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While employers seek numerical and functional flexibility from the workforce, the power of employers to rewrite the terms of the contract unilaterally and to offer only precarious work packages undermines job security and economic security. The law provides little protection for employees, though continuity of employment and a permanent job can sometimes be established through statutory measures. Legislation may grant employees a right to more predictable work.
Experiencing emotions is part of human nature and our daily life. Sometimes, emotions can be too intense and we need or want to control them. Emotion regulation (ER) is a term that describes management of emotional experiences, regardless of whether we downregulate negative emotions or upregulate positive ones. Conscious, cognitive efforts to regulate an emotion have been subsumed under this term, as well as unconscious, implicit regulation of emotion. Effective ER has been associated with a number of positive outcomes, such as an increased general well-being, improved performance at work and in personal and professional relations, and, most importantly, enhanced mental and physical health. In contrast, deficits in ER are observed in severe psychological disorders, such as depression and anxiety. Consequently, understanding the neural underpinnings of ER has become one of the most popular topics in affective neuroscience throughout the last two decades.
Heated online communication reveals global challenges in the digital age, often fuelled by collective outrage. This article investigates how Buddhist network perspectives, paralleling digital reality, can inform mental health. Avatamsaka philosophy provides practical ways to navigate web complexities, suggesting that individual actions ripple across society. Recognising our interdependence and the impermanence of social responses deepens understanding of communication’s broader impact and dynamic interconnected worldviews. These perspectives support relational balance and cognitive flexibility, essential for alleviating online distress and conflicts, including acceptance of present circumstances and fostering motivation for positive change. Valuing connectedness while respecting individuality helps cultivate resilience, enriching therapeutic practices.
In the context of volatile markets, characterised by a need for continuous product development involving module-wise product modifications, the importance of flexibility as an attribute of products and their production system has been increasing. This paper presents a methodological approach focusing on the flexibility evaluation of modules regarding their interfaces. The subject encourages engineers and researchers to analyse and rethink the interface design and the location of module boundaries regarding change propagation. The method was validated using the Design Method Validation System (DMVS) to determine its usefulness, applicability and acceptability. The design workshop for validation was applied to a product family of trunk lids by employees of a German car manufacturer.
Morphological matrices (MMs) have traditionally been used to generate concepts by combining different means. However, exploring the vast design space resulting from the combinatorial explosion of large MMs is challenging. Additionally, all alternative means are not necessarily compatible with each other. At the same time, for a system to achieve long-term success, it is necessary for it to be flexible such that it can easily be changed. Attaining high system flexibility necessitates an elevated compatibility with alternative means of achieving system functions, which further complicates the design space exploration process. To that end, we present an approach that we refer to as multi-objective technology assortment combinatorics. It uses a shortest-path algorithm to rapidly converge to a set of promising design candidates. While this approach can take flexibility into account, it can also consider other quantifiable objectives such as the cost and performance of the system. The efficiency of this approach is demonstrated with a case study from the automotive industry.
This innovative work delves into the world of ordinary early modern women and men and their relationship with credit and debt. Elise Dermineur focuses on the rural seigneuries of Delle and Florimont in the south of Alsace, where rich archival documents allow for a fine cross-analysis of credit transactions and the reconstruction of credit networks from c.1650 to 1790. She examines the various credit instruments at ordinary people's disposal, the role of women in credit markets, and the social, legal, and economic experiences of indebtedness. The book's distinctive focus on peer-to-peer lending sheds light on how and why pre-industrial interpersonal exchanges featured flexibility, diversity, fairness, solidarity and reciprocity, and room for negotiation and renegotiation. Before Banks also offers insight into factors informing our present financial system and suggests that we can learn from the past to create a fairer society and economy.
The chapter offers a unique perspective on strategy development and the role of a strategist, highlighting the importance of context-specific thinking, flexibility, and reflection. The chapter begins by examining Dayan’s early experiences as a revolutionary guerrilla fighter, which shaped his view of war as a phenomenon that can only be understood in its local, concrete geographical, cultural, and political contexts. This dismissal of rigid, established military patterns is central to Dayan’s approach to strategy development throughout his career. The chapter then explores Dayan’s unique approach to strategy development, which was characterized by contextualized learning, the application of the 80:20 principle for setting priorities, delegation and empowerment, time management for maximum flexibility, and the use of meetings to generate and test new ideas. Dayan’s ability to hold two opposing points of view simultaneously and his love for the land of Israel are also discussed. Overall, the chapter offers valuable insights into the development of a strategist and the importance of context-specific thinking and flexibility in strategy development.
As informational leakages become a common occurrence in economic and business settings, the impact of observability on behavior in adversarial situations assumes increased importance. Consider a two-player contest where there is a probabilistic information leak about one player’s action and the recipient of the information has the ability to revise his contest expenditure in response to the leaked rival choice. How does the ability to revise and resubmit affect each contestant’s behavior? We design a laboratory experiment to study this question for two well-known contest games: the lottery contest and the all-pay auction. Equilibrium predicts that compared to simultaneous moves, the strategic asymmetry arising from the ability to revise has no effect on expected expenditure in the lottery contest. In contrast, in the all-pay auction expected expenditure is decreasing in the probability of informational leakage. Experimental data support these predictions despite overexpenditure relative to equilibrium. Furthermore, the potential observability of the rival’s action confers an advantage on the informed player not only in the all-pay auction, as theory predicts, but also in the lottery contest if the probability of leakage is high.
Much has been made about the impact of new technologies on the organisation of work in the professions. However, the gendered effect of technological change has rarely been a focus of investigation, even though these transformations are occurring in a context of persistent and pervasive gendered inequality. This paper aims to address this gap, using the case of the legal profession to understand the gendered impact of technological change. Drawing on insights developed through interviews with 33 senior legal stakeholders, the paper finds that technological change plays out in contradictory ways, offering both promise and peril for gender equality within the legal profession. We identify four key concepts – bifurcation, democratisation, humanisation, and flexibilisation – to elucidate the intricate interplay between technology and gendered legal careers, acknowledging the dual potential that technology holds for advancement and adversity. We argue for proactive measures and strategies to be adopted by legal institutions, professional associations, and employers, to harness the benefits of new technologies while mitigating the very real risks such technologies pose to a more gender-equitable future of work.
This chapter introduces the key concepts and major theoretical accounts of cognitive control (e.g., conflict monitoring, the expected value of control) that seek to answer fundamental questions about the control mechanisms, the recruitment of control resources, the selection of task-relevant processes, and the prevention of interference. Although some of the theories focus more on the regulatory processes, while others on the evaluative mechanisms, most of them complement each other. Essential questions, such as the sources of capacity limitations, the continuum between control and automaticity, cognitive flexibility as a marker, the effects of contextual changes, and individual differences in both behavioral performance and neural activity are critically discussed throughout the chapter. The most widely used behavioral paradigms and their outcome measures (e.g., congruency effects, intrusion cost, switching cost, practice effects, post-error slowing and post-error reduction of interference) are presented and linked to different conceptual constructs.
This chapter presents a brief theoretical overview of intelligence, cognition, and expertise and their theoretical basis for use in the subsequent chapters. It introduces the main models of intelligence including trait and factorial models, the triarchic mind, and multiple intelligence theories. It then reviews the approach of cognitive psychology based upon early computer modelling of human cognition, schemas and frames, production systems, and episodic and semantic memory. Finally, it reviews expert systems, expert knowledge acquisition and retrieval, practice, transfer of skill, flexibility of knowledge retrieval, and how all of these factors influence the ability of an individual to make transitions in their careers.
Most intelligence models include an array of processes and mechanisms that enable experts to generalize their knowledge and processes during career transitions and produce flexibility in cognitive structures that enable individuals to overcome limitations in applying expert knowledge and processes across domains and functional areas. These processes have been described variously as insightful thinking, induction, eduction, elaborating and mapping, novelty and metaphorical capacity, inductive inference, divergent production abilities, analogy, flexibility of use, and closure. They are discussed in light of the retrospective interviews with twenty-four elite performers in three domains (business, sports, and music) who successfully and repeatedly transitioned to higher positions within their field.
Research has shown that taking a break, or an "incubation interval," can facilitate creative problem solving. One interpretation of this phenomenon is that it allows for task-switching and attentional flexibility, which can improve creative performance. Task-switching may allow individuals to break their mental set and identify solutions that were previously unavailable. It may also encourage the alternation between idea generation and evaluation, leading to attentional flexibility. This chapter discusses the evidence for the benefits of attentional flexibility and its relationship to mind-wandering, and presents a new study on the potential sources of benefit for task-switching on creativity.
Spatial governance in Kenyan cities has been practised in a manner that is exclusionary and that denies certain groups access to resources and opportunities. In Nairobi, land tenure has been used to craft an exclusionary idea of urban citizenship. Eligibility to participate in spatial governance has been made conditional on having formally recognised interests in land. Marginalised groups have in turn deployed a range of measures to contest power and counter exclusion. They have resisted persistent attempts at their erasure from the cityscape by carrying out acts of transgression within a context now underwritten by a transformative constitutional framework. Within the Mukuru informal settlements, transgressive and legal strategies are toolboxes from which inhabitants draw a plethora of tools to confront exclusionary spatial governance practices. This chapter examines how, in using these strategies, the inhabitants deploy their democratic imaginations to test their understandings of urban citizenship and expand its realms. In doing this, the inhabitants reimagine urban planning in a form that is more inclusive and that attends to the realities within their spaces.
Crisis research focuses primarily on how response structures should be organized. There are ongoing debates about the required degree of flexibility in the response structure and what role emergent groups should have. A shared assumption in this research is that organization and structure are synonymous with order in a crisis and enable a rapid, coordinated response. Disorganization, by extension, is criticized for crisis response failures. This view ignores the risk of over-organization and crisis response rigidity. In uncertain crises, disorganizing might produce a looser, less ordered structure that facilitates a novel, adaptive response. The dilemma for frontline responders revolves around the need for both organizing and disorganizing during crises. It is worthwhile noting that different types and phases of the crisis demand different forms of reorganizing. The reorganizing process, through disorganizing and organizing, needs to be ongoing throughout the duration of the crisis situation to ensure that crisis demands and organizational response structures evolve synchronously.
Planned actions, as prescribed in protocols and trained in exercises, help frontline responders take action under enormous pressure. Yet, these same actions are often hard, if not impossible, to implement during crises, either because the specific situation was not anticipated and there are no plans in place or because prepared plans do not produce the desired results. As a consequence, frontline responders will need to improvise and adapt their activities to crisis situations. Yet, improvisation under extreme stress is very difficult and may be inefficient or even dangerous to responders. The resulting dilemma for responders is how to choose the right course of action. This requires a view of both action patterns as complementary and even mutually conducive, as most crises will demand a combination of plans and improvisation. Reflective acting helps frontline responders to find the right balance and define adequate response activities.
We know from decades of research that a key component of stress resilience is being flexible in how we think and how we manage our emotions. We profile individuals who showed exceptional flexibility, including Jerry White, who lost his leg to a landmine. We discuss two psychotherapies that teach flexibility: cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). You will learn evidence-based ways to embrace gratitude and humor, catch and challenge negative thoughts, and work towards accepting situations that you cannot immediately control.
Transition from war to peace often leads to new challenges. Conflict scholars suggest that these challenges lead groups to be unable to commit credibly and suggest mechanisms for decreasing the fear of being the victim, and increasing the costs, of reneging. However, international law and international political economy scholars debate the utility of making agreements flexible. This paper argues that provisions intended to increase the flexibility of agreements are detrimental to implementation because they operate under the assumption that groups are in a repeated game, and because they can lead to an even more severe commitment problem. Using a newly collected dataset on civil war cease-fire agreements, duration analyses suggest agreements with more flexibility-enhancing provisions exhibit a higher likelihood of violations. Although provisions calling for third-party enforcement – a mechanism for reducing fear and increasing costs – seem to decrease the likelihood of violations, this effect disappears when flexibility-enhancing provisions are considered.
The legitimacy crisis of ISDS in Europe has prompted the EU – an emerging actor in international investment law – to reform this field. In particular, the EU reform was designed to enhance the rule of law in international investment law, as a means of legitimising the field. However, the reform of international investment law has ultimately exposed the clash of different visions of the rule of law in international law and the multifaceted nature of this concept. The purpose of this book was to evaluate the EU’s vision and its contribution to the development of international law in the field of investment. In particular, the book sought to assess whether the EU reform addresses the key international investment law problems and in doing so contributes to the achievement of the rule of law and legitimacy. To answer this question, a substantial analysis was undertaken of EU investment law and policy in both its internal dimension (Part II) and external relations (Part III), and placed in the broader context of international investment law and its reform (Part I). As many scholars have written about international investment law, what value does this book add? The following observations encapsulate the findings of this research and attest to its relevance and contribution to the international investment law reform debate.
Chapter 16 opens by asking readers to identify the elements in their developing demonstrations that are in good shape and those that still need work. The chapter organizes such elements by analogy to a three-legged stool: One leg is a demonstration’s materials; another is a comprehensive plan; the third is the person doing the demonstration. Discussion of materials emphasizes practical considerations such as visual or manipulable items that are exciting, portability, backups, links to core points, and even duct tape. Discussion of plans emphasizes clarity on the demonstration’s goals, knowing how to use the materials, and having a stock of juicy questions; detailed plans make it easier to be flexible in the face of surprises. Discussion of the person emphasizes how people are crucial to cooperative conversations, how they make the materials more interesting and more entertaining, how their questions guide other people’s learning, and how they represent their fields. This chapter’s Closing Worksheet asks readers to write demonstration guidelines modeled in the Worked Example about a demonstration using dinosaurs to compare human language to other forms of communication.