Suchergebnisse

In pursuit of the criminal -- The birth of forensics -- Securing the scene -- Recording the scene -- Handling the evidence -- Taking the scene -- Recording the scene -- Handling the evidence -- Taking fingerprints -- Analyzing fingerprints -- Written in blood -- DNA analysis -- Trace evidence -- Natural clues -- A good impression -- Guns and bullets -- Firearms in the laboratory -- At the scene of the crime -- A bug's life -- Cause of death -- Toxic world -- The bones of the matter -- Spitting image -- Behavior of the offender -- Fire starters -- Fire testing -- Crash investigation -- The big bang -- Computer forensics -- Paper trail -- Every picture tells a story -- Future forensics.

PurposeAs social media has become an ingrained aspect of our lives—including our political relationships with other citizens and the state—various governments have warned public servants that being politically active online might threaten the reputed impartiality of themselves and the public service. This study examines whether public servants are less likely to be politically active on social media than other citizens, and seeks to understand public servants' varying disposition to be politically active online by investigating the role of employees' underlying Big 5 personality traits.Design/methodology/approachMultivariate regression, along with marginal effects and predicted probabilities, are used to investigate public servants' online political activity with survey data from Canada, a country where impartiality is a core public service value, and where governments, public service commissions and even public sector unions have voiced cautious messages about the threat online political activity presents to the reputed impartiality of public servants, and the public service at large.FindingsAnalysis of the direct effects of being a public servant and each Big 5 personality trait finds that being a public servant significantly, and substantively, reduces the probability of engaging in online political activity, meanwhile, Extraversion and Conscientiousness have consistent, significant and substantive relationships with being politically active online. Subsequent analysis investigating the dynamic between the Big 5 and being a public servant, uncovers a more complex story. Among public servants, Openness and Neuroticism, rather than Extraversion and Conscientiousness, are associated with significant and substantive changes in the probability of engaging in some online politically activities. This is consistent with research investigating the relationship between the Big 5 and risk aversion, given that public servants in Canada work in an environment with a highly cautious discourse portraying social media as a serious risk to impartiality.Practical implicationsThe findings also speak to best practices for public service human resource managers by shedding light how public servants' behavior can be better understood and managed by paying attention to their underlying personality traits.Originality/valueThis study moves beyond analyzing trends between public and private sector employees, to instead examine public servants' online political activity. This study offers theoretical and empirical insight into how public servants' disposition to be politically active online is, in part, influenced by their underlying Big 5 personality traits, specifically, Neuroticism and Openness.

What do citizens know about state legislative salaries and how does correct information change opinions of legislators and what citizens believe to be their proper levels of compensation? Through an original experiment with more than 2,000 registered voters from four heterogeneous states, this paper provides evidence that the degree of innumeracy regarding state legislative salaries exceeds innumeracy regarding many other political facts. Further, providing participants with correct information can influence policy opinions directly related to legislative salary but has no effects on indirect policy opinions, such as assessments of legislators themselves. These findings have important implications for scholars of public opinion, factual misperceptions, and state legislative representation.

Depuis quelque temps, les réseaux sociaux préoccupent divers acteurs, qui craignent qu'en menaçant l'anonymat, ces réseaux mettent en danger la neutralité de la bureaucratie. Toutefois, les données empiriques sur l'activité politique en ligne des fonctionnaires sont peu nombreuses. Dans cet article, en nous appuyant sur la littérature consacrée à la motivation de service public, nous formulons des hypothèses divergentes sur la relation existant entre fonction publique et activité politique en ligne. En confrontant ces hypothèses aux données issues d'une enquête conduite au Canada, il ressort que, dans la fonction publique, le fait d'être syndiqué réduit la probabilité d'être politiquement actif en ligne. Alors que les réseaux sociaux continuent de transformer la nature de la gouvernance, les résultats semblent indiquer que l'anonymat et la neutralité demeurent des normes professionnelles importantes dans la tradition administrative des pays utilisant le système de Westminster, ce qui transparaît dans les activités politiques en ligne des fonctionnaires canadiens. Remarques à l'intention des praticiens • En raison de leur visibilité et de leur caractère permanent, les activités politiques des fonctionnaires sur les réseaux sociaux menacent la réputation d'impartialité des agents publics. • Aussi, certaines administrations et certains syndicats de la fonction publique ont appelé le personnel administratif à la prudence face aux dangers que représentent les activités politiques en ligne. • Des données issues d'une enquête menée au Canada semblent indiquer que ces appels ont porté leurs fruits. • Dans la fonction publique, le fait d'être syndiqué réduit la probabilité d'être politiquement actif en ligne mais ne réduit pas la probabilité de conduire des activités politiques traditionnelles « hors ligne ».

Recruiting civil servants on the basis of merit is believed to improve the quality of governance because it increases the bureaucracy's expertise, leads bureaucrats to develop distinct preferences and encourages them to candidly voice their opinions to others. Yet, to date, the reason why merit recruitment positively affects employee voice remains theoretically vague and has received little empirical scrutiny. This article advances this research by theoretically specifying why merit recruitment positively affects employee voice, and by empirically testing this association with survey data measuring the perceptions of federal civil servants in Canada. Controlling for several additional factors believed to influence employee voice, the results from various multivariate regression models show a robust and statistically significant association between merit recruitment and fear to voice a dissenting opinion. The more civil servants believe that merit recruitment is high, the less they fear reprisal for expressing a dissenting opinion to their superiors.

Various actors have recently expressed concern that by threatening anonymity, social media places the bureaucracy's neutrality in jeopardy. Yet, empirically, little is known about the online political activities of public servants. Drawing upon the public service motivation literature, this article develops contrasting hypotheses between public sector employment and online political activity. Testing hypotheses with survey data from Canada, the results show that unionized public sector employment reduces the probability of being politically active online. As social media continues to change the nature of governance, the results suggest that anonymity and neutrality remain important professional norms within the Westminster administrative tradition, and are reflected in the online political activities of public sector employees in Canada. Points for practitioners • Due to its visibility and permanency, public servants' political activity on social media potentially threatens their reputation as politically impartial officials. • Some governments and public sector unions have thus voiced messages of caution to administrative personnel about the dangers of being politically active online. • Survey data from Canada suggest that these messages have worked. • Unionized public sector employment reduces the probability of being politically active online but does not reduce the probability of being active in traditional "offline" political activities.