Opening the black box : what makes risk management pervasive in organisations?

This thesis is concerned with what pervasive risk management is, and how it can be achieved in practice. Specifically, it examines the effect of social processes and cultural factors on how risk management can be coordinated across and embedded within business processes and organisational culture. A growing literature addresses what is termed risk management maturity: the capability of an organisation to assess, manage, communicate and govern risk (and opportunity). Notwithstanding its benefits, the emphasis of this literature on risk management benchmarking and standardisation has led, arguably, to a bureaucratisation of risk management process. Research followed a case study strategy and data were gathered through semi-structured interviews. A total of 43 interviews were conducted in one private and one public sector organisation. The findings describe a number of social processes and related cultural factors that significantly affected risk management pervasiveness in the two organisations. (1) Shared experience and respect for experience facilitated flexible coordination between operational and strategic risk management. (2) Informal, lateral communication integrated the knowledge of diverse stakeholders required to manage complex environmental risks. (3) Lack of common understanding of the purpose and function of risk management undermined coordination of risk management practice. These findings progress the debate on the balance between standardisation and informal social process to achieve pervasive risk management, and contribute to a richer description of organisational risk management maturity. The findings are of value to risk managers wishing to embed the adaptive and coordinated risk management required in dynamic and complex environment

Drug problems and social exclusion: the development of heroin careers in risk environments.

The location-specificd rug scenesi dentified in Ireland and the UK in the 1980s indicated that problem drug use had a particular social and spatial focus in urban working-class communities, particularly those affected by unemployment and deprivation. This thesis explores localised drug problems in a number of disadvantaged neighbourhoods of Dublin by locating the perspective and experience of heroin users within the context of the social and economic contexts in which they live and operate. Taking a critical interpretivist methodological approach, the concepts of social exclusion and risk environments are used as heuristic devices for understanding the context in which problematic drug careers develop in marginalised areas. Using a multi-method research design, the study draws on secondary demographic, socioeconomic and policy data to provide a contextual framework of risk environments. The study then explores the development of heroin careers and the lived experience of social exclusion through in-depth qualitative interviews with sixty-one heroin users and an ethnographic study of the five socially excluded Dublin neighbourhoods in which they lived. An inductive analysis of the themes arising from the data describes the interactive dynamics at play in which social and structural processes are seen to both facilitate, and be facilitated by, local drug problems. The multiple and interconnected risks that drug users are seen to encounter at both a micro and macro environmental level contributes to our knowledge of localised drug problems and their relationship with social exclusion, and leads to the development of the concept of a risk environment for drug problems with consequent potential for informing grounded policy interventions

University of Dayton Magazine. Spring 2017

This issue includes articles about Mary\u27s Garden exhibit, the 1967 basketball tournament, 200 years of Marianist brothers and sisters, mental health after a trauma, and Joseph T. Dickman.https://ecommons.udayton.edu/dayton_mag/1214/thumbnail.jp

Another epistemic culture : Reconstructing knowledge diffusion for rural development in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta

In the age of “post-industrial society” and “knowledge economy,” how do agrarian communities in developing countries talk, think, and apply knowledge for their everyday life and production? Does a farmer become a “knowledge worker,” or are knowledge workers only scientists, experts, development practitioners, and agriculture managers? More generally, is there a culture that nurtures knowledge production processes among interactive actors and across traditional boundaries and niches? Globalisation has transformed the way knowledge is produced, transmitted, and applied, as research results from one part of the world are transmitted over long distances to users who need it for their development. A wide gap has often arisen between epistemic culture, the culture of knowledge production, and the social and cultural conditions in which knowledge is applied. This problem is by no means new, but it has taken on new dimensions and practices. Founded on constructivist perspectives of systems thinking and symbolic interactionism, this research scrutinises knowledge diffusion for rural development within the interaction of different types of knowledge, knowledge processes and the four knowledge systems of agricultural extension, research, agribusiness, and farming community in the Mekong Delta, the largest and most active agriculture region in Vietnam. Placed in a broad analysis of the delta’s river and water civilisation (van minh song nuoc), modern hydraulic society developments and recent natural and social change impacts, the present research has revealed the duality of knowledge diffusion for agriculture and rural development in the Mekong Delta. The conventional model is still prominent in the knowledge diffusion landscape of the delta; researchers are knowledge producers, and agricultural extensionists and development experts are the main knowledge transfer agents of research results and technologies to rural residents as passive receivers. Sets of actors remain confined to their own life worlds, reading from their own scripts while farmers are perceived as passive knowledge and development receivers. The research has also illuminated a restructuration of knowledge diffusion from grassroots, informal, bottom-up efforts and networks conditioned on interactive environment, new identity of actors, and hybridity of knowledge work organisations. What is accentuated from multiple research case studies is that another epistemic culture of rural development is emerging. It is characterised by three principles of inclusionality, co-creation and reflexivity. Inclusionality promotes dynamic relational influences and co-evolutionary processes between nature and humans, environment and structure, community and individuals, knowledge source and receivers. The “I know better” fence that divides actors into the binarism of development experts-beneficiaries, knowledge source-passive receivers, and agencies with interest and knowledge work clashes is demolished. Co-creation relates to the active and creative participation of actors in development and knowledge development construction. Knowledge co-production can be formally performed in transdisciplinary research or everyday practice of collaborative informal grouping. It has to be built upon partnerships. Reflexivity refers to reflexive management of mega-knowledge in creating new knowledge at various levels of learning. Reflexivity creates opportunities for enhancement of conceptual readiness and effective implementation of innovation in more complicated and uncertain contexts of development as well as enrichment of local imaginings that potentially reshape and transform global issues and regimes. Another epistemic culture of development is emerging with an increasingly important role to play in constructing knowledge for sustainable rural development practices in the Mekong Delta, yet it is often “hidden” from the mainstream development and knowledge for development landscapes. It is from the internalist reconstruction and transformation within reflective communities and hybrid knowledge developed from interaction and networking logic that the alternative epistemic culture is beginning to spring, and in this same orientation it should be promoted. Yet, in the vast ocean of knowledge and emerging islands of new epistemic practices, micro-to-macro knowledge governance has to bridge and breed knowledge-processes-based interaction and learning cultures among communities and networks. If not, distributed transformations of the described epistemic culture of development only fall into being marginalised, budding, and unstructured features of knowledge-based societal change projects and cannot effectively lead (to) rural development transformation

Video Vortex reader : responses to Youtube

The Video Vortex Reader is the first collection of critical texts to deal with the rapidly emerging world of online video – from its explosive rise in 2005 with YouTube, to its future as a significant form of personal media. After years of talk about digital convergence and crossmedia platforms we now witness the merger of the Internet and television at a pace no-one predicted. These contributions from scholars, artists and curators evolved from the first two Video Vortex conferences in Brussels and Amsterdam in 2007 which focused on responses to YouTube, and address key issues around independent production and distribution of online video content. What does this new distribution platform mean for artists and activists? What are the alternatives

Participatory arts for creativity in education (PACE) model: exploring the participatory arts as a potential model for fostering creativity in post-primary education

This research study set out to explore how creativity was being fostered within Participatory Arts initiatives, with a view to informing the design of a Participatory Arts model for education. The study explored two types of Participatory Arts initiatives, the first led by Upstate Theatre Project, a ‘pure’ Participatory Arts initiative, and the second led by Fighting Words, an ‘applied’ Participatory Arts initiative. In the context of this study, the aim was to provide an evidence base for, and articulate, the factors and processes underpinning climates for creativity, and the (pedagogic) approaches used to foster creativity in Participatory Arts initiatives, as well as exploring the enablement of beneficial outcomes across both Participatory Arts contexts. The study firstly affirmed that Participatory Arts initiatives foster creativity, and furthermore that the practices within these initiatives enable the type of ‘learning for creativity’ outcomes articulated by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) in Ireland. The study further articulated the Participatory Arts for Creativity in Education (PACE) model, a three-layered guide on the principles, practices and processes that can be used to foster creativity. Moreover, the study revealed a series of vignettes of good practice with respect to the enablement of climates for creativity and processes for being creative. The recommendations include a call for the Department of Education and Skills (DES) and the NCCA in Ireland to review the current national guidelines on fostering creativity in education in light of the findings from this research study, and for a creativity toolkit to be developed based on the PACE model and accompanying vignettes, and implemented within workshops for practitioners (post-primary teachers, artist-tutors) aiming to foster creativity through the Participatory Arts process