Framing frontier governance through territorial processes in the Brazilian Amazon

The policy intervention to enforce property rights and control deforestation frontiers is often undermined in the Brazilian Amazon, and this intervention problem is considered to be stemming from weak frontier governance. However, little has been understood how this governance can be strengthened in the context of social change. Drawing on a literature review of the Amazon development and sociological studies of space, this article argues that frontier governance is characterised by the co-generation of two territorial processes: the official settlement implementation (physical spacing) and the spontaneous settlers' shaping of the vernacular community (production of place). The co-generation process opens new deliberative space where both state and non-state actors claim authority over the intervention. Therefore, strengthening frontier governance involves empowering this emerging authority to be able to promote public engagement with sustainable development on the frontier. The article uses the regional history and ethnographic material collected in the southeast of Pará to illustrate the discussion.     

Contrasting community and corporate perceptions of sustainability: A case study within the platinum mining region of South Africa

The concept of sustainable development is debatable within the mining context as the fact that mineral resources are non-renewable makes mining inherently unsustainable. The need for a realistic definition of sustainability that can be applied to mining is important, in light of claims by the industry that sustainable development principles underpin aspects of their operations. Furthermore, the socio-economic upliftment that should logically follow the implementation of these principles is not visible in many mining areas. Within the theoretical frameworks of intermediate sustainability, our study aimed to determine the level of sustainability that is appropriate for the mining context. The evaluation of community perspectives within the Rustenburg platinum region in South Africa as a case study, based on qualitative information derived from structured questionnaires and informal interviews brings further clarity. We found out that the environmental and social costs associated with mining were high, while economic benefits to surrounding communities were low. The perceptions of community and corporations were found to contrast sharply: the reality experienced by community members fell well short of the optimistic scenarios presented in the corporate social responsibility reports of the mining companies, which has implications for the mining industry in the area. The Rustenburg region is typical of mining areas, more especially the developing world, and application of a realistic sustainable development concept here can help the mining industry elsewhere to move its operations onto a genuinely more sustainable path.     

职业指导贯穿高校人才培养工作全过程的研究

职业是经济社会分层的表征,职业指导随着经济社会和职业的发展应运而生。从就业形势、社会对高校人才培养的要求及大学毕业生职业核心竞争力缺失等方面对高校就业工作现状进行了分析,提出将职业指导融入人才培养机制、目标、方法和内容等各个层面,实现大学生有序就业,完成高校办学与社会需求之间的有效对接。     

Access and Local Government Research: Methodological Reflections

Abstract

This methodological paper draws on research from Australia to examine the question of gaining access to local governments in undertaking work on natural resource management. It is argued that a range of macro-level changes have impacted on the local government sector in Australia, and these changes have rendered access problematic for researchers. These changes include an expansion of local government roles, an increase in financial pressure within the sector, a proliferation of audit measures across local governments and a low level of respect amongst local government personnel for academics and academic work. The paper concludes by identifying the reasons why understanding access in qualitative research on local government and environmental sustainability is important.     

多尺度网络视角下企业产业扶贫资源跨区域配置及减贫效应

扶贫网络研究有助于解构扶贫资源的跨区域配置方式,挖掘扶贫要素的空间适配机制,对于巩固拓展脱贫攻坚成果同乡村振兴有效衔接有一定借鉴意义。基于上市公司精准扶贫数据构建了区域间的扶贫关联网络,运用社会网络分析法及地理加权回归（GWR）模型分析了多尺度扶贫网络格局、网络结构及其减贫效应,得到结论如下：（1）多尺度视角下的网络格局的空间异质性明显,企业的扶贫行为趋于空间邻近区域,空间指向性较强,城市间的精准扶贫关联网络呈现由“少核互联”的较稀疏网络向“多核交织”的密集型网络演进。地理距离对企业扶贫的约束仍然存在,但约束性逐渐降低。（2）扶贫关联网络复杂度不断强化,净溢出、经纪人、净受益和双向溢出四个板块间的溢出效应明显。（3）扶贫关联网络中扶贫多元化提升、区域连接数增加、区域联系强度增强及区域节点中介性提升对产业扶贫效应的发挥具有促进作用。     

基于粗集理论算法-脊波神经网络的深基坑变形预测与应用

基坑开挖变形具有非线性特性,在脊波神经网络的基础上,采用粗集理论算法优化初始权值和阈值,建立了基于粗集理论算法-脊波神经网络的深基坑变形预测模型,应用该模型对西南地区某市火车站综合交通换乘中心南广场的基坑开挖过程进行了变形预测。结果表明:粗集理论算法能够对脊波神经网络进行优化,提高了脊波神经网络基坑变形预测结果的收敛速度和泛化能力;脊波神经网络能逼近基坑变形的非线性部分,避免了模型误差影响基坑开挖变形预测精度,提高了系统整体抗干扰性能。模型的预测值与实测值之间的误差在5%以内,满足实际工程的要求。     

Converging disciplinary understandings of social aspects of resilience

Resilience thinking has developed separately in the bodies of literature on social-ecological systems, and that published principally within developmental psychology and mental health on the resilience of individuals. This paper explores what these bodies of literature might learn from the other towards a more integrated and enriched understanding of both social-ecological systems and social resilience. The psychology-based literature recognises a strong set of factors that enhance the strengths of individuals and communities, but lacks a sophisticated integration of the physical environmental context. The social-ecological systems literature offers an excellent foundation in complex adaptive systems, but tends to superimpose ecological concepts of system function onto the human domain, and needs to include an array of core social science concepts that are important to a full understanding of social-ecological systems. An example on north eastern Australia suggests how a converged understanding of social resilience could assist managers to acknowledge, enhance and foster social resilience in linked social-ecological systems.     

‘Enclosing country park land and the conservation of military heritage:’ an Ostromian interpretation of the fools’ paradise

British colonial military heritage structures in Hong Kong are in a state of ruin and government neglect. Urgent attention is required in the form of active management to avoid the loss of valuable heritage resources and the negative impact on the landscape and environment. This paper explores two possible alternatives – user participation and social entrepreneur participation – to achieve innovative solutions to rent dissipation of these structures situated in isolated areas within protected-area boundaries, with a focus on a specific case. Emphasis is placed on fostering public participation, involving the allocation of some property rights. Elinor Ostrom's diagnostic approach to common-pool resource problems is applied to both solutions to determine the conditions necessary to achieve the objectives. The discussions are informed by social entrepreneurship principles and a version of the Coase Theorem, the latter coinciding with Ostrom's view regarding the role of property rights in achieving sustainable outcomes.     

How team helping influences abusive and empowering leadership: The roles of team affective tone and performance

Leaders' perceptions of their teams are critical sources of contextual social information influencing leadership behaviors. In this paper, we extend affect-as-social-information theory to understand how and why team helping behaviors predict leaders' mistreatment of their teams in the form of abusive supervision and positive leader behavior in the form of empowering leadership, both through leaders' perceptions of team positive affective tone. In addition, based on social information processing, we examine the cue of leaders' perceptions of team task performance as a factor that helps us understand when the relationship between positive affective tone and leadership behaviors may be attenuated. In two text-based scenario studies, a video-based scenario study, and a multisource field study, we found evidence that team helping behavior is antecedent to abusive and empowering leadership behaviors and that this relationship is fully mediated by leaders' perceptions of team positive affective tone. Moreover, our results support team task performance as a factor that decreases the degree to which affective tone is related to abusive supervision. We discuss our findings as a caution to scholars' assumptions about the directionality of leader-team influence, emphasizing the need to acknowledge upward effects in workplace mistreatment research in the leader–team relationship.     

Interactional justice,leader–member exchange,and employee performance: Examining the moderating role of justice differentiation

Past research suggests that interactional justice plays a pivotal role in facilitating high‐quality leader–member exchange (LMX), with downstream implications for employee performance. However, the broader context in which these effects unfold has received scarce attention. Drawing from deontic justice and social exchange theories, we suggest that interactional justice differentiation is an important contextual moderator of the link between interactional justice and LMX. Specifically, we argue that high interactional justice differentiation attenuates the link between interactional justice and LMX, in turn influencing the effects of interactional justice on employee task and creative performance. Results from two studies employing both experimental and multisource, multilevel survey designs provide convergent support for the hypothesized model. We conclude by highlighting several key theoretical and practical implications of our findings. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.