Although international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) rely on their governance structures to pursue crucial missions across national borders, the extant literature is lacking theoretical ...insights and empirical evidence that explain the influence of such structures on INGO effectiveness. Using organizational and psychological theories, socially constructed effectiveness measurement, and data on 152 U.S.-based INGOs, this study explores how centralization, a fundamental structural characteristic, relates to an INGO’s effectiveness as perceived by its own leader versus by leaders of other INGOs. Quantitative and qualitative findings suggest that centralized, unitary INGOs tend to have stronger internally perceived effectiveness but weaker externally perceived effectiveness reputations than decentralized INGOs do. This perceptual tension may inform INGO governance reforms and future research on organizational structure, effectiveness, and leadership.
As much of nonprofit management research on inter‐organizational collaboration has focused on various macro and meso aspects of collaboration, little is known about micro aspects such as the ...attitudes of individuals involved in collaboration. To contribute to a more holistic and multidisciplinary understanding of collaboration, this study draws upon social psychological theories about attitude structure and attitudinal ambivalence to explore the variation in attitudes that nonprofit leaders have toward collaboration opportunities. Based on interviews with the leaders of 20 US‐based transnational nonprofits in the field of child welfare, the study qualitatively identifies four major types of attitudes toward collaboration opportunities: Avid, Averse, Apprehensive, and Apathetic. The study then presents several propositions to facilitate a future research program for the integration of attitudes into collaboration research. Practical policy and managerial implications are also discussed.
Collaborative relations between international and local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have often been analysed in terms of their nature and impacts. This study explores several local ...organizational characteristics that may explain the existence of such collaboration in the first place. Drawing upon a set of organizational theories and original data from a recent survey of 223 local NGOs in Lebanon, the study offers novel empirical evidence that international NGOs may reach and empower a subset of local NGOs better than others, which could exert distributional and undesirable effects on local NGO ecosystems.
Falls among the elderly are an important global health problem. This study assesses knowledge regarding risk factors of falls, as well as attitudes and practices towards fall prevention among older ...adults in the rural community. A cross-sectional study was performed in four rural communes in Thai Binh province, Vietnam. A total of 3038 older people were recruited. Knowledge was assessed by using Falls Risk Awareness Questionnaire. Questions about attitudes were based on the Health Belief Model. Other questions regarding attitudes and practices regarding fall prevention were also asked. Multivariate regression was performed to identify associated factors with knowledge, attitudes and practices. Results showed that the mean score of knowledge regarding risk factors of falls was low at 11.37/32. The highest scores were observed in terms of drug aspects, followed by medical condition and behavioural aspects. Older people mostly agreed with perceived severity, susceptibility, benefits and barriers, but their attitudes about cues to action, health motivation and actions were most neutral. Meanwhile, more than half of the participants practised recommended fall preventive measures. To conclude, health education interventions and fall prevention services that enhance community-based fall prevention knowledge, attitudes and practices for older adults should be performed to reduce the burden of falls in this population.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Increasingly, organisations flexibly outsource work on a temporary basis to a global audience of workers. This so-called crowdsourcing has been applied successfully to a range of tasks, from ...translating text and annotating images, to collecting information during crisis situations and hiring skilled workers to build complex software. While traditionally these tasks have been small and could be completed by non-professionals, organisations are now starting to crowdsource larger, more complex tasks to experts in their respective fields. These tasks include, for example, software development and testing, web design and product marketing. While this emerging expert crowdsourcing offers flexibility and potentially lower costs, it also raises new challenges, as workers can be highly heterogeneous, both in their costs and in the quality of the work they produce. Specifically, the utility of each outsourced task is uncertain and can vary significantly between distinct workers and even between subsequent tasks assigned to the same worker. Furthermore, in realistic settings, workers have limits on the amount of work they can perform and the employer will have a fixed budget for paying workers. Given this uncertainty and the relevant constraints, the objective of the employer is to assign tasks to workers in order to maximise the overall utility achieved. To formalise this expert crowdsourcing problem, we introduce a novel multi-armed bandit (MAB) model, the bounded MAB. Furthermore, we develop an algorithm to solve it efficiently, called bounded ε-first, which proceeds in two stages: exploration and exploitation. During exploration, it first uses εB of its total budget B to learn estimates of the workers' quality characteristics. Then, during exploitation, it uses the remaining (1−ε)B to maximise the total utility based on those estimates. Using this technique allows us to derive an O(B23) upper bound on its performance regret (i.e., the expected difference in utility between our algorithm and the optimum), which means that as the budget B increases, the regret tends to 0. In addition to this theoretical advance, we apply our algorithm to real-world data from oDesk, a prominent expert crowdsourcing site. Using data from real projects, including historic project budgets, expert costs and quality ratings, we show that our algorithm outperforms existing crowdsourcing methods by up to 300%, while achieving up to 95% of a hypothetical optimum with full information.
Student attendance is both a critical input and intermediate output of the education production function. However, the malleable classroom-level determinants of student attendance are poorly ...understood. We estimate the causal effect of class size, class composition, and observable teacher qualifications on student attendance by leveraging the random classroom assignments made by Tennessee’s Student/Teacher Achievement Ratio (STAR) Project class size experiment. A 10-student increase in class size increases the probability of being chronically absent by about 3 percentage points (21%). For Black students, random assignment to a Black teacher reduces the probability of chronic absence by 3.1 percentage points (26%). However, naive mediation analyses suggest that attendance is not a mechanism through which class size and same-race teachers improve student achievement.
High levels of air pollutants in Vietnam, especially particulate matters including PM2.5, can be important risk factors for respiratory diseases among children of the country. However, few studies on ...the effects of ambient air pollution on human health have been conducted in Vietnam so far. The aim of this study is to examine the association between PM2.5 and hospital admission due to acute lower respiratory infection (ALRI) among children aged < 5 years old in Ho Chi Minh city, the largest city of Vietnam. Data relating PM2.5 and hospital admission were collected from February 2016–December 2017 and a time series regression analysis was performed to examine the relationship between PM2.5 and hospital admission including the delayed effect up to three days prior to the admission. We found that each 10 μg/m3 increase in PM2.5 was associated with an increase of 3.51 (95%CI: 0.96–6.12) risk of ALRI admission among children. According to the analysis, male children are more sensitive to exposure to PM2.5 than females, while children exposed to PM2.5 are more likely to be infected with acute bronchiolitis than with pneumonia. The study demonstrated that young children in HCMC are at increased risk of ALRI admissions due to the high level of PM2.5 concentration in the city's ambient air.
Display omitted
•First study on the impact of PM2.5 on acute lower respiratory infection (ALRI) in Vietnam.•Each 10 μg/m3 increase in PM2.5 was associated with an increase of 3.51% risk of ALRI admission.•Boys were more sensitive to PM2.5 exposure than girls.•Children aged 1–2 years old were more sensitive than children in other age groups.•Significant association between PM2.5 and acute bronchiolitis but none for pneumonia.
This study demonstrates that high level of PM2.5 increased the risk of admission for acute lower respiratory infection among Vietnamese children, especially for acute bronchiolitis and among males.
•Characterization of ITZ in composite model: gravels immersed in cementitious paste.•ITZ structure more affected by binder nature and properties than aggregate porosity.•Physical rather than chemical ...disturbance over a greater distance from aggregate.•ITZ accentuated by the increase in the volume content of SSD porous aggregates.
The preservation of natural resources and the limitation of CO2 emissions contribute to sustainable development. In the context of concrete design, this contribution is achieved by using local or recycled aggregates. However, such aggregates can be porous and of low quality, adversely affecting the compressive strength and the durability of concrete. To gain a preliminary understanding, an experimental programme was designed for an elementary model (EM) composed of paste and gravel. This paper analyses the impact of the nature (highly or only slightly porous), the moisture state (saturated surface dry (SSD) or oven dry (OD)) and the volume content of aggregates, together with the binder nature, on i) the water porosity of the EM (WP EM), and ii) the structure of the paste-aggregate interface. The results indicate that volume and water porosity of the aggregate are the two most important factors affecting WP EM. In order to better highlight the coupling between the nature of the aggregate and the nature of the binder, the porosity of the paste in the EM (WP PEM) is calculated. This calculation shows that it is the nature of the binder (water retention capacity and reactivity) rather than the aggregate porosity that mainly controls the variations of WP PEM, in comparison with the porosity of the paste hydrated (WP BP) without any aggregates. The representation of the difference between WP PEM and WP BP by a three-phase model makes it possible to assess the extent of the aggregate disturbance in the arrangement of hydration products (physical thickness of the interfacial transition zone (ITZ)). In most cases this is greater than the chemical disturbance measured with a scanning electron microscope (SEM) in combination with energy-dispersive spectroscopy (EDS). The increase in the aggregate volume content accentuates WP PEM and the ITZ physical thickness when porous aggregates (natural or recycled) in the SSD moisture state are inserted.
In recent years, the Indian Ocean Region has become central to the strategies of major global powers due to a series of geoeconomic and geopolitical factors. While China increased its influence in ...this region by opening up connections within the framework of the BRI, offering loans, and constructing infrastructures, India, with its “neighborhood first” policy, also preserved its traditional sphere of influence. Due to the rising strategic competition by powers, Indian Ocean Region was at the crossroads of great power competition, especially the strategic competition between China and India. The article was based on a comparative approach and simultaneously compared India and China’s influence in each field in the Indian Ocean region. The analysis showed that competition between China and India in the context of the two countries still has many tensions, leading to each country’s efforts to strengthen military control over the Indian Ocean region. However, this competition tends to serve as a balance between the two countries, motivating them to develop regional power rather than allowing a single dominant state to become a hegemon.
3D Printing of Highly Pure Copper Tran, Thang Q.; Chinnappan, Amutha; Lee, Jeremy Kong Yoong ...
Metals (Basel ),
07/2019, Letnik:
9, Številka:
7
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Copper has been widely used in many applications due to its outstanding properties such as malleability, high corrosion resistance, and excellent electrical and thermal conductivities. While 3D ...printing can offer many advantages from layer-by-layer fabrication, the 3D printing of highly pure copper is still challenging due to the thermal issues caused by copper’s high conductivity. This paper presents a comprehensive review of recent work on 3D printing technology of highly pure copper over the past few years. The advantages and current issues of 3D printing methods are compared while different properties of copper parts printed by these methods are summarized. Finally, we provide several potential applications of the 3D printed copper parts and an overview of current developments that could lead to new improvements in this advanced manufacturing field.
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