14 research outputs found

    Measurement of service innovation project success:A practical tool and theoretical implications

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    Rethinking the risk matrix

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    So far risk has been mostly defined as the expected value of a loss, mathematically PL (being P the probability of an adverse event and L the loss incurred as a consequence of the adverse event). The so called risk matrix follows from such definition. This definition of risk is justified in a long term “managerial” perspective, in which it is conceivable to distribute the effects of an adverse event on a large number of subjects or a large number of recurrences. In other words, this definition is mostly justified on frequentist terms. Moreover, according to this definition, in two extreme situations (high-probability/low-consequence and low-probability/high-consequence), the estimated risk is low. This logic is against the principles of sustainability and continuous improvement, which should impose instead both a continuous search for lower probabilities of adverse events (higher and higher reliability) and a continuous search for lower impact of adverse events (in accordance with the fail-safe principle). In this work a different definition of risk is proposed, which stems from the idea of safeguard: (1Risk)=(1P)(1L). According to this definition, the risk levels can be considered low only when both the probability of the adverse event and the loss are small. Such perspective, in which the calculation of safeguard is privileged to the calculation of risk, would possibly avoid exposing the Society to catastrophic consequences, sometimes due to wrong or oversimplified use of probabilistic models. Therefore, it can be seen as the citizen’s perspective to the definition of risk

    CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY IN ROMANIA

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    The purpose of this paper is to identify the main opportunities and limitations of corporate social responsibility (CSR). The survey was defined with the aim to involve the highest possible number of relevant CSR topics and give the issue a more wholesome perspective. It provides a basis for further comprehension and deeper analyses of specific CSR areas. The conditions determining the success of CSR in Romania have been defined in the paper on the basis of the previously cumulative knowledge as well as the results of various researches. This paper provides knowledge which may be useful in the programs promoting CSR.Corporate social responsibility, Supportive policies, Romania

    Trans-local-act cultural practices within and across

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    TRANS-LOCAL-ACT: CULTURAL PRACTICES WITHIN AND ACROSS a book edited by Doina Petrescu, Constantin Petcou, Nishat Awan which brings together a series of reflections and practices around issues of local and trans-local cultural production within different contexts in Europe prompted through the agency of a collaborative and networked project: Rhyzom. Like the whole Rhyzom project, the book is an attempt to create transversal links and connections within and across different local framings and to seize instances of the dynamic and complicated nature of notions of ‘local’ and ‘culture’ through multiple forms of practice, which address the critical condition of culture in contemporary society. In relations with ‘local and ‘trans-local’, ‘place’ and ‘culture’, issues of conflict and contest, ecologies, politics and care practices, common and commonality, institutions and agencies are addressed. The book is written by architects, artists, activists, curators, cultural workers, educators, sociologists and residents living in different rural and urban areas in Europe and is addressed to anyone concerned with the relation between culture, subjectivity, space and politics today

    Knowledge and Management Models for Sustainable Growth

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    In the last years sustainability has become a topic of global concern and a key issue in the strategic agenda of both business organizations and public authorities and organisations. Significant changes in business landscape, the emergence of new technology, including social media, the pressure of new social concerns, have called into question established conceptualizations of competitiveness, wealth creation and growth. New and unaddressed set of issues regarding how private and public organisations manage and invest their resources to create sustainable value have brought to light. In particular the increasing focus on environmental and social themes has suggested new dimensions to be taken into account in the value creation dynamics, both at organisations and communities level. For companies the need of integrating corporate social and environmental responsibility issues into strategy and daily business operations, pose profound challenges, which, in turn, involve numerous processes and complex decisions influenced by many stakeholders. Facing these challenges calls for the creation, use and exploitation of new knowledge as well as the development of proper management models, approaches and tools aimed to contribute to the development and realization of environmentally and socially sustainable business strategies and practices

    Algorithmic Reason

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    Are algorithms ruling the world today? Is artificial intelligence making life-and-death decisions? Are social media companies able to manipulate elections? As we are confronted with public and academic anxieties about unprecedented changes, this book offers a different analytical prism to investigate these transformations as more mundane and fraught. Aradau and Blanke develop conceptual and methodological tools to understand how algorithmic operations shape the government of self and other. While disperse and messy, these operations are held together by an ascendant algorithmic reason. Through a global perspective on algorithmic operations, the book helps us understand how algorithmic reason redraws boundaries and reconfigures differences. The book explores the emergence of algorithmic reason through rationalities, materializations, and interventions. It traces how algorithmic rationalities of decomposition, recomposition, and partitioning are materialized in the construction of dangerous others, the power of platforms, and the production of economic value. The book shows how political interventions to make algorithms governable encounter friction, refusal, and resistance. The theoretical perspective on algorithmic reason is developed through qualitative and digital methods to investigate scenes and controversies that range from mass surveillance and the Cambridge Analytica scandal in the UK to predictive policing in the US, and from the use of facial recognition in China and drone targeting in Pakistan to the regulation of hate speech in Germany. Algorithmic Reason offers an alternative to dystopia and despair through a transdisciplinary approach made possible by the authors’ backgrounds, which span the humanities, social sciences, and computer sciences

    Algorithmic Reason

    Get PDF
    Are algorithms ruling the world today? Is artificial intelligence making life-and-death decisions? Are social media companies able to manipulate elections? As we are confronted with public and academic anxieties about unprecedented changes, this book offers a different analytical prism to investigate these transformations as more mundane and fraught. Aradau and Blanke develop conceptual and methodological tools to understand how algorithmic operations shape the government of self and other. While disperse and messy, these operations are held together by an ascendant algorithmic reason. Through a global perspective on algorithmic operations, the book helps us understand how algorithmic reason redraws boundaries and reconfigures differences. The book explores the emergence of algorithmic reason through rationalities, materializations, and interventions. It traces how algorithmic rationalities of decomposition, recomposition, and partitioning are materialized in the construction of dangerous others, the power of platforms, and the production of economic value. The book shows how political interventions to make algorithms governable encounter friction, refusal, and resistance. The theoretical perspective on algorithmic reason is developed through qualitative and digital methods to investigate scenes and controversies that range from mass surveillance and the Cambridge Analytica scandal in the UK to predictive policing in the US, and from the use of facial recognition in China and drone targeting in Pakistan to the regulation of hate speech in Germany. Algorithmic Reason offers an alternative to dystopia and despair through a transdisciplinary approach made possible by the authors’ backgrounds, which span the humanities, social sciences, and computer sciences

    Trans-Local-Act: Cultural practices within and across

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    This book brings together a series of reflections and practices around issues of local and trans-local cultural production within different contexts in Europe, prompted through the agency of a collaborative and networked project: Rhyzom (www.rhyzom.net). All these cultures developed within local contexts are intrinsically related to political, economic, social and material aspects and to specific temporalities, spatialities, individual and collective histories and experiences. Like the whole Rhyzom project, the book is an attempt to create transversal links and connections within and across different local framings and to seize instances of the dynamic and complicated nature of notions of ‘local’ and ‘culture’ through multiple forms of practice, which address the critical condition of culture in contemporary society. In relations with ‘local, and ‘trans-local’, ‘place’ and ‘culture’, issues of conflict and contest, ecologies, politics and care practices, common and commonality, institutions and agencies are addressed. The book is written by architects, artists, activists, curators, cultural workers, educators, sociologists, geographers and residents living in different rural and urban areas in Europe and is addressed to anyone concerned with the relation between culture, subjectivity, space and politics today. The list of projects and topics presented in the book is open: the Rhyzom website provides the framework for further displays and possible collaborations

    Connecting space and justice in metropolitan Porto:the discourses of inhabitants on the spatial dimension of justice

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    This investigation on spatial justice, while being fundamental research, has empirical pertinence and operational quality in the form of a justice-minded urbanism. Connecting the concreteness of cities with the societal objectives of development and of justice lays at the heart of the relationship between space and justice that this thesis sets out to develop. This project proposes an encounter among erudite studies on space, justice and spatial justice and between these theories and the discourses of citizens on what matters for justice in space. A theoretical contribution (a program for a theory of spatial justice) intersects an empirical terrain, based on the metropolitan area of Porto. Exploratory interviews with a sample of this society allow the participants to determine the themes of pertinence to discuss the spatial dimension of justice. Listening to what the inhabitants of metropolitan Porto have to say about injustice and their habitat produces a better understanding on the ways in which space and ethics are related in this society. Does space matter for justice? How do individuals problematize injustice through space? Is there one or several spatial justice conception in the society? Are individuals coherent or do they affiliate with different political-philosophical orientations in function of the themes at stake? In the pursuit of answers to these questions we conceive space and justice as two separate planes. We are interested in seeing the specific contribution of deontological components (rationality, impartiality and reasonableness) and ideas of justice (equality and freedom and their interrelations) vis-Ă -vis the proper spatial imagination of inhabitants. We arrive at the conclusion that there is a strong interconnection between the ways in which inhabitants treat these two dimensions in their configuration of spatial injustices and the proposition of their contraries. The capacity to imagine space as a resource for society's development project co-varies with the comprehensiveness of the "materials of justice" which are implied in the reversal of injustice. We identify that there is a proper ethical capacity involved in telling the just and that such capacity has varying degrees in different individuals. Through the quantitative and qualitative exploration of the corpus we observe that there are today, in Porto, ten different ways of connecting space and justice. Two main fields Âż one located in an epoch of morality and the other in ethics Âż compose contrasting urban problems: societal versus non-societal scales, metrics of continuity or of separateness, and varying degrees of complexity of the substance of space. These contradictions confirm the idea that urbanism needs to be a political process, inclusive of all voices of a society holding different spatial justice conceptions, yet working towards their convergence as well. A theory of spatial justice can support the actors in detecting the reasons for their disagreements and in their reconstructive work towards the consensus of spatial-ethical values
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