Formal conceptualisation as a basic for a more procedural knowledge management

Knowledge management at an organisational level can only be brought into practice if a corporate memory is defined. Unfortunately, at this moment there is no complete and procedural specification on how to build it. This paper presents a complete and generic knowledge representation scheme that makes it possible to conceptualise/represent the knowledge of any domain in a systematic way, guiding the definition of a corporate memory and allowing us to reach a more procedural level in knowledge management discipline. The conclusions of our study, which follows the generic and formal definition of any conceptualisation, are illustrated by a real project

Some reflections on the legitimacy of international trial justice

This paper addresses a number of interrelated conceptual difficulties that impact adversely on the ability of international criminal trials to deliver outcomes perceived as legitimate by victims and communities in post-conflict states. It begins by exploring the extent to which those moral justifications for punishment espoused by international courts are instrumental in marginalizing the aspirations for justice of victims and victim communities, and suggests how a greater appreciation of the sociological context of punishing international crimes can contribute towards an improved understanding of normative practice. The paper then examines the relationship between perceptions of international crime and punishment, and the broader issue of whether international criminal law provides an appropriate normative structure for giving effect to those universal humanitarian values concerned with punishment in an increasingly pluralistic world. Finally, the paper considers how the theory and practice of punishing international crimes can more effectively satisfy both local and global aspirations for post-conflict justice through enhancing the transformative capacity of international criminal trials

The social cognition of medical knowledge, with special reference to childhood epilepsy

This paper arose out of an engagement in medical communication courses at a Gulf university. It deploys a theoretical framework derived from a (critical) sociocognitive approach to discourse analysis in order to investigate three aspects of medical discourse relating to childhood epilepsy: the cognitive processes that are entailed in relating different types of medical knowledge to their communicative context; the types of medical knowledge that are constituted in the three different text types analysed; and the relationship between these different types of medical knowledge and the discursive features of each text type. The paper argues that there is a cognitive dimension to the human experience of understanding and talking about one specialized from of medical knowledge. It recommends that texts be studied in medical communication courses not just in terms of their discrete formal features but also critically, in terms of the knowledge which they produce, transmit and reproduce

The limits of a diliberative cosmopolitanism : the case of 'new governance' in the EU

This paper illuminates the limits of a cosmopolitan deliberative governance via an analysis of EU practices and theories of ‘governance’. Analysing the point at which the term ‘governance’ became prominent in the institutions, via a consideration of the European Commission’s 2001 White Paper and the various proposals for ‘new governance’ produced by its in-house think-tank, the Forward Studies Unit (FSU), in the late 1990s, it detects in this turn a Habermasian discourse ethic, which has informed much contemporary social, legal and political theorising on governance and deliberative democracy. In these reports an open, pluralist and procedural rationality and practice of governance is advocated as thirdway between state and market. However, the implicit conditions required for consensus or learning are constitutive of important closures. Turning to recent practice, the EU’s ‘Open Method of Co-ordination’ (OMC) – much vaunted by certain deliberative scholars - while ostensibly embodying an inclusive procedural rationality, is significantly circumscribed by an extant market constitution which excludes certain forms of welfare or social policy. More generally, it is suggested that advocates of a deliberative post-national governance fail to scrutinise the ways in which their key agent, civil society, has been intimately connected with dominant governing rationalities such as those which privilege the market, both historically and contemporaneously

Valid knowledge: The economy and the academy

The future of Western universities as public institutions is the subject of extensive continuing debate, underpinned by the issue of what constitutes valid knowledge. Where in the past only prepositional knowledge codified by academics was considered valid, in the new economy enabled by information and communications technology, the procedural knowledge of expertise has become a key commodity, and the acquisition of this expertise is increasingly seen as a priority by intending university students. Universities have traditionally proved adaptable to changing circumstances, but there is little evidence to date of their success in accommodating to the scale and unprecedented pace of change of the Knowledge Economy or to the new vocationally-oriented demands of their course clients. And in addition to these external factors, internal ones are now at work. Recent developments in eLearning have enabled the infiltration of commercial providers who are cherry-picking the most lucrative subject areas. The prospect is of a fracturing higher education system, with the less adaptable universities consigned to a shrinking public-funded sector supporting less vocationally saleable courses, and the more enterprising universities developing commercial partnerships in eLearning and knowledge transfer. This paper analyses pressures upon universities, their attempts to adapt to changing circumstances, and the institutional transformations which may result. It is concluded that a diversity of partnerships will emerge for the capture and transfer of knowledge, combining expertise from the economy with the conceptual frameworks of the academy

Distributed Leadership: A Review of Literature

A review of empirical research studies of distributed leadership from public and private sector settings completed since 1995