Effective knowledge transfer to SMEs

EIM examined to what extent small and medium-sized enterprises may be stimulated to absorb more know-how in respect of for instance new process technology to use that know-how for in-company business process upgrading. The study focuses primarily on the cluster of businesses hardly involved in technological innovation, and examines to what degree knowledge about marketing and know-how management is employed to stimulate the absorption of know-how among retarded businesses.

From Communicative Silencer to Responsive Listener: Participation and Public Dialogue in Benin

The interpretation explores the issue of participatory communication within the particular Beninese context of public dialogue by focusing on the communicative praxis of intellectual elite and by taking the public dialogue of the 1990 National Conference of Benin as a case study. The interpretive listening of such a situated participatory public dialogue results in the framing of two major metaphors: communicative silencer and responsive listener. First, the interpretation unveils that the possibility of broad participation in the democratization of Benin is compromised by a culture of silence in which intellectual elite become communicative silencers of the silenced communities including the illiterate, the poor and the underprivileged. Second, the interpretation pays heed to the communicative alternative emerging from the public dialogue experienced during the National Conference echoing a call to the intellectual elite to become responsive listeners

The Word: Jacques Ellul\u27s Dialogic Response To La Technique

The focus of this interpretive work is primarily to bring two Ellulian metaphors into conversation with one another: la technique, and “the word.” Jacques Ellul (1912-1994), a prominent French philosopher, sociologist, and theologian, is predominantly known for his critique of what he calls la technique, an underlying system which acts as an all-encompassing feature of necessity, which privileges the values of efficiency, speed, and progress in all societal endeavors, and which serves as the predominant interpretive lens by which we can examine and understand our current historical and cultural moment. Technique had its origination in the value system of the machine, but its tentacles have now reached into every aspect of human lived experience, turning humanity into a means, limiting human freedom, and reconstructing truth in terms of fact. In response to what Ellul calls the Technological Society, he presents the idea of “the word,” a dialogic metaphor which illuminates the intersubjective intentionality in human relation by recognizing the value of authentic “encounter” in a phenomenological space which Martin Buber described as “the between.” Ellul prioritizes dialogue over and against the totality of a world given over to Technique. This dissertation seeks to understand the dialectic between these two oppositions, to bring them into conversation with one another in an effort to understand how Ellul’s dialogic hermeneutic can serve as a response to Technique, and to present some possible solutions which can serve to guide human beings seeking liberation within the tyranny of the Technological Society

Dialogue as the Labor of Care: Welcoming a Unity of Contraries

Dialogue as the labor of care unfolds a vision of how the philosophy of dialogue can assist us as human beings to enact care in our daily lives. In the end, caring is a unity of contraries; blessing and burden, joy and suffering, necessity and triumph. The invitation of dialogue into the communicative life of caring requires bravery and courage and thus creates strong and rare natures. The impetus of this vision comes from the work of Martin Buber whose ideas have changed the way we view communication and enrich the way we view caring. The additional metaphor of labor, provided by the work of Hannah Arendt, allows for a deeper understanding of caring. The metaphor of labor reveals and emphasizes that not only is care a necessity for human communicative life, care is at the same time a blessing and a burden. The necessity of labor opens the conversation concerning care through the notion of care as an imperative for everyday communicative life. Joy and suffering, blessing and burden, necessity and triumph emphasize the fact that life is best lived in the unity of contraries

The pragmatization of love : a study of the concepts of hierarchy, encounter, and epoche

This study is presented in narrative form and develops perspectives upon the topic of love. The foundational implication of this research is that in acknowledging our common ground we experience the mutuality from which we may prosper human well-being. Experiences of mutuality and reciprocity will be regarded as unfolding the realms of love. I intend to describe, contrast, and integrate concepts of hierarchy, and dialogical encounter to pose the situation of love. Hierarchy denotes stratification with an uneven distribution of control. The impulse to control can be witnessed in technology; thus our culture, in its utilitarianism, supports an environment which is looked upon as increasingly technological in its concerns and hierarchical in its composition. Division, alienation, and dehumanization are pervasive descriptors and indicative of destructiveness. Analysis of the concepts of hierarchy and encounter allows for the discussion of factors dehumanizing and humanizing the world and are bound within the theme of the pragmatization of love. This theme contains a two-fold meaning. One is articulated in objectification which lessens human being; and the other, the Utopian generative meaning, aspires toward bettering the world of shared living

Ontology of Close Human-Nature Relationships

The world’s environmental problems call out for solutions. At root, many of the solutions currently being offered revolve around how modern humans relate to the environment. An array of theorists have offered perspectives and prescriptions for improvement of this relationship, with many seeking to promote a sense of closeness between human and nonhuman. But, in attempting to offer perspectives on how this might be achieved, theorists tend to neglect the relational structure and dynamics that produce closeness or, if exploring it, tend to characterize the nonhuman as incapable of participating in it as a truly close, relational partner. In this dissertation, I argue that the rejection of nonhumans as potential close relational partners rests upon a priori ontological commitments that erroneously contain what ecofeminists call “human/nature dualisms.” The work of this dissertation is to root out those dualisms, correct for them, and through that, begin to rehabilitate the ontological possibilities for human-nature relational closeness. I begin my work by articulating, and committing to, a basic human-nature relational model rooted in the “interdependence” theory of close interhuman relationships offered by Kelley et al. (1983). Leveraging that model, I then go on to show that humans and nonhumans have both the capacity to enter into close relations with each other and more than ample opportunity to do so in their daily lives. The effects of this ontological reorientation are broad-ranging, and call out for fundamental correction of the way that predominant, modern human-nature relationships are carried out, from techniques for environmental education to prescriptions for sustainable development

A study of intersubjectivity in the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and its bearing on the issue of transcendence

Abstract available: p.