Exploring Improvisational Approaches to Social Knowledge Acquisition

To build agents that can engage user in more open-ended social contexts, more and more attention has been focused on data-driven approaches to reduce the requirement of extensive, hand-authored behavioral content creation. However, one fundamental challenge of data-driven approaches, is acquiring human social interaction data with sufficient variety to capture more open-ended social interactions, as well as their coherency. Previous work has attempted to extract such social knowledge using crowdsourced narratives. This paper proposes an approach to acquire the knowledge of social interaction by integrating an improvisational theatre training technique into a crowdsourcing task aimed at collecting social narratives. The approach emphasizes theory of mind concepts, through an iterative prompting process about the mental states of characters in the narrative and paired writing, in order to encourage the authoring of diverse social interactions. To assess the effectiveness of integrating prompting and two-worker improvisation to the knowledge acquisition process, we systematically compare alternative ways to design the crowdsourcing task, including a) single worker vs. two workers authoring interaction between different characters in a given social context, and b) with or without prompts. Findings from 175 participants across two different social contexts show that the prompts and two-workers collaboration could significantly improve the diversity and the objective coherency of the narratives. The results presented in this paper can provide a rich set of diverse and coherent action sequences to inform the design of socially intelligent agents

Exploring Improvisational Approaches to Social Knowledge Acquisition

To build agents that can engage user in more open-ended social contexts, more and more attention has been focused on data-driven approaches to reduce the requirement of extensive, hand-authored behavioral content creation. However, one fundamental challenge of data-driven approaches, is acquiring human social interaction data with sufficient variety to capture more open-ended social interactions, as well as their coherency. Previous work has attempted to extract such social knowledge using crowdsourced narratives. This paper proposes an approach to acquire the knowledge of social interaction by integrating an improvisational theatre training technique into a crowdsourcing task aimed at collecting social narratives. The approach emphasizes theory of mind concepts, through an iterative prompting process about the mental states of characters in the narrative and paired writing, in order to encourage the authoring of diverse social interactions. To assess the effectiveness of integrating prompting and two-worker improvisation to the knowledge acquisition process, we systematically compare alternative ways to design the crowdsourcing task, including a) single worker vs. two workers authoring interaction between different characters in a given social context, and b) with or without prompts. Findings from 175 participants across two different social contexts show that the prompts and two-workers collaboration could significantly improve the diversity and the objective coherency of the narratives. The results presented in this paper can provide a rich set of diverse and coherent action sequences to inform the design of socially intelligent agents

Shopping for new glasses: looking beyond jazz in the study of organization improvisation

This article calls for research on organizational improvisation to go beyond the currently dominant jazz metaphor in theory development. We recognize the important contribution that jazz improvisation has made and will no doubt continue to make in understanding the nature and complexity of organizational improvisation. This article therefore presents some key lessons from the jazz metaphor and then proceeds to identify the possible dangers of building scientific inquiry upon a single metaphor. We then present three alternative metaphors Indian music, therapy and role theory. We explore the nature of these metaphors and seek to identify ways in which they differ from the jazz metaphor. This analysis leads us to identify not merely how these alternative metaphors fill the gaps left by the jazz metaphor but also how they complement the contribution from the jazz metaphor thus further strengthening theory-building in this genre. Ultimately, our understanding of organizational improvisation will be sharpened by more incisive theoretical analysis and empirical research.

Bricolage in organizations

Theories of management and organization have traditionally overlooked the concept of bricolage. Focused on the rationality of resource allocation, scholars have missed the relevance of the skill of “inventing” resources from available materials. Changes in the nature of competition are, however, stressing the importance of speed and change as competitive factors in shifting environments. In these environments it may be impossible to search and wait for the presumably adequate resources. Bricolage, therefore, may be a relevant practice in these environments. This article discusses the concept of organizational bricolage by asking such questions as: What is bricolage? Why is bricolage a relevant practice? Why is bricolage so often ignored? How can it be facilitated?resources; resourcing; bricolage; improvisation

Knowing Through Improvisational Dance: A Collaborative Autoethnography

This article is a collaborative autoethnographic reflection about two dance-based research projects. Our objectives for the projects were two-fold: to practice knowledge production and mobilization in a way that diverged from dominant traditional Western scholarship, and to re-examine our engagement with the self-injury focus of previous research. With our collaborative meaning making came new dilemmas and unanticipated relationship development. Through dance and collaborative writing, we discovered a vulnerability that could cast doubt on dominant knowledge practices. As a relational praxis, two stories converged to facilitate critically reflexive perspectives and less dominant ways of knowing directed toward social justice.In diesem Beitrag leisten wir eine kollaborative Autoethnografie zweier tanzbasierter Forschungsprojekte. Wir verfolgten mit diesen Projekten zwei Ziele: 1. die Produktion von Erkenntnissen jenseits des dominanten westlichen Wissenschaftsverständnisses und 2. eine Überprüfung unseres Wissensstandes aus vorangegangenen Forschungsarbeiten zu selbstverletzendem Handeln. Aus unserem kollaborativen Ansatz resultierten neue Dilemmata und unerwartete Beziehungsverläufe. Tanz und gemeinsames Schreiben sensibilisierten uns für eine Vulnerabilität, die dominantes Wissen infrage stellte. Als relationale Praxis konvergierte unser Schreiben dahingehend, dass es zu einer kritischen Reflexion der jeweiligen Perspektiven verhalf und zu einem Mehr an sozialer Gerechtigkeit beitrug

Business coping strategy, entrepreneurial orientation, improvisational competence, and crisis readiness of the Malaysian medium-sized manufacturing enterprises in recessionary times

The main issue of this thesis was the hampered performance of the manufacturing small-and-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Malaysia during economic recessions. The bona fide respondents of the study were the medium-sized manufacturing enterprises (MMEs). Crisis readiness (CR) was proposed as the surrogate measure for firm performance. While CR was examined in relationships to business coping strategy (BCS) and entrepreneurial orientation (EO), this study also assessed the mediating effect of improvisational competence (IC) on the BCS-CR relationship. Altogether, a three-pronged-objective research framework was theoretically underpinned by resource-based view. Simple random sampling technique was used to select the targeted respondents. Of the 295 usable responses, a random near-split-half of 145 and 150 were used for exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis respectively. Statistically significant positive relationships were found in two direct relationships: BCS-CR and EO-CR, while IC was found to mediate the BCS-CR relationship. Significant positive relationships were also evident between all dimensions of EO and CR, except risk-taking. While CR was a new performance surrogate, its examination with BCS, EO, and IC contributed nascent theoretical insights. Other theoretical gaps included the development and validation of the BCS and bricolage scales, psychometric revisions of the CR and IC scales, and the incorporation of a vignette into the measurement to provide standardization as to the recessionary context understudied. Practically, the findings provided the manufacturing entrepreneurs some guidance on the appropriate response strategy and decision making which would better-position them in recessionary situations. Likewise, the understandings may also assist the policy makers to develop or to adjust policies to better-fabricate assistance channelled to MMEs. Towards the end, methodological limitations and potential avenues for future research were also identified

Teacher cognition in language teaching: A review of research on what language teachers think, know, believe, and do

This paper reviews a selection of research from the field of foreign and second language teaching into what is referred to here as teacher cognition – what teachers think, know, and believe and the relationships of these mental constructs to what teachers do in the language teaching classroom. Within a framework suggested by more general mainstream educational research on teacher cognition, language teacher cognition is here discussed with reference to three main themes: (1) cognition and prior language learning experience, (2) cognition and teacher education, and (3) cognition and classroom practice. In addition, the findings of studies into two specific curricular areas in language teaching which have been examined by teacher cognition – grammar teaching and literacy – are discussed. This review indicates that, while the study of teacher cognition has established itself on the research agenda in the field of language teaching and provided valuable insight into the mental lives of language teachers, a clear sense of unity is lacking in the work and there are several major issues in language teaching which have yet to be explored from the perspective of teacher cognition

Developing Acquisition IS Integration Capabilities: The Learning Processes of Novice Acquirers

Existing theory suggests that to successfully integrate information systems post-acquisition, an acquiring company must leverage two capabilities; diagnosis and integration execution. This paper seeks to understand how an inexperienced acquirer can develop these capabilities in anticipation of an acquisition. It uses a case study to understand the learning processes a novice acquirer engages in as they develop them. It finds the novice acquirer, applies trial and error, experimental, and vicarious learning processes, while actively avoiding improvisational learning. The results of the study contribute to the existing acquisition IS integration literature by specifically addressing the limited understanding of how novice acquirers can learn the required IS integration capabilities

Skoo-Bee-Dee-Boo-Bop-Scat: The Impacts of Vocal Jazz Improvisational Techniques on the Secondary Choral Student and Secondary Choral Program

Despite evidence that vocal jazz improvisation techniques are valuable tools for increased ear training and vocal technique knowledge, the specific impacts of vocal jazz training for the secondary school chorister have yet to be fully expressed. The singing and musicianship benefits of improvisational techniques matter because they impact the young choral singer and the individual student experience in and contribution to the school choir program. This study expressed the impacts of vocal jazz improvisational pedagogy for the secondary school vocalist as a member of the school choir program and the individual student musician. Guided by Eisner’s model of arts-based research, this qualitative grounded theory research study, as prescribed by Creswell, explored diverse viewpoints concerning the pedagogical and educational benefits of exposing secondary school choir students to vocal jazz improvisational techniques. Perspectives on the benefits of vocal jazz improvisational training have developed through a body of existing literature. To illustrate the benefits of vocal jazz improvisational techniques, this study reflected on the experiences seen in the literature. This study combined a qualitative grounded theory research model including surveys of music educators and bespoke interviews with field experts. The study results showed that students who are given the opportunity to explore vocal jazz improvisation exhibit enhanced musical skills, increased performance bravery, and a broader cultural perspective. In the appendices, the researcher included a collection of vocal jazz improvisational exercise templates for use in the field. Additionally, the researcher also developed a vocal jazz improvisation listening guide for emerging jazz vocalists and a collection of existing instructional videos. These resources are also included in the appendices. This study and appendix resources could advance music education training for future music educators and increase the preparedness of choral teachers through the use of jazz pedagogy

A second-person model to anomalous social cognition

Reports of patients with schizophrenia show a fragmented and anomalous subjective experience. This pathological subjective experience, we suggest, can be related to the fact that disembodiment inhibits the possibility of intersubjective experience, and more importantly of common sense. In this paper, we ask how to investigate the anomalous experience both from qualitative and quantitative viewpoints. To our knowledge, few studies have focused on a clinical combination of both first- phenomenological assessment and third-person biological methods, especially for Schizophrenia, or ASD therapeutics and diagnosis. We will thus attempt to bring forward a second-person scientific design, accounting for both the first-person subjective experiential aspects, and respective third-person neurobiological correlates of embodied aesthetics in anomalous experience. From this proposal, we further explore the consequences to clinical and research practice