Entrepreneurship in instituitionalised settings: The roles of hospital benchmarking

Purpose: The paper aims to analyse the roles of benchmarking by and of public hospitals in relation to ranking and institutional entrepreneurship. Design/methodology/approach: Neo-institutional theory informs the study in particular its recent concern with entrepreneurship and strategic change. A qualitative design and method are employed incorporating primary and secondary data. Sources of evidence include: semi-structured interviews, documentation, observation and archival records. Interviews are a primary source and during site visits, 44 interviews were held. Findings: The study offers evidence of how professionals using and recalculate benchmark data and experiment in a free/relational space that is isolated (protected from intrusion), interactive and inclusive. This free space enables a collective to use performance numbers as a reference for identifying superior practices that remedy difference and inform change. A free space is one where power relations are reworked and hierarchical accountability being pushed a bit sideways. Originality/value: The extant literature is also still coming to terms with institutional entrepreneurship and change that happens via a collective, especially in mature fields, as well as the conditions that enable this. A lack of attention to micro-institutional change and practices is a major shortcoming in extant studies. The present study deals with micro-institutional change via new practices identified through a collective

Interim research assessment 2003-2005 - Computer Science

This report primarily serves as a source of information for the 2007 Interim Research Assessment Committee for Computer Science at the three technical universities in the Netherlands. The report also provides information for others interested in our research activities

Becoming a Platform in Europe

Emerging out of the collaborative work conducted within the Working Group “Mechanisms to activate and support the collaborative economy” of the COST Action “From Sharing to Caring: Examining Socio-Technical Aspects of the Collaborative Economy”, the book questions the varied set of organizational forms collected under the label of “collaborative” or “sharing” economy —ranging from grassroots peer-to-peer solidarity initiatives to corporate owned platforms— from the perspective of what is known as the European social values: respect for human dignity and human rights (including those of minorities), freedom, democracy, equality, and the rule of law. Therefore, the edited collection focuses on the governance of such economic activities, and how they organize labour, cooperation and social life. From individual motivations to participating, to platform use by local groups, until platform design in its political as well as technological dimensions, the book provides a comparative overview and critical discussion on the processes, narratives and organizational models at play in the collaborative economy. On such a basis, the volume offers tools, suggestions and visions for the future that may inform the designing of policies, technologies, and business models in Europe

Becoming a Platform in Europe

Emerging out of the collaborative work conducted within the Working Group “Mechanisms to activate and support the collaborative economy” of the COST Action “From Sharing to Caring: Examining Socio-Technical Aspects of the Collaborative Economy”, the book questions the varied set of organizational forms collected under the label of “collaborative” or “sharing” economy —ranging from grassroots peer-to-peer solidarity initiatives to corporate owned platforms— from the perspective of what is known as the European social values: respect for human dignity and human rights (including those of minorities), freedom, democracy, equality, and the rule of law. Therefore, the edited collection focuses on the governance of such economic activities, and how they organize labour, cooperation and social life. From individual motivations to participating, to platform use by local groups, until platform design in its political as well as technological dimensions, the book provides a comparative overview and critical discussion on the processes, narratives and organizational models at play in the collaborative economy. On such a basis, the volume offers tools, suggestions and visions for the future that may inform the designing of policies, technologies, and business models in Europe

Class influences on life chances in Post-Reform Vietnam

This study provides a critical analysis of the influence of social class on life chances in post-reform Vietnam. As the country underwent a profound structural transition from a centrally planned to a market-oriented economy in the mid-1980s, social class gradually replaced political class as a major source of inequality. Knowledge about this phenomenon is rudimentary – not least because of the continuing power of state ideology in contemporary Vietnam. Throughout the investigation, Bourdieu’s framework of class reproduction guides both a quantitative analysis of the Survey Assessment of Vietnamese Youth 2010 and a qualitative research of 39 respondents in the Red River Delta region, including young people of the first post-reform generation – now in their 20s and 30s – and their parents. The study discusses the ways in which class determines the ability of parents to transmit different resources to their children, focusing on those that are usable and valued in the fields of education and labour. It finds that, across several areas of social life in contemporary Vietnam, implicit class-based discrimination is disguised and legitimised by explicit and seemingly universal ‘meritocratic’ principles. The study makes a number of original contributions to sociology, three of which are particularly important. (1) Empirically, it breaks new ground for a sociological understanding of both the constitution and the development of class inequalities in contemporary Vietnam. (2) Methodologically, it offers numerous useful examples of mixed-methods integration. (3) Theoretically, it proposes to think with, against and beyond some of the most relevant Bourdieusian research on this topic. The empirical application of Bourdieu’s framework in toto, as opposed to a more customary partial appropriation, facilitates comprehensive insights into: class-specified practices as governed and conditioned by internalised powers and structural resources; the multidimensionality of class-based advantages and disadvantages; and the causative transmission and activation of capital across and within generations

Semantic and pragmatic characterization of learning objects

Tese de doutoramento. Engenharia Informática. Universidade do Porto. Faculdade de Engenharia. 201