Inspiration Mining: Intersecting Improbable Connections in a New Landscape of Cultural Reflection and Influence

This article aims to present a critical reflection on the collaborative curatorship of the exhibition “Intersecting Improbable Connections”. It is a transdisciplinary exhibition covering architecture, design, arts, among other fields, and calls for non-linear productive thinking strategies. It explores the intersection of unlikely relationships to inspire memorable visits to museums, and it feeds the Inspædia platform, creating a new landscape of reflection and cultural influence. It advocates a new concept of exhibition curation that minimizes costs (because it does not involve transportation or insurance for the pieces) and is intended to help stimulate creative processes. Based on a selection of content from the participating museums’ permanent exhibitions, duly marked with QR Codes, visitors can access that content that is already available on the Inspædia platform and explore potentially endless connections, without losing contact with the physical object (and vice versa).FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, in the scope of the projects SFRH/BPD/98427/2013, UID/EAT/04008/ 2019, and UID/AUR/04026/201

The intersection of fashion, immersive technology and sustainability: a literature review.

Fashion industry emissions, resource use and waste are attracting increasing consumer and government attention, with broad agreement that a new approach is required along the supply chain. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, a move to digitalisation facilitated an accelerating interest in digital applications, including immersive technologies such as augmented and virtual reality. This systematic literature review explores the intersecting topics of fashion, immersive technologies and sustainability to determine the trends, examine the solutions offered and discuss the implications of immersive technologies for sustainability. Four resources were consulted (Scholar, SCOPUS, WOS, and ProQuest), resulting in 74 articles for the review. Grey literature was included due to the currency of the topic and gaps in the available academic literature. The findings highlight immersive technology uses in the fashion industry, which are part of a move towards sustainability. These technologies are used to reduce online returns, educate consumers, reduce waste in design and manufacture, and remove the need for physical items. However, issues include high energy costs, consumer reluctance and skill shortages. Results suggest future research and industry discussions should focus on empirical studies to measure the sustainability impact of immersive technologies, monitor technology diffusion and uptake, and measure the industry skills gap

Design revolutions: IASDR 2019 Conference Proceedings. Volume 2: Living, Making, Value

In September 2019 Manchester School of Art at Manchester Metropolitan University was honoured to host the bi-annual conference of the International Association of Societies of Design Research (IASDR) under the unifying theme of DESIGN REVOLUTIONS. This was the first time the conference had been held in the UK. Through key research themes across nine conference tracks – Change, Learning, Living, Making, People, Technology, Thinking, Value and Voices – the conference opened up compelling, meaningful and radical dialogue of the role of design in addressing societal and organisational challenges. This Volume 2 includes papers from Living, Making and Value tracks of the conference

Competition in financial services

In the financial services sector, the failure of a single institution can have a compounding effect on the sector, and on national and global economies. In particular, there is systemic risk from inter-institution lending, and this effect is more complex in Australia due to the small number of major players. In retail banking in Australia, following a similar practice in most developed countries, if an unsecured creditor is a retail depositor, their deposit is insured by the government. That is, if a retail bank fails, the Federal Government will make the depositors whole. The regulatory system, particularly the prudential regulatory system, is designed to protect depositors’ and borrowers’ interests, and this protects the interest of the government. The effect is that regulatory policy on banking has prioritised stability in consideration of the sovereign risk associated with the risk of retail bank failure. However, this approach also creates a policy dilemma. The dilemma concerns the extent to which the retail banking sector can attain the benefits of the vigorous rivalry from effective and efficient competition, without unduly risking stability and the potential of a devastating call on the public purse. Specifically, in the context of effective and efficient competition, there is limited competitiveness in retail banking in Australia. This is reflected in the static state of market share between the four major banks, and very slow and marginal improvements gains even by strong second tier competitors. Furthermore, the retail banking sector’s capacity for product and service innovation is limited. Although the absence of vigorous rivalry is conducive to stability within the retail banking sector, it is likely to detract from the welfare of retail banking consumers. Furthermore, the level of innovation may not be as high as is feasible and barriers, including prudential regulatory barriers to entry or expansion, mean that the extent of rivalry is unlikely to change without some form of promotion of competition. The paper consequently makes a four-point recommendation for the removal of the ‘four pillars’ policy:  The four major banks are protected by an implicit government guarantee that impacts market operation with little observable benefit to consumers, and may be a source of consumer disutility.  The four pillars policy has prompted increased vertical integration within the sector, particularly in the area of mortgage products.  There are sufficient merger protections provided by Part IV of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth).  Competition and contestability arise when there are reasonably low barriers to entry and exit from the sector. It is not clear that low barriers to entry exist in Australia, and evidence to support this view comes from the failure of international banks to gain a significant toehold in the retail banking sector in Australia. One deterrent to entry is the regulatory focus on the four pillars. The authors recognise that this position is at odds with the view of the Financial System Inquiry. However, the rationale in the report of the Inquiry was to prevent mergers, and the current competition law achieves this objective. The paper recommends two specific policies to promote competition in retail banking without the structural intervention that would otherwise be required to improve the intensity of competition in the retail banking sector:  Introduce bank account number portability. This would use ‘know your customer’ and central database systems in a similar form to those that have been used for mobile number portability in Australia for the last decade and a half.  Introduce customer access to data held by banks to allow third parties to compare bank offerings across all banks.  Significantly, these two recommendations are consistent with the productivity proposals issued by the UK Government in July 2015. The research paper also examines crowd equity funding as a disruptive force in the banking sector, and recommends that crowd equity funding be permitted with the following safeguards:  ASIC should take an active role in monitoring crowd equity funding and be willing to sue in case of fraudulent action.  Any intermediary online platform should have a financial services licence with limited duty of care.  There should be a cap for business raisings through crowd equity funding of $2 million in a 12-month period.  Crowd equity funding is a social phenomenon. Through its use of social media, it has attracted people who have previously never been interested in investing in companies. Instead of being feared, this interest should be nurtured through the promotion of investors’ financial education

City as lens: (re)imagining youth in Glasgow and Hong Kong

In recent years, a paradox has emerged in the study of youth. On the one hand, in the context of the processes of globalization, neoliberalism and precarity, the patterning of leisure and work for young people is becoming increasingly convergent across time and space. On the other hand, it is clear that young people’s habits and dispositions remain deeply tied to local places, with global processes filtered and refracted through specific cultural contexts. Against this backdrop, drawing on an Economic and Social Research Council/Research Grants Council (ESRC/RGC)-funded study of contemporary youth in Glasgow and Hong Kong, this article seeks to explore the role of the city as a mediating lens between global forces and local impacts. Utilizing both historical and contemporary data, the article argues that despite parallels in the impact of global forces on the structure of everyday life and work, young people’s leisure habits remain rooted in the fates and fortunes of their respective cities

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

Sustainable Investing: Navigating the Inefficiencies of an Inefficient Market

Over the past decade, sustainable investing, also known as socially responsible investing, ethical investing, or responsible investing, has experienced heightened popularity worldwide. This popularity reflects the increasing awareness of investors of social, environmental, ethical, and corporate governance issues. However, while retail investors\u27 interest has increased, their actual participation has been nominal. This paper explores the question: How do individual investors incorporate sustainability-related experiences, information, learning, or a combination of these in deciding to invest in sustainable investments? This study aims to identify the barriers and enablers that may inhibit or facilitate participation in sustainable investments. The study follows a grounded theory approach to construct theory from data, a method appropriate for this situation given the paucity of research involving investors\u27 intentions but lack of execution in sustainable investing. Furthermore, the study uses Behavioral Decision Theory and Nudge Theory as conceptual frameworks to structure the collection and analysis of data. The study entailed an extensive review of extant literature and promoted data collection through an intensive interview process involving knowledgeable investing and sustainability professionals. The findings identified several uncertainty drivers involving investors’ attitudes towards rating and reporting agencies, the financial merits of sustainable investing, and concerns about greenwashing. Each of these contributes to inefficiencies surrounding sustainable investing. These inefficiencies include asymmetric information, market power, market friction, and externalities. These uncertainty drivers and market inefficiencies promote investor responses through options unavailable to traditional investors. Contributions to theory include confirmation and extension of extant literature, enhanced function of behavioral decision theory and nudge theory, and extended application of market inefficiencies. Contribution to practice involves a conceptual model around strategic option theory for sustainable investing and the application of BDT and nudge. From these, individual investors, investment advisors, and investment companies can make more insightful decisions in their investment strategy to increase participation in sustainable investments

Digital poverty in Margate: a study of two hyperlocal communities

This report presents the findings of an in-depth, qualitative study of digital poverty from the perspectives of two hyperlocal communities in the UK seaside town of Margate. Specifically, the study examines members of Margate’s Roma community and its Creative Diaspora, drawing from interviews with individuals from these communities, in order to better understand specific lived experiences of digital poverty within the changing context of Margate as a place. The analysis is presented under three key headings: skills, productivity, and infrastructure.The British Academ

Digital Ecosystems as a Unit of Scientific Analysis. A Sociological Investigation

The growth of digital ecosystems such as Google, Apple and Uber has led to radical changes in economic activity, work and consumption. It has also challenged established economic, social and organization theory, which has clear limitations in understanding these phenomena. The discourses on these topics are conducted in various arenas, which are not linked, and conceptualise digital ecosystems differently. What kind of theoretical object is this? The purpose of this study is to present an institutional and comparative analysis of the research on platforms and digital ecosystems. We identify four research streams; political, economic, technological and individual. We analyse each stream regarding the key insights, and identify the most important knowledge sources. Then we assess the relevance of classical and modern sociology for understanding digital ecosystems