Consumer complaining behavior (CCB) is an important stream of research and practice, as it links the domains of service failure and service recovery. CCB research, although extensive and temporally wide, exhibits a lack of concern for the underlying assumptions of scholarly inquiry. Researchers neither explicitly mention, nor consciously indicate their ontological, epistemological, and methodological assumptions. We systematically identify the extant CCB literature and map it to two well-accepted paradigmatic classifications (Burrell and Morgan 1979; Deetz Organization Science 7(2): 191–207, 1996). Normative (...) or functionalist paradigm with the assumptions of an objective external reality, a positivist epistemology, a determinist view of human nature, and nomothetic methodology emerges as the dominant CCB research paradigm. The implications of this dominance are discussed as a barometer of the future of CCB research and practice. (shrink)

The Islamic Republic of Iran punishes homosexuality with death but it actively recognizes transsexuality, and partially funds sex change operations. This article aims to examine how this seemingly progressive stance on transsexuality is connected to the IRI's larger oppressive apparatus of gender. It will first provide an overview of the cultural politics of gender and sexuality under the Islamic Republic's rule, and will then discuss the confluence of religious and medical literatures that led the Islamic Republic to adopt its new (...) discourse on transsexuality despite – or perhaps rather because of – its sex/gender politics. The article does not deny that this emerging discourse has been somewhat empowering for those transsexuals who genuinely desire surgical transformation. But empowering as it might have been for such transsexuals, the emerging discourse is still deeply troubling since it systematically regards homosexuality and more generally any sexual or gender non-conformity as unintelligible, perverse, and punishable by law, except for those willing to transform their "wrong bodies." The article will, therefore, demonstrate that the IRI's permission of transsexuality and sex change operations is motivated by a goal that is more about assimilating gender atypical individuals into the heteronormative order than about broadening horizons for sex/gender possibilities. The article ends by discussing how this discourse is making non-surgical trans/multi-gendered identity illegible and illegitimate not only as a publicly recognized possibility, but also with regard to transpersons' own self-perception and self-constitution of their gender and sexual subjectivity. (shrink)

Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, like Goethe’s Faust, begins in Faustus’ study. Faustus, renowned for his learning, is reading, going through the entire range of medieval disciplines — Aristotelian logic, Galenic medicine, Justinian law, Jerome’s Vulgate. His rapid deductions, after quoting to himself snatches from the concerned texts, read like a pastiche of the vanity of all human knowledge one encounters in De vanitate scientiarum by Cornelius Agrippa, a rumored alchemist and master of the occult.1 Faustus rejects logic as sterile, and (...) medicine and law as “mercenary,” unfit for the gentleman-scholar, who, according to the contemporary code,2 did not study or work for gain — these are.. (shrink)

The present study sets out to investigate an important aspect of gendered performance, namely, the presence of interactional metadiscourse in conference presentations delivered in Persian. The study pursues two primary objectives: firstly, to compare the quantity and quality of interactional metadiscourse markers as expressed by male and female academics; secondly, to investigate some other factors influencing the phenomenon under investigation. The data include twenty-four conference presentations by twelve males and twelve females. The quantitative analysis showed a statistically significant difference in (...) the use of interactional metadiscourse by male and female presenters. However, the qualitative analysis helped the authors to identify more similarities than differences. In point of fact, such factors as academic status and nativeness had caused the speakers to use different metadiscourse strategies. (shrink)

This paper deals with designing a harvesting control strategy for a predator–prey dynamical system, with parametric uncertainties and exogenous disturbances. A feedback control law for the harvesting rate of the predator is formulated such that the population dynamics is asymptotically stabilized at a positive operating point, while maintaining a positive, steady state harvesting rate. The hierarchical block strict feedback structure of the dynamics is exploited in designing a backstepping control law, based on Lyapunov theory. In order to account for unknown (...) parameters, an adaptive control strategy has been proposed in which the control law depends on an adaptive variable which tracks the unknown parameter. Further, a switching component has been incorporated to robustify the control performance against bounded disturbances. Proofs have been provided to show that the proposed adaptive control strategy ensures asymptotic stability of the dynamics at a desired operating point, as well as exact parameter learning in the disturbance-free case and learning with bounded error in the disturbance prone case. The dynamics, with uncertainty in the death rate of the predator, subjected to a bounded disturbance has been simulated with the proposed control strategy. (shrink)

This paper describes a traditional SIR type epidemic model with saturated infection rate and treatment function. The dynamics of the model is studied from the point of view of stability and bifurcation. Basic reproduction number is obtained and it is shown that the model system may possess a backward bifurcation. The global asymptotic stability of the endemic equilibrium is studied with the help of a geometric approach. Optimal control problem is formulated and solved. Some numerical simulation works are carried out (...) to validate our analytical results. (shrink)

This paper is a portrayal of how social responsibility performance evaluation can act as an accounting measure of management efficiency. In fact, it has given much importance to socio-economic and socio-human obligations to others. The paper attempts to show that these days there is a great need to emphasise more clearly social responsibility, which the corporate sector can and should undertake. The theme of the paper is that the scope of corporate social responsibility encompasses not only economic well-being but also (...) the human aspects of life. In addition, if management of a corporation performs its social responsibility well, one may say that management has done its job efficiently. This study is based on mainly literature review. Analytical thinking is also another building block of this paper. However, the limitation of this study is that no data of the existing situation of Bangladesh or India pertaining to the subject matter referred to in the present paper has been used. (shrink)

A controversy over the pudgala or “person” raged among Indian Buddhists for more than a millennium. Their polemics were at least as much a matter of canonical exegesis as of reasoning and argument, for the “mainstream” Buddhist doctors had to account for—and explain away—the numerous places in scripture where the Buddha speaks of the “person.” The Bhārahārasūtra or “sūtra on the bearer of the burden” was one of the scriptures most frequently quoted and discussed in this connection. The present paper (...) is aimed at presenting a reconstructed Sanskrit version of this sūtra and providing an overview of the doctrinal and argumentative uses that were made of it in the context of the debates about the status of the “person.”. (shrink)