This paper provides new insights into the food security performance of long and short food chains, through an analysis of the resilience of such chains during the severe weather events that occurred in the Australian State of Queensland in early 2011. Widespread flooding cut roads and highways, isolated towns, and resulted in the deaths of people and animals. Farmlands were inundated and there were food shortages in many towns. We found clear evidence that the supermarket-based food chain delivery system experienced (...) significant difficulties in supplying food to flood-affected towns. In contrast, more localized food supply chains—which relied upon supply from growers in peri-urban areas and community-based food initiatives—remained largely intact, and provided food at a time when the supermarkets were limited in their ability to respond to consumer demand. However, on closer examination of food distribution during flooding in the regional city of Rockhampton and in the State capital, Brisbane, the demarcation of success between “long” and “short” food chains became blurred. Both types of food supply chains shared some key resilience characteristics in responding to crisis but diverged in other important ways. We argue that conceptualizing food chains in terms of key elements of resilience—scale, diversity, flexibility and cohesion—may be more fruitful than the short-long dichotomy alone. This approach is particularly useful when prioritizing food security as the basis for evaluating food system sustainability in a context of predicted increases in extreme weather events and future climate change. (shrink)

Bullying remains a pervasive problem in healthcare, and evidence suggests systems in place are not utilised due to perceptions of ineffectiveness and inequity. This study examines bystander responses to bullying and factors that influence decisions to intervene. We explore relationships between bystanders’ perceptions of psychological safety across three levels (organisation, supervisor and colleague) and reactions to witnessing bullying. We suggest psychological safety would be positively associated with the decision to intervene. Findings indicate the most pervasive reaction to witnessing incidents of (...) bullying is to discuss with colleagues, a low‐involvement reaction. We find perceptions of supervisory and organisational safety/support are positively related to high‐involvement decisions such as formal reporting of the incidents, highlighting the importance of support from those in power. However, perceptions of collegial support may lead to low‐involvement responses, which risk reinforcing and underpinning dysfunctional organisational dynamics by providing informal social and emotional responses that may substitute more formal organisational responses to this persistent problem. This study highlights the importance of support from individuals in power if bystanders are to feel comfortable making high‐involvement interventions. (shrink)

Research in a scientific subject is an art as well as a science, for success depends on many things which can never be learned by rule, such as intuitions, openness of the mind to new and original ideas, the intellectual observation which is quick to recognize unsuspected relationships between apparently unconnected phenomena. While all this is certainly true, still there is a discipline of mind and method which no research worker can afford to neglect during his studies. This discipline is (...) for the most part used, without their adverting to it, by successful researchers, and the aim of this book is to formulate these rules and guiding principles. (shrink)