Promoting sustainable construction: European and British networks at the knowledge-policy interface

The responsibility of builders, developers, planners, architects and policy-makers to promote more sustainable urban environments and buildings is consistently prioritized in nascent European, national and local planning strategies. Yet what counts as ‘sustainable construction’ varies by issue, sector and policy mandate. Proponents of sustainable construction might promote technological shifts in terms of materials, energy use and waste reduction, or they might encourage cultural and behavioural adaptations to how society views, uses and plans its built environment. This paper examines this problematic bifurcation of sustainable construction into two exclusive agendas: the construction technology agenda and the urban sustainability planning agenda, each constituted by distinct policy and sector-based networks. It is argued that the orientation to detail in the construction technology agenda operates at odds with the holistic process orientation of the broader urban sustainability agenda, thus complicating the effective translation or co-generation of sustainable construction knowledge between the two networks. The lack of integration between these two sets of networks should be cause for concern, yet appears to be largely overlooked in mainstream policy processes

Enacting global competition in local supply chain environments: German “Chemieparks” and the micro-politics of employment relations in a CME

Drawing upon the debate on institutional mediation of macro processes, we examine how multinational enterprises (MNEs) engage with global competition through restructuring their operations situated in local supply chain environments and how employment relations (ER) of coordinated market economies are reconfigured in the course of this restructuring process. Our empirical setting is the German chemical industry which is both an exemplar of coordinated labour-management-collaboration and highly exposed to global competition. Using a comparative case study design, we observe how MNEs re-structure two local production sites into ‘Chemieparks’. Our empirical data suggest that local agency diverges in the extent to which the social partnership type of ER is maintained or disrupted. Furthermore, we highlight the importance of micro-political practices for understanding the restructuring outcome as well as the local enactment and change of macro institutions within production networks as meso-level arenas for institutional mediation

Using network science to analyze football passing networks: dynamics, space, time and the multilayer nature of the game

From the diversity of applications of Network Science, in this Opinion Paper we are concerned about its potential to analyze one of the most extended group sports: Football (soccer in U.S. terminology). As we will see, Network Science allows addressing different aspects of the team organization and performance not captured by classical analyses based on the performance of individual players. The reason behind relies on the complex nature of the game, which, paraphrasing the foundational paradigm of complexity sciences "can not be analyzed by looking at its components (i.e., players) individually but, on the contrary, considering the system as a whole" or, in the classical words of after-match interviews "it's not just me, it's the team".Comment: 7 pages, 1 figur

Knowledge re-use for decision support

Effective decision support has already been identified as a fundamental requirement for the realisation of Network Enabled Capability. Decision making itself is a knowledge-intensive process, and it is known that right decisions can only be reached based on decision maker's good judgement, which in turn is based on sufficient knowledge. It is not unusual for decision makers to make incorrect decisions because of insufficient knowledge. However, it is not always possible for decision makers to have all the knowledge needed for making decisions in complex situations without external support. The re-use of knowledge has been identified as providing an important contribution to such support, and this paper considers one, hitherto unexplored, aspect of how this may be achieved. This paper is concerned with the computational view of knowledge re-use to establish an understanding of a knowledge-based system for decision support. The paper explores knowledge re-use for decision support from two perspectives: knowledge provider's and knowledge re-user's. Key issues and challenges of knowledge re-use are identified from both perspectives. A structural model for knowledge re-use is proposed with initial evaluation through empirical study of both experienced and novice decision maker's behaviour in reusing knowledge to make decisions. The proposed structural model for knowledge re-use captures five main elements (knowledge re-uers, knowledge types, knowledge sources, environment, and integration strategies) as well as the relationships between the elements, which forms a foundation for constructing a knowledge-based decision support system. The paper suggests that further research should be investigating the relationship between knowledge re-use and learning to achieve intelligent decision support

Sociomateriality and disabled individuals’ identity work: a critical poststructuralist research agenda

This paper responds to calls to rebalance the role of materiality in identity work. Taking a critical poststructuralist approach to identity work and a relational ontology perspective on sociomateriality, we explore how a ‘disabled’ person’s identity work is shaped by and responds to the influences of embodied practices and material arrangements within the workplace. We achieve this by reviewing the notion of sociomateriality as a "constitutive entanglement" (Orlikowski, 2007: 1437) of the material and the human. More specifically, we discuss how disabled individuals are constituted through sociomaterial relations and practices involving the body, assistive technology and mundane artefacts. This paper, therefore, contributes to the emerging interest, in identity studies, on the role of the material within identity work, and, in Disability Studies, to the entanglement of the social and material in constructions of disability as difference

Non‐hierarchical learning: sharing knowledge, power and outcomes

Arguing that every student has the capacity to succeed and that every student must be provided with the opportunity to reach their full potential, this article introduces a new pedagogic approach that draws on a wide range of influences. Linking theoretical practices from sociology, pedagogy, social and educational psychology, and cultural studies, the approach posits that teaching and learning should be conducted in non‐hierarchical classrooms where all members are equal and working towards shared objectives. A theoretical frame is outlined and the factors that helped shape it are reflected on. A conceptual framework which covers the goals of instruction, instructional materials, classroom management, instructional methods, and assessment is also presented. It is hoped that educators will consider the concepts included in this article and, if possible, incorporate them into their teaching practices