Europeana communication bug: which intervention strategy for a better cooperation with creative industry?

Although Europeana as well as many GLAMs are very engaged - beside the main mission, i.e. spreading cultural heritage knowledge- in developing new strategies in order to make digital contents reusable for creative industry, these efforts have been successful just only in sporadic cases. A significant know how deficits in communication often compromises expected outcomes and impact. Indeed, what prevails is an idea of communication like an enhancement “instrument” intended on the one hand in purely economic (development) sense, on the other hand as a way for increasing and spreading knowledge. The main reference model is more or less as follows: digital objects are to be captured and/or transformed by digital technologies into sellable goods to put into circulation. Nevertheless, this approach risks neglecting the real nature of communication, and more in detail the one of digital heritage where it is strategic not so much producing objects and goods as taking part into sharing environments creation (media) by engaged communities, small or large they may be. The environments act as meeting and interchange point, and consequently as driving force of enhancing. Only in a complex context of network interaction on line accessible digital heritage contents become a strategic resource for creating environments in which their re/mediation can occur – provided that credible strategies exist, shared by stakeholders and users. This paper particularly describes a case study including proposals for an effective connection among Europeana, GLAMs and Creative Industry in the framework of Food and Drink digital heritage enhancement and promotion. Experimental experiences as the one described in this paper anyway confirm the relevance of up-to-date policies based on an adequate communication concept, on solid partnerships with enterprise and association networks, on collaborative on line environments, on effective availability at least for most of contents by increasing free licensing, and finally on grassroots content implementation involving prosumers audience, even if filtered by GLAMs

Investigating the impact of networking capability on firm innovation performance:using the resource-action-performance framework

The author's final peer reviewed version can be found by following the URI link. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.Purpose The experience of successful firms has proven that one of the most important ways to promote co-learning and create successful networked innovations is the proper application of inter-organizational knowledge mechanisms. This study aims to use a resource-action-performance framework to open the black box on the relationship between networking capability and innovation performance. The research population embraces companies in the Iranian automotive industry. Design/methodology/approach Due to the latent nature of the variables studied, the required data are collected through a web-based cross-sectional survey. First, the content validity of the measurement tool is evaluated by experts. Then, a pre-test is conducted to assess the reliability of the measurement tool. All data are gathered by the Iranian Vehicle Manufacturers Association (IVMA) and Iranian Auto Parts Manufacturers Association (IAPMA) samples. The power analysis method and G*Power software are used to determine the sample size. Moreover, SmartPLS 3 and IBM SPSS 25 software are used for data analysis of the conceptual model and relating hypotheses. Findings The results of this study indicated that the relationships between networking capability, inter-organizational knowledge mechanisms and inter-organizational learning result in a self-reinforcing loop, with a marked impact on firm innovation performance. Originality/value Since there is little understanding of the interdependencies of networking capability, inter-organizational knowledge mechanisms, co-learning and their effect on firm innovation performance, most previous research studies have focused on only one or two of the above-mentioned variables. Thus, their cumulative effect has not examined yet. Looking at inter-organizational relationships from a network perspective and knowledge-based view (KBV), and to consider the simultaneous effect of knowledge mechanisms and learning as intermediary actions alongside, to consider the performance effect of the capability-building process, are the main advantages of this research

Labour Administration Reforms in China

[Excerpt] This publication provides an explanation of the comprehensive labour administration system in China, including its recent advances, with emphasis on its public services functions, such as public employment, labour inspection and social insurance services. With the recent improvements to both the legal framework and the institutions of labour administration, it is believed that these public services will play bigger and more active roles in ensuring compliance with legislation and protecting the legitimate rights and interests of employers and workers alike

Europe ́s Coherence Gap in External Crisis and Conflict Management The EU’s Integrated Approach between Political Rhetoric and Institutional Practice. November 2019

The European Union (EU) aspires to play a part in conflict prevention, crisis management and post-conflict peace- building through civil and/or military operations, through stabilisation efforts, and by building resilience at home and abroad. To bring this ambition to fruition, EU institutions have gradually expanded their ‘comprehensive approach to external conflict and crisis’ (CA) to become a full-fledged ‘integrated approach to conflict and crisis’ (IA).1 In their most basic form, CAs seek coordination and coherence in responding to external conflicts and crises by adopting a system-wide ‘whole-of-government approach’ (WGA). In their more elaborate form, IAs have incorpo- rated non-traditional security concepts, variously known as conflict transformation, (non-liberal) peacebuilding and human-security approaches. In their most expansive form, IAs may even be understood to apply to external action writ large

IE WP 23/04 Prospective Voluntary Agreements to Escape Carbon Lock-in

The paper looks for co-evolutionary policy responses to carbon lock-in – a persistent state that creates systemic market and policy barriers to carbon low technological alternatives. We address the coordination role for authorities rather than the corrective optimisation and analyse experiences from environmental voluntary agreements and foresight activities. The paper argues that combining the virtues of these tools into a new policy tool, named Prospective Voluntary Agreement (PVA), can help facilitate an escape from carbon lock-in and provide policy resources for addressing lock-in related issues. The merit of PVA lies with the enhancement of collaborative policy culture and inter-sectoral and interdisciplinary stakeholder learning that creates commitment to desired action for escaping lock-in.environmental voluntary agreement; foresight; increasing returns; lock-in; path-dependence

Prospective voluntary agreements to escape carbon lock-in

The paper looks for co-evolutionary policy responses to carbon lock-in - a persistent state that creates systemic market and policy barriers to carbon low technological alternatives. We address the coordination role for authorities rather than the corrective optimisation and analyse experiences from environmental voluntary agreements and foresight activities. The paper argues that combining the virtues of these tools into a new policy tool, named Prospective Voluntary Agreement (PVA), can help facilitate an escape from carbon lock-in and provide policy resources for addressing lock-in related issues.Lock-in , Carbon, Policy responses, Agreements

Disease surveillance and patient care in remote regions: an exploratory study of collaboration among healthcare professionals in Amazonia

The development and deployment of information technology, particularly mobile tools, to support collaboration between different groups of healthcare professionals has been viewed as a promising way to improve disease surveillance and patient care in remote regions. The effects of global climate change combined with rapid changes to land cover and use in Amazonia are believed to be contributing to the spread of vector-borne emerging and neglected diseases. This makes empowering and providing support for local healthcare providers all the more important. We investigate the use of information technology in this context to support professionals whose activities range from diagnosing diseases and monitoring their spread to developing policies to deal with outbreaks. An analysis of stakeholders, their roles and requirements, is presented which encompasses results of fieldwork and of a process of design and prototyping complemented by questionnaires and targeted interviews. Findings are analysed with respect to the tasks of diagnosis, training of local healthcare professionals, and gathering, sharing and visualisation of data for purposes of epidemiological research and disease surveillance. Methodological issues regarding the elicitation of cooperation and collaboration requirements are discussed and implications are drawn with respect to the use of technology in tackling emerging and neglected diseases

Improving National and Homeland Security through a proposed Laboratory for Information Globalization and Harmonization Technologies (LIGHT)

A recent National Research Council study found that: "Although there are many private and public databases that contain information potentially relevant to counter terrorism programs, they lack the necessary context definitions (i.e., metadata) and access tools to enable interoperation with other databases and the extraction of meaningful and timely information" [NRC02, p.304, emphasis added] That sentence succinctly describes the objectives of this project. Improved access and use of information are essential to better identify and anticipate threats, protect against and respond to threats, and enhance national and homeland security (NHS), as well as other national priority areas, such as Economic Prosperity and a Vibrant Civil Society (ECS) and Advances in Science and Engineering (ASE). This project focuses on the creation and contributions of a Laboratory for Information Globalization and Harmonization Technologies (LIGHT) with two interrelated goals: (1) Theory and Technologies: To research, design, develop, test, and implement theory and technologies for improving the reliability, quality, and responsiveness of automated mechanisms for reasoning and resolving semantic differences that hinder the rapid and effective integration (int) of systems and data (dmc) across multiple autonomous sources, and the use of that information by public and private agencies involved in national and homeland security and the other national priority areas involving complex and interdependent social systems (soc). This work builds on our research on the COntext INterchange (COIN) project, which focused on the integration of diverse distributed heterogeneous information sources using ontologies, databases, context mediation algorithms, and wrapper technologies to overcome information representational conflicts. The COIN approach makes it substantially easier and more transparent for individual receivers (e.g., applications, users) to access and exploit distributed sources. Receivers specify their desired context to reduce ambiguities in the interpretation of information coming from heterogeneous sources. This approach significantly reduces the overhead involved in the integration of multiple sources, improves data quality, increases the speed of integration, and simplifies maintenance in an environment of changing source and receiver context - which will lead to an effective and novel distributed information grid infrastructure. This research also builds on our Global System for Sustainable Development (GSSD), an Internet platform for information generation, provision, and integration of multiple domains, regions, languages, and epistemologies relevant to international relations and national security. (2) National Priority Studies: To experiment with and test the developed theory and technologies on practical problems of data integration in national priority areas. Particular focus will be on national and homeland security, including data sources about conflict and war, modes of instability and threat, international and regional demographic, economic, and military statistics, money flows, and contextualizing terrorism defense and response. Although LIGHT will leverage the results of our successful prior research projects, this will be the first research effort to simultaneously and effectively address ontological and temporal information conflicts as well as dramatically enhance information quality. Addressing problems of national priorities in such rapidly changing complex environments requires extraction of observations from disparate sources, using different interpretations, at different points in times, for different purposes, with different biases, and for a wide range of different uses and users. This research will focus on integrating information both over individual domains and across multiple domains. Another innovation is the concept and implementation of Collaborative Domain Spaces (CDS), within which applications in a common domain can share, analyze, modify, and develop information. Applications also can span multiple domains via Linked CDSs. The PIs have considerable experience with these research areas and the organization and management of such large scale international and diverse research projects. The PIs come from three different Schools at MIT: Management, Engineering, and Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences. The faculty and graduate students come from about a dozen nationalities and diverse ethnic, racial, and religious backgrounds. The currently identified external collaborators come from over 20 different organizations and many different countries, industrial as well as developing. Specific efforts are proposed to engage even more women, underrepresented minorities, and persons with disabilities. The anticipated results apply to any complex domain that relies on heterogeneous distributed data to address and resolve compelling problems. This initiative is supported by international collaborators from (a) scientific and research institutions, (b) business and industry, and (c) national and international agencies. Research products include: a System for Harmonized Information Processing (SHIP), a software platform, and diverse applications in research and education which are anticipated to significantly impact the way complex organizations, and society in general, understand and manage critical challenges in NHS, ECS, and ASE