Interest Groups and the Governance of Growth in Organic Farming

In this paper we probe the issue of developing capacity by exploring the organisational evolution of the key organic interest groups in Australia, the UK and Denmark. A comparison of the Organic Federation of Australia (OFA), the British Soil Association (SA) and the Danish National Association of Organic Farming, NAOF (later the National Organic Association, NOA) is particularly useful in investigating the nuts and bolts of interest group capacity development and adjustment. They emerged from a similar milieu; yet they developed their capacities very differently. While all three associations have developed capacities for the promotion of the organic sector in relation to consumers, farmers and government, they differ significantly in relation to capacity development as it pertains to policy implementation. The key differences can be explained by variation in the organic farm policies of the three countries. The comparison also demonstrates that existing groups can adapt capacities when policy changes, even where neo-liberal inspired policy strategies are deployed

Governing growth in organic farming: The evolving capacities of organic groups in the United Kingdom and Denmark

The question of the ‘policy capacity’ of interest groups is increasingly gaining prominence as a key variable in governing and transformative capacities. This raises the issue of whether group policy capacities can be developed. While group scholars have long talked of group capacity, this has largely amounted to compiling a ‘shopping list’ of possible capacities general to all groups. There has not been much attention to variations in capacity among groups, or with the development of capacity by a single group over time. This paper takes a tentative step towards filling this gap. In pursuing this general line of inquiry we argue that (i) initial ‘selection’ of group type shapes scope of capacity development, (ii) groups seek to adapt capacity to changing policy contexts, and (iii) adaptive efforts are shaped by the ‘legacy’ of the originating type – change is bounded unless the group engages in ‘radical’ organisational changes (e.g. redefinition of entire purpose). This general argument is fleshed out by comparing and contrasting the evolution of the key organic interest groups in both the UK and Denmark

From competition and conversion to co-operation and conversation: Dynamics of Christian-Muslim engagement

Two books, Islam & the West Post 9/11 and Islam and the West: reflections from Australia, cover a range of theoretical issues, regional-specific topics and case studies that explore issues related to the theme of Islam and the West. These are but two in a great flood of publications. Interest in contemporary Islam is high. The stakes are high. If global warming is a cause for concern, the idea of an interreligious meltdown between Islam and Christianity – which between them encompass the majority of the entire population of the globe – cannot be lightly brushed aside, given today the upsurge in ‘fundamentalist’ (I use this expression cautiously) ideologies and related assertive, even terrorist, activities. But there are two other recent books which argue, in effect, that a meltdown is by no means inevitable, and that, indeed, the prospect for friendship between the peoples of these two great religions is eminently possible and supremely to be desired

Health Biotechnology Innovation for Social Sustainability -A Perspective from China

China is not only becoming a significant player in the production of high-tech products, but also an increasingly important contributor of ideas and influence in the global knowledge economy. This paper identifies the promises and the pathologies of the biotech innovation system from the perspective of social sustainability in China, looking at the governance of the system and beyond. Based on The STEPS Centre’s ‘Innovation, Sustainability, Development: A New Manifesto’, a ‘3D’ approach has been adopted, bringing together social, technological and policy dynamics, and focusing on the directions of biotechnological innovation, the distribution of its benefits, costs and risks and the diversity of innovations evolving within it and alongside it

Managing knowledge in organizations : a Nonaka’s SECI model operationalization

Purpose: The SECI model (Nonaka, 1994) is the best-known conceptual framework for understanding knowledge generation processes in organizations. To date, however, empirical support for this framework has been overlooked. The present study aims to provide an evidence-based groundwork for the SECI model by testing a multidimensional questionnaire Knowledge Management SECI Processes Questionnaire (KMSP-Q) designed to capture the knowledge conversion modes theorized by Nonaka. Methodology: In a twofold study, the SECI model was operationalized via the KMSP-Q. Specifically, Study One tested its eight-dimensional structure through exploratory and confirmatory factorial analyses on 372 employees from different sectors. Study Two examined the construct validity and reliability by replicating the KMSP-Q factor structure in knowledge-intensive contexts (on a sample of 466 health-workers), and by investigating the unique impact of each dimension on some organizational outcomes (i.e., performance, innovativeness, collective efficacy). Findings: The overall findings highlighted that the KMSP-Q is a psychometrically robust questionnaire in terms of both dimensionality and construct validity, the different knowledge generation dimensions being specifically linked to different organizational outcomes. Research/Practical Implications: The KMSP-Q actualizes and provides empirical consistency to the theory underlying the SECI model. Moreover, it allows for the monitoring of an organization’s capability to manage new knowledge and detect the strengths/weaknesses of KM-related policies and programs. Originality/Value: This paper proposes a comprehensive measure of knowledge generation in work contexts, highlighting processes that organizations are likely to promote in order to improve their performance through the management of their knowledge resources

Corporate Security Responsibility: Towards a Conceptual Framework for a Comparative Research Agenda

The political debate about the role of business in armed conflicts has increasingly raised expectations as to governance contributions by private corporations in the fields of conflict prevention, peace-keeping and postconflict peace-building. This political agenda seems far ahead of the research agenda, in which the negative image of business in conflicts, seen as fuelling, prolonging and taking commercial advantage of violent conflicts,still prevails. So far the scientific community has been reluctant to extend the scope of research on ‘corporate social responsibility’ to the area of security in general and to intra-state armed conflicts in particular. As a consequence, there is no basis from which systematic knowledge can be generated about the conditions and the extent to which private corporations can fulfil the role expected of them in the political discourse. The research on positive contributions of private corporations to security amounts to unconnected in-depth case studies of specific corporations in specific conflict settings. Given this state of research, we develop a framework for a comparative research agenda to address the question: Under which circumstances and to what extent can private corporations be expected to contribute to public security

The knowledge domain of chain and network science

This editorial paper aims to provide a framework to categorise and evaluate the domain of Chain and Network Science (CNS), and to provide an envelope for the research and management agenda. The authors strongly feel that although considerable progress has been made over the past couple of years in the development of the CNS domain, a number of important and exciting challenges are still waiting to be tackled. This paper provides a definition of the object of study of CNS, its central problem area, the organisation and governance of chain and network co-operation, and the relationships between chain organisation and technology development, market dynamics, and the economy and society at large. It indicates relevant sources of knowledge among the various academic disciplines. It touches upon CNS problem solving by identifying areas for knowledge development and CNS tool construction

Psychopower and Ordinary Madness: Reticulated Dividuals in Cognitive Capitalism

Despite the seemingly neutral vantage of using nature for widely-distributed computational purposes, neither post-biological nor post-humanist teleology simply concludes with the real "end of nature" as entailed in the loss of the specific ontological status embedded in the identifier "natural." As evinced by the ecological crises of the Anthropocene—of which the 2019 Brazil Amazon rainforest fires are only the most recent—our epoch has transfixed the “natural order" and imposed entropic artificial integration, producing living species that become “anoetic,” made to serve as automated exosomatic residues, or digital flecks. I further develop Gilles Deleuze’s description of control societies to upturn Foucauldian biopower, replacing its spacio-temporal bounds with the exographic excesses in psycho-power; culling and further detailing Bernard Stiegler’s framework of transindividuation and hyper-control, I examine how becoming-subject is predictively facilitated within cognitive capitalism and what Alexander Galloway terms “deep digitality.” Despite the loss of material vestiges qua virtualization—which I seek to trace in an historical review of industrialization to postindustrialization—the drive-based and reticulated "internet of things" facilitates a closed loop from within the brain to the outside environment, such that the aperture of thought is mediated and compressed. The human brain, understood through its material constitution, is susceptible to total datafication’s laminated process of “becoming-mnemotechnical,” and, as neuroplasticity is now a valid description for deep-learning and neural nets, we are privy to the rebirth of the once-discounted metaphor of the “cybernetic brain.” Probing algorithmic governmentality while posing noetic dreaming as both technical and pharmacological, I seek to analyze how spirit is blithely confounded with machine-thinking’s gelatinous cognition, as prosthetic organ-adaptation becomes probabilistically molded, networked, and agentially inflected (rather than simply externalized)