwise error probability and the bit error rate. The proposed protocol achieves the multiple-input single-output performance bound with a novel relay ordering and scheduling strategy.

Identifying and using ehealth phobias to implement communication protocols and change cultural and social behaviours in ehealth

Standardisation of validated communication protocols that aid in the adoption of policies, methods and tools in a secure eHealth setting require a significant cultural shift among clinicians

Grunt language versus accent : the perceived communication barriers between international medical graduates and patients in Central Wheatbelt catchments

Due to the chronic shortages of GPs in Australian rural and remote regions, considerable numbers of international medical graduates (IMG) have been recruited. IMG experience many difficulties when relocating to Australia with one of the most significant being effective GP-patient communication. Given that this is essential for effective consultation it can have a substantial impact on health care. A purposive sample of seven practising GPs (five IMG, two Australian-trained doctors (ATD)) was interviewed using a semistructured face-to-face interviewing technique. GPs from Nigeria, Egypt, United Kingdom, India, Singapore and Australia participated. Interviews were transcribed and then coded. The authors used qualitative thematic analysis of interview transcripts to identify common themes. IMG-patient communication barriers were considered significant in the Wheatbelt region as identified by both IMG and ATD. ATD indicated they were aware of IMG-patient communication issues resulting in subsequent consults with patients to explain results and diagnoses. Significantly, a lack of communication between ATD and IMG also emerged, creating a further barrier to effective communication. Analysis of the data generated several important findings that rural GP networks should consider when integrating new IMG into the community. Addressing the challenges related to cross-cultural differences should be a priority, in order to enable effective communication. More open communication between ATD and IMG about GP-patient communication barriers and education programs around GP-patient communication would help both GP and patient satisfaction.

Communication and the casualisation of nursing : a critical ethnography

The contemporary working environment is being rapidly reshaped by technological, industrial and political forces. Increased global competitiveness and an emphasis on productivity have led to the appearance of alternative methods of employment, such as part-time, casual and itinerant work, allowing greater flexibility. This allows for the development of a core permanent staff and the simultaneous utilisation of casual staff according to business needs. Flexible workers across industries are generally referred to as the non-standard workforce and full-time permanent workers as the standard workforce. Even though labour flexibility favours the employer, increased opportunity for flexible work has been embraced by women for many reasons, including the gender struggle for greater economic independence and social equality. Consequently, the largely female nursing industry, both nationally and internationally, has been caught up in this wave of change. This ageing workforce has been at the forefront of the push for flexibility with recent figures showing almost half the nursing workforce is employed in non-standard capacity. In part, this has allowed women to fulfil caring roles outside their work, to ease off nearing retirement and to supplement the family income. More significantly, however, flexibility has developed as an economic management initiative, as a strategy for cost constraint. The result has been the development of a dual workforce and as suggested by Pocock, Buchanan and Campbell (2004), associated deep-seated resentment and the marginalisation of part-time and casual workers by their full-time colleagues and managers. Additionally, as nursing currently faces serious recruitment and retention problems there is urgent need to understand the factors which are underlying present discontent in the nursing profession. There is an identified gap in nursing knowledge surrounding the issues relating to recruitment and retention. Communication involves speaking, listening, reading and writing and is an interactive process which is central to the lives of humans. Workplace communication refers to human interaction, information technology, and multimedia and print. It is the means to relationship building between workers, management, and their external environment and is critical to organisational effectiveness. Communication and language are integral to nursing performance (Hall, 2005), in twenty-four hour service however increasing fragmentation due to part-time and casual work in the nursing industry means that effective communication management has become increasingly difficult. More broadly it is known that disruption to communication systems impacts negatively on consumer outcomes. Because of this gap in understanding how nurses view their contemporary nursing world, an interpretative ethnographic study which progressed to a critical ethnographic study, based on the conceptual framework of constructionism and interpretativism was used. The study site was a division within an acute health care facility, and the relationship between increasing casualisation of the nursing workforce and the experiences of communication of standard and non-standard nurses was explored. For this study, full-time standard nurses were those employed to work in a specific unit for forty hours per week. Non-standard nurses were those employed part-time in specific units or those nurses employed to work as relief pool nurses for shift short falls where needed. Nurses employed by external agencies, but required to fill in for shifts at the facility were excluded from this research. This study involved an analysis of observational, interview and focus group data of standard and non-standard nurses within this facility. Three analytical findings - the organisation of nursing work; constructing the casual nurse as other; and the function of space, situate communication within a broader discussion about non-standard work and organisational culture. The study results suggest that a significant culture of marginalisation exists for nurses who work in a non-standard capacity and that this affects communication for nurses and has implications for the quality of patient care. The discussion draws on the seven elements of marginalisation described by Hall, Stephen and Melius (1994). The arguments propose that these elements underpin a culture which supports remnants of the historically gendered stereotype "the good nurse" and these cultural values contribute to practices and behaviour which marginalise all nurses, particularly those who work less than full-time. Gender inequality is argued to be at the heart of marginalising practices because of long standing subordination of nurses by the powerful medical profession, paralleling historical subordination of women in society. This has denied nurses adequate representation and voice in decision making. The new knowledge emanating from this study extends current knowledge of factors surrounding recruitment and retention and as such contributes to an understanding of the current and complex nursing environment.

ICT shared services in the higher education sector : foundations, benefits, success factors and issues

Universities are more and more challenged by the emerging global higher education market, facilitated by advances in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). This requires them to reconsider their mission and direction in order to function effectively and efficiently, and to be responsive to changes in their environment. In the face of increasing demands and competitive pressures, Universities like other companies, seek to continuously innovate and improve their performance. Universities are considering co-operating or sharing, both internally and externally, in a wide range of areas to achieve cost effectiveness and improvements in performance. Shared services are an effective model for re-organizing to reduce costs, increase quality and create new capabilities. Shared services are not limited to the Higher Education (HE) sector. Organizations across different sectors are adopting shared services, in particular for support functions such as Finance, Accounting, Human Resources and Information Technology. While shared services has been around for more than three decades, commencing in the 1970’s in the banking sector and then been adopted by other sectors, it is an under researched domain, with little consensus on the most fundamental issues even as basic as defining what shared services is. Moreover, the interest in shared services within Higher Education is a global phenomenon. This study on shared services is situated within the Higher Education Sector of Malaysia, and originated as an outcome resulting from a national project (2005 – 2007) conducted by the Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) entitled "Knowledge, Information Communication Technology Strategic Plan (KICTSP) for Malaysian Public Higher Education"- where progress towards more collaborations via shared services was a key recommendation. The study’s primary objective was to understand the nature and potential for ICT shared services, in particular in the Malaysian HE sector; by laying a foundation in terms of definition, typologies and research agenda and deriving theoretically based conceptualisations of the potential benefits of shared services, success factors and issues of pursuing shared services. The study embarked on this objective with a literature review and pilot case study as a means to further define the context of the study, given the current under-researched status of ICT shared services and of shared services in Higher Education. This context definition phase illustrated a range of unaddressed issues; including a lack of common understanding of what shared services are, how they are formed, what objectives they full fill, who is involved etc. The study thus embarked on a further investigation of a more foundational nature with an exploratory phase that aimed to address these gaps, where a detailed archival analysis of shared services literature within the IS context was conducted to better understand shared services from an IS perspective. The IS literature on shared services was analysed in depth to report on the current status of shared services research in the IS domain; in particular definitions, objectives, stakeholders, the notion of sharing, theories used, and research methods applied were analysed, which provided a firmer base to this study’s design. The study also conducted a detailed content analysis of 36 cases (globally) of shared services implementations in the HE sector to better understand how shared services are structured within the HE sector and what is been shared. The results of the context definition phase and exploratory phase formed a firm basis in the multiple case studies phase which was designed to address the primary goals of this study (as presented above). Three case sites within the Malaysian HE sector was included in this analysis, resulting in empirically supported theoretical conceptualizations of shared services success factors, issues and benefits. A range of contributions are made through this study. First, the detailed archival analysis of shared services in Information Systems (IS) demonstrated the dearth of research on shared services within Information Systems. While the existing literature was synthesised to contribute towards an improved understanding of shared services in the IS domain, the areas that are yet under-developed and requires further exploration is identified and presented as a proposed research agenda for the field. This study also provides theoretical considerations and methodological guidelines to support the research agenda; to conduct better empirical research in this domain. A number of literatures based a priori frameworks (i.e. on the forms of sharing and shared services stakeholders etc) are derived in this phase, contributing to practice and research with early conceptualisations of critical aspects of shared services. Furthermore, the comprehensive archival analysis design presented and executed here is an exemplary approach of a systematic, pre-defined and tool-supported method to extract, analyse and report literature, and is documented as guidelines that can be applied for other similar literature analysis, with particular attention to supporting novice researchers. Second, the content analysis of 36 shared services initiatives in the Higher Education sector presented eight different types of structural arrangements for shared services, as observed in practice, and the salient dimensions along which those types can be usefully differentiated. Each of the eight structural arrangement types are defined and demonstrated through case examples, with further descriptive details and insights to what is shared and how the sharing occurs. This typology, grounded on secondary empirical evidence, can serve as a useful analytical tool for researchers investigating the shared services phenomenon further, and for practitioners considering the introduction or further development of shared services. Finally, the multiple case studies conducted in the Malaysian Higher Education sector, provided further empirical basis to instantiate the conceptual frameworks and typology derived from the prior phases and develops an empirically supported: (i) framework of issues and challenges, (ii) a preliminary theory of shared services success, and (iii) a benefits framework, for shared services in the Higher Education sector.

Future Information Communication Technology and Applications : ICFICE 2013

Focuses on the various aspects of advances in future information communication technology and its applications Presents the latest issues and progress in the area of future information communication technology Applicable to both researchers and professionals These proceedings are based on the 2013 International Conference on Future Information & Communication Engineering (ICFICE 2013), which will be held at Shenyang in China from June 24-26, 2013. The conference is open to all over the world, and participation from Asia-Pacific region is particularly encouraged. The focus of this conference is on all technical aspects of electronics, information, and communications ICFICE-13 will provide an opportunity for academic and industry professionals to discuss the latest issues and progress in the area of FICE. In addition, the conference will publish high quality papers which are closely related to the various theories and practical applications in FICE. Furthermore, we expect that the conference and its publications will be a trigger for further related research and technology improvements in this important subject. "This work was supported by the NIPA (National IT Industry Promotion Agency) of Korea Grant funded by the Korean Government (Ministry of Science, ICT & Future Planning)."

The ancient gene C12orf29 : an exploration of its role in the chordate body plan

The sheep (Ovis aries) is commonly used as a large animal model in skeletal research. Although the sheep genome has been sequenced there are still only a limited number of annotated mRNA sequences in public databases. A complementary DNA (cDNA) library was constructed to provide a generic resource for further exploration of genes that are actively expressed in bone cells in sheep. It was anticipated that the cDNA library would provide molecular tools for further research into the process of fracture repair and bone homeostasis, and add to the existing body of knowledge. One of the hallmarks of cDNA libraries has been the identification of novel genes and in this library the full open reading frame of the gene C12orf29 was cloned and characterised. This gene codes for a protein of unknown function with a molecular weight of 37 kDa. A literature search showed that no previous studies had been conducted into the biological role of C12orf29, except for some bioinformatics studies that suggested a possible link with cancer. Phylogenetic analyses revealed that C12orf29 had an ancient pedigree with a homologous gene found in some bacterial taxa. This implied that the gene was present in the last common eukaryotic ancestor, thought to have existed more than 2 billion years ago. This notion was further supported by the fact that the gene is found in taxa belonging to the two major eukaryotic branches, bikonts and unikonts. In the bikont supergroup a C12orf29-like gene was found in the single celled protist Naegleria gruberi, whereas in the unikont supergroup, encompassing the metazoa, the gene is universal to all chordate and, therefore, vertebrate species. It appears to have been lost to the majority of cnidaria and protostomes taxa; however, C12orf29-like genes have been found in the cnidarian freshwater hydra and the protostome Pacific oyster. The experimental data indicate that C12orf29 has a structural role in skeletal development and tissue homeostasis, whereas in silico analysis of the human C12orf29 promoter region suggests that its expression is potentially under the control of the NOTCH, WNT and TGF- developmental pathways, as well SOX9 and BAPX1; pathways that are all heavily involved in skeletogenesis. Taken together, this investigation provides strong evidence that C12orf29 has a very important role in the chordate body plan, in early skeletal development, cartilage homeostasis, and also a possible link with spina bifida in humans.

Communication choices to engage participation of rural Indonesian craftspeople in development projects

In participatory design projects, maintaining effective communication between facilitator and participant is essential. This paper describes the consideration given to the choice of communication modes to engage participation of rural Indonesian craftspeople over the course of a significant 3 year project that aims to grow their self-determination, design and business skill. We demonstrate the variety and subtlety of oral and written forms of communication used by the facilitator during the project. The culture, the communication skill and the influence of tacit knowledge affect the effectiveness of some modes of communication over the others, as well as the available infrastructure. Considerations are specific to the case of rural Indonesian craftspeople, but general lessons can be drawn.

A test of three interventions to promote people's communication of their consent for organ donation

People's decision to join an organ donor registry and have a discussion with family about their organ donation preference increases the likelihood that their family will consent to donation of their organs. This study explores the effectiveness of three interventions compared to a control condition to increase individual consent (registering and discussing donation wishes) for organ donation. Australian residents who had not previously communicated their consent (N = 177) were randomly allocated to complete an online survey representing either an extended theory of planned behaviour motivational intervention (strengthening intention via attitudes, subjective norms, control, moral norms and identity), a volitional intervention using constructs from the health action process approach (strengthening the translation of intentions into action using action plans and coping plans), a combined motivational and volitional intervention, or a control condition. Registering, but not discussing, intentions increased in the motivational compared to non-motivational conditions. For joining the organ donor registry, the combination of strengthening intentions (motivational) as well as forming specific action (when, where, how, and with whom for discussing) and coping (listing potential obstacles and how these may be overcome) plans (volitional) resulted in significantly higher rates of self-reported behaviour. There was no evidence for this effect on discussion.

Shouting from the ivory tower : a marketing approach to improve communication of academic research to entrepreneurs

Evidence-based practice in entrepreneurship requires effective communication of research findings. We focus on how research synopses can “promote” research to entrepreneurs. Drawing on marketing communications literature, we examine how message characteristics of research synopses affect their appeal. We demonstrate the utility of conjoint analysis in this context and find message length, media richness and source credibility to have positive influences. We find mixed support for a hypothesized negative influence of jargon, and for our predictions that participants’ involvement with academic research moderates these effects. Exploratory analyses reveal latent classes of entrepreneurs with differing preferences, particularly for message length and jargon.