Portraying the nature of corruption: Using an explorative case-study design

What is the nature of corruption in Western democracies? To answer this research question, the authors study 10 Dutch corruption cases in depth, looking at confidential criminal files. The cases allow them to sketch a general profile of a corruption case. The authors offer nine propositions to portray the nature of corruption. They conclude that corruption usually takes place within enduring relationships, that the process of becoming corrupt can be characterized as a slippery slope, and that important motives for corruption, aside from material gain, include friendship or love, status, and the desire to impress others. The explorative multiple case study methodology helps to expand our understanding of the way in which officials become corrupt. © 2008 The American Society for Public Administration

Vulnerabilities Faced by Women Widowed by Kedarnath Disaster: An Explorative Case Study

This paper is aimed at exploring the vulnerabilities of women widowed during the Uttarakhand floods of India in 2013. Generally, widows in the Northern States of India, are perceived as a second-class citizen and is usually associated with social neglect, isolation, restrictions and poverty. The study consisted of 20 women who lost their husband in the floods. The results indicate that they are facing financial difficulties and profound helplessness. Their economic concerns primarily revolved around providing primary education and decent nutrition for their children. Governmental compensation and pension were reported to be insufficient to cover daily needs. Keywords: Widowhood; Vulnerability; Disaster; Floods eISSN: 2398-4287© 2020. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bsby e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BYNC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/ebpj.v5iSI3.253

Sign use and communicative behaviour after sign support course: An explorative case study

At the Habilitation center in Nacka, Stockholm, Sweden, a sign support course was developed where the sign selection was based on relevant everyday situations and the amount of signs was limited. The aim of the study was to examine if participants in the course “Våga teckna” changed their sign language use, lexical variation and communicative behavior after participating and if it was maintained over time. In this study a parent and a resource person participated, each with a child with disabilities. Participants were filmed and video recorded interactions were analyzed. Sign use was calculated per each film session. The adults' communicative behavior in interaction with the children was rated by the assessment instrument KOMMUNIKATIV. The parent used fewer signs and got lower ratings of communicative behavior after the course. The resource person increased her sign use and communicative quality after the course. Analysis of the number of signs, lexical variation and communicative behavior can be an informative way to evaluate sign support courses.På Habiliteringscenter Nacka har en teckenstödskurs utvecklats där teckenurvalet baseras på relevanta vardagssituationer och teckenantalet är relativt begränsat. Studien syftade till att undersöka om deltagare i kursen ”Våga teckna” förändrade sin teckenanvändning, om deras kommunikativa beteende påverkades och om det kvarstod över tid. I studien deltog en förälder och en resursperson med varsitt barn med funktionsnedsättning. Deltagarna filmades och videoinspelad interaktion analyserades. Teckenanvändningen beräknades utifrån lexikal variation och antal tecken per filmtillfälle. De vuxnas kommunikativa beteende i interaktion med barnen skattades med bedömningsinstrumentet KOMMUNIKATIV. Föräldern använde färre tecken och skattades lägre i kommunikativt beteende efter kursen. Hos resurspersonen observerades däremot ökad teckenanvändning och kommunikativ kvalitet efter genomgången ”Våga teckna”-kurs. Analys av antalet tecken, lexikal variation och kommunikativt beteende kan vara ett informativt sätt att utvärdera teckenstödskurser

AI for Situational Awareness in Situations With High Uncertainty: An Explorative Case Study

Often, the police experience scenarios with much uncertainty. These scenarios can be characterized by high time pressure, huge amounts of information, and potentially severe consequences. In this paper, we study whether artificial intelligence (AI) can be a fit for the information processing needs of the police helping them achieve situational awareness and make better decisions. Given the potential severity of police situations, AI can potentially reduce the risk of fatal outcomes and wrong decisions. Investigating this issue with police officers and AI experts as our informants, our findings suggest that our informants are positive to AI as a support tool, but more skeptical to whether AI can make an impact in their daily police work due to the complexity of their work. The importance of implementing AI to suitable tasks is emphasized

Capturing the Dynamic Nature of Cyber Risk: Evidence from an Explorative Case Study

In this research, we developed a novel approach to enable a dynamic cyber risk management strategy as the dynamic nature of cyber risk is rarely considered in current decision support tools. Our explorative case study shows that many management challenges such as investment decisions, priority setting, and “shelf time” analyses can be continuously analyzed. Our research using system thinking and modelling provides valuable insights about these challenges to support current strategic decision-making practices and improve managerial learning. These insights enable management to identify and analyze the effectiveness of future cyber risk management strategies before implementing them

Users as inventors and developers of radical innovation: An explorative case study analysis in the field of medical technology

Our study focuses on the question, whether users should be intensively involved in the innovation process of radical product innovations or better not - from the manufacturer's perspective. Radical innovations incorporate new technologies, shift market structures, require intensive user learning and induce significant behavior changes. Due to these specifics the question arises, whether users play a productive role in the innovation process of radical innovations at all, or if their contributions might even be counterproductive. To gain a better understanding for the users' role in radical innovation and to develop a differentiated view of their contributions, we have studied three dimensions of user involvement were studied: (1) Which characteristics enable users to contribute to the innovation process? (2) How do manufacturers need to interact with users to benefit from their contributions? (3) How does user involvement impact on the manufacturer? We focused our study on the early phases of the innovation process. Two phases were distinquished for the analysis of these questions: Idea gen-eration and development. This distinction allows us to analyse the role of users within separate phases of the innovation process. Based on relevant theories and empirical work a set of propositions was formulated for each dimension. To study the addressed research questions, an explorative case study analysis was conducted in the field of medical technology. Five radical innovation projects were selected including medical robots, navigation systems, and biocompatible implants. In-depth inter-views were conducted with marketing, R&D, project leaders, CEO's, and users. A content analysis framework was applied to systematically analyse the collected data. The case studies reveal that users with a unique set of characteristics (motivation, competencies, contextual factors) were able to deliver major contributions in all three phases of the radical innova-tion projects. In four cases users turned out to be the original inventor of the radical innovations. Particularly users that work under extreme conditions (e.g. neurosurgeons) prooved to be a valuable source for radically new ideas. Furthermore the cases show that the innovative users took over classi-cal functions of manufacturers in the development process. For example the innovative users identified relevant experts and manufacturers that were required to transform their ideas into prototypes and products. These users therefore took over the networking function. some users were able to actively contribute to the development of first prototypes. A unique set of characteristics enabled users to do so. With regard to appropriate patterns of interaction between users and manufacturers the analysis reveals that face-to-face-interactions are required. This is due to the nature of information that is transferred. The information provided by users and by manufacturers is highly complex. Therefore explanations and visualisations are needed to gain an understanding on either side. In addition the analysis shows that it seems to be appropriate to interact with a small, well selected number of users in early phases and to increase the number of involved users as the project gets closer to market introduc-tion. In four cases specific users contributed significantly to NPD success. Based on the results of the study, the recommendation for manufacturers is to leverage the knowledge of users with certain char-acteristics for radical innovation projects. The results of our study form the basis of a market research concept for radical innovations. --innovation process,product innovation

Towards Crime Prevention Using Big Data Analytics: A Literature Review with an Explorative Case Study

Since the popularization of the big data concept, it has been implemented in various areas. Contemporary literature has proved the potential of using big data in crime prevention. In this research paper, we examine research on big data being used in Crime Prevention while implementing an author-centric to a concept-centric research approach. We also present the foundation for future research by analyzing data derived from the City of Chicago. We identified the neighborhoods in Chicago that are statistically more prone to crimes and used data of the last 10 years to make our observations. We additionally provide further discussion points for future research purpose

Making Digital Infrastructures More Generative Through Platformization and Platform- driven Software Development: An Explorative Case Study

Digital innovation platforms are particularly known for their generativity producing and reproducing flexible solutions for multiple user groups and attracting third-party developers. Consequently, as a concept, generativity often relates to the consumer market as its focal unit of analysis. In contrast, this paper takes a public sector organization as a unit of analysis, investigating the potential for developing more generative digital infrastructures through processes of platformization and platform-driven software development practices. We define platformization as the transition from silo-based organization to platform-based organization, where the dismantling of monolithic legacy systems enables new ways of organizing the development and maintenance of software development. By decoupling systems, organizations can recouple their organization to overcome the limitations of traditional silo-based organization. Our contribution is twofold. First, we contribute by describing platformization as a sociotechnical process that consist of changes to both infrastructure and organization, where the dismantling of monolithic applications enables new ways of organizing the development and maintenance of software. Second, we contribute by theorizing how platformization processes can produce increased generativity for the IT organization and its digital infrastructure