Conflict and seduction in the public sphere

In a critical but sympathetic reading of Habermas’s work (1984, 1987a, 1987b, 2003), Luke Goode (2005) recently sought to rework his theory of deliberative democracy in an age of mediated and increasingly digital public spheres. Taking a different approach, Alan McKee (2005) challenged the culture- and class-bound strictures of Habermasian rationalism, instead pursuing a more radically pluralist account of postmodern public spheres. The editors of this special section of Media, Culture & Society invited us to discuss our differing approaches to the public sphere. Goode holds that the institutional bases of contemporary public spheres (political parties, educational institutions or public media) remain of critical importance, albeit in the context of a kaleidoscopic array of unofficial and informal micro-publics, both localized and de-territorialized. In contrast, McKee sustains a ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’ toward the official, hegemonic institutions of the public sphere since they tend to exclude and delegitimize discourses and practices that challenge their polite middle-class norms. McKee’s recent research has focused on sexual cultures, particularly among youth (McKee, 2011). Goode’s recent work has examined new social media spaces, particularly in relation to news and public debate (e.g. Goode, 2009; Goode et al., 2011). Consequently, our discussion turned to a domain which links our interests: after Goode discussed some of his recent research on (in)civility on YouTube as a new media public sphere, McKee challenged him to consider the case of pornographic websites modelled on social media sites.1 He identifies a greater degree of ‘civility’ in these pornographic sibling sites than on YouTube, requiring careful consideration of what constitutes a ‘public sphere’ in contemporary digital culture. Such sites represent an environment that shatters the opposition of public and private interest, affording public engagement on matters of the body, of intimacy, of gender politics, of pleasure and desire – said by many critics to be ruled out of court in Habermasian theory. Such environments also trouble traditional binaries between the cognitive and the affective, and between the performative and the deliberative. In what follows we explore the differences between our approaches in the form of a dialogue. As is often the case, our approaches seemed less at odds after engaging in conversation than may have initially appeared. But important differences of emphasis remain.

Assessing the Impact of Sensor Accuracy and Sensor Choice on Air Traffic Conflict Risk Estimation using Risk-Ratio Concepts

One of the primary desired capabilities of any future air traffic separation management system is the ability to provide early conflict detection and resolution effectively and efficiently. In this paper, we consider the risk of conflict as a primary measurement to be used for early conflict detection. This paper focuses on developing a novel approach to assess the impact of different measurement uncertainty models on the estimated risk of conflict. The measurement uncertainty model can be used to represent different sensor accuracy and sensor choices. Our study demonstrates the value of modelling measurement uncertainty in the conflict risk estimation problem and presents techniques providing a means of assessing sensor requirements to achieve desired conflict detection performance.

Escalation of conflict in large private family businesses

This study investigates escalation of intra-familial conflicts in family top management teams. Using a Critical Incident Technique approach, this study uses interviews to collect data from 23 family and non-family individuals and groups within six large-scale privately-held family businesses in Indonesia. The study develops a theoretical model to explain why family business conflicts escalate and become destructive. An inductive content analysis found that the use of a dominating strategy by both parties in dealing with conflict, the expression of negative emotions, and the involvement of non-family employees are more likely to cause escalation. This study contributes to the theory of family business conflict to help family business more satisfying and productive.

Child mental health after parental separation: The impact of resident/non-resident parenting, parent mental health, conflict and socioeconomics

Children of separated parents tend to have poorer mental health than children of intact families. Explanations to date have tended to focus on resident mothers, neglecting the potential importance of non-resident fathers. Using recent data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children, and independent teacher-reports of child mental health, this study 1) compares the mental health of children with resident and non-resident fathers and 2) explores predictors of poor mental health among children with a non-resident father. Children with a non-resident father had poorer mental health than those with a resident father, but this difference was explained fully by exposure to parental conflict, and to a lesser extent by socioeconomic status, parenting, and parent mental health. For children with a non-resident father, the strongest predictors of child mental health were mothers' employment and maternal parenting consistency. Policy implications are discussed.

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.

Analysing the Sri Lankan conflict using Michael Mann's four-dimensional model of social power

This thesis provides an overview of the Sri Lankan civil war with a view to identifying some of the factors that contributed to the dispute between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. It adopts a multi-causal explanation of the conflict by reference to the theories of social power developed by Michael Mann. The conflict has been variously described as an ethnic or political conflict, or has been characterised as a determined by a number of interacting factors (including colonialism, ethnicity, religion, economy, politics and globalisation). Mann’s four-dimensional model of social power is deployed to analyse the causal relationships, together with their inter-connections, which clarify the origins of the dispute. It argues that Mann’s theoretical framework helps to highlight some of the interconnected elements that contributed to the conflict.

Land use conflict across the airport fence : competing urban policy, planning and priority in Australia

Land use planning within and surrounding privatised Australian capital city airports is a fragmented process as a result of: current legislative and policy frameworks; competing stakeholder priorities and interests; and inadequate coordination and disjointed decision-making. Three Australian case studies are examined to detail the context of airport and regional land use planning. Stakeholder Land Use Forums within each case study have served to inform the procedural dynamics and relationships between airport and regional land use decision-making. This article identifies significant themes and stakeholder perspectives regarding on-airport development and broader urban land use policy and planning. First, it outlines the concept of the “airport city” and examines the model of airport and regional “interfaces.” Then, it details the policy context that differentiates on-airport land use planning from planning within the surrounding region. The article then analyses the results of the Land Use Forums identifying key themes within the shared and reciprocal interfaces of governance, environment, economic development and infrastructure. The article concludes by detailing the implications of this research to broader urban planning and highlights the core issues contributing to the fragmentation of airport and regional land use planning policy.

The nature of intra-familial conflict in large-scale privately-held family businesses in Indonesia

This thesis is a qualitative study aimed at better capturing the complexity of conflict in family businesses. An inductive content analysis revealed two important issues: the dynamics of intergenerational conflicts and the escalation process of conflicts. The results demonstrated that conflicts are more likely to be intergenerational than intra-generational due to the role of senior members in daily business operations, generational differences, and a perception gap that exist between generations concerning each other’s competencies in doing the business. Furthermore, the set of factors contributing to conflict escalation is related to how family members handle the conflict, how they manage their emotions, and how they are able to avoid non-family employee involvement. These findings provide a foundation for taking preventative actions, implementing strategies for managing conflicts or devising effective solutions for resolving conflicts before they become more destructive.

Australia's mining interests within Nigeria and Libya : policies, corruption and conflict

Crude petroleum remains the single most imported commodity into Australia and is sourced from a number of countries around the world (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), 2011a). While interest in crude petroleum is widespread, in recent years Australia's focus has been drawn to the continent of Africa, where increased political stability, economic recovery and an improved investment climate has made one of the largest oil reserves in the world increasingly more attractive. Despite improvement across the continent, there remain a number of risks which have the potential to significantly damage Australia's economic interests in the petroleum sector,including government policies and legislation, corruption and conflict. The longest exporters of crude petroleum products to Australia – Nigeria and Libya – have been subject to these factors in recent years and, accordingly, are the focus of this paper. Once identified, the impact of political instability, conflict, government corruption and other risk factors to Australia's mining interests within these countries is examined, and efforts to manage such risks are discussed.

Mediating conflict and control : practice challenges for nurses working in palliative care

A work-based professional development program was offered to a group of registered nurses working in palliative care. The goal of the program was to improve skills in psychosocial care (Yates et al., 1996). Participants were encouraged to reflect critically on their practice experience within a group setting. The focus of the group discussion and reflection were shared practice incidents. Each participant was given the opportunity to identify and describe an incident from their professional practice that presented a challenging issue within palliative nursing. This paper explores the themes of conflict and control, evident within the collection of fifteen practice incidents and discusses the nurses role as mediator. The concepts of patient advocacy and professional autonomy are challenged through the nurses experience of providing care within a hierarchical and bureaucratic health service. The outcome of reflection for the organization is most effective when shared experience and collective action (rather than individual practice) are the focus.

Role salience and support as moderators of demand/conflict relationships in China

This study examined the effects of role demand on both work–family conflict and family–work conflict, and the moderating effects of role salience and support on these relationships. Based on 391 dual-career (managerial and blue-collar employees) couples from a Taiwanese company in China, the results of this survey study showed clear gender differences in the patterns of relationships observed. For men, the most important demands that negatively impacted on work–family conflict were frequency of overtime and frequency of socializing for work purposes (yingchou), and supervisory support buffered the negative impact of frequent overtime. For women however, strong supervisory support and low work role salience were more important for reducing work–family conflict, and there was no significant main effect found for any of the role demand factors. Furthermore, women with high work role salience were more likely to feel the impact of yingchou on work–family conflict. In the family domain, the most influential demand for men was hours spent on household tasks, but for women, it was the frequency of family-related leave. Interestingly, males reported higher family role salience than females and spouse support intensified rather than buffered the positive impact of hours spent on household tasks on family–work conflict for males.

The role of conflict in determining consensus on quality in Wikipedia articles

This paper presents research that investigated the role of conflict in the editorial process of the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia. The study used a grounded approach to analyzing 147 conversations about quality from the archived history of the Wikipedia article 'Australia'. It found that conflict in Wikipedia is a generative friction, regulated by references to policy as part of a coordinated effort within the community to improve the quality of articles.

A case study analysis of Israeli Organised Crime (IOC) (1990-2005) : applying the Crime Business Analysis Matrix (CBAM)

Israeli Organised Crime (IOC) gained prominence in the 1990s for its involvement in the manufacturing and wholesale distribution of MDMA through traditional trafficking networks across Europe. Equipped with astute business acumen and an entrepreneurial spirit, IOC dominated MDMA trafficking in Europe for more than a decade and remains as a major participant in this drug market. The paper analyses the entrepreneurial activities of IOC within the context of the MDMA market in Europe between 1990 and 2005 using the Crime Business Analysis Matrix (CBAM) as proffered by Dean, et al (2010). The study is in two parts. Part A provides a review of the literature as it pertains to IOC and its involvement in the European drug market, while Part B provides a qualitative analysis of their criminal business practices and entrepreneurialism of IOC within this context.

What roles do team climate, roster control, and work life conflict play in shiftworkers’ fatigue longitudinally?

The study aimed to examine shiftworkers fatigue and the longitudinal relationships that impact on fatigue such as team climate, work life conflict, control of shifts and shift type in shift working nurses. We used a quantitative survey methodology and analysed data with a moderated hierarchical multiple regression. After matching across two time periods 18 months apart, the sample consisted of 166 nurses from one Australian hospital. Of these nurses, 61 worked two rotating day shifts (morning & afternoon/evening) and 105 were rotating shiftworkers who worked three shifts (morning afternoon/evening and nights). The findings suggest that control over shift scheduling can have significant effects on fatigue for both two-shift and three-shift workers. A significant negative relationship between positive team climate and fatigue was moderated by shift type. At both Time 1 and Time 2, work life conflict was the strongest predictor of concurrent fatigue, but over time it was not.