Virtual EQ – the talent differentiator in 2020?

In an increasingly competitive, globalised world, knowledge-intensive industries/ services are seen as engines for success. Key to this marketplace is a growing army of ‘talent’ i.e. skilled and dedicated knowledge workers. These knowledge workers engage in non-routine problem solving through combining convergent, divergent and creative thinking across organizational and company boundaries - a process often facilitated though the internet and social media, consequently forming networks of expertise. For knowledge workers, sharing their learning with others through communities of practice embedded in new information media becomes an important element of their personal identity and the creation of their individual brand or e-social reputation. Part of the new knowledge/skills needed for this process becomes not only emotional intelligence (being attuned to the emotional needs of others) but being able to do this within and through new media, thus the emergence of virtual emotional intelligence (EQ). Our views of current research found that HRD practitioners in 2020 might need to consider Virtual EQ as part of their talent portfolio. However it seems that new technology has created strategies for capturing and managing knowledge that are readily duplicated and that a talent differentiator in 2020 might simply be the ability and willingness to learn

Change is in the Cards: Competition in the Canadian Debit Card Market

As new entrants arrive in Canada’s debit card market, rule changes are needed to ensure a level playing field, and to enhance the potential benefits of competition for consumers and merchants. In a study released today, the author assesses the implications of the rapidly changing debit payment landscape. Bergevin makes recommendations for action to ensure that consumers and merchants are protected and that the system can evolve to serve them even better.financial services, debit card market, VISA, MasterCard, Interac

The Strategic Adaptation of Party Organizations to New Information and Communication Technologies : A Study of Catalan and Spanish Parties

Aquest document se centra en els casos dels dos principals partits espanyols (PP i PSOE) i catalans (PSC i CDC) en el període immediatament després de les eleccions generals espanyoles de maig de 2008, quan aquests celebraren els seus congressos. En general, es poden distingir tres tipus d'actors: en primer lloc, els ciberactivistes que tracten d'obtenir el reconeixement formal de la seva activitat en els seus partits. Així com, els líders del partit que poden intentar promoure la presència del partit en el ciberespai, però que també poden romandre indecisos perquè no és clar l'impacte electoral a la xarxa del ciberactivisme. Finalment, alguns militants tradicionals (off-line) solen ser reticents al reconeixement del ciberactivisme perquè amenaça les recompenses previstes dins del partit. Aquest article mostra com els nostres partits varen respondre al desafiament del ciberactivisme i arriba a la conclusió que la seva situació electoral, mediada per la seva ideologia, estructura organitzativa i el tipus de militància, poden ajudar-nos a comprendre el grau diferent d'institucionalització en l'organització del partit.Este documento se centra en los casos de los dos principales partidos españoles (PP y PSOE) y catalanes (PSC y CDC) en el período inmediatamente después de las elecciones generales de mayo de 2008, cuando estos celebraron sus congresos. En general, se pueden distinguir tres tipos de actores: en primer lugar, los ciberactivistas que tratan de obtener el reconocimiento formal de su actividad en sus partidos. Así como, los líderes del partido que pueden intentar promover la presencia del partido en el ciberespacio, pero que también pueden permanecer indecisos porque no está claro el impacto electoral en la red del ciberactivismo. Finalmente, algunos militantes tradicionales (off-line) suelen ser reticentes al reconocimiento del ciberactivismo porque amenaza las recompensas previstas dentro del partido. Este artículo muestra cómo nuestros partidos respondieron al desafío del ciberactivismo y llega a la conclusión de que su situación electoral, mediada por su ideología, estructura organizativa y el tipo de militancia, pueden ayudarnos a comprender el grado diferente de institucionalización en la organización del partido.This paper focuses on the cases of the two major Spanish (PP and PSOE) and Catalan parties (PSC and CDC) in the period just after the Spanish general elections of May 2008, when these parties held their party conferences. In general, three kind of actors can be distinguished: first, cyber-activists that try to get formal recognition of their activity in their parties. Then, party leaders that can try to promote the presence of the party in cyberspace but that can also remain undecided because it is not clear the net electoral impact of the cyber-activism. Finally, some traditional off-line militants are typically reluctant to the recognizance of the cyber-activism because it threatens their expected payoffs within the party. This paper shows how our parties responded to the challenge of cyber-activism and concludes that their electoral situation, mediated by their ideology, organizational structure and type of membership, can help us to understand their differential degree of party organizational institutionalization

Supporting social innovation through visualisations of community interactions

Online communities that form through the introduction of sociotechnical platforms require significant effort to cultivate and sustain. Providing open, transparent information on community behaviour can motivate participation from community members themselves, while also providing platform administrators with detailed interaction dynamics. However, challenges arise in both understanding what information is conducive to engagement and sustainability, and then how best to represent this information to platform stakeholders. Towards a better understanding of these challenges, we present the design, implementation, and evaluation of a set of simple visualisations integrated into a Collective Awareness Platform for Social Innovation platform titled commonfare.net. We discuss the promise and challenge of bringing social innovation into the digital age, in terms of supporting sustained platform use and collective action, and how the introduction of community visualisations has been directed towards achieving this goal

Electronic Miscommunication and the Defamatory Sense

This article examines the effect that cultural and technological changes have had on interpersonal communication and aims to provide an interdisciplinary explanation for the recent proliferation of defamation in electronic media. The authors argue that the absence of certain extra-linguistic cues and established cultural convention in the electronic environment often results in miscommunication which — if not itself defamatory — gives rise to emotional exchanges between interlocutors in a manner that provokes defamation. The authors begin their analysis with a discussion of defamation law as a recipient-oriented tort, demonstrating the importance of the context of communication in the determination of whether a particular remark carries a defamatory sense. In order to better understand how an online communication is received and understood by its recipients, the authors then investigate three differences between electronic and other media of communications: i) that the technology-mediated and text-bases character of electronic communication makes the process of communication more difficult and the incidence of miscommunication more likely; ii) that the nature of social interaction in the online setting has a tendency to increase hostile communications that might be considered defamatory; iii) that the cultural context and standards of communication that develop in online communities will reduce the significance of these hostile communications. Applying these considerations to the law of defamation, the authors conclude by rejecting the naive point of view that a libel published through the Internet ought to be dealt with in exactly the same way that a libel published in a newspaper is dealt with. The authors end by calling for further empirical research about the content that is produced as a consequence of contextual challenges in electronic communication. Cet article analyse l\u27effet de changements culturels et technologiques sur la communication personnelle et vise à donner une explication interdisciplinaire de la récente prolifération de cas de diffamation dans les médias électroniques. Les auteurs posent que l\u27absence de certains signaux extra-linguistiques et de conventions culturelles dans l\u27environnement électronique mène souvent à une mauvaise communication qui – si elle n\u27est pas diffamatoire en soi — fait monter l\u27émotivité des interlocuteurs de manière à provoquer des échanges diffamatoires. Les auteurs discutent d\u27abord de la législation contre la diffamation en tant que tort orienté vers le destinataire et démontrent l\u27importance du contexte pour déterminer si le sens d\u27une remarque particulière est diffamatoire. Pour mieux appréhender comment une communication en ligne est reçue et comprise par ses destinataires, les auteurs abordent trois différences entre médias électroniques et autres: (1) le fait que les communications électroniques sont sous forme de textes et médiatisées par la technologie rend le processus plus difficile et la mauvaise communication plus probable; (2) ce type d\u27interaction sociale en ligne accroît tendanciellement les communications hostiles sinon diffamatoires; (3) le contexte culturel des communautés en ligne qui développent des standards de communication réduiront la portée des échanges hostiles. Appliquant ces dimensions au droit contre la diffamation, les auteurs concluent en rejetant le point de vue naïf selon lequel on devrait traiter de la même manière un libelle publié sur Internet ou dans un journal. D\u27autres recherche empiriques seront nécessaires sur le contenu produit face au défi contextuel de la communication électronique

"Needless to Say My Proposal Was Turned Down": The Early Days of Commercial Citation Indexing, an "Error-making" Activity and Its Repercussions Till Today

In today’s neoliberal audit cultures university rankings, quantitative evaluation of publications by JIF or researchers by h-index are believed to be indispensable instruments for “quality assurance” in the sciences. Yet there is increasing resistance against “impactitis” and “evaluitis”. Usually overseen: Trivial errors in Thomson Reuters’ citation indexes produce severe non-trivial effects: Their victims are authors, institutions, journals with names beyond the ASCII-code and scholars of humanities and social sciences. Analysing the “Joshua Lederberg Papers” I want to illuminate eventually successful ‘invention’ of science citation indexing is a product of contingent factors. To overcome severe resistance Eugene Garfield, the “father” of citation indexing, had to foster overoptimistic attitudes and to downplay the severe problems connected to global and multidisciplinary citation indexing. The difficulties to handle different formats of references and footnotes, non-Anglo-American names, and of publications in non-English languages were known to the pioneers of citation indexing. Nowadays the huge for-profit North-American media corporation Thomson Reuters is the owner of the citation databases founded by Garfield. Thomson Reuters’ influence on funding decisions, individual careers, departments, universities, disciplines and countries is immense and ambivalent. Huge technological systems show a heavy inertness. This insight of technology studies is applicable to the large citation indexes by Thomson Reuters, too

Collaborative assessment of information provider's reliability and expertise using subjective logic

Q&A social media have gained a lot of attention during the recent years. People rely on these sites to obtain information due to a number of advantages they offer as compared to conventional sources of knowledge (e.g., asynchronous and convenient access). However, for the same question one may find highly contradicting answers, causing an ambiguity with respect to the correct information. This can be attributed to the presence of unreliable and/or non-expert users. These two attributes (reliability and expertise) significantly affect the quality of the answer/information provided. We present a novel approach for estimating these user's characteristics relying on human cognitive traits. In brief, we propose each user to monitor the activity of her peers (on the basis of responses to questions asked by her) and observe their compliance with predefined cognitive models. These observations lead to local assessments that can be further fused to obtain a reliability and expertise consensus for every other user in the social network (SN). For the aggregation part we use subjective logic. To the best of our knowledge this is the first study of this kind in the context of Q&A SN. Our proposed approach is highly distributed; each user can individually estimate the expertise and the reliability of her peers using her direct interactions with them and our framework. The online SN (OSN), which can be considered as a distributed database, performs continuous data aggregation for users expertise and reliability assessment in order to reach a consensus. We emulate a Q&A SN to examine various performance aspects of our algorithm (e.g., convergence time, responsiveness etc.). Our evaluations indicate that it can accurately assess the reliability and the expertise of a user with a small number of samples and can successfully react to the latter's behavior change, provided that the cognitive traits hold in practice. © 2011 ICST

The Meanings of Communion: Anglican Identities, the Sexuality Debates, and Christian Relationality

Recent discussions of the international Anglican Communion have been dominated by notions of a \'crisis\' and \'schism\' resulting from conflicts over issues of homosexuality. Existing accounts of the Communion have often tended to emphasise the perspectives of those most vocal in the debates (particularly bishops, senior clergy, and pressure groups) or to engage in primarily theological analysis. This article examines the nature of the purported \'crisis\' from the perspectives of Anglicans in local parishes in three different national contexts: England, South Africa, and the US. Unusually for writing on the Communion, attention is simultaneously given to parishes that have clear pro-gay stances, those that largely oppose the acceptance of homosexual practice, and those with more ambivalent positions. In doing so, the article offers new insights for the growing body of literature on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Christians, as well as wider discussions about the contested nature of contemporary Anglican and other Christian identities. Key themes include the divergent ways in which respondents felt (and did not feel) connections to the spatially distant \'others\' with whom they are in Communion; the complex relationships and discordances between parish, denominational, and Communion-level identities; and competing visions of the role of the Communion in producing unity or preserving diversity amongst Anglicans.Anglican Communion; Sexuality; Christianity; Religious Identities

MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS AS A STRATEGIC FUNCTION OF MARKETING

Today we put great emphasis on the strategic importance of marketing communication, rather than seeing it as merely a tactical process of promoting the other elements of the marketing mix. Brands exist in the minds of customers not only through their experience of a product or service, but also because of the long-term effects of communication. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance of marketing communications - as a strategic function - in the marketing activity of an organization.marketing communication, communications strategy, planning marketing communications, strategy push, strategy pull