98,872 research outputs found
Collaborative pedagogy and digital scholarship: a case study of 'Media Culture 2020'
This paper presents an educational case study of âMedia Culture 2020â, an EU Erasmus
Intensive Programme that utilised a range social media platforms and computer software
to create open, virtual spaces where students from different countries and fields could
explore and learn together. The multi-disciplinary project featured five universities from
across Europe and was designed to develop new pedagogical frameworks to encourage
collaborative approaches to teaching and learning in the arts. The main objective of
the project was to break down classroom and campus walls by creating digital learning
environments that facilitated new forms of production, transmission and representation of
knowledge. Media Culture 2020 was designed to pilot a novel mode of âblended learningâ,
demonstrating a number of ways in which âWeb 2.0â networked technologies might be
adopted by academics to encourage open and collaborative modes of practice. The project
utilised a number of social media platforms (including Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Google
Hangout, Google Docs and Blogger) to enhance the learning experiences of a diverse set
of students from different cultural and international contexts. In doing so, Media Culture
2020 enabled participants with a diverse range skills and cultural experiences to develop
new working practices that respond to the convergence of digital media and art, as well
as the internationalisation of media production and business, through the use of open,
interactive software
Supply chain management as the key to a firmâs strategy in the global marketplace
Purpose: This research aims to analyze the intersection of two literature streams: that of strategy and supply chain management (SCM). This review should create a better understanding of âstrategic SCMâ by focusing on relevant theories in the strategic management field and their intersection with SCM to develop a joint research agenda. Design/Methodology/Approach: We conducted a correspondence analysis on the content of 3,402 articles from the top SCM journals. This analysis provides a map of the intellectual structure of content in this field to date. The key trends and changes were identified in strategic SCM research from 1990-2014 as well as the intersection with the key schools of strategic management. Findings: The results suggest that SCM is key to a successful deployment of strategy for competing in the global marketplace. The main theoretical foundations for research in this field were identified and discussed. Gaps were detected and combinations of theoretical foundations of strategic management and SCM suggest four poles for future research: agents and focal firm; distributions and logistics strategic models; SCM competitive requirements; SCM relational governance. Research limitations/implications: Scholars in both the strategy and the SCM fields continue to search for competitive advantages. Much recent research indicates that strategic SCM can be a critical source for that advantage. One of the limitations of our research is that the analysis does not include every journal that published an article mentioning SCM. However, the 34 journals selected are reputed to be the most influential on SCM and focused primarily on SCM. Practical implications: The map of the intellectual structure of research to strategic SCM highlights the need to combine different theoretical approaches to the complex phenomenon of SCM. Practitioners should consider the supply chain as an informal organization and should devote time and resources to build a shared advantage across the supply chain. They should also consider the inherent benefits and risks that sharing Originality/value: The paper demonstrates that strategic SCM needs a balanced and rigorous combination of theoretical approaches to deliver more theory-driven evidences. Our research combines both a qualitative analysis and a quantitative methodology that summarizes gaps and then outlines future research from a large sample of articles. This methodology is an original contribution to this field and offers some assistance for enlarging the sample of future literature reviews
How journal rankings can suppress interdisciplinary research. A comparison between Innovation Studies and Business & Management
This study provides quantitative evidence on how the use of journal rankings
can disadvantage interdisciplinary research in research evaluations. Using
publication and citation data, it compares the degree of interdisciplinarity
and the research performance of a number of Innovation Studies units with that
of leading Business & Management schools in the UK. On the basis of various
mappings and metrics, this study shows that: (i) Innovation Studies units are
consistently more interdisciplinary in their research than Business &
Management schools; (ii) the top journals in the Association of Business
Schools' rankings span a less diverse set of disciplines than lower-ranked
journals; (iii) this results in a more favourable assessment of the performance
of Business & Management schools, which are more disciplinary-focused. This
citation-based analysis challenges the journal ranking-based assessment. In
short, the investigation illustrates how ostensibly 'excellence-based' journal
rankings exhibit a systematic bias in favour of mono-disciplinary research. The
paper concludes with a discussion of implications of these phenomena, in
particular how the bias is likely to affect negatively the evaluation and
associated financial resourcing of interdisciplinary research organisations,
and may result in researchers becoming more compliant with disciplinary
authority over time.Comment: 41 pages, 10 figure
A comparative study on communication structures of Chinese journals in the social sciences
We argue that the communication structures in the Chinese social sciences
have not yet been sufficiently reformed. Citation patterns among Chinese
domestic journals in three subject areas -- political science and marxism,
library and information science, and economics -- are compared with their
counterparts internationally. Like their colleagues in the natural and life
sciences, Chinese scholars in the social sciences provide fewer references to
journal publications than their international counterparts; like their
international colleagues, social scientists provide fewer references than
natural sciences. The resulting citation networks, therefore, are sparse.
Nevertheless, the citation structures clearly suggest that the Chinese social
sciences are far less specialized in terms of disciplinary delineations than
their international counterparts. Marxism studies are more established than
political science in China. In terms of the impact of the Chinese political
system on academic fields, disciplines closely related to the political system
are less specialized than those weakly related. In the discussion section, we
explore reasons that may cause the current stagnation and provide policy
recommendations
Combining Luhmann and Actor-Network Theory to see Farm Enterprises as Self-organizing Systems
From a rural, sociological point of view no social theories have so far been able to grasp the ontological complexity and special character of a farm enterprise as an entity in a really satisfying way. The contention of this paper is that a combination of Luhmannâs theory of social systems and the actor-network theory (ANT) of Latour, Callon, and Law offers a new and radical framework for understanding a farm as a self-organizing, heterogeneous system.
Luhmannâs theory offers an approach to understand a farm as a self-organizing system (operating in meaning) that must produce and reproduce itself through demarcation from the surrounding world by selection of meaning. The meaning of the system is expressed through the goals, values, and logic of the farming processes. This theory is, however, less useful when studying the heterogeneous character of a farm as a mixture of biology, sociology, technology, and economy.
ANT offers an approach to focus on the heterogeneous network of interactions of human and non-human actors, such as knowledge, technology, money, farmland, animals, plants, etc., and how these interactions depend on both the quality of the actors and the network context of interaction. But the theory is weak when it comes to explaining the self-organizing character of a farm enterprise.
Using Peirceâs general semiotics as a platform, the two theories in combination open a new and radical framework for multidisciplinary studies of farm enterprises that may serve as a platform for communication between the different disciplines and approaches
Diversity and network coherence as indicators of interdisciplinarity: Case studies in bionanoscience
Interdisciplinary research, nanotechnology, nanoscience, diversity, indicators, network analysis
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Optimising multi-disciplinary contributions for the smart clothing development process
This research aims to introduce a strategic approach to overcome the creative boundaries and optimize multidisciplinary contributions in Smart Clothing development, since the former research results revealed that these issues are key to achieving fully integrated Smart Clothes. Therefore, this paper examines collaborative projects that are shown to break through the creative boundary and integrate multidisciplinary contributions, and identifies how individual designers overcome their creative constraints and collaborate with others, in order to identify a practical method. The research result indicates that a clear description of Smart Clothingâs context will provide a new framework for the developers to work on
A department of methodology can coordinate transdisciplinary sport science support
In the current sporting landscape, it is not uncommon for professional sport teams and organizations to employ multidisciplinary sport science support teams. In these teams and organizations, a âhead of performanceâ may manage a number of sub-discipline specialists with the aim of enhancing athlete performance. Despite the best intentions of multidisciplinary sport science support teams, difficulties associated with integrating sub-disciplines to enhance performance preparation have become apparent. It has been suggested that the problem of integration is embedded in the traditional reductionist method of applied sport science, leading to the eagerness of individual specialists to quantify progress in isolated components. This can lead to âsiloâ working and decontextualized learning environments that can hinder athlete preparation. To address this challenge, we suggest that ecological dynamics is one theoretical framework that can inform common principles and language to guide the integration of sport science sub-disciplines in a Department of Methodology. The aim of a Department of Methodology would be for group members to work within a unified conceptual framework to (1) coordinate activity through shared principles and language, (2) communicate coherent ideas, and (3) collaboratively design practice landscapes rich in information (i.e., visual, acoustic, proprioceptive and haptic) and guide emergence of multi-dimensional behaviors in athlete performance
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