Developing communication tools for resource management in western Alaska: an evaluation of the Western Alaska Landscape Conservation Cooperative coastal projects database

Master's Project (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2017Science communication is an essential component in decision-making for resource management in Alaska. This field aids in bridging knowledge gaps between scientists and diverse stakeholders. In 2014, the Western Alaska LCC developed a database cataloging the current coastal change projects in order to facilitate collaboration amongst researchers, managers, and the surrounding communities. In order to better inform similar outreach projects in other LCC regions, this MNRM project entailed an evaluation of this database between April and September 2016 and comprised a ten-question phone interview with the database participants and other involved personnel. Results from this evaluation can help refine the database to better suit its users' needs in the future, and it can also inform the creation of similar tools in other LCC regions. This project evaluated the use and usability of the Western Alaska LCC Coastal Change Database. First, I review coastal change and its impacts on Western Alaska. Next, I explore how institutions can respond to these changes and what resources they can use, including decision-support tools. I then provide examples of different decision-support tools (both in academic literature and in Alaskan projects) and discuss methodologies for evaluating their use. Interview results are then reported. The evaluation of the WALCC Coastal Change Database indicated that the tool was mostly used to enhance general understanding of the research occurring in the region. Respondents were less likely to use it for time-intensive tasks such as collaboration. Respondents also indicated that a place exists for tools like this database to flourish, but they need 1) persistent outreach, 2) a dynamic design, and 3) immediate benefits for users' time. In the future, regular updates and frequent outreach could improve the database's usability and help maintain its credibility

Identifying Boundary Spanning Behaviours, Capital Conversions and Practices in Multicultural Teams

This study concerns boundary spanning within and across multicultural teams, and will examine the impact of behaviours, roles, and boundary spanning practices in a multicultural team environment. Definitions of boundaries, boundary roles and boundary spanning behaviours and practices will be reviewed from social network and forms of capital literature, including recent conceptual rethinking on brokerage as ongoing processes (Obstfeld, 2014): of note conduiting and mediation. Conduiting is a form of indirect brokerage where an intermediary is the lone link between two agents across a boundary, and it involves false starts at brokering. The examination of false starts as they occur on a longitudinal basis will be attempted. With this approach, it is hoped to carry out a fresh examination of how conduiting may convert to mediation, namely a direct brokering process where a more successful intermediary succeeds in linking erstwhile separate parties together for communal collaboration (Obstfeld 2005; Lingo and O'Mahony, 2010). Reviews of ambassador and of task co-ordinator roles (Ancona and Caldwell, 1992) will include their negotiating behaviours within and between groups, and the forms of capital they accrue and convert between on a longitudinal basis. Key gatekeeping behaviours will be reviewed in terms of negotiation (Friedman and Podolny, 1992); as well as those of un-nominated emerging technology gatekeepers (Tushman and Scanlan, 1981). The emphasis of this study is the examination of the concept of boundary roles in simulated multicultural teams of higher education students (Popov et al, 2012). This is timely given that the brokerage processes of informal social structure have been found in experimental educational studies to boost the effectiveness of multicultural teams (Di Marco, Taylor and Alin, 2010). This thesis will explore the nature of informal social processes that develop during collaboration within and between multicultural teams with respect to: role negotiation processes (Ryan and Cosliger, 2011); gatekeeping behaviours (Levina and Vaast, 2005); and barriers to boundary spanning (Schotter and Beamish, 2011). Semi structured interviews and focus groups will be used in a longitudinal inter-subjective approach, in a multicultural team context over 30 weeks' duration. Purposive sampling will be employed to identify respondents in a three - pronged data collection process with the first set of focus groups at 15 weeks into the project, the second at 27 weeks, and individual interviews at 30 weeks. Manual coding will be employed to capture subtle details of boundary spanning practices. Key findings included barrier breaking practices, and associated capital conversions. Contributions from this longitudinal approach to multicultural teams include the identification of: barrier breaking practices based on social inclusion and processes of constituting social space associated with boundary spanning in practice; and the nature of associated capital conversions by key boundary roles

Organizational Culture and Relationship Skills

While both the strategic management and the network literature recognize the importance of inter-firm relationships for explaining competitive advantage, the question why firms differ in their ability to benefit from these relationships is rarely addressed.This paper aims to begin to fill this gap in the literature. We argue that organizational culture is an important factor influencing the relationship skills of a firm, defined as a firm s ability to manage its ties with other firms, whether these are customers, suppliers, or service providers. We assume relationship skills to be especially relevant for the formation and maintenance of close and durable transaction ties.We test our model on a dataset of 127 Dutch inter-firm relations and find general support.Specifically, we find that firms with organizational cultures characterized by an orientation towards stability and predictability, a positive orientation towards innovation, and not characterized by a strong focus on immediate results, score high on relationship skills.Relationship skills, in turn, are found to have a positive influence on the outcomes of inter-firm relationships in terms of learning, achieving innovations and gaining new contacts, but not in terms of immediate (financial) results.corporate culture;interorganizational relations;networks;strategic management;stability;alliance;Netherlands

APS200 project – the place of science in policy development in the public service

The report aims to achieve better government outcomes through facilitating the effective use of scientific input in policy development in the public service. The Australian Public Service (APS) is increasingly tasked with solving complex policy problems that require significant input from science in order to address them fully and appropriately. Policy making within the APS needs to be based on a rigorous, evidence‐based approach that routinely and systematically draws upon science as a key element. The Australian Government’s investment in science, research and innovation capacity supports a long‐term vision to address national challenges and open up new opportunities. This investment is also significant, with the Commonwealth providing $8.9 billion to support science, research and innovation in 2012‐13. There is an opportunity to harness this investment to address complex societal challenges, by ensuring that scientific research and advice is more effectively incorporated in the development of evidence‐based policy. There is an opportunity for policy makers to make better use of the science capacity provided by our science institutions, including publicly funded research agencies and other science agencies, universities, Cooperative Research Centres and Medical Research Institutes. There is also an opportunity to capitalise on the willingness of scientists to contribute their research results to the policy making process

TRUST MANAGEMENT – AN INFORMATION SYSTEMS PERSPECTIVE

The focus of the Information Systems (IS) research on trust has been on the perception of trust and explaining the concept in terms of its antecedents. The merits of this descriptive and explanatory knowledge notwithstanding, the usefulness and applicability of this knowledge for organizations that aim at actively influencing their trust position is limited. In light of recent public scandals in areas such as social media, car manufacturing or financial services, organizations require an understanding of how customer trust can be managed using contemporary information systems solutions. In this paper we propose trust management as an IS theme of increasing relevance and draw upon extant research in IS, psychology, and marketing to bridge the gap between topics such as risk management, compliance management and governance on the one hand and trust management on the other. We utilize Botsman’s concept of uncertainty as a proxy for customer trust to bring together organizational approaches that can objectively reduce uncertainty linked to an organization, its processes, products, and services with the customer’s perception of this uncertainty. We contribute to the further maturity of trust management by providing new foundations and providing explicit advice on how to improve trust in organizations

Development of an ontology for aerospace engine components degradation in service

This paper presents the development of an ontology for component service degradation. In this paper, degradation mechanisms in gas turbine metallic components are used for a case study to explain how a taxonomy within an ontology can be validated. The validation method used in this paper uses an iterative process and sanity checks. Data extracted from on-demand textual information are filtered and grouped into classes of degradation mechanisms. Various concepts are systematically and hierarchically arranged for use in the service maintenance ontology. The allocation of the mechanisms to the AS-IS ontology presents a robust data collection hub. Data integrity is guaranteed when the TO-BE ontology is introduced to analyse processes relative to various failure events. The initial evaluation reveals improvement in the performance of the TO-BE domain ontology based on iterations and updates with recognised mechanisms. The information extracted and collected is required to improve service k nowledge and performance feedback which are important for service engineers. Existing research areas such as natural language processing, knowledge management, and information extraction were also examined

A Design Theory for Digital Platforms Supporting Online Communities: A Multiple Case Study

This research proposes and validates a design theory for digital platforms that support online communities (DPsOC). It addresses ways in which digital platforms can effectively support social interactions in online communities. Drawing upon prior literature on IS design theory, online communities, and platforms, we derive an initial set of propositions for designing effective DPsOC. Our overarching proposition is that three components of digital platform architecture (core, interface, and complements) should collectively support the mix of the three distinct types of social interaction structures of online community (information sharing, collaboration, and collective action). We validate the initial propositions and generate additional insights by conducting an in-depth analysis of an European digital platform for elderly care assistance. We further validate the propositions by analyzing three widely used digital platforms, including Twitter, Wikipedia, and Liquidfeedback, and we derive additional propositions and insights that can guide DPsOC design. We discuss the implications of this research for research and practice

MAPPING AND EXPLORING INFORMAL NETWORK IN ORGANIZATIONAL AND COMMUNITY LEADERSHIP

Work often happens through informal interactions and relationships. Formal networks and vertical channels no longer enough for the organizational and community capacity to adapt to the rapid social changes and disruptions. Just as the network knowledge is an asset for any organization in the disruptive era, understanding people’s connections and network’s approach is critically important in the cultural transformation of the leadership in the community and organization. The purpose of this article is to review and investigate how Social Network Analysis (SNA) could visualize and analyze the informal networks in organizational and community leadership’s studies. This study introduces a model that combines organizational leadership and community leadership as a social relations category in a micro- sociological perspective. By applying social network approach to evaluating leadership network, the organization or community can more efficiently scale and accelerate their development as well as solves their leadership problems. This method is useful for those who are seeking to influence policy, disseminate new ideas, and mobilize resources towards a common or a specific goal. SNA provides a set of theories, tools, and processes for understanding the relationships and structures of a network. SNA will determine the particular measures, from simple to complex rules, which need to be applied to derive insights from the network and how the network system is structured and evolved with time. The results of this review could help leaders to diagnose, measure, and evaluate their informal network structures and dynamics which are connected through shared interests, work, experiences, and collaborations.

Product LIfecycle Management, Knowledge Integration and Reliability in New Product Co-Development: A Case Study Between Europe and China

An important question for IS researchers and practitioners is how IT can improve new product development (NPD) in an international co-development context. More precisely, this paper aims at understanding how Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) technology contributes to NPD knowledge integration and to process reliability in this environment. It is based on a longitudinal case study of a French industrial Group with design teams located in Europe, and which had greatly increased co-development work with China at the time of the study. The first author participated in PLM implementation in Asia over the course of four years. Data analyses indicate a reduction of glitches, from which we infer a positive contribution of PLM to process reliability through knowledge sharing and coordination of mature objects. Indeed,PLM use supports commissioning rather than mediating objects and close rather than open design specifications. Glitches related to knowledge transformation problems are not eliminated with PLM

Organizational Culture and Relationship Skills

While both the strategic management and the network literature recognize the importance of inter-firm relationships for explaining competitive advantage, the question why firms differ in their ability to benefit from these relationships is rarely addressed.This paper aims to begin to fill this gap in the literature. We argue that organizational culture is an important factor influencing the relationship skills of a firm, defined as a firm s ability to manage its ties with other firms, whether these are customers, suppliers, or service providers. We assume relationship skills to be especially relevant for the formation and maintenance of close and durable transaction ties.We test our model on a dataset of 127 Dutch inter-firm relations and find general support.Specifically, we find that firms with organizational cultures characterized by an orientation towards stability and predictability, a positive orientation towards innovation, and not characterized by a strong focus on immediate results, score high on relationship skills.Relationship skills, in turn, are found to have a positive influence on the outcomes of inter-firm relationships in terms of learning, achieving innovations and gaining new contacts, but not in terms of immediate (financial) results.