Crowded places have been the target of terrorist attacks for many years. Their inherent nature has resulted in a vulnerability to a range of attacks, most notably the threat of vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIEDs). Government agendas have been seeking to reduce the extent of this vulnerability, by encouraging those who are responsible for the design, construction and operation of such places to incorporate counter-terrorism measures (CTMs) into their designs, and where necessary, retro-fit them into existing places. However, little is known about what measures can be used, as well as their performance and consequences. The aim of the research is therefore to identify the aforementioned range of measures through the development of a typology that also examines their relative performance and consequences for a range of scenarios, in order to inform key decision makers who are responsible for the protection of crowded places. Through the use of a qualitative research strategy and respective research methods, interviews, site visits and document analysis were carried out in both the UK and in the USA. A total of 47 participants were recruited for the research, with the collection of data spanning 16 months. A preliminary study was undertaken that determined a range of influences on whether crowded places are protected, as well as influences on the value of CTMs themselves. A theoretical framework was developed to capture and understand those influences. Conventional data analysis methods and internal validation techniques were used to subject the data to methodological rigour, ensuring the validity and reliability of the research. While the negative consequences of incorporating CTMs can be profound, every CTM that can be used has additional benefits; measures can be incorporated at no cost and can even generate revenue; and designing-in CTMs has a number of advantages over retro-fitting them. This research s contribution to knowledge in relation to methodology, empiricism, theory, industry, and policy has resulted in the creation of a significant amount of guidance for key decision makers who are responsible for the design, construction and operation of crowded places, as well as providing data on the benefits that can be gained from incorporating mitigative measures that is of interest to those who have a role to play in the design, construction and operation of the built environment more broadly. Recommendations for further research posit that greater understanding is needed in relation to the specific monetary costs of CTMs themselves, the experience of users of protected places, the implications of invisible CTMs, and the need for research into the assessment and incorporation of proportionality into the built environment. Practical recommendations put forward the need for clarification of legislation in relation to duties of care, the dissemination of the incentives to protect, and benefits of protecting, crowded places, the need for further debate and transparency regarding proportionality and what constitutes proportionate design, and the need to encourage greater engagement between stakeholders and the means through which this can occur. The research posits that legislative requirements encompassing the mitigation of terrorist attacks are apparent, and that therefore, organisations should incorporate CTMs into vulnerable places, yet as previously indicated, such CTMs do not have to cost anything.

The ability of outsiders to gain controlling interest in a firm has a large impact on managerial behavior. This threat has not been wielded in Indian corporations for the most part in spite of there being no direct regulatory hurdles in the execution of the same. This paper seeks to determine the reasons behind the lack of hostile takeover bids in India, as well as analyze the effect on corporate governance. The scrutiny of the Indian corporate sphere leads us to believe that corporate governance is in the process of being codified, but there are numerous motivations already in place to incentivize good managerial behavior, other than the threat of hostile takeover bids.

Children’s social information processing (SIP) encompasses cognitive and behavioral sequence that underlies social responses. SIP in peer interactions is well studied. Less is known about SIP in mother-child interchanges. Youth who show one SIP pattern a hostile attribution of intent (HAI) bias—in peer interactions consistently exhibit externalizing symptoms. This relationship is less consistently observed for HAI biases toward mothers. I hypothesized that this inconsistent association reflects moderating factors; specifically, engaging in foundational parenting practices (monitoring/supervision, consistent discipline) would weaken the relationship between HAI biases toward mothers and externalizing behaviors. Logistic regression yielded limited support for hypotheses. Consistent discipline predicted externalizing behaviors in some contexts; however, moderator effects were not detected. Isolated parenting practices thus may not buffer against the risk of externalizing behaviors linked to HAI biases toward mothers. Future research might examine how different HAI biases (peer, mother, etc.) related to each other and outcome variables.

Fientliga företagsförvärv har under en lång tid varit en del av den globala finansmarknaden och är numera inte främmande för de svenska aktörerna. Ett företagsförvärv blir fientligt när bolagets styrelse råder aktieägarna att avslå det framlagda budet. Är budet intressant för aktieägarna, som ofta strävar efter att maximera sin kapitalvinst, kan det dock lätt uppstå en intressekonflikt inom bolaget då styrelsen, till skillnad från aktieägarna, är snarare intresserad av att behålla sin makt och anställning. Detta kan resultera i att styrelsen blir frestad att vidta åtgärder för att förhindra uppköpet.   I samband med fientliga uppköpserbjudanden har det på den amerikanska aktiemarknaden utarbetats en rad försvarsåtgärder som kan vidtas av bolagsstyrelsen i syfte att försvåra eller förhindra ett företagsförvärv. På den svenska aktiemarknaden är vidtagande av åtgärder som har till syfte att förhindra eller försvåra att ett uppköpserbjudande framläggs eller genomförs icke tillåtna enligt 5 kap. 1 §             lagen om offentliga uppköpserbjudanden på aktiemarknaden (LUA). Motiveringen till detta förbud framkommer i bland annat Aktiemarknadsnämndens uttalande AMN 2005:47:”ett offentligt erbjudande anses vara en angelägenhet mellan målbolagets aktieägare och budgivaren, varför målbolagets styrelse inte ska tillåtas försämra förutsättningarna för att ett erbjudande lämnats”. Av denna anledning har styrelsen i ett målbolag som är ett aktiebolag en relativt svag position, då den beslutsfattande makten är hos de enskilda aktieägarna vid exempelvis antagandet av ett framlagt bud och hos bolagsstämman avseende vidtagande av eventuella försvarsmetoder. Dock har det genom AMN:s uttalanden framkommit i en rad praktiska fall att målbolagets styrelse hittat möjligheter att agera och i viss mån kringgå förbudet.   Uppsatsen är en komparativ studie med den svenska och amerikanska rättregleringen i fokus. Paralleller och samband dras även mellan det svenska, europeiska och engelska systemet. Syftet med arbetet är att undersöka svenska företagsledningarnas möjligheter och handlingsutrymme vid tillämpning av internationella försvarsmetoder för att avvärja ett oönskat uppköpserbjudande. I uppsatsen undersöks även de åtgärder som kan vidtas i ett preventivt syfte.   Möjligheten till genomförandet av ett bolagsuppköp är ett nyckelmoment för skapandet av en effektiv värdepappersmarknad där svaga bolag upphör att existera och starka bolag har utvecklings- och tillväxtmöjligheter. Att avgöra vad som stämmer överens med god sed kan dock bli problematiskt, då regleringen på området är oerhört spridd och i viss mån inkoherent. Trots dessa svårigheter har det i praktiken genomförts ett antal företagsuppköp som har visat på att tillämpningen av försvarmetoder är i viss utsträckning möjlig om den går att motivera genom att bolagets eller/och aktieägarnas intressen tillgodoses. Enligt aktiebolagslagen (ABL) är föremålet för aktiebolagets verksamhet att ge vinst till fördelning för aktieägarna. Samtidigt är aktieägarnas förtroende centralt för väl fungerande värdepappersmarknader. En mer omfattande rätt för bolagsstyrelsen i målbolaget att fatta beslut om försvarsåtgärder skulle kunna skada dessa grundläggande ändamål med ABL och den börsrättsliga regleringen. På så sätt skulle en betydligt större makt hos bolagsstyrelsen kunna ha en skadlig effekt, då det är aktieägarnas vinster och förtroende som bör prioriteras. Genom att analysera samspelet mellan de bolagsrättsliga och börsrättsliga principerna och relevanta praktiska avgöranden går det att se att den nationella regleringen är konstruerad på bästa möjliga sätt för att upprätthålla en god sed på den svenska finansmarknaden, trots sina potentiella brister i sammanhanget. / Hostile takeovers have for a long time been a part of the global financial market and are nowadays not an unknown phenomenon on the Swedish stock market. A takeover attempt becomes hostile when the board of directors of the target advises the shareholders to reject the submitted bid. That particular situation can, however, easily become the reason for conflict of interests within the company. The bid can be valuable for the shareholders, who primarily seek ways to maximize their profit at the same time, as the members of the board of directors desire to keep their employment and position within the company. The board can therefore as a result be willing to take action in order to prevent the takeover.   During the mid-20th century, due to a takeover-wave, the American stock market developed a series of defence measures that could be used by the board in order to impede or prevent an acquisition. However, measures that are intended to prevent or impede a takeover offer are prohibited on the Swedish stock market under Ch. 5 § 1 in the Act on Public Takeover Offers. The justification for this prohibition is found in, inter alia, the Swedish Securities Council's (Aktiemarknadsnämnden) statement AMN 2005: 47 where they indicated that a public offer is considered to be a matter between the target company's shareholders and the bidder, why the offeree company should not be allowed to impair the prerequisites for an offer submitted. For this reason, management has a relatively weak position in Swedish corporations, since the decision-making power is not with the board but with the separate shareholders when it comes to accepting a potential bid or the shareholders’ meeting of the corporation when a decision must be made if measures should be enact in order to prevent a bid. However, the boards of directors in some target companies have found opportunities to act and to some extent circumvent the ban posed in the Act on Public Takeover Offers.   The thesis is a comparative study with Swedish and American legal regulations in focus. Parallels are also drawn between the Swedish, European and English systems. The aim is to investigate the ability of the board of directors in Swedish corporations to use different defence methods to fend off an unwanted takeover bid. The paper also examines the measures that can be taken before the bid and as a result have a preventive function.   The possibility of implementing a company takeover is a key element for the creation of an efficient financial market in which weak companies cease to exist and strong companies have development and growth potential. A determination on what actions can be consistent with good practice can be problematic, since the regulations in this area are extremely widespread and somewhat incoherent. Despite these difficulties, the legal practice in this area has shown that the application of the defence methods is to some extent possible if the board of directors focus on supporting the will to defend the company and / or shareholder interests. To give the board of directors extended powers could have a detrimental effect on profits and trust. By analysing the interaction between the principles in company law and securities law as well as some relevant decisions by the Swedish Securities Council, it is possible to see that the Swedish national regulation is designed in the best possible way to maintain good practices on the Swedish stock market despite some shortcomings.

Research on factors that contribute to the forms and functions of aggression (reactive, proactive, relational, and overt) is important for informing intervention efforts with aggressive youth. Previous research shows that aggressive youth often have cognitive and social deficits associated with their aggressive behavior. For example, aggressive youth may exhibit deficits in social variables such as social intelligence (i.e., the understanding of behaviors of people and ability to predict outcomes of situations). Hypothetically, this lack of social intelligence may be related to how youth interpret social situations, and could conceivably lead to hostile attributional bias, or the tendency to interpret ambiguous stimuli as hostile. The main purpose of this study was to examine whether HAB mediated the relationship between social intelligence and reactive relational aggression in a sample of detained adolescent boys (ages 12-18). The results failed to support this hypothesis. Supplemental analyses explored whether HAB moderated the relationship between social intelligence and the subtypes of aggression, but results were not consistent with this hypothesis.

Although internalizing and externalizing problems are often considered in isolation from one another, the frequently co-occur in individuals leading to unique behavior profiles. The current study examined the associations between the forms, functions, and subtypes of aggression, anxiety, hostile attributional bias (HAB), and perceived (proactive or reactive) provocateur motivation in a sample of youth (mean age = 13.84 years, 51% male, 37.5% Caucasian). Results indicated that only reactive relational aggression significantly predicted anxiety, while relational and reactive aggression did not. HAB was not significantly associated with either anxiety or any type of aggression. Perceived proactive provocateur motivation was significantly associated with anxiety, but not aggression, and reactive motivation was not significantly associated with either. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed.

The purpose of this qualitative, explorative, descriptive and contextual study was to explore and describe nurses’ experiences of hostile behaviour from mentally ill patients in the psychiatric ward of a general hospital and to propose recommendations to the hospital management to support nurses who experienced hostile behaviour from mentally ill patients. Purposive sampling was used to identify the twelve nurses who participated in this study. Data were collected through in-depth face-to-face interviews, drawings and field notes. The data were analysed using Tesch’s descriptive method of open coding and the findings revealed that nurses experienced verbal abuse, physical abuse and sexual harassment from mentally ill patients, and had varied negative and positive responses to these forms of hostile behaviour. Main challenges were identified and recommendations were made to the hospital management to support nurses who experience hostile behaviour from mentally ill patients. / Health Studies / M. A. (Public Health)

Made available in DSpace on 2016-07-27T14:21:49Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Marleny da Penha Oliveira Santana.pdf: 509292 bytes, checksum: 1c5ab09f818c1f0713edfe249299ecf7 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-04-22 / This study aims at investigating prejudice against women through the men's opinions regarding to feminine insertion in a profession considered masculine: information technology. Specifically, we planned to answer to the following question: how do men evaluate women that act in professions of masculine prevalence? Our sample was constituted by 253 men. Of these, 54.2% were information technology students and 45.8% were emplyees in two information technology companies, one federal and one municipal. The mean age was 31.4 years (DP=10.7 years), with minimum of 18 and maximum 58 year-old. Two thirds of participants (66.6%) were married or lived with somebody. The participants answered a questionnaire formed by open questions and Likert-type scales. Taken together, the results indicate that the adhesion to the hostile sexism and the benevolent sexism co-exist among the participants, however, a tendency exists to higher levels of hostile sexism among the students. Those results are discussed from the perspective of the Theory of the Realistic Conflicts (Sherif, 1967). / Este estudo tem como objetivo principal investigar o preconceito contra as mulheres por meio das opiniões dos homens a respeito da inserção feminina em uma profissão considerada masculina: a tecnologia da informação. Especificamente, planejamos responder à seguinte questão: como os homens avaliam mulheres que atuam em profissões de predomínio masculino? Nossa amostra foi constituída por 253 homens, dos quais 54,2% eram estudantes da área de informática e 45,8% atuavam em duas empresas de tecnologia da informação, uma federal e outra municipal. A idade média foi de 31,4 anos (DP=10,7 anos), com idade mínima de 18 e máxima de 58 anos. Dois terços dos participantes (66,6%) eram casados ou moravam junto com alguém. Os participantes responderam a um questionário formado por questões abertas e em formato Likert. Tomados em conjunto, os resultados indicam que tanto a adesão ao sexismo hostil quanto ao benevolente co-existem entre os participantes, no entanto, existe uma tendência ao sexismo hostil ser mais alta entre os estudantes. Esses resultados são discutidos à luz da Teoria dos Conflitos Realistas (Sherif, 1967).

This study is concerned with public companies (listed on the stock exchange) which are threatened by an unwanted takeover-attempt. Particularly, the investigation is centered around opportunities for such companies to defend themselves against hostile takeovers. Therefore, this study covers defense strategies, the so-called anti-takeover provisions (ATPs) or shark repellents. More specifically, pre-emptive ATPs were analyzed in order to determine whether they are effective measures for a takeover-target to avoid being acquired. This question is widely discussed by existing literature that is concerned with the overall topic of mergers & acquisitions, whereby findings of prior researchers often are contradicting or inconclusive. Moreover, there is a lack of literature examining the case of takeover-attempts which are characterized by a hostile deal-attitude specifically. As the adoption of pre-emptive ATPs does have its pitfalls, we aimed to find implications for the management of publicly traded companies concerning the question if they should deploy pre-emptive ATPs or not.   We analyzed hostile takeover-events which took place within the timeframe of 2003-2018, whereby target-companies where located all over the world. As done by other researchers before, the level of resistance against takeovers has been measured by forming an index (in this study denoted by G-Index*), which accounts for the number of pre-emptive ATPs adopted by the takeover-target. That index was used subsequently to test, if companies with a low/high level of resistance against takeovers were more/less likely to be acquired. As not only the resistance against takeovers is an influencing factor on the outcome of a takeover-event, we also measured the impact of performance- and contextual factors. Those comprise key performance indicators (KPIs) for efficiency and profitability, as well as the context factors region and industry. That measurement has been carried out using the binary logistic regression, whereby all mentioned aspects were included in one model to form a representative model of takeover-events. This model was used to examine the individual impacts of all variables on the one hand, and for predicting the takeover-likelihood for each company on the other hand. Subsequently, the predicted takeover-likelihood was tested via the Pearson correlation with the number of pre-emptive ATPs adopted by the public companies.   By using the binary regression, we found that a higher level of managerial resistance against takeovers is decreasing the probability for a company to be acquired. High resistance against takeovers, measured by a high number of pre-emptive anti-takeover provisions adopted, does have a statistically significant negative effect on the takeover-likelihood. Moreover, another key finding is that a company which is more efficient than the average of its industry, is more likely to be acquired. High efficiency (measured by gross profit margin) does have a statistically significant positive effect on the takeover-likelihood. By using the Pearson correlation, we found a statistically significant relation between the number of pre-emptive ATPs adopted and the predicted takeover-likelihood. The predicted takeover-likelihood correlates negatively with the number of pre-emptive ATPs.   These results show that pre-emptive ATPs can be an effective measure against hostile takeovers.

hostility has been found to be a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. One proposed pathway between hostility and cardiovascular disease is an increase in cardiovascular reactivity among hostile individuals when faced with challenging, competitive situations, in which interpersonal stressors are present. A potential situation that may elicit this exaggerated reactivity is found in cardiac rehabilitation exercise programs. Such factors may be competition and feedback regarding their performance. This study sought to find out how hostile individuals would respond physiologically, behaviorally, and affectively when presented with negative and positive performance feedback, while exercising in a challenging, competitive setting. It was found that the three groups (positive feedback, negative feedback, no feedback) did not differ on physiological reactivity, exercise behavior, or affect as a result of the type of feedback they received. Limitations of the study are discussed and improvements for future studies are suggested.