Participatory music-making and well-being within immigrant cultural practice: exploratory case studies in South East Queensland,Australia

ABSTRACT

Music participation is a way of life for many cultures and is an activity that is often passed on generationally. It can become especially important as a leisure activity for maintenance of self- and national identity for people who have migrated to countries of contrasting cultures, such as Australia. This article describes exploratory, qualitative research into the ways in which participatory music-making within communities from immigrant backgrounds in Brisbane, Australia may influence aspects of participants’ wellbeing. The sample for this research included three broadly-defined cultural groups living in the region: people of Baltic origin; people from Latin American and Caribbean backgrounds; and ‘newly arrived’ immigrants and refugees. Interviews with individuals have been analysed to explore the ways in which this involvement might affect mental, social, and emotional wellbeing. Our qualitative analyses demonstrated that beyond these aspects, factors of subjective wellbeing, both hedonic and eudaimonic, were apparent. This article aims to provoke discussions on the divergent ways in which immigrant communities utilise music-making practices to foster different types of wellbeing and the importance of maintaining diversity through cultural practices.     

Forecasting demand for electricity in Maryland: An econometric approach

Most of the models for forecasting demand for energy are based on simple extrapolations of past trends or on a simple regression equation with price of the energy and the stock of appliances as explanatory variables. In this paper, an attempt has been made to derive static and dynamic multiple regression equations from economic theory of consumption and production (Section II). Historical data were fitted to these theoretical constructs to test the equations in terms of econometric theory and forecast the demand according to “higher order conditional interval forecasts”. The residential demand for electricity is a function of its price, price of its substitute, per capita income and a lagged demand variable for dynamic adjustment of actual demand to equilibrium demand for electricity. The forecasts of residential demand to 1990 are based on projections of exogenous variables such as residential price of electricity, per capita income and the estimated long run elasticity of demand (Section III). The nonresidential demand for electricity is a function of employment in that sector, sectoral prices of electricity and the lagged sectoral demand. The forecasts of nonresidential electricity demand are also based on projections of its independent variables (Section IV). The last section converts the total demand for electricity into the required generating capacities and juxtaposes them against the estimates of expected supplies available from the forecasts of the utilities. The paper concludes that the eighties will be faced with excess supply of electricity in Maryland, in case the assumptions of projections of independent variables hold good. The misallocation of resources inherent in such excess supplies could be avoided if realistic scenerios of future demand, as attempted in this paper, could be predicted.     

Truth Half Told: Finding the Perfect Pitch for Advertising and Marketing in Socialist Yugoslavia, 1950-1991

Beginning in the 1950s, advertising and marketing specialistsin Yugoslavia campaigned aggressively to change public and officialperceptions of their work. By casting commercial promotion interms of categories already established as legitimate in theideology of Yugoslav socialism, the industry gradually naturalizedadvertising and marketing, transforming them from suspect capitalistpractices into apparent necessities of progressive, rationalproduction and distribution. Although the rhetoric used in thiscampaign consistently appealed to socialist values, in practiceYugoslav advertising and marketing were largely based on Westernmodels. Yugoslav commercial promotion was only superficially"socialist advertising"; practitioners' arguments tended toobscure the true qualities of the industry.     

Death from drowning: defining a new challenge for child survival in Bangladesh

The study focuses on children less than 5 years old and explores the epidemiological profile and correlates of drowning as a challenge to child survival in Bangladesh. Two data sources from Bangladesh, a cohort of 8,070 children followed for 2 years in a rural area and a nation-wide survey conducted in 1996–97 have been used. In addition, a systematic review of the literature has been conducted spanning the past two decades for analysis of drowning in children. Seventy drowning deaths were reported in the cohort and 726 deaths were reported in the national survey. Verbal autopsy and semi-structured interviews were conducted on all deaths. Drowning accounted for 43% of deaths in the cohort and 20% of deaths in 1–4-year-old children in the national survey. Most drowning deaths were in 12–23 month old children from falling into ditches and ponds. Communities provided valuable insights on possible interventions to reduce deaths due to drowning. Drowning is a newly recognized challenge for Bangladesh. Considerable research and programmatic work is required to understand the nature of the problem and develop appropriate interventions. This paper calls on aid agencies to create opportunities for drowning research and action in their work plans for the country.     

Partial or total integration in a cross‐border merger? Building a Nordic bank culture

The rate of failure for international mergers and acquisitions (M&As) is exceptionally high, since the integration of merging firms does not function well. Using a process perspective, this study aims to analyze the integration process in a cross‐border merger and the development of a common organizational culture. A framework based on premerger cultural and organizational fit, synergy, and resulting organizational culture is developed to study the growth of Nordea, a merger of four Nordic banks. Data include in‐depth interviews and secondary sources. This case study shows how cultural and managerial differences are dealt with and synergies realized. Building a broad organizational culture involving human resource management, decision making, technology, competitiveness, and customer relationships is necessary for merger integration, but it is costly and difficult. We suggest that success in mergers lies in managers creating a new cultural identity with unique values and perspectives.     

Empirical implications of mathematical functions used to analyze market penetration of new products—Cigarettes case study

Three types of S-shaped growth curves—the logistic, the lognormal, and the Gompertz—are widespread in the literature on analysis of market penetration of new products/processes. This article discusses the mathematical properties of these function in the light of their empirical implications, such as location of the point of maximum growth rate, the symmetry/asymmetry of the growth rates around that inflection point, and the ease of estimation (linear and nonlinear regressions). The empirical economic expectations cannot specify these phenomena a priori so that a less restrictive function should be preferred. Such a function is the Gompertz function. It is, therefore, applied to the study of market penetration of filtered and menthol cigarettes and shown that the empirical verification vindicates the theoretical postulates of that function. The empirical estimates are also closer to actual estimates of growth rates of adoption.     

Informal conflict intervention: Advice and dissent

A disparity appears to exist between how managers are advised to handle conflict and the intervention methods that they utilize in actual practice. Normative advice tends to agree that managers should adopt a facilitative, mediatorlike role (e.g., Walton, 1987; Tjosvold, 1990), while the empirical research suggests that managers are much more controlling, often deciding how to resolve the problem on their own (e.g., Kolb, 1986; Sheppard, 1983). The present study focuses on two potential reasons as to why managers utilize the methods they do: (1) They treat choices instrumentally to achieve key goals and (2) they interpret or frame conflicts in a form that suggests directive action. One hundred and eighty managers were interviewed about a recent effort to intervene in a dispute at work. The results confirm that managers are very controlling when intervening in disputes and relates this to both interpretive frame and, to a lesser extent, managerial goals. A canonical analysis appears to emphasize the pivotal role that frame plays in influencing whether or not managers choose the solution. Implications of these results for managerial action are discussed.