ExSS 2018: Workshop on explainable smart systems

Smart systems that apply complex reasoning to make decisions and plan behavior are often difficult for users to understand. While research to make systems more explainable and therefore more intelligible and transparent is gaining pace, there are numerous issues and problems regarding these systems that demand further attention. The goal of this workshop is to bring academia and industry together to address these issues. The workshop includes a keynote, poster panels, and group activities, towards developing concrete approaches to handling challenges related to the design, development, and evaluation of explainable smart systems

Coupling Performance Measurement and Collective Activity: The Semiotic Function of Management Systems. A Case Study

Theories about management instruments often enter dualistic debates between structure and agency: do instruments determine the forms of collective activity (CA), or do actors shape instruments to their requirements, or are instruments and concrete activity decoupled, as some trends of new institutionalist theory assume? Attempts to overcome the dualistic opposition between structure and activity stem from diverse sources: actors’ networks theory, structuration theory, pragmatism, theory of activity, semiotics. Performance measurement and management systems can be defined as structural instruments engaged in CA. As such they constrain the activity, but they do not determine it. Reciprocally, they are modified by the way CA uses them and makes sense of them. The central thesis of this paper will be that it is impossible to study the role of performance measurement as a common language in organizations independently from the design of the CA in which it is engaged. There is a not deterministic coupling between structure (i.e. management technical tools) and CA (i.e. business processes). The transformation of CA entails a transformation in the meaning of the “performance” concept, in the type of measurement required and in the performance management practices. The relationship between performance measurement and CA is studied here in the production division of a large electricity utility in France. The research extended over several years and took place when two new management systems were simultaneously implemented: a new management accounting system and an integrated management information system (ERP), both in the purchasing process. The new management accounting system was designed by the purchasing department; the new management information system was designed by the operational departments. Whereas the coherence between both projects could have been given by their common subordination to the rebuilding of CA (the purchasing process), their disconnection from concrete CA opened the possibility of serious dissonances between them. Both the new performance management system and the new ERP met difficulties to provide common languages, since the dimension of CA was taken for granted and consequently partly ignored in the engineering of both systems. When CA incurs radical transformations, actors’direct discursive exchanges about it, “collective activity about collective activity”, become necessary to ensure a flexible and not deterministic coupling between CA and new management systems. This reflexive and collective analysis of the process by actors themselves requires the establishment of “communities of process”, which can jointly redesign the CA and its performance measurement system. We conclude that performance measurement can be a common language as far as there is a clear and shared understanding of how CA should concretely take place and should be assigned to the different categories of actors.Business Process; Collective Activity; Community of Process; Management Instruments; Performance Measurement; Semiotics; Theory of Activity

CORRECTING ACCOUNTING ERRORS AND ACKNOWLEDGING THEM IN THE EARNINGS TO THE PERIOD

The accounting information is reliable when it does not contain significant errors, is not biasedand accurately represents the transactions and events. In the light of the regulations complying with Europeandirectives, the information is significant if its omission or wrong presentation may influence the decisions users makebased on annual financial statements. Given that the professional practice sees errors in registering or interpretinginformation, as well as omissions and wrong calculations, the Romanian accounting regulations stipulate treatmentsfor correcting errors in compliance with international references. Thus, the correction of the errors corresponding tothe current period is accomplished based on the retained earnings in the case of significant errors or on the currentearnings when the errors are insignificant. The different situations in the professional practice triggered by errorsrequire both knowledge of regulations and professional rationale to be addressed

When the financial statements are definitive. The Italian case.

In this article, the question arises as to when a balance sheet can be defined as definitive is certain. Undoubtedly, observance of the postulates of truthfulness, fairness and clarity is the first step toward drawing up a legitimate and legally valid balance sheet. This, however, does not guarantee that the financial statements are certain and definitive because, at any time, a shareholder or third party may challenge the financial statements drawn up even though they observe the postulates of clarity, truthfulness and correctness. The balance sheet will become final and inevitable when no one can challenge the resolution approving that document. This article will highlight the evolution that has taken place in Italy concerning this issue

Child court hearing in family cases: Questionnaire to assess the child needs during the juddes exploration

The basis of family law is the child's interest. This is related to the right to be listened to, but not as an obligation. As a consequence, there is a necessity for the judge to conduct a judicial exploration of the child. But, in general, the judges are not trained in this type of explorations, and they may consequently obtain erroneous information in their exploration. Therefore, in this work, we present the generation of a questionnaire that explores the judicial agents' necessities during judicial exploration of children. Five expert researchers in the subject participated in creating the questionnaire; five family judges participated in the pilot test; and in the final study, 63 family judges answered the final questionnaire. Global reliability was adequate (.858), as was the reliability for interviewer's skills, but it was not for the other areas of the questionnaire. An exploratory factor analysis showed a factor structure consisting of 5 factors that accounted for 46.12% of the total variance, but these five factors don't correspond to the factors provided by experts. But construct validity validated the structure provided by the experts (X^2 /df = 1.35; BBNNFI = .873; CFI = .879; IFI = .881; RMR = .139; SRMR = .153; RMSEA = .075). To sum up, we can say that the questionnaire could be improved, but the best areas are the stages of the interview and the interviewer's skills

Beyond Gatekeeping: The Normative Responsibility of Internet Intermediaries

This paper puts forward a normative approach to the responsibility of Internet intermediaries for third-party content they host. It argues that, in thinking about intermediary liability, our focus should be, rather than on the outcomes of intermediaries’ decisions, on their responsibility towards the reasoning processes in reaching these. What is necessary is a framework that, at the same time that it attaches responsibilities to such decisions, creates a cushioning system for their making, attenuating the hardship of honest mistakes. Within this framework, intermediaries must be seen not as mere keepers of gates, but as designers of artefacts whose use plans settle normative questions and play a fundamental role in the construction of our normative reality. Accordingly, an interpretive commitment must be required towards the integrity of such a reality. Every time intermediaries make a decision, as they always will and should, – in all this hidden jurisprudence – the integrity of our normative order and the values it reflects are at stake. All this must be seen as part of a broader concern with justice (corrective, normative) in the internal life of the information environment. For the same reason, however, we should not expect perfection from intermediaries, but responsible efforts. Like journalists who are entitled to make mistakes, if only they seek responsibly to avoid these (which is the idea of responsible communication in defamation), so it should be with Internet intermediaries. Understanding so enables us to move away from outcomes-based approaches towards a more granular and fairer system of intermediary liability.preprin

Comparisons of unilateral and bilateral cochlear implantation for children: spatial listening skills and quality of life

Recently, controversy in the care of severely-profoundly deaf children has centred on whether they should be provided with bilateral cochlear implants (two implants, one in each ear) rather than a unilateral cochlear implant (one implant in one ear). Potentially, implanting both ears rather than one could improve children’s spatial listening skills, meaning the ability to localise sources of sound (by comparing the intensity and timing of sounds arriving at the two ears) and to perceive speech in noise (by attending to whichever ear gives the better signal-to-noise ratio). The overall aim of the studies reported in this thesis was to assess whether bilateral implantation for children is more effective than unilateral implantation in improving spatial listening skills and quality of life. The first study measured the relationship between spatial listening skills and age in normally-hearing children. The second study compared the spatial listening skills of unilaterally- and bilaterally-implanted children. Whilst controlling for confounds, the bilateral group performed significantly better than the unilateral group on tests of sound-source localisation. Moreover, the bilateral group, but not the unilateral group, displayed improved speech perception when the source of a masking noise was moved from the front to either side of the head. Neither group of implanted children performed as well as normally-hearing children on tests of the ability to localise sources of sound and to perceive speech in noise. The third study measured the spatial listening skills of normally-hearing adults when listening to simulations of unilateral or bilateral implants. The differences in performance between simulations were similar to the differences in performance between groups of implanted children, which provides further evidence that the children's performance was primarily influenced by the number of implants they used rather than by confounds. The fourth study found that there was no significant difference between bilaterally- and unilaterally-implanted children in parental estimates of quality of life. The fifth study presented informants, who were not the parents of hearing-impaired children, with descriptions of a hypothetical child with unilateral or bilateral implants. The informants judged that the bilaterally-implanted child had a higher quality of life than the unilaterally-implanted child. These studies indicate that bilateral implantation for children is more effective than unilateral implantation in enabling spatial listening skills, but the extent of any gain in quality of life remains uncertain

Do Politics in Our Democracy Prevent Schooling for Our Democracy? Civic Education in Highly Partisan Times

Amid hyper-partisanship, increasing critiques of civic education reform priorities from conservatives, and growing signs of democratic backsliding, can schools provide foundational support for democratic norms, commitments, and capacities? Drawing on a unique national survey of high school principals conducted in 2018, we examine how political context, district priorities, and principal beliefs and characteristics are related to support for civic education. We find that a school’s partisan context is unrelated to most supports for democratic education. Of note, however, support for the discussion of controversial issues is less common in conservative districts, raising important questions about why the discussion of controversial issues (a core building block of democratic societies) is less common in conservative settings. In addition, support for civic education at the school level is highest at schools led by principals who are civically active and in districts that are committed to democratic aims. At a time when school districts face highly contentious politics, these findings indicate that systemic district commitments can help strengthen our civic foundations and that principals and district leaders may be able to promote small-d democracy amid increasingly politicized school governance contexts

The end of customary international law? : A purposive analysis of structural indeterminacy

Where CLS, and other critical discourses, seek to “uncover” and “explode” the ideologies and biases of law, to demonstrate its inability to fulfil its promises, the present work is intended to initiate the task of demanding that law, and especially CIL, live up to those very promises. But first, the nature of these promises, and the structure and purpose of law must be examined, analysed, and where necessary contested and decided, or rather, defined. In this regard, the hidden assumptions of legal theory must be uncovered and problematised; the debates over law must be disaggregated, before law itself can be properly determined. Only after these tasks have been completed can the nihilist challenges of NAIL be met. This thesis argues that CIL is best understood as an independent system of rules, against which state conduct may be assessed; rather than as a necessarily authoritative institutional reality. This highlights the distinction between law-creative, and merely legally evaluable, state actions. The theory presented in the final chapter - which is developed from the methodology outlined in the preceding four chapters - acts as a lens through which those actions of states which alter or develop CIL may be distinguished from those actions which ought, merely, to be judged in the light of CIL. This allows us to distinguish legal from illegal state conduct, regardless of the absence or presence of enforcement. This distinction between the legal and the illegal is distinct from, analytically prior to, and more important than, the enforcement of legal commands

Angst Springs Eternal:Dangerous Times and the Dangers of Timing the “Arab Spring”

Various reflections on the ‘Arab Spring’ evince a common view of the relationship between change and time that imbues events with a sense of intrinsic peril. Based on a framework developed from Norbert Elias’s concept of timing, this article elaborates the relationship between time and the ‘Arab Spring’ by unpacking and explaining three rhetorical tropes prevalent in academic responses to the revolts. The first two construct a problem to which the third proffers a solution. First, analysts treat time itself as a problematic force confounding stability and progress. Second, they deploy fluvial metaphors to present dynamic events as inherently insecure. Third, they use temporal Othering to retrofit the ‘Arab Spring’ to the familiar arc of liberal democracy, which renders the revolts intelligible and amenable to external intervention. These moves prioritize certainty and order over other considerations and constrain open-ended transformations within a familiar rubric of political progress. They also constitute an active timing effort based on a conservative standard, with important implications for our understanding of security and for scholarly reflexivity. The article concludes with three temporal alternatives for engaging novel changes like the ‘Arab Spring’