Learning from environmental actors about environmental developments: the case of international organizations

This article makes a case for viewing international governmental organizations (IOs) as corporate agents capable of learning. In doing so, it attempts to go beyond prevailing conceptions of IOs as means or settings for multilateral negotiation and bargaining. The proposed theoretical framework argues from an organizational learning perspective. By integrating notions from neo-institutionalism and policyanalysis it tries to capture the impact of IOs' publicness on learning processes. The focus is on IOs' relations with stakeholders and constituencies for the development and implementation of transboundary policies. These interactions are seen as a means to learn about external demands, expectations and expertise. Their impact on the internal dynamics in IOs tends to be of a dual nature: enhanced adaptability in its margins and buffering the organizational core from environmental fluctuations. Hence, some skepticism is appropriate in assessing IOs' capacity to engage in profound changes as a result of learning. It rests on the contention that the social constitution of the organization-environment nexus and its linkages with intraorganizational processes is of crucial importance for IOs' ability to learn about environmental changes and developments. Emphasis is placed on the contested and controversial nature of knowledge absorption and the limiting effect of administrative routines and procedures on IOs' absorptive capacity. -- Im vorliegenden Aufsatz wird der Versuch unternommen, internationale gouvernmentale Organisationen als lernfähige korporative Akteure zu betrachten. Damit soll gezeigt werden, dass internationale Organisationen weder als Instrumente mitgliedstaatlicher Interessen noch als Arenen multilateraler Verhandlungsprozesse hinreichend verstanden werden können. In der Perspektive des Organisationslernens wird danach gefragt, wie internationale Organisationen im Zuge des Interaktionsgeschehens mit Akteuren aus ihrem Umfeld über äußere Veränderungen und Trends lernen. Dabei geht es um die Vermittlung als auch die Interpretation der von außen an internationale Organisationen herangetragenen Erwartungen, Anforderungen, Ideen und Wissen. Ziel des Papiers ist die Entwicklung eines theoretischen Analyserahmens, der das Interaktionsgeschehen zwischen internationalen Organisationen und den ihre Umwelt repräsentierenden Akteuren als Auslöser für organisationale Lernprozesse begreift und gleichzeitig auch institutionelle, kulturelle und politisch-interessenbezogene Bedingungen berücksichtigt. Die aus dem Spannungsfeld zwischen Organisation und Umwelt resultierenden Lernprozesse sind dualer Natur: Erhöhte Anpassungsfähigkeit in den Grenzbereichen internationaler Organisationen geht mit Abpufferung des Organisationskerns von Umweltfluktuationen einher. Diese Einschätzung gründet auf der Prämisse der sozialen Konstituierung des Organisations-Umwelt Nexus und dessen Verbindungen mit organisationsinternen Prozessen. Darüber hinaus wird die politische Bedingtheit organisationaler Wissensprozessierung und der Einfluss administrativer Routinen und Verfahren auf die Aufnahmefähigkeit internationaler Organisationen betont.

A Process Modelling Framework Based on Point Interval Temporal Logic with an Application to Modelling Patient Flows

This thesis considers an application of a temporal theory to describe and model the patient journey in the hospital accident and emergency (A&E) department. The aim is to introduce a generic but dynamic method applied to any setting, including healthcare. Constructing a consistent process model can be instrumental in streamlining healthcare issues. Current process modelling techniques used in healthcare such as flowcharts, unified modelling language activity diagram (UML AD), and business process modelling notation (BPMN) are intuitive and imprecise. They cannot fully capture the complexities of the types of activities and the full extent of temporal constraints to an extent where one could reason about the flows. Formal approaches such as Petri have also been reviewed to investigate their applicability to the healthcare domain to model processes. Additionally, to schedule patient flows, current modelling standards do not offer any formal mechanism, so healthcare relies on critical path method (CPM) and program evaluation review technique (PERT), that also have limitations, i.e. finish-start barrier. It is imperative to specify the temporal constraints between the start and/or end of a process, e.g., the beginning of a process A precedes the start (or end) of a process B. However, these approaches failed to provide us with a mechanism for handling these temporal situations. If provided, a formal representation can assist in effective knowledge representation and quality enhancement concerning a process. Also, it would help in uncovering complexities of a system and assist in modelling it in a consistent way which is not possible with the existing modelling techniques. The above issues are addressed in this thesis by proposing a framework that would provide a knowledge base to model patient flows for accurate representation based on point interval temporal logic (PITL) that treats point and interval as primitives. These objects would constitute the knowledge base for the formal description of a system. With the aid of the inference mechanism of the temporal theory presented here, exhaustive temporal constraints derived from the proposed axiomatic system’ components serves as a knowledge base. The proposed methodological framework would adopt a model-theoretic approach in which a theory is developed and considered as a model while the corresponding instance is considered as its application. Using this approach would assist in identifying core components of the system and their precise operation representing a real-life domain deemed suitable to the process modelling issues specified in this thesis. Thus, I have evaluated the modelling standards for their most-used terminologies and constructs to identify their key components. It will also assist in the generalisation of the critical terms (of process modelling standards) based on their ontology. A set of generalised terms proposed would serve as an enumeration of the theory and subsume the core modelling elements of the process modelling standards. The catalogue presents a knowledge base for the business and healthcare domains, and its components are formally defined (semantics). Furthermore, a resolution theorem-proof is used to show the structural features of the theory (model) to establish it is sound and complete. After establishing that the theory is sound and complete, the next step is to provide the instantiation of the theory. This is achieved by mapping the core components of the theory to their corresponding instances. Additionally, a formal graphical tool termed as point graph (PG) is used to visualise the cases of the proposed axiomatic system. PG facilitates in modelling, and scheduling patient flows and enables analysing existing models for possible inaccuracies and inconsistencies supported by a reasoning mechanism based on PITL. Following that, a transformation is developed to map the core modelling components of the standards into the extended PG (PG*) based on the semantics presented by the axiomatic system. A real-life case (from the King’s College hospital accident and emergency (A&E) department’s trauma patient pathway) is considered to validate the framework. It is divided into three patient flows to depict the journey of a patient with significant trauma, arriving at A&E, undergoing a procedure and subsequently discharged. Their staff relied upon the UML-AD and BPMN to model the patient flows. An evaluation of their representation is presented to show the shortfalls of the modelling standards to model patient flows. The last step is to model these patient flows using the developed approach, which is supported by enhanced reasoning and scheduling

A Taxonomy of Workflow Management Systems for Grid Computing

With the advent of Grid and application technologies, scientists and engineers are building more and more complex applications to manage and process large data sets, and execute scientific experiments on distributed resources. Such application scenarios require means for composing and executing complex workflows. Therefore, many efforts have been made towards the development of workflow management systems for Grid computing. In this paper, we propose a taxonomy that characterizes and classifies various approaches for building and executing workflows on Grids. We also survey several representative Grid workflow systems developed by various projects world-wide to demonstrate the comprehensiveness of the taxonomy. The taxonomy not only highlights the design and engineering similarities and differences of state-of-the-art in Grid workflow systems, but also identifies the areas that need further research.Comment: 29 pages, 15 figure

Technical Capacity, Policymaking and Food Standards: An Overview of Indian Experience

The SPS Agreement in the WTO gives legal validity to the CODEX\ud standards. Since the developed countries have been at the forefront of\ud setting the food standards in the CODEX, the developing countries have\ud been increasingly engaged in the CODEX, and also in the WTO, with an\ud objective to increase their exports of the agricultural and food products.\ud But such objective and desire have often been stymied by the lack of\ud institutions which can sustain the intense technical negotiations at the\ud CODEX. If these participations are not qualitatively satisfactory, the very\ud objective of such participations is not fulfilled. But since most of the\ud developing countries are lacking in such high technical capacity, they are\ud unable to influence or qualitatively shape the negotiations in the CODEX.\ud This also impacts their exports of agricultural and food products.\ud India has been an active member of the WTO. But whether it has been\ud able to influence or respond to the play of events internationally and\ud concomitantly balance it with the domestic imperatives that are embedded\ud in the international legal and technological regimes, institutional capacity\ud constraints and other social issues. This paper examines such issues, and\ud also examines some bilateral trade agreements which demonstrate the\ud mounting pressure on the developing countries to conform to the food\ud standards of the developed countries

Re-thinking the project manager's role and practice : a case study in the context of an IT department

This thesis explores the social construction of the project manager role and its enactment within an organizational context. The research builds on the themes of the Rethinking Project Management agenda in focusing on research that is about, in and for project management practice (Winter et al. 2006b). The complex organization context of project practice is engaged with and themes such as role legitimacy, organizational power, organizational boundaries and the nature of project and organizational time are explored. The importance of the influence of the professional association’s project management model to the construction of the organizational project manager role and enactment is investigated. The research utilizes an empirically focused treatment of structuration theory (Giddens 1984) as a conceptual framework in addressing the social construction of the project managers’ role and its enactment. The research was conducted using a case study approach in which multiple instances of project managers’ practice in a shared IT organizational context were examined from the perspective of interactions across the boundary between the projects and the organization. The case study data was analysed and findings were generated through the iterative engagement with the organizational phenomena, the conceptual framework and the research questions being explored. The conclusions of the research support the Rethinking Project Management agenda and propose a wider and more social consideration of projects and their management that takes into account the social construction of projects, the importance of boundary spanning activities and objects, and the social nature of time as key elements in rethinking the role and practice of project managers

Combining the User as Social Actor Model, Institutional Theory and a Theory of Unobtrusive Power to Understand the Acquiescence of Software Developers

In this paper we argue that a combination of a social actor model, Institutional theory, and a model of unobtrusive power can constitute a theoretical framework for understanding how the business client is able to exercise control and subsequent subjugation of developers in the systems development process. Specifically, the paper develops a 3-level theoretical framework grounded in institutional theory that integrates elements of Lamb and Kling’s social actor model and Scott’s 3-pillars framework concentrating on the relationships among systems developers, the business client, the SDM, and the context surrounding its use. The framework is strengthened through the application of a third level – Hardy’s multi-dimensional model of power, offering explanations of political inactivity by developers. In this paper we discuss how all three theory can be combined in a framework for analyzing the power relations between developers and the business client. We apply this theoretical framework in a case study of the deployment of a mandated in-house developed systems development methodology in a large IT department of a major Australian bank Here we will show how, from the perspective of developers, the business client exercise both overt and unobtrusive power over the development process