Pop-up Maktivism: A Case Study of Organizational, Pharmaceutical, and Biohacker Narratives

abstract: The biohacker movement is an important and modern form of activism. This study broadly examines how positive-activist-oriented biohackers emerge, organize, and respond to social crises. Despite growing public awareness, few studies have examined biohacking's influence on prevailing notions of organizing and medicine in-context. Therefore, this study examines biohacking in the context of the 2016 EpiPen price-gouging crisis, and explores how biohackers communicatively attempted to constitute counter-narratives and counter-logics about medical access and price through do-it-yourself (DIY) medical device alternatives. Discourse tracing and critical case study analysis are useful methodological frameworks for mapping the historical discursive and material logics that led to the EpiPen pricing crisis, including the medicalization of allergy, the advancement of drug-device combination technologies, and role of public health policy, and pharmaceutical marketing tactics. Findings suggest two new interpretations for how non-traditional forms of organizing facilitate new modes of resistance in times of institutional crisis. First, the study considers the concept of "pop-up maktivism" to conceptualize activism as a type of connective activity rather than collective organizing. Second, findings illustrate how activities such as participation and co-production can function as meaningful forms of institutional resistance within dominant discourses. This study proposes “mirrored materiality” to describe how biohackers deploy certain dominant logics to contest others. Lastly, implications for contributions to the conceptual frameworks of biopower, sociomateriality, and alternative organizing are discussed.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Communication 201

Antecedents and Catalysts for Developing a Healthcare Analytic Capability

Analytics is the most advanced component of business intelligence. An analytic capability enables fact-based decisions using quantitative models. These models draw on statistical and quantitative analysis of large data repositories. An analytic capability is especially critical in healthcare because lives are at stake and there is intense pressure to reduce costs and improve efficiency. This study proposes antecedents and catalysts for developing an analytic capability based on an in-depth study of the cardiac surgical programs of the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). The VHA has developed an analytic capability for patient treatment and administrative decision-making. The models rely on the input of clinical data from multiple facilities. However, a diversity of standards, infrastructure, staff and patient mix result in misunderstood data definitions, errors in data entry, incomplete data sets, and conflicts between multiple systems. Consequently, data aggregation and data interoperability at both the systemic and semantic levels are challenging. Catalysts for developing an analytic capability, derived from the VHA case study, include a community of practice and patient case reassessment practices. Antecedents of an analytic capability include robust data aggregation and cleaning practices and establishment of data standards followed by judicious tailoring of analytic outputs to decision making needs

Receptionist input to quality and safety in repeat prescribing in UK general practice: ethnographic case study

Objective To describe, explore, and compare organisational routines for repeat prescribing in general practice to identify contributors and barriers to safety and quality

Food Risks and Type I & II Errors

The IFAMR is published by (IFAMA) the International Food and Agribusiness Management Review. www.ifama.orgFood safety, food defense, error based disruption, control oriented supply networks, Agribusiness, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Food Security and Poverty, Risk and Uncertainty, Q130,

Meeting Curation Challenges in a Neuroimaging Group

The SCARP project is a series of short studies with two aims; firstly to discover more about disciplinary approaches and attitudes to digital curation through ‘immersion’ in selected cases; secondly to apply known good practice, and where possible, identify new lessons from practice in the selected discipline areas. The study summarised here is of the Neuroimaging Group in the University of Edinburgh’s Division of Psychiatry, which plays a leading role in eScience collaborations to improve the infrastructure for neuroimaging data integration and reuse. The Group also aims to address growing data storage and curation needs, given the capabilities afforded by new infrastructure. The study briefly reviews the policy context and current challenges to data integration and sharing in the neuroimaging field. It then describes how curation and preservation risks and opportunities for change were identified throughout the curation lifecycle; and their context appreciated through field study in the research site. The results are consistent with studies of neuroimaging eInfrastructure that emphasise the role of local data sharing and reuse practices. These sustain mutual awareness of datasets and experimental protocols through sharing peer to peer, and among senior researchers and students, enabling continuity in research and flexibility in project work. This “human infrastructure” is taken into account in considering next steps for curation and preservation of the Group’s datasets and a phased approach to supporting data documentation

A collective mindfulness perspective of information sharing in the blood supply chain.

Purpose: This thesis aims to determine and unravel the underlying mechanisms of how inter-organisational information sharing influences blood safety and availability in the dyadic blood supply chain in normal, high tempo, and emergency conditions. Design/methodology/approach: Grounded in the critical realism paradigm and the perspective of high reliability theory particularly the collective mindfulness concept, this thesis uses an embedded multiple case study designed for theory elaboration. A combined retroductive-abductive and the basic qualitative description has been adopted as a research strategy. Two contrasting cases with three embedded cases for each main case are selected using convenient and context-based approaches, representing a centralised and tightly regulated blood supply chain in the UK as well as a decentralised and loosely regulated blood supply chain in Indonesia. The data are collected using the triangulation of semi- structured interviews, walkthroughs, and other supporting documents including artefacts and archives. Template analysis coupled with within-case and cross- case analyses are then used to analyse the data. Findings: This thesis finds that inter-organisational information sharing influences blood safety and availability through the dynamic enactments of collective mindfulness principles that reflect the inter-organisational information sharing behaviour across the operational conditions. It also finds that the blood supply chain actors in the centralised and tightly regulated context are collectively more mindful when sharing information than those in the decentralised and loosely regulated context, so that more positive changes in the blood safety and availability performance are observed in the former compared to that in the latter context. Interestingly, whilst the data reveal an emerging mechanism of heedful interrelating across a range of operational conditions, this thesis also reveals the fact that inter-organisational information sharing does not necessarily lead to positive changes in blood safety and availability. In fact, negatively enacted collective mindfulness principles can lead inter-organisational information sharing to unimproved and even potentially worse blood safety and availability performance. Originality/value: The primary contribution of this thesis lies in understanding the underlying mechanisms of how inter-organisational information sharing influences blood safety and availability in the dyadic blood supply chain across a range of operational conditions. Whilst offering practical and conceptually relevant knowledge to the blood supply chain literature, it informs the wider supply chain literature on the different collective mindfulness principles that make inter- organisational information sharing influence supply chain performance across a range of operational conditions. The use of the collective mindfulness concept offers a novel perspective that extends the current discussion on the effectiveness of that information sharing for supply chains.PhD in Leadership and Managemen

Curating Brain Images in a Psychiatric Research Group: Infrastructure and Preservation Issues SCARP Case Study No. 1

Curating neuroimaging research data for sharing and re-use involves practical challenges for those concerned in its use and preservation. These are exemplified in a case study of the Neuroimaging Group in the University of Edinburgh’s Division of Psychiatry. The study is one of the SCARP series encompassing two aims; firstly to discover more about disciplinary approaches and attitudes to digital curation through ‘immersion’ in selected cases, in this case drawing on ethnographic field study. Secondly SCARP aims to apply known good practice, and where possible to identify new lessons from practice in the selected discipline areas; in this case using action research to assess risks to the long term reusability of datasets, and identify challenges and opportunities for change