Uncertainty, Reflection, and Designer Identity Development

Uncertainty is a defining quality of the design space and it stands to reason that designers’ personal attitudes toward uncertainty may influence design processes and outcomes via cognitive, affective, and/or behavioral channels. Individual attitudes and behavior patterns related to uncertainty may constitute a critical element of designer identity, which represents the synthesis of knowledge, action, and being. This qualitative study examined how graduate students in an instructional design course reflected on their experiences and beliefs regarding uncertainty. Participants were more reflective when discussing a general experience with uncertainty than their current attitudes toward uncertainty in design. Findings support the use of narrated reflection in design education related to uncertainty and identity. Implications for design education interventions and design are discussed

Precise Yet Uncertain: Broadening Understandings of Uncertainty and Policy in the BPA Controversy

Bisphenol A (BPA) is one of the most studied and most controversial chemicals used by the food packaging industry, because of its endocrine disruptive properties. Part of the controversy is due to the uncertainty that surrounds the effects of BPA on the endocrine system. Uncertainty includes data gaps, methodological hurdles, incompatibilities between toxicology and endocrinology-based approaches, and so on. In this article, we analyze how uncertainty has been conceptualized and treated. We focus on the European Food Safety Authority assessments of BPA, and study how exposure and hazard assessments have evolved over time, how uncertainty has been analyzed, and how the agency responded to controversies. Results show that in the attempt to reduce knowledge gaps, assessments have become progressively larger, including more references, evidence, and effects. There is a tendency toward greater precisions and specification of results, and toward protocolization of all processes included in the assessment (from literature review, to uncertainty assessments, and public consultation). Yet, the uncertainty has not diminished following the increase in evidence. We argue that the strategy used to reduce uncertainty within risk assessment, namely including more variables, studies, data, and methods, amplifies the uncertainty linked to indeterminacy (as more results increase the fragmentation of the knowledge base due to the open-ended nature of complex issues) and ambiguity (as complexity gives way to multiple nonequivalent interpretations of results). For this reason, it is important to consider different types of uncertainty and how these uncertainties interact with each other.publishedVersio

Collective Risk Management in a Flight to Quality Episode

We present a model of optimal intervention in a flight to quality episode. The reason for intervention stems from a collective bias in agents' expectations. Agents in the model make risk management decisions with incomplete knowledge. They understand their own shocks, but are uncertain of how correlated their shocks are with systemwide shocks, treating the latter uncertainty as Knightian. We show that when aggregate liquidity is low, an increase in uncertainty leads agents to a series of protective actions -- decreasing risk exposures, hoarding liquidity, locking-up capital -- that reflect a flight to quality. However, the conservative actions of agents leave the aggregate economy over-exposed to negative shocks. Each agent covers himself against his own worst-case scenario, but the scenario that the collective of agents are guarding against is impossible. A lender of last resort, even if less knowledgeable than private agents about individual shocks, does not suffer from this collective bias and finds that pledging intervention in extreme events is valuable. The intervention unlocks private capital markets.

General practitioners' perceptions of effective health care

Objectives: To explore general practitioners' perceptions of effective health care and its application in their own practice; to examine how these perceptions relate to assumptions about clinicians' values and behaviour implicit in the evidence based medicine approach. Design: A qualitative study using semistructured interviews. Setting: Eight general practices in North Thames region that were part of the Medical Research Council General Practice Research Framework. Participants: 24 general practitioners, three from each practice. Main outcome measures: Respondents' definitions of effective health care, reasons for not practising effectively according to their own criteria, sources of information used to answer clinical questions about patients, reasons for making changes in clinical practice. Results: Three categories of definitions emerged: clinical, patient related, and resource related. Patient factors were the main reason given for not practising effectively; others were lack of time, doctors' lack of knowledge and skills, lack of resources, and "human failings." Main sources of information used in situations of clinical uncertainty were general practitioner partners and hospital doctors. Contact with hospital doctors and observation of hospital practice were just as likely as information from medical and scientific literature to bring about changes in clinical practice. Conclusions: The findings suggest that the central assumptions of the evidence based medicine paradigm may not be shared by many general practitioners, making its application in general practice problematic. The promotion of effective care in general practice requires a broader vision and a more pragmatic approach which takes account of practitioners' concerns and is compatible with the complex nature of their work

Start-Up Founders’ Competence Potential

In order to respond to all the fast changes that are happening, it is necessary to act quickly and to be adaptable, both from the point of view of organizations and individuals, having necessary knowledge and skill and continually developing human potentials. The year 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic has shown how those changes can happen overnight and create a need for the companies’ transformation. That is the new clear reason for the big interest in researching start-ups. Start ups are innovative and fast-developing companies, bringing new solutions and new products, and working under extreme uncertainty, therefore, they require specific skills, knowledge, and other competencies of their founders. Competencies, on the other side, are predispositions, knowledge and skills needed to respond and adapt to changes. The aim of the paper is to propose a theoretical model of relationships between start-up founders’ competence potential and outcomes of their ventures. The theoretical model is based on the Upper Echelons Theory presented by Hambrick and Mason (1984) and the scale measuring competence potential of employees in innovative enterprises proposed by Rakowska and Sitko-Lutek (2015). Competence potential of start-up founders is still not researched in depth, so the proposed theoretical method could be used as the practical research methodology.In order to respond to all the fast changes that are happening, it is necessary to act quickly and to be adaptable, both from the point of view of organizations and individuals, having necessary knowledge and skill and continually developing human potentials. The year 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic has shown how those changes can happen overnight and create a need for the companies’ transformation. That is the new clear reason for the big interest in researching start-ups. Start-ups are innovative and fast-developing companies, bringing new solutions and new products, and working under extreme uncertainty, therefore, they require specific skills, knowledge, and other competencies of their founders. Competencies, on the other side, are predispositions, knowledge and skills needed to respond and adapt to changes. The aim of the paper is to propose a theoretical model of relationships between start-up founders’ competence potential and outcomes of their ventures. The theoretical model is based on the Upper Echelons Theory presented by Hambrick and Mason (1984) and the scale measuring competence potential of employees in innovative enterprises proposed by Rakowska and Sitko-Lutek (2015). Competence potential of start-up founders is still not researched in depth, so the proposed theoretical method could be used as the practical research methodology

The relation of theology and history studied in the context of epistemological dualisms

This thesis proposes to come to terms with the problem which the idea of history poses for theology, but it does so primarily through a critical analysis of the way epistemological dualisms have pre-determined the discussion. Part One engages in a critical and methodological study which is intended to show that the rise of modem philosophy, in attempting to provide an epistemological access to reality, provided the intellectual tools which ultimately led to the rise of modem historical criticism. Further, it will be seen that these epistemological dualisms (e.g., the distinction between the necessary truths of reason and the contingent truths of fact) underlie the problem which the rise of historical criticism has put to theology—how can historically-conditioned events which are empirically uncertain and inconclusive serve as the frame of reference for Christian faith with its claim to universal and absolute validity? This question which presupposes a dualistic epistemology is the fundamental and recurring issue in this thesis. For example, modern philosophy (beginning with Descartes) sought to establish a basis for the absolute truths of reason in contrast to the incertitudes of historical knowledge. This quest for absolute certainty in regard to philosophical knowledge led to such epistemological dualisms as body-mind, thought and extension, truths of reason and truths of fact. The consequence of these dualisms led to the recognition history is characterised by the categories of relativity and probability. That is, historical events are conditioned according to their historical setting, and the knowledge of these events are characterised by varying degrees of probability in sharp contrast to the absolute certainty of the necessary truths of reason. Thus, the epistemological dualisms to be considered in Part One provide the central twofold question which historical criticism has posed to theology—how can historically-conditioned events (i.e., historical relativity) serve as the point of departure for Christian faith with its claim to universal and absolute truth? That is to say, how can historical relativity be reconciled with the claim of Christian faith that a single event can be absolutely unique? And, how can the probabilities of historical knowledge be reconciled with the claim of Christian faith as a historical revelation to have absolute truth? That is, how can the certitude of faith be maintained over against the incertitude of historical knowledge?Part Two is concerned with dualisms in religious epistemology, which correspond somewhat to the philosophical dualisms articulated in Part One. That is, even as modern philosophy sought to provide a basis for the absolute certainty of truth through such distinctions as thought and extension, truths of reason and truths of fact, even so theology has sought to provide a basis for the absolute certainty of religious knowledge through such distinctions as faith and knowledge, Hlstorie and Geschichte, inner history and outer history, nature and history. The intent of these related dualisms in religious epistemology is to make room for the certainty of faith which is threatened by the incertitude of historical knowledge and the relativity (i.e., the causal nexus) of the historical process. Thus, these two categories of historical criticism - i.e., historical relativity and the probability of historical knowledge - presuppose the delineation of a dualistic epistemology. For example, with the sharp distinction between the truths of reason and truths of fact, it was seen that history is characterised by (1) historical relativity (or contingency) as opposed to the necessary truths of reason and (2) more or less degrees of probability concerning historical knowledge as opposed to the absolute certainty of the truths of reason. On the other hand, religious epistemology developed into a dualism of its own in an attempt to cope with these two categories of relativity and probability with the result that the certainty of faith was made independent of the uncertainty of history.Part Three offers a constructive proposal to integrate the twofold aspect of religious epistemology. It is argued that theology cannot tolerate a divorce between Historie and Geschichte, faith and knowledge, inner history and outer history, even as philosophy cannot endure the Kantian divorce between noumenon and phenomenon. Also, even as theology must not divorce inner history from outer history, i.e., historical meanings cannot be divorced from historical facts, even so hermeneutics cannot be divorced from historical research. Thus, it is argued that the kerygma must be based upon temporal events which can at least be theoretically verifiable. This is to acknowledge that the biblical texts intend to "report" events which really happened. Thus, Part Three is an attempt to "overcome" a dualistic epistemology. In so doing, it proposes to integrate the hermeneutical and historical aspects of the idea of revelation, as well as integrating faith and history, in terms of a theology of universal history. The term, "hermeneutical," is intended to focus attention upon: (l) the biblical texts themselves as the linguistic bearers of the interpretation of certain events which are revelatory, (2) the distance that separates the biblical texts from the modern age, (3) the resulting necessity for bridging the distance between the biblical texts and the modern age, and (4) the epistemological problem of history. The term, "historical," is intended to focus attention upon: (l) the objective, temporal quality of history as the bearer of revelatory events, and (2) the necessity for ascertaining the historical reliability of the events recorded in the biblical texts. The term, "universal history," is a more comprehensive concept which intends to bring together both the historical and the hermeneutical aspects of revelation

Reasoning about constitutive norms in BDI agents

Software agents can be members of different institutions along their life; they might even belong to different institutions simultaneously. For these reasons, agents need capabilities that allow them to determine the repercussion that their actions would have within the different institutions. This association between the physical word, in which agents' interactions and actions take place, and the institutional world is defined by means of constitutive norms. Currently, the problem of how agents reason about constitutive norms has been tackled from a theoretical perspective only. Thus, there is a lack of more practical proposals that allow the development of software agents capable of reasoning about constitutive norms. In this article we propose an information model, knowledge representation and an inference mechanism to enable Belief-Desire-Intention agents to reason about the consequences of their actions on the institutions and making decisions accordingly. Specifically, the information model, knowledge representation and inference mechanism proposed in this article allows agents to keep track of the institutional state given that they have a physical presence in some real-world environment. Agents have a limited and not fully believable knowledge of the physical world (i.e. they are placed in an uncertain environment). Therefore, our proposal also deals with the uncertainty of the environment. © The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved

The effects of intra-organisational collaboration in reducing uncertainties for enhancing the performance of innovation projects : the role of organisational learning

Innovation is essential for business prosperity and a major driver of success and sustainability in today’s world. The history of organisation-level innovation projects (products, services and processes) is rich with cases of great ideas that failed to be realised as well as those creative ideas that ended in remarkable success. The rate of reported failure of innovation projects is however, much higher than reported success. Innovation project uncertainty is considered a key reason for innovation project failure (García-Quevedo et al. 2018). Scholars in innovation management studies confirm that uncertainty is a natural and intrinsically inherent characteristic of innovation projects (Roper & Tapinos 2016; Um & Kim 2018). A knowledge gap about how to reduce uncertainty in order to enhance innovation project performance however, persists. Indeed, extant research on managing innovation projects is for the most part theoretical and lacks empirical evidence regarding effective organisational practices that reduce innovation project uncertainty for successful project performance. This research responds to this lack of empirical evidence by proposing intra-organisational collaboration as an organisational practice, and empirically examining its impact on reducing innovation project uncertainty and improving innovation project performance, whilst considering the mediation role of organisational learning in this relationship. Based on a systematic literature review, this research develops a comprehensive conceptual framework that assesses the relationships between intra-organisational collaboration, organisational learning, innovation project uncertainty reduction and innovation project performance in the context of innovation projects. The thesis draws on the three most common sources of innovation project uncertainty: task, market and technological in examining how innovation project uncertainty can be reduced through intra-organisational collaboration. Additionally, it integrates previous studies to conceptualise intra-organisational collaboration as a multi-dimensional construct made up of by five sub-constructs: collaborative relationship, collaborative leadership, communication and sharing information, trust formation, and commitment. The findings of this research offer several insights into the context of innovation projects. First these findings highlight the need for organisations to embed collaborative practices in their project’s environment. This research found that collaborative practices operated dialectically in enhancing organisational learning and enabled project members to manage complicated tasks, foresee future demand and market changes as well as solve technological problems. These collaborative practices allowed project members to successfully reduce innovation project uncertainty and enhance project performance