What’s Our Responsibility? How Individuals and Organizations Can Proactively Address Human Trafficking

Human trafficking is regarded by Interpol as the second largest and fastest growing criminal industry in the world. This letter is submitted in response to the topic of Human Trafficking addressed in Volume 2, Issue 1. In response to the ever-increasing attention to this problem, various programs focus on the rescue of survivors in anti-trafficking efforts - sometimes overshadowing efforts to prevent human trafficking and rehabilitate those harmed. A comprehensive, responsible approach requires a system of rescue and rehabilitation with a deliberate eye toward prevention. The basic human rights of survivors are at risk of being violated by “so-called rescue missions, despite the good intentions of would-be rescuers.” At the prevention level, a firm human rights approach is needed. When interventions shift their emphasis to prevention and tackle the innate contributors to inequality, then the roots of trafficking and slavery can be firmly extirpated. By taking a thoughtful and vested approach to tackling all areas of trafficking— including prevention, rescue, and rehabilitation—resources can be used more effectively, and communities are likely to have a more extensive impact in the fight against this hideous crime against humanity.

The World Trade Organization’s Legitimacy Crisis: What Does The Beast Look Like?

The concept of legitimacy has many facets. The article reviews from a politics and law perspective the diagnosis of an ``institution in crisis''. This article is divided into three sections. It starts with a cautionary note on existing fallacies about assessing multilateral intergovernmental institutions and discusses competing schools of thought that approach the World Trade Organization (WTO) with varying perceptions of democracy and legitimacy. Section II takes up the actual debate on redesigning the WTO and directs attention to the question of balancing input and output legitimacy. Section III sketches potential avenues of research that have been neglected in the past.

The Democratizing Effects of Multilateral Organizations: A Cautionary Note on the WTO

The field of international relations has been obsessed with democracy and democratization and its effects on international cooperation for a long time. More recently, research has turned its focus on how international organizations enhance democracy. This article contributes to this debate and applies a prominent liberal framework to study the ‘outside-in’ effects of the World Trade Organization. The article offers a critical reading of democratization through IO membership. It provides for an assessment of the dominant framework put forward by Keohane et al. (2009). In doing so, it develops a set of empirical strategies to test conjectured causal mechanisms with respect to the WTO, and illustrates the potential application by drawing on selected empirical evidence from trade politics. Finally, it proposes a number of analytical revisions to the liberal framework and outlines avenues for future research.

Keeping citizens, companies, and organizations informed by Web KnowARR

For the main part, electronic government (or e-government for short) aims to put digital public services at disposal for citizens, companies, and organizations. To that end, in particular, e-government comprises the application of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) to support government operations and provide better governmental services (Fraga, 2002) as possible with traditional means. Accordingly, e-government services go further as traditional governmental services and aim to fundamentally alter the processes in which public services are generated and delivered, after this manner transforming the entire spectrum of relationships of public bodies with its citizens, businesses and other government agencies (Leitner, 2003). To implement this transformation, one of the most important points is to inform the citizen, business, and/or other government agencies faithfully and in an accessible way. This allows all the partaking participants of governmental affairs for a transition from passive information access to active participation (Palvia and Sharma, 2007). In addition, by a corresponding handling of the participants' data, a personalization towards these participants may even be accomplished. For instance, by creating significant user profiles as a kind of participants' tailored knowledge structures, a better-quality governmental service may be provided (i.e., expressed by individualized governmental services). To create such knowledge structures, thus known information (e.g., a social security number) can be enriched by vague information that may be accurate to a certain degree only. Hence, fuzzy knowledge structures can be generated, which help improve governmental-participants relationship. The Web KnowARR framework (Portmann and Thiessen, 2013; Portmann and Pedrycz, 2014; Portmann and Kaltenrieder, 2014), which I introduce in my presentation, allows just all these participants to be automatically informed about changes of Web content regarding a- respective governmental action. The name Web KnowARR thereby stands for a self-acting entity (i.e. instantiated form the conceptual framework) that knows or apprehends the Web. In this talk, the frameworks respective three main components from artificial intelligence research (i.e. knowledge aggregation, representation, and reasoning), as well as its specific use in electronic government will be briefly introduced and discussed.

The tower of David : a book of stories for the program of women's organizations

by Elma Ehrlich Levinger

Gender-Fair Language in Organizations: Attracting Potential Leaders and Promoting the Organizational Image of Gender Equality

In many languages, masculine generics are the traditional way of referring to women and men. However, gender-fair forms (e.g., feminine-masculine word pairs) can enhance gender equality: for instance, they counteract male biases in mental associations (Stahlberg et al., 2007) and evoke more neutral perceptions of gender-stereotypical professions (Merkel et al., 2013). Compared to masculine forms, use of gender-fair language in advertisements for leadership positions also helps to achieve gender equality in hiring decisions (e.g., use of German Geschäftsführerin/Geschäftsführer 'CEO fem/masc' instead of Geschäftsführer 'CEO masc', cf. Horvath & Sczesny, 2012). The present research investigates how potential applicants react to the use of gender-fair vs. masculine forms in German job ads for leadership positions (Study 1) and how the respective organization is perceived in response to these forms (Study 2). In Study 1, 251 participants showed higher intentions to apply for a leadership position when it was advertised with a feminine-masculine word pair instead of a masculine form; this was mediated by job appeal and organizational attraction. In Study 2, 154 participants perceived the organization as more discriminatory when masculine forms were used. This was mediated by the organizational image of gender equality. Thus, gender-fair language affects the social perception of a job and the respective organization and can impact social behavior in an organizational context.

Does context matter? Analysing structural and individual factors of member commitment in sport clubs

This article addresses factors that infl uence member commitment in sport clubs. Based on the theory of social action and the economic behaviour theory, it focuses not only on individual characteristics of club members but also on the corresponding structural conditions of sport clubs. Accordingly, a multilevel framework is developed for explaining member commitment in sport clubs. Different multilevel models were estimated in order to analyse the infl uences of both the individual and corresponding context Level in a sample of n = 1,699 members of 42 Swiss and German sport clubs. The multilevel analysis permitted an adequate handling of hierarchically structured data. Results of These multilevel analyses indicated that the commitment of members is not just an outcome of individual characteristics such as strong identifi cation with their club, positively perceived (collective) solidarity, satisfaction with their sport club, or voluntary engagement. It is also determined by club-specific structural conditions: commitment proves to be more probable in rural sport clubs and clubs that explicitly support sociability. Furthermore, cross-level effects in relation to member commitment were also found between the context variable sociability and the individual variable identification.

Complete Genome Sequence of Bovine Pestivirus Strain PG-2, a Second Member of the Tentative Pestivirus Species Giraffe

We report the complete genome sequence of bovine pestivirus strain PG-2. The sequence data from this virus showed that PG-2 is closely related to the giraffe pestivirus strain H138. PG-2 and H138 belong to one pestivirus species that should be considered an approved member of the genus Pestivirus.

Molecular cloning, expression analysis and assignment of the porcine tumor necrosis factor superfamily member 10 gene (TNFSF10) to SSC13q34-->q36 by fluorescence in situ hybridization and radiation hybrid mapping

We have cloned the complete coding region of the porcine TNFSF10 gene. The porcine TNFSF10 cDNA has an ORF of 870 nucleotides and shares 85% identity with human TNFSF10, and 75% and 72% identity with rat and mouse Tnfsf10 coding sequences, respectively. The deduced porcine TNFSF10 protein consists of 289 amino acids with the calculated molecular mass of 33.5 kDa and a predicted pI of 8.15. The amino acid sequence similarities correspond to 86, 72 and 70% when compared with human, rat and mouse sequences, respectively. Northern blot analysis detected TNFSF10-specific transcripts (approximately 1.7 kb) in various organs of a 10-week-old pig, suggesting ubiquitous expression. Real-time RT-PCR studies of various organs from fetal (days 73 and 98) and postnatal stages (two weeks, eight months) demonstrated developmental and tissue-specific regulation of TNFSF10 mRNA abundance. The chromosomal location of the porcine TNFSF10 gene was determined by FISH of a specific BAC clone to metaphase chromosomes. This TNFSF10 BAC clone has been assigned to SSC13q34-->q36. Additionally, the localization of the TNFSF10 gene was verified by RH mapping on the porcine IMpRH panel.