Personal Cyber-Data Literacy Plurality in Routinized-Prescriptive and Relational-Holistic Cyber-Regimes

Ursula Franklin encouraged all who would listen to act in ways that are socially useful and personally satisfying. Over two decades ago, in her Massey Lectures on The Real World of Technology, she warned about the unsustainability of prescriptive bitsphere technology regimes determined by precisely routinized compliance. She advocated for alternative holistic regimes determined by care-full relational consideration. Cyber-data literacies are defined as allowing individuals to use and benefit from data associated with their digital practices. Routinized literacies are being mis-afforded by behaviour manipulation through learning systems built on cyber-surveillance and broken personal data markets. This critical essay calls for a re-imagining of cyber-data literacies as socially useful and personally satisfying relational digital practices rather than merely routinized digital media utilization skills. A meta-synthesis of neuro-cognitive and hermeneutic theory is used to frame a comparison of cyber-data literacies afforded by cyber-regimes of exclusive compliance and inclusive consideration. Inspired by Hanah Arendt’s concept of human plurality, the essay analyses how personal cyber-data literacies are constrained and afforded by human diversity. Personal cyber-data are conceptualized as lifeworld givens, entangled with personal knowledge and experience, oriented and determined by data cognitive artifact constraints and affordances, and filtered through individuated foresight and insight. Despite foresight plurality, a capacity for distributed cognition and intelligence arises from shared mind/brain architectures and bio-psycho-social-relational determinants of a shared human biology. The essay examines opportunities and benefits of promoting cyber-data literacy plurality, grounded in personal data made meaningful to both people and machines through meta-narratives constructed using personal cyber-data by people the data are about

Noncognitive microfoundations : understanding dynamic capabilities as idiosyncratically refined sensitivities and predispositions

Can use published PDF in AURA. Check policy and update on publication. Acknowledgements We would like to thank former associate editor Mike Pfarrer and three anonymous reviewers for their exceptional comments and encouragement.Peer reviewedPostprin

Exploring Mechanisms in Tacit Knowledge Externalization: Preliminary Findings from Participatory Agricultural Innovation Practices in Ethiopia

Tacit knowledge is embedded in people’s experiences, expertise, know-how, skills, techniques, insights, judgments, actions or behaviors. This knowledge is a source of innovation that can provide dynamic responses to context specific problems. Effective exploitation and management of tacit knowledge is critical, but the subject of tacit knowledge in general and the process of its externalization and sharing in particular are still relatively unexplored and not fully understood. In addition, the agricultural sector has rarely been the topic of inquiry in research related to tacit knowledge elicitation and most previous studies focus on high tech industries and business organizations. This paper explored what mechanisms are being used to externalize tacit knowledge and what factors impact this process given the context of participatory agricultural research in Ethiopia. We applied a qualitative case study method using an in-depth semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions and document analysis as data collection tool

Strategic Knowledge Measurement and Management

Knowledge and intellectual capital are now recognized as vital resources for organizational survival and competitive advantage. A vast array of knowledge measures has evolved, spanning many disciplines. This chapter reviews knowledge measures focusing on groups of individuals (such as teams, business and organizations), as they reflect the stock or flow of knowledge, as well as enabling processes that enhance knowledge stocks and flows. The chapter emphasizes the importance of organizational value chains, pivotal talent pools and the link between knowledge and competitive success, in understanding the significance of today’s knowledge measures, and opportunities for future research and practice to enhance them

The long and winding road: Routine creation and replication in multi-site organizations

Prior research on organizational routines in the ‘capabilities’ literature has either studied how new routines are created during an exploratory process of variation and selection or how existing routines are replicated during a phase of exploitation. Few studies have analyzed the life cycle of new routine creation and replication as an integrated process. In an in-depth case study of England’s Highways Agency, this paper shows that the creation and replication of a new routine across multiple sites involves four sequential steps: envisioning, experimenting, entrenching and enacting. We contribute to the capabilities research in two ways: first, by showing how different organizational levels, capabilities and logics (cognitive and behavioural) shape the development of new routines; and second, by identifying how distinct evolutionary cycles of variation and selective retention occur during each step in the process. In contrast with prior research on replication as an exact copy of a template or existing routine, our study focuses on the replication of an entirely new routine (based on novel principles) that is adapted to fit local operational conditions during its large-scale replication across multiple sites. We draw upon insights from adjacent ‘practice research’ and suggest how capabilities and practice studies may complement each other in future research on the evolution of routines

On heuristic and linear models of judgment: Mapping the demand for knowledge

Research on judgment and decision making presents a confusing picture of human abilities. For example, much research has emphasized the dysfunctional aspects of judgmental heuristics, and yet, other findings suggest that these can be highly effective. A further line of research has modeled judgment as resulting from “as if” linear models. This paper illuminates the distinctions in these approaches by providing a common analytical framework based on the central theoretical premise that understanding human performance requires specifying how characteristics of the decision rules people use interact with the demands of the tasks they face. Our work synthesizes the analytical tools of “lens model” research with novel methodology developed to specify the effectiveness of heuristics in different environments and allows direct comparisons between the different approaches. We illustrate with both theoretical analyses and simulations. We further link our results to the empirical literature by a meta-analysis of lens model studies and estimate both human and heuristic performance in the same tasks. Our results highlight the trade-off between linear models and heuristics. Whereas the former are cognitively demanding, the latter are simple to use. However, they require knowledge – and thus “maps” – of when and which heuristic to employ.Decision making; heuristics; linear models; lens model; judgmental biases

Dynamic Capabilities and Strategic Management: Explicating the Multi-Level Nature of Dynamic Capabilities - Insights from the Information Technology Security Consulting Industry

The dynamic capabilities perspective has become one of the most vibrant approaches to strategic management. Despite its growing popularity, it has faced criticism because of ambiguity and contradictions in dynamic capabilities literature. There has been increasing calls to address the fragmentation in the literature and provide empirically collaborated insights if it is to fulfil its potential as a distinct approach to strategic management. The microfoundations research agenda remains an emerging theme in the dynamic capabilities literature and since the overarching emphasis of a microfoundational approach is in the explanatory primacy of the micro-level especially in its relation to macro-level entities, it covers a wide array of subjects at several levels. One of the main criticisms of the microfoundations approach is a lack of multi-level analysis and there has been calls for multi-level theory development to connect levels within particular contexts since dynamic capabilities are path dependent and context-specific. This thesis explores the multi-level nature of dynamic capabilities in the Information Technology Security context and empirically investigates the impact of microfoundations of dynamic capabilities on firm capability renewal and reconfiguration. It overcomes the challenge associated with fragmentation in dynamic capabilities by presenting a conceptual model for the multi-level nature of dynamic capabilities. By explicating where dynamic capabilities reside, we can more purposely impact on them to advance our scholarly understanding and proffer practical managerial interventions to directly enhance specific abilities of sensing, seizing and reconfiguring to achieve superior outcomes. The research employed the Gioia qualitative case study research methodology and research methods used were 35 semi-structured interviews and observations. The research findings suggest that firms renew and reconfigure their capabilities to align with the changing industry and industry standards, and client needs. Firms also renew and reconfigure capabilities and capability framework due to internal strategic organisational learning and to align with firm’s specific business strategies. Capability renewal and reconfiguration is vital to achieve technical and evolutionary fitness. In addition, findings inform that dynamic capabilities in the form of ability to sense, seize and reconfigure exhibit at macro, meso and micro levels. Actor’s external engagement with significant institutions enables superior sensing ability. Accumulated experience is exploited to gain credibility with clients to win business, and demystifying firm processes and clarity of language in firm artefacts achieve superior knowledge articulation and codification processes by actors. Structuring of simple routines and capabilities enable ease of internal knowledge transfer but susceptibility to intellectual property theft by outsiders whereas complex routines and capabilities create challenges for knowledge transfer but are harder for competitors to discern and copy. Drawing on the research findings, the thesis presents a conceptual model for the multi-level microfoundations of dynamic capabilities in knowledge-intensive domains with relevance for theory and practice

Design thinking as a source of innovation - a micro-foundation perspective : The case of IBM Finland

Innovation plays a key role in enabling firms to gain a competitive advantage in the rapidly changing business environment. In the management realm, innovation capability which is a characterised as a systematic approach to account for building new knowledge and competitive advantage has attracted considerable attention, both scholarly and popular. The contribution of this concept has, nevertheless, been general and received little attention within how it can be built and developed. The success drawn from design and its expansion beyond the original exclusive design world to a variety of other disciplines have been recognised. Design thinking which is characterised as a human-centered and multi-disciplinary approach and gets inspiration from professional designers’ practices emerges as a promise to innovation. The portray of design thinking as a linear approach is, however, inadequate because little empirical evidence has focused on specific settings or individuals using it. By bridging the concepts of innovation capability, design thinking, and micro-foundations, this study seeks to closely examine how individual interactions which are facilitated by design thinking approach produce innovative outcomes, ultimately enhancing innovation capability of a firm over time. Furthermore, the research also sheds light on the interplay between individual and firm level, and scrutinises the mechanism to address the paradox in innovation projects between exploiting what has been known and exploring what is unknown to the firm. This exploratory qualitative research work is informed by a single-case study of IBM Finland as a corporate setting. The findings showed that innovations occur within the “third space” which is formulated by people from different organisations and led by the design-driven facilitators, or vendor team at the project level. As a result, innovation capability is developed by means of an accumulative learning process which is systematically managed with the support of technology. The present results highlight the implications for project-based businesses, non-design-background practitioners and managers, and management educators