Management, Technology and Learning for Individuals, Organisations and Society in Turbulent Environments

This book presents the collection of fifty two papers which were presented on the First International Conference on BUSINESS SUSTAINABILITY ’08 - Management, Technology and Learning for Individuals, Organisations and Society in Turbulent Environments, held in Ofir, Portugal, from 25th to 27th of June, 2008. The main motive of the meeting was the growing awareness of the importance of the sustainability issue. This importance had emerged from the growing uncertainty of the market behaviour that leads to the characterization of the market, i.e. environment, as turbulent. Actually, the characterization of the environment as uncertain and turbulent reflects the fact that the traditional technocratic and/or socio-technical approaches cannot effectively and efficiently lead with the present situation. In other words, the rise of the sustainability issue means the quest for new instruments to deal with uncertainty and/or turbulence. The sustainability issue has a complex nature and solutions are sought in a wide range of domains and instruments to achieve and manage it. The domains range from environmental sustainability (referring to natural environment) through organisational and business sustainability towards social sustainability. Concerning the instruments for sustainability, they range from traditional engineering and management methodologies towards “soft” instruments such as knowledge, learning, creativity. The papers in this book address virtually whole sustainability problems space in a greater or lesser extent. However, although the uncertainty and/or turbulence, or in other words the dynamic properties, come from coupling of management, technology, learning, individuals, organisations and society, meaning that everything is at the same time effect and cause, we wanted to put the emphasis on business with the intention to address primarily the companies and their businesses. From this reason, the main title of the book is “Business Sustainability” but with the approach of coupling Management, Technology and Learning for individuals, organisations and society in Turbulent Environments. Concerning the First International Conference on BUSINESS SUSTAINABILITY, its particularity was that it had served primarily as a learning environment in which the papers published in this book were the ground for further individual and collective growth in understanding and perception of sustainability and capacity for building new instruments for business sustainability. In that respect, the methodology of the conference work was basically dialogical, meaning promoting dialog on the papers, but also including formal paper presentations. In this way, the conference presented a rich space for satisfying different authors’ and participants’ needs. Additionally, promoting the widest and global learning environment and participativeness, the Conference Organisation provided the broadcasting over Internet of the Conference sessions, dialogical and formal presentations, for all authors’ and participants’ institutions, as an innovative Conference feature. In these terms, this book could also be understood as a complementary instrument to the Conference authors’ and participants’, but also to the wider readerships’ interested in the sustainability issues. The book brought together 97 authors from 10 countries, namely from Australia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Portugal, Russia, Serbia, Sweden and United Kingdom. The authors “ranged” from senior and renowned scientists to young researchers providing a rich and learning environment. At the end, the editors hope and would like that this book will be useful, meeting the expectation of the authors and wider readership and serving for enhancing the individual and collective learning, and to incentive further scientific development and creation of new papers. Also, the editors would use this opportunity to announce the intention to continue with new editions of the conference and subsequent editions of accompanying books on the subject of BUSINESS SUSTAINABILITY, the second of which is planned for year 2011.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Studying complex places : change and continuity in York and Dijon

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Museum, design, organisation: an exploration of spatialities and a project in modelling museum design activity

There were three stages in the process of narrowing and focussing the project. Initially the aim was nothing less than a 'paradigm shift' - to reframe the Praxis of Science as 'Design' using the museum as a microcosmic context  in which the complexity of the condition of modernity/ postmodernity was amply reflected. This over-ambitious scheme narrowed at first to one of exploring the interdisciplinary problem of the multidimensionality of design. In this, incommensurability and theories of space have to be accommodated in a workable model, and the forms and transformations of the model have then to be 'proved' in a praxiological exposition. Finally, it has become clear that much of the detailed creative work implied in the previous formulation of the project is, to be realistic, of a  postdoctoral nature. Therefore, the Ph.D. problem has been focussed even further.The focus is on the development of a multidimensional expression of museum design in the form of a theoretical model and an appraisal of its implications for general theory in organization and design. This involves (1)  Background theory - a survey of concepts and theories in modelling, (2) Focal theory - a critique of existing notions of organization and Praxis in museums and in Design, (3) Model theory - the development and presentation of a  more adequate scheme, and (4) Contribution - the evaluation of its potential as a generalization.Background TheoryIn the first part of the programme it has been necessary to ask a specific question about Philosophy - does any  specific paradigm offer an adequate conceptual scheme and 'language' in which to work? And if not, what do  so-called post-Philosophical approaches - radical pragmatism, ironism - have to offer in terms of a workable  strategy, perhaps one that is recognizably `designerly' in approach.In addition the definition and clarification of a wide range of incommensurable notions of 'space' has had to be undertaken to be clear that the complexity with which design, in the generic sense, engages has a particular character which is quite distinct from that of disciplines such as Science, History, and Politics which are  traditionally inclined towards epochal paradigmatic solidarity and towards contingent epistemological coherence.  The designer is, arguably, more of a chameleon than is the scientist or the historian or the politician, more so even than are the novelist and the ethnographer whom Rorty cites as latterly more crucial figures.' This 'quixotic' aspect of the designer's position is crucial to any argument about personal integrity and social value: this enigmatic  journeyman and traveller follows a lonely path guided by emotional (instinctual) as much as by intellectual and practical imperatives.Focal TheoryThe second part of the programme has involved two operations: (1) a  critical investigation, in some detail, of the discourses of organization, design and museography/museology; and (2) an opening up of the intervals between them, that is, an exploration their three interfaces - organization- design; design-museum; and museum-organization. Model Theory By proposing a visible constellation of spatial concepts and exposing the tensions which characterize their  performativity, the second part of the programme is drawn towards the final part of the programme. In this the  adequacy of the proposed model is evaluated in terms of the specific context of the museum as an organizational  type - a creative-administrative nexus - and in terms of its potential value as a generalization. This latter point has  involved consideration of the possible `museal' quality of organization in general and a reappraisal of the values of  design above and beyond the institutionalized, professionally delineated and administered discipline of Design  practice.ContributionThe conclusions emphasize the difficulty of boundary crossing enterprizes such as this project. A considerable effort has gone into deferring the synthetic instinct that all theory tends, sooner or later, to exemplify. However, not just for the sake of form, I make clear some specific and critical points in relation to the 'new' space established by this investigation of museum-design-organization. The museum design discipline has good reason to expound a communication-led collaborative philosophy and to have the strength to develop its discourse in more  sophisticated intellectual circles.In general there is a central message that emerges from the museum-design-organization complex which in one sense bolsters the ironist/new pragmatist stance in engaged theory but also reminds us that to be engaged one  must develop skills and capacities that are independent of the logics of language, that are irrational and yet  invaluable.And in future the interdisciplinary (as distinct from the multidisciplinary) platform must speak its name and be  generous. If one is met with incomprehension, resistance, threat response, or out and out hostility one has failed to understand the nature of design. One does not wait to be invited in, neither does one go straight for the jugular.  One makes a home, a communal place, a common ground. One finds the hearth and kindles in it a new flame, a  new light. One arranges a meeting of minds prepared to enchant with and to be enchanted by new visions and  new stories. And one helps each soul along its journey with no more than a gentle nudge in a promising direction  in the certain knowledge that the whole process will need to be repeated tomorrow and that this will remain the  case for each tomorrow

Unmet goals of tracking: within-track heterogeneity of students' expectations for

Educational systems are often characterized by some form(s) of ability grouping, like tracking. Although substantial variation in the implementation of these practices exists, it is always the aim to improve teaching efficiency by creating homogeneous groups of students in terms of capabilities and performances as well as expected pathways. If students’ expected pathways (university, graduate school, or working) are in line with the goals of tracking, one might presume that these expectations are rather homogeneous within tracks and heterogeneous between tracks. In Flanders (the northern region of Belgium), the educational system consists of four tracks. Many students start out in the most prestigious, academic track. If they fail to gain the necessary credentials, they move to the less esteemed technical and vocational tracks. Therefore, the educational system has been called a 'cascade system'. We presume that this cascade system creates homogeneous expectations in the academic track, though heterogeneous expectations in the technical and vocational tracks. We use data from the International Study of City Youth (ISCY), gathered during the 2013-2014 school year from 2354 pupils of the tenth grade across 30 secondary schools in the city of Ghent, Flanders. Preliminary results suggest that the technical and vocational tracks show more heterogeneity in student’s expectations than the academic track. If tracking does not fulfill the desired goals in some tracks, tracking practices should be questioned as tracking occurs along social and ethnic lines, causing social inequality

The French-Anglophone divide in lithic research: A plea for pluralism in Palaeolithic Archaeology

In this provocative study, Shumon T. Hussain engages with the long-standing issue of French-Anglophone research conflicts in Palaeolithic archaeology. By examining a range of well-selected case studies and discursive contexts, the author shows that French and Anglophone approaches in lithic analysis are anchored in opposing cognitive frameworks. He argues that the mainstays of this division can be elucidated by calling upon the marginalised work of American philosopher Stephen C. Pepper, who captured the totality of credible Western thought in terms of four equitable world hypotheses. Based upon his insights, the dissertation demonstrates that French lithic research gravitates towards ‘contextualistic’ and ‘organicistic’ modes of inquiry, while Anglophone approaches tend to rely on ‘formistic’ and ‘mechanistic’ styles of reasoning. Hussain carefully lays out the implications of this condition for mutual understanding and critical practice. He contends that the French-Anglophone divide can only be overcome if scholars endorse scientific pluralism and begin to seriously take into consideration both the strengths and shortcomings of different cognitive frameworks, including their own. Human Origin

Linguistic Politeness Beyond Modernity. A Critical Reconsideration of Politeness Theories

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Interdisciplinary Approaches to Culture Theory

The central theme of the volume is interdisciplinary experimentation. The volume includes collaborative and interdisciplinary studies on a variety of topics, from territorialisation of theory, relations between culture theory and research methodology, culture-dependent meaning formation, power relations in discourses on religion, communal heritage management, celebration practices of (national) holidays, conceptual boundaries of the ‘unnatural’, temporal boundaries in culture and cultural boundaries within archaeological material. Some of the chapters are dedicated to more general theoretical and methodological questions, while the majority of chapters use Estonian culture as source material for approaching broader cultural theoretical notions and questions. The chapters are the outcome of an experimental collaborative project aimed at bringing together representatives of various disciplines in order to find new ways to conceptualise and study their research objects or discover new study objects between disciplines. The approaches to interdisciplinary collaboration taken by the authors of the chapters are diverse. Some of them juxtapose or combine several disciplinary perspectives on common issue in order to highlight the multifaceted nature that escapes the purview of any one discipline. Some reveal similarities or complementarities between the disciplines despite the apparent differences in their metalanguage and theoretical apparatus. Others take a more integrative approach and aim to present a more holistic interdisciplinary theoretical or methodological framework. Several of the chapters re-evaluate or re-interpret existing data or case studies from the vantage points afforded by other fields, prompting questions that are not usually asked within their own field. In addition, the experimental collaboration also offered a space within which to explore issues located between disciplines and whose reoccurring presence becomes evident when diverse disciplines and studies are brought into dialogue