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This paper analyses the integration of social considerations into public transport planning. It addresses the challenge of balancing social benefits against objectives such as efficiency and cost minimization. Through a literature review, this paper examines methods for assessing public transport accessibility for potentially disadvantaged groups and identifies knowledge gaps in existing research. The analysis reveals a predominant focus on post-implementation (ex-post) accessibility assessments and a lack of research examining potential impacts (ex-ante) during planning stages. Furthermore, the paper identifies a lack of research on how to weigh social benefits against other more conventional objectives such as efficiency and cost minimization and also against environmental considerations. Research usually proposes changes ex-post based solely on a desire to improve accessibility for potentially disadvantaged groups. Therefore, there is a need for more research on how to manage conflicting interests in planning, for example through composite methods. The paper also highlights the tendency of research to overlook the practical usability of methods developed. The relevance of methods to policy makers and planners responsible for planning public transport systems remains largely unexplored. To develop practically useful methods, research needs a better understanding of the norms governing planning practices. It is common to discuss how the mobility needs of potentially disadvantaged passenger groups should be met in isolation from policy contexts. More research is needed about how the potential tensions between social, economic, and environmental considerations play out in public transport planning practices. All of this leads to a risk of a theory–practice gap, marked by a disconnect between research and the practical needs of the public transport providers. By proposing a more nuanced research approach that better reflects the complexity of real-world planning and the different needs of user groups, research can enable public transport planning for what we term 'sustainable accessibility'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the associations between conflict management behaviors, job satisfaction, and innovation performance as felt by 322 blue-collar workers in supermarket chains in Istanbul. The authors collected data through direct and virtual surveys and a convenience sampling methodology. The study uses frequency analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, item-level summary statistics, linear regression analysis, moderating analysis, and simple plots. The results indicate that integrating and compromising managers are significantly and positively associated with innovation performance while dominating, obliging, and avoiding managers are significantly and negatively related to innovation performance. Job satisfaction significantly and positively moderates the links between integrating and compromising managers and innovation performance. Job satisfaction significantly and negatively affects the relationships between dominating, obliging, and avoiding managers and innovation performance. The study focuses on some supermarkets and treats a low number of respondents. Conflict management strategies reflect employee perceptions that might lead to attributive misconceptions. The paper exclusively portrays how job satisfaction moderates links between management styles in dispute resolution and novelty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientific and technological advancements over the last three decades have failed to reduce the widespread prevalence of academic dishonesty in higher education, in large part because institutional barriers prevent faculty from adopting existing tools to curb cheating. We conducted a systematic literature review of research on cheating and found that the majority of studies propose new tools without advancing theory or even utilizing existing theory. Although some studies note the systemic nature of academic misconduct, the academic integrity literature requires a robust theoretical framework to model its systemic nature and derive practical strategies. Building on theory from several domains, we propose a systemic model of academic (mis)conduct which predicts group-level effects on students and offers practical guidance for faculty overcoming institutional barriers to curb cheating. We leverage game theory for useful models of systemic, group-level phenomena in this context, and we leverage education reform literature for insights on how to support instructors' adoption of new tools. Our model, the spectrum of academic conduct, identifies trust as a single dimension governing both cheating behaviors and productive learning behaviors. Integrating insights from pedagogy, conflict management, and organizational psychology, we discuss multiple practical strategies to lower students' opportunity, motivation, and rationalization to cheat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dempster-Shafer evidence theory (DST) is a versatile framework for handling uncertainty and provides a reliable method for data fusion. Managing conflicts between multiple bodies of evidence (BOEs) within DST poses a challenging problem that necessitates effective strategies. In this paper, we present a novel similarity measurement called the belief Tanimoto coefficient (BTC). The BTC accurately quantifies the consistency between BOEs by considering both the length and direction of the evidence vectors. Furthermore, we propose a conflict measurement approach based on BTC. We analyze and demonstrate the desirable properties of the proposed similarity and conflict measures. Numerical examples and comparisons are provided to illustrate the superior effectiveness and validity of BTC. Additionally, we introduce a multisource information fusion method called BTC-MSIF. The proposed BTC-MSIF method achieves higher accuracy rates compared to existing approaches in real-world scenarios, including fault diagnosis and pattern classification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Universities in many liberal democracies, such as the US, the UK, or Germany, grapple with a pivotal question: how much room should be given to controversial utterances? On the one side, there are those who advocate for limiting permissible speech on campus to create a safe environment for a diverse student body and counter the mainstreaming of extremist views, particularly by right-wing populists. On the other side, concerns arise about stifling the free exchange of ideas and creating an atmosphere of fear and censorship. The debate is further complicated by participants' occasional uncertainties about the legal norms relevant in the given context, such as when freedom of speech is an issue and when it is not. This paper addresses the question of whether universities should allow actors with primarily political (as opposed to scholarly) agendas to speak on campus. Focusing on German universities, we begin by discussing some of the potentially relevant legal norms. We then propose shifting emphasis from whether we should make room for public political discussions on campus to how such events must be organized so that they deliver the goods that their advocates emphasize while avoiding the dangers of which critics warn. Drawing on conflict management literature concerned with process design, we make several practical suggestions on how to organize an event that brings political discourse to the university campus without causing harm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the causes, consequences, and strategies for managing organizational conflict among the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) in Akure, Nigeria, to achieve sustainable peace and harmonious relationships among union members, and actualize better transport service delivery to the larger society. A survey design was adopted to elicit primary data through questionnaires and in-depth interviews with NURTW members. Desk research was also used to gather relevant information from the literature. Hundred (100) questionnaires were purposively and randomly administered to commercial drivers who are members of the National Union of Road Transport Workers in Akure. The survey was done across three major parks in Akure: Cathedral Park, Ondo Road Park and Benin Garage Park. They were selected because they are mostly dominated by the members of NURTW, and mostly patronized by passengers. The data collected were analyzed using simple descriptive and inferential statistics; in the form of frequencies, percentages, bar charts, and logistic regression. The study found that most of the NURTW members were males, and were majorly in the economic productive year between the ages of 35 and 45. Findings further revealed that government or political interference is a major cause of conflict among NURTW members. The aftermath of conflict among the union usually resulted in disruptions of the union activities and destruction of lives and properties. The bargaining approach in managing conflict is the most effective strategy for addressing conflict among NURTW members in Akure, Nigeria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to pressing global challenges, sustainability transitions research has emerged as an interdisciplinary field focused on fundamental changes, necessitating novel approaches for strategy-making from research and innovation. Foresight practitioners need to extend their well-established methodological toolkit, which can inform subsequent planning processes about managing conflicts and shaping futures, to include the articulation of response options for contributing to the creation of more sustainable future systems. This research aims to contribute to this need by exploring future options characterized by discrepancies. Drawing from the Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) literature to understand discrepancies between "desirability" and "probability" of future options as missed opportunities to secure social desirability in the future or as threats to it, this research argues for the collective identification and anticipation of discrepancies to reflect on options for making more responsive strategies. Thus, informed by RRI, a Delphi exercise was modified to engage experts from the German agri-food sector (n = 21) to assess divergent innovation-driven changes in the German agri-food sector that had been collectively anticipated and reflected upon beforehand. The results speak for a reduction of complexity by revealing specific actions necessary to redirect research and innovation processes away from unsustainable paths, as well as identifying determinants of discrepancies to do good or avoid harm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a software ecosystem, companies' stakeholders make various decisions and perform various tasks to ensure the strategic and architectural goals of the company. Analyzing vendor capabilities and making decisions to select software vendors requires expert professionals. To analyze vendors' capabilities and accessing them according to the company's strategic and architectural goals is presently an ad-hoc and manual process. Presently, there is no systematic process for 'vendor analysis and selection' specifically for the software industry. Therefore, this study introduces a novel framework which elaborates all the tasks required for vendor proposal evaluation. It also includes the automatic detection of inconsistencies and conflicts prevalent during this process. A new method called 'Inconsistency and Conflict Removal (ICR)' is proposed as part of this framework. ICR automates the process of spotting inconsistencies and conflicts by taking scores of vendor capabilities as input reported by different decision-makers. Further, to illustrate this framework, 'a case of Hospital' has been considered. This study provides valuable knowledge that would facilitate organizations in software vendor selection. It will lead to substantial savings in terms of economics, such as actual costs, time, and improved administrative processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A water resources conflict over the perennialized water in Carás Valley in the Salgado basin is systematically studied using the Graph Model for Conflict Resolution (GMCR). This conflict took place in the Ceará Brazilian State, and it is a classic dispute over water resources between both upstream and downstream users mediated by public institutions. Thus, a group decision-making model is proposed to highlight strategic insights for dealing with this conflict. This model includes identifying the conflict in an intelligence phase, and subsequently, carries out the modeling and analysis phases by applying the GMCR method. Based on the stability analysis results, out of the 32 feasible scenarios, only 1 was an equilibrium. This recommended scenario relates to the upstream users maintain the dams built on the stream and the downstream users should report to the authorities the water scarcity. For the public institutions, the model showed they should realize a technical inspection to investigate the water scarcity, as well as negotiate with the upstream users for removal of the dams constructed in the perennial valley. This scenario is robust, since sensitivity analysis showed the equilibrium state remained stable for some modifications on the preference information. The group decision model of this work strategically enhances the way decision makers and mediator could think and act by collaborating directly to provide them insights about how the conflict situation may optimally end up. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stimulus-induced conflicts in decision-making tasks produce both behavioral and neuronal congruency effects. However, how and when conflicts are detected and resolved at the neuronal level remains largely unclear. To address these issues, we recorded from single neurons in the frontal eye fields of two macaques performing a conflict task. Although the temporal dynamics of the neuronal congruency effects are independent of the specific task rules, they are substantially different in target- and distractor-encoding neurons. Conflicts were detected ~100 ms after the conflict-inducing cue (20–30 ms after the visual response), which is much faster than predicted based on human EEG results. This suggests that conflict detection relies on a fast mechanism in frontal eye fields. Resolving the conflict at the neuronal level, however, requires between <400 ms to ~1000 ms, and shows profound interindividual differences and depends on task rules, indicating that it is a more complex and top-down driven process. Our findings illuminate the neuronal mechanisms underlying decision-making when a conflict is present, a crucial cognitive process playing a role in basic survival and high-level cognitive functions. A single-unit electrophysiology study with awake macaques suggests that a conflict is detected fast by frontal eye field neurons, while it is much slower resolved and in a complex manner, depending on the specific task rules and individual strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conflicts occur when multiple parties interact and have different evaluations about the possible scenarios that may occur. There are conflicts not only in daily events as in parents deciding which school to choose for their kids, but also among countries deciding how to reduce global warming. The graph model for conflict resolution (GMCR) is an efficient model to represent and analyze conflicts. The GMCR models the conflict considering sequences of moves and countermoves that can be made by the decision makers (DMs) in the course of a conflict. Since DMs may present different behavior in conflicts there are several stability concepts that have been proposed in the GMCR. Matrix representations have been developed for many of these stability concepts in order to provide a more computationally tractable method to find stable states in a conflict. Berge stabilities were recently introduced into the GMCR to analyze the effects of altruistic behavior in the stability analysis of conflicts. In particular, Berge behavior occurs in disputes where DMs act benevolently anticipating a similar response from others such that, in the end, their actions are in their own self-interest. As it happens with other solution GMCR concepts, the logical definitions of Berge stabilities are hard to apply in large conflicts with a high number of states or DMs. In this work, our objective is to propose matrix representations for Berge stabilities so that it becomes computationally tractable to analyze the effect of altruistic behavior in large conflicts. To illustrate the applicability of the proposed matrix representations, we apply the method to the Elmira conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]