6,139 research outputs found

    Navigating the system vs. changing the system: a comparative analysis of the influence of asset-based and rights-based approaches on the well-being of socio-economic disadvantaged communities in Scotland

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    Asset-based and rights-based approaches have become leading strategies in Scottish community development. The asset-based approach seeks to help communities develop skills to provide self-help solutions. The rights-based approach seeks to help communities claim rights and make governments more accountable. These two approaches are based on contrasting conceptions of empowerment, employ opposing methods and lead to different outcomes. However, there is no empirical research that has comparatively assessed the two. This thesis represents the first in-depth exploration of the comparative effects of asset-based and rights-based approaches on the well-being of communities experiencing socio-economic disadvantage in Scotland. The study follows a qualitative design that includes a comparative case study of two projects: the AB project (representing the asset-based approach), and the RB project (representing the rights-based approach). The study also includes the perspectives of a wider pool of practitioners working in a range of community development organisations in Scotland. In total, forty-five participants across seventeen organisations have participated in this study. To assess the influence of asset-based and rights-based approaches upon well-being, this thesis employs a pluralistic account that combines objective and subjective indicators across three dimensions: material, social and personal. The specific well-being framework employed is the result of combining White’s (2010) well-being framework for the development practice and Oxfam Scotland’s (2013) Humankind Index. The results of this study indicate that asset-based and rights-based approaches have important contrasting effects on well-being. The asset-based approach seems to have a more positive effect on project participants and across a higher number of well-being indicators. The rights-based approach has more observable effects on material well-being and a higher impact on the wider community, but across fewer indicators. My findings also suggest that employing these approaches in community development settings brings different advantages and disadvantages. The asset-based approach seems easier to apply and to prove the positive outcomes on those involved. This approach, however, risks sustaining the status quo and, by doing so, misses out the opportunity to achieve more transformational outcomes. The right-based approach seems able to address structural disadvantages more effectively. Yet, it is more difficult to apply and to prove a positive impact. Organisations, practitioners, and communities applying it also face higher costs. These findings have significant implications at the practice level. Asset-based and rights-based approaches are rarely combined in UK community development settings. As a result, practitioners are often left in the position of having to make a trade-off between helping improve the well-being of project participants and helping improve the well-being of the wider community. In theory, practitioners could avoid this trade- off by combining these approaches. In practice, this is not always possible. Asset-based and rights-based approaches represent opposing theories of change. There are also legal and funding requirements that prevent organisations from following a combination of both. Given this, understanding the comparative impact of applying asset-based and rights-based approaches in community development is critical

    Modular lifelong machine learning

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    Deep learning has drastically improved the state-of-the-art in many important fields, including computer vision and natural language processing (LeCun et al., 2015). However, it is expensive to train a deep neural network on a machine learning problem. The overall training cost further increases when one wants to solve additional problems. Lifelong machine learning (LML) develops algorithms that aim to efficiently learn to solve a sequence of problems, which become available one at a time. New problems are solved with less resources by transferring previously learned knowledge. At the same time, an LML algorithm needs to retain good performance on all encountered problems, thus avoiding catastrophic forgetting. Current approaches do not possess all the desired properties of an LML algorithm. First, they primarily focus on preventing catastrophic forgetting (Diaz-Rodriguez et al., 2018; Delange et al., 2021). As a result, they neglect some knowledge transfer properties. Furthermore, they assume that all problems in a sequence share the same input space. Finally, scaling these methods to a large sequence of problems remains a challenge. Modular approaches to deep learning decompose a deep neural network into sub-networks, referred to as modules. Each module can then be trained to perform an atomic transformation, specialised in processing a distinct subset of inputs. This modular approach to storing knowledge makes it easy to only reuse the subset of modules which are useful for the task at hand. This thesis introduces a line of research which demonstrates the merits of a modular approach to lifelong machine learning, and its ability to address the aforementioned shortcomings of other methods. Compared to previous work, we show that a modular approach can be used to achieve more LML properties than previously demonstrated. Furthermore, we develop tools which allow modular LML algorithms to scale in order to retain said properties on longer sequences of problems. First, we introduce HOUDINI, a neurosymbolic framework for modular LML. HOUDINI represents modular deep neural networks as functional programs and accumulates a library of pre-trained modules over a sequence of problems. Given a new problem, we use program synthesis to select a suitable neural architecture, as well as a high-performing combination of pre-trained and new modules. We show that our approach has most of the properties desired from an LML algorithm. Notably, it can perform forward transfer, avoid negative transfer and prevent catastrophic forgetting, even across problems with disparate input domains and problems which require different neural architectures. Second, we produce a modular LML algorithm which retains the properties of HOUDINI but can also scale to longer sequences of problems. To this end, we fix the choice of a neural architecture and introduce a probabilistic search framework, PICLE, for searching through different module combinations. To apply PICLE, we introduce two probabilistic models over neural modules which allows us to efficiently identify promising module combinations. Third, we phrase the search over module combinations in modular LML as black-box optimisation, which allows one to make use of methods from the setting of hyperparameter optimisation (HPO). We then develop a new HPO method which marries a multi-fidelity approach with model-based optimisation. We demonstrate that this leads to improvement in anytime performance in the HPO setting and discuss how this can in turn be used to augment modular LML methods. Overall, this thesis identifies a number of important LML properties, which have not all been attained in past methods, and presents an LML algorithm which can achieve all of them, apart from backward transfer

    An Exploration of the Suitability of Pharmacy Education in Saudi Arabia to Prepare Graduates to Meet Healthcare Needs: a Mixed-Methods Study

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    The key role of pharmacists within the health system, particularly in optimising safe, responsible and effective use of medicines, underpins the demand for a highly skilled and competent workforce. Therefore, developing the capacity of pharmacists to attain and maintain essential competencies relevant to the population’s health needs is required to ensure a high standard of patient care, thereby helping to improve patient and population health. In Saudi Arabia, little evidence exists regarding the assessment of national educational programmes’ structure and outcomes. Moreover, no national competency framework exists for pharmacists in any sector or stage of practice. In the absence of such core quality elements to inform pharmacy education assessment and development, the extent to which pharmacy schools in Saudi Arabia prepare competent pharmacists to address societal needs from pharmacy services is unclear. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the extent to which pharmacy education can prepare competent pharmacists to address the healthcare needs for pharmacy practice in Saudi Arabia. An exploratory sequential mixed methods research design was used to address the aim of this study in three phases: individual interviews and focus groups were employed with a purposively selected sample of pharmacy policy makers, pharmacists and the public to explore societal healthcare needs and the roles required of pharmacists to meet those needs; a national online survey of pharmacists and an online nominal group consensus method of pharmacy experts were used to identify competencies considered essential to develop a profession-wide national foundation level competency framework; and a case study in which curriculum mapping of two purposively selected Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) curricula was used to assess the extent to which the current pharmacy programme in Saudi Arabia meets the identified competencies of the developed national competency framework. Based on qualitative and quantitative analyses of societal healthcare needs, pharmacists’ roles, core competencies and curricular contents within the local context of Saudi Arabia, findings showed that there is a mismatch between initial education and real practice needs and expectations. While the country’s current needs from pharmacists are to optimise health system capacity and increase access to primary care services and medicines expertise in community pharmacies, the study indicated local education is product-oriented with a focus of curricular content and experiential training opportunities in most schools on preparing future pharmacists for hospital pharmacy practice. The study also identified several gaps between current initial education programmes and the competencies required to practise the expected roles, suggesting that current initial education might not prepare the students sufficiently to provide the full range of quality pharmaceutical services as per the country’s pharmacy practice needs. The study provided a new understanding of graduates’ readiness to practise as per the country’s pharmacy practice needs, the quality of educational programmes and pharmacists' professional development opportunities in Saudi Arabia. Findings maybe used to inform the development of competency-based education and maximise graduates’ capacity to deliver and develop pharmaceutical services effectively to best meet societal healthcare needs in Saudi Arabia

    An empirical investigation of the relationship between integration, dynamic capabilities and performance in supply chains

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    This research aimed to develop an empirical understanding of the relationships between integration, dynamic capabilities and performance in the supply chain domain, based on which, two conceptual frameworks were constructed to advance the field. The core motivation for the research was that, at the stage of writing the thesis, the combined relationship between the three concepts had not yet been examined, although their interrelationships have been studied individually. To achieve this aim, deductive and inductive reasoning logics were utilised to guide the qualitative study, which was undertaken via multiple case studies to investigate lines of enquiry that would address the research questions formulated. This is consistent with the author’s philosophical adoption of the ontology of relativism and the epistemology of constructionism, which was considered appropriate to address the research questions. Empirical data and evidence were collected, and various triangulation techniques were employed to ensure their credibility. Some key features of grounded theory coding techniques were drawn upon for data coding and analysis, generating two levels of findings. These revealed that whilst integration and dynamic capabilities were crucial in improving performance, the performance also informed the former. This reflects a cyclical and iterative approach rather than one purely based on linearity. Adopting a holistic approach towards the relationship was key in producing complementary strategies that can deliver sustainable supply chain performance. The research makes theoretical, methodological and practical contributions to the field of supply chain management. The theoretical contribution includes the development of two emerging conceptual frameworks at the micro and macro levels. The former provides greater specificity, as it allows meta-analytic evaluation of the three concepts and their dimensions, providing a detailed insight into their correlations. The latter gives a holistic view of their relationships and how they are connected, reflecting a middle-range theory that bridges theory and practice. The methodological contribution lies in presenting models that address gaps associated with the inconsistent use of terminologies in philosophical assumptions, and lack of rigor in deploying case study research methods. In terms of its practical contribution, this research offers insights that practitioners could adopt to enhance their performance. They can do so without necessarily having to forgo certain desired outcomes using targeted integrative strategies and drawing on their dynamic capabilities

    Ethnographies of Collaborative Economies across Europe: Understanding Sharing and Caring

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    "Sharing economy" and "collaborative economy" refer to a proliferation of initiatives, business models, digital platforms and forms of work that characterise contemporary life: from community-led initiatives and activist campaigns, to the impact of global sharing platforms in contexts such as network hospitality, transportation, etc. Sharing the common lens of ethnographic methods, this book presents in-depth examinations of collaborative economy phenomena. The book combines qualitative research and ethnographic methodology with a range of different collaborative economy case studies and topics across Europe. It uniquely offers a truly interdisciplinary approach. It emerges from a unique, long-term, multinational, cross-European collaboration between researchers from various disciplines (e.g., sociology, anthropology, geography, business studies, law, computing, information systems), career stages, and epistemological backgrounds, brought together by a shared research interest in the collaborative economy. This book is a further contribution to the in-depth qualitative understanding of the complexities of the collaborative economy phenomenon. These rich accounts contribute to the painting of a complex landscape that spans several countries and regions, and diverse political, cultural, and organisational backdrops. This book also offers important reflections on the role of ethnographic researchers, and on their stance and outlook, that are of paramount interest across the disciplines involved in collaborative economy research

    Essays on Manufacturers’ IT Capabilities for Digital Servitization

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    Over the last decades, studies have found that transformational drivers affect how firms innovate their business models (Chesbrough, 2010; Massa et al., 2016). In markets in which physical products become commodities, the servitization of business models is a transformational driver for firms (Wise & Baumgartner, 1999). For its part, digitalization increases the potential to reshape business models through novel use cases of technology (Yoo et al., 2010). Recently, digitalization was found to extend the opportunities from servitization through digital technologies as digital servitization (Paschou et al., 2020). Digital servitization describes a firm’s shift from product-centric offerings to service-centric offerings with the help of novel IT assets (Naik et al., 2020). The manufacturing industry provides promising examples of firms with portfolios of physical offerings that might undergo such a transformational shift (Baines et al., 2017). So far, digital servitization research focuses primarily on four topics: re-defining the notion of servitization in the context of digitalization, identifying digital servitization value drivers, linking the transformation to specific technologies, and deriving how novel service offerings arise (Paschou et al., 2020; Zhou & Song, 2021). Despite the breadth of digital servitization research, how firms can shift to service-centric offerings remains unclear (Kohtamäki et al., 2019). Specifically, research lacks studies on the prerequisites and mechanisms that link theory with evidence on achieving IT-enabled service innovation (Paschou et al., 2020). Further, how firms must organize to build and operate IT-enabled services around these technologies remains unclear (Paschou et al., 2020). In a recent report on the manufacturing industry, practitioners confirm these gaps and associate them with a lack of managerial and technical knowledge (Illner et al., 2020). A theoretical lens that helps to address these shortcomings is the knowledge-based theory. It suggests that knowledge is the primary rationale, so that a firm benefits from its assets (Grant, 1996b; Nonaka, 1994). The knowledge-based theory understands a capability as a directed application of knowledge in a firm’s activities (Grant, 1996b; Nonaka, 1994). In the context of digitalization, firms require IT capabilities based on knowledge of how to capitalize on IT assets (Lee et al., 2015). Digital servitization research finds that IT capabilities are critical for identifying, adapting, and exploiting IT-enabled service innovations (Johansson et al., 2019). Still, little extant research informs firms that undergo digital servitization about which IT capabilities can help to strengthen their competitive advantage (Coreynen et al., 2017). Even though IT capabilities may be necessary for success in innovating IT-enabled services, the required knowledge needs to be disseminated effectively throughout an organization (Foss et al., 2014; Grant, 1996a; Nonaka, 1994). The organizational control theory offers a theoretical perspective about knowledge dissemination mechanisms, which can be horizontal or vertical (Ouchi, 1979). Horizontal knowledge dissemination mechanisms depend on codifying processes in rules or measuring process outputs through indicators, while the locus of exerting these rules and indicators determines the vertical knowledge dissemination. The IT innovation and IT governance literature refers to these knowledge dissemination mechanisms as formalization of IT activities and centralization of IT decision-making (Weill, 2004; Winkler & Brown, 2013; Zmud, 1982). However, how to orchestrate knowledge, particularly for IT capabilities, in firms that undergo digital servitization is not yet clear (Kohtamäki et al., 2019; Münch et al., 2022; Sjödin et al., 2020). Against this background, this dissertation addresses how manufacturers organize their IT capabilities while encountering the transformational drivers of digital servitization by answering the following overarching research question: How can manufacturers organize their IT capabilities to capitalize on digital servitization? (References to be found in the full text):List of abbreviations in synopsis............................................................................................................V Part I: Synopsis of the dissertation..........................................................................................................11 Motivation.......................................................................................................................................12 Research design...............................................................................................................................22. 1Conceptual approach and research objectives....................................................................22. 2Research methodologies and methods................................................................................4 3Structure of the dissertation.............................................................................................................5 3.1Systematization of the papers.............................................................................................5 3.2Paper1: Revisiting the concept of IT capabilities in the era of digitalization....................7 3.3Paper2: Short and sweet –Multiple mini case studies as a form of rigorous case studyresearch...............................................................................................................................9 3.4Paper3: Linking IT capabilities and competitive advantage of servitized business models..........................................................................................................................................11 3.5Paper4: From selling machinery to hybrid offerings –Organizational impact of digitalservitization on manufacturing firms................................................................................11 3.6Paper5: Manufacturers’ IT-enabled service innovation success as a multifacetedphenomenon: A configurational study..............................................................................13 3.7Paper6: The missing piece –Calibration of qualitative data for qualitative comparativeanalyses in IS research......................................................................................................14 3.8Paper7: Prerequisites and causal recipes for manufacturers’ success in innovating ITenabled services................................................................................................................16 4Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................19 4.1Resultssummary...............................................................................................................19 4.2Contributions....................................................................................................................20 4.2.1Theoretical contributions......................................................................................20 4.2.2Methodological contribution................................................................................21 4.2.3Practical contribution............................................................................................21 4.3Limitations and future research........................................................................................22 5References.....................................................................................................................................24 Part II: Papers of the dissertation...........................................................................................................29 Paper1: Revisiting the concept of IT capabilities in the era of digitalization.......................................30 Paper2: Short and sweet –Multiple mini case studies as a form of rigorous case study research.......41 Paper3: Linking IT capabilities and competitive advantage of servitized business model..................64 Paper4: From selling machinery to hybrid offerings –Organizational impact of digital servitization on manufacturing firms......................................................................................................................80 Paper5: Manufacturers’ IT-enabled service innovation success as a multifaceted phenomenon: A configurational study...................................................................................................................108 Paper6: The missing piece –Calibration of qualitative data for qualitative comparative analyses in IS research........................................................................................................................................119 Paper7: Prerequisites and causal recipes for manufacturers’ success in innovating IT-enabled services.....................................................................................................................................................136 Overview of the digital appendix on CD.............................................................................................17

    ‘Inner qualities versus inequalities’: A case study of student change learning about Aboriginal health using sequential, explanatory mixed methods

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    Racism and lack of self-determination in health care perpetuate injury and injustice to Aboriginal people. To instil cultural safety at individual, organisational, community and systems levels, a key site of action has been health professional education that seeks to elicit reflexivity, cultural humility and a working understanding of Aboriginal health concepts. Studies in Aboriginal community settings show Family Well Being (FWB) empowerment education is effective in supporting personal and collective reflexivity and transformation through empowering life skills development. Implementation of FWB within educational settings shows early signs of effectiveness among students. Yet knowledge of the steps and processes of student change is lacking. This mixed methods explanatory case study sought to measure and understand change in postgraduate students of a leading Australian university learning about Aboriginal health and wellbeing through blended delivery, including through face-to-face immersion in FWB in an urban classroom. Three interrelated studies investigated fidelity and acceptability of the program, measured and analysed growth and empowerment in students, and explained processes of change observed, through thematic analysis of asynchronous online discussions using lenses based on transformative learning and empowerment. Researcher reflexivity was promoted by Aboriginal supervision. Over six years, 194 students enrolled in two different Aboriginal public health courses, 85 of them in the FWB course. As well as achieving program fidelity and acceptability, pre/post-course change in students across a range of emotional empowerment, personal growth and life-long learning processes was measured in the FWB group. Thematic analysis revealed students’ fluid and recursive processes of transformative learning in their professional selves and capacities to act in domains important to Aboriginal health. This case study contributes new knowledge critical to strengthening health professional capabilities for ever more complex, uncertain and emotionally demanding sites of practice, and to work in empowering ways—with, not for, Aboriginal people and communities

    Tradition and Innovation in Construction Project Management

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    This book is a reprint of the Special Issue 'Tradition and Innovation in Construction Project Management' that was published in the journal Buildings

    Constitutions of Value

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    Gathering an interdisciplinary range of cutting-edge scholars, this book addresses legal constitutions of value. Global value production and transnational value practices that rely on exploitation and extraction have left us with toxic commons and a damaged planet. Against this situation, the book examines law’s fundamental role in institutions of value production and valuation. Utilising pathbreaking theoretical approaches, it problematizes mainstream efforts to redeem institutions of value production by recoupling them with progressive values. Aiming beyond radical critique, the book opens up the possibility of imagining and enacting new and different value practices. This wide-ranging and accessible book will appeal to international lawyers, socio-legal scholars, those working at the intersections of law and economy and others, in politics, economics, environmental studies and elsewhere, who are concerned with rethinking our current ideas of what has value, what does not, and whether and how value may be revalued

    Digital Literacy Education in Welsh Primary and Secondary Schools from the 1960s to the Present

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    Digital technologies are imbued with ideologies that impact culture and society. These technologies are ubiquitous, pervasive, and central to how people communicate, consume information, and orchestrate their lives. Therefore, for people to fully understand the impact and influence of these technologies on their lives and engage with them and the digital environment in a critically informed way - digital literacy is an absolute and necessary requirement. However, we are not seeing digital literacy as standard. This study assesses: (1) Whether students are being sufficiently educated about how digital technologies use and affect them in a social, cultural, and ethical capacity; (2) Whether the programme content of digital literacy education (DLE) is primarily driven by neo-liberal economically driven government policies; and (3) How much influence private neo-liberal capitalistic enterprises have in determining the educational agenda of DLE? Qualitative data was collected via three focus group interviews and twenty-six semi-structured interviews which explored students, educational professionals, and government officials’ views of DLE in Wales. The data was thematically coded using critical discourse analysis, and analysed using theories developed in Herbert Marcuse’s 1964 publication One-Dimensional Man. The results indicated that DLE educational policy has broadened to include knowledge that extends beyond the teaching of purely mechanistic skills. However, a variety of factors were identified that impede their implementation. Additionally, it is argued that students’ mechanistic digital skills have been declining since the introduction of touch screen technologies into primary and secondary schools. Findings also indicated that educators main DLE focus was on preparing students for employment purposes, and the influence private neo-liberal capitalistic enterprises have in determining not only the educational agenda of DLE, but education in general is profound, and has accelerated exponentially since the COVID-19 imposed lockdowns
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