The Goals and Assumptions of Conflict Management in Organizations

[Excerpt] This chapter examines how different goals and assumptions about conflict in organizations shape perspectives on managing conflict and resolving disputes. Four frames of reference are described: the neoliberal egoist perspective emphasizing the operation of the free market as the ideal method of resolving conflict; the critical perspective emphasizing broad societal divisions between labor and capital as the source of conflict; the unitarist perspective viewing conflict as primarily a function of interpersonal differences and organizational dysfunction, which can be remedied by improved managerial practice; and the pluralist perspective emphasizing the mixture of common and competing interests in the employment relationship, which requires institutional interventions to remedy the inequality of bargaining power that produces conflict. The pluralist perspective may best balance the often competing goals of efficiency, equity, and voice. It is described further in this chapter together with its implications for the design of dispute resolution procedures and conflict management systems

A Formal Method for Modeling, Verification and Synthesis of Embedded Reactive Systems

Embedded reactive systems are now invisible and everywhere, and are adopted, for instance, to monitor and control critical tasks in cars, airplanes, traffic, and industrial plants. However, the increasing amount of new functionalities being moved to software leads to difficulties in verifying the design correctness. In this context, we propose a novel design method called BARE Model, which is a formal abstraction to design, verify and synthesize software in embedded reactive applications. The method consists in designing the application using an extension of the well-known finite state machine, called X-machine. We thus propose to translate this model to a tabular data structure, which is a kind of state transition table augmented with memory input, memory output, and condition (or guard). This tabular structure may be automatically translated to the input of the NuSMV model checker in order to verify the system’s properties. We also propose a runtime environment to execute the system (expressed as a tabular data structure) in a specific platform. In this way, we can convert the high-level specification into executable code that runs on a target platform. To show the practical usability of our proposed method, we experimented it with the Envirotrack case study. The experiment shows that the proposed method is able to not only model the system, but also to verify safety and liveness properties, and synthesize executable code of real-world applications

The invisible power of fairness. How machine learning shapes democracy

Many machine learning systems make extensive use of large amounts of data regarding human behaviors. Several researchers have found various discriminatory practices related to the use of human-related machine learning systems, for example in the field of criminal justice, credit scoring and advertising. Fair machine learning is therefore emerging as a new field of study to mitigate biases that are inadvertently incorporated into algorithms. Data scientists and computer engineers are making various efforts to provide definitions of fairness. In this paper, we provide an overview of the most widespread definitions of fairness in the field of machine learning, arguing that the ideas highlighting each formalization are closely related to different ideas of justice and to different interpretations of democracy embedded in our culture. This work intends to analyze the definitions of fairness that have been proposed to date to interpret the underlying criteria and to relate them to different ideas of democracy.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figure, preprint version, submitted to The 32nd Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence that will take place in Kingston, Ontario, May 28 to May 31, 201

A library of Taylor models for PVS automatic proof checker

We present in this paper a library to compute with Taylor models, a technique extending interval arithmetic to reduce decorrelation and to solve differential equations. Numerical software usually produces only numerical results. Our library can be used to produce both results and proofs. As seen during the development of Fermat's last theorem reported by Aczel 1996, providing a proof is not sufficient. Our library provides a proof that has been thoroughly scrutinized by a trustworthy and tireless assistant. PVS is an automatic proof assistant that has been fairly developed and used and that has no internal connection with interval arithmetic or Taylor models. We built our library so that PVS validates each result as it is produced. As producing and validating a proof, is and will certainly remain a bigger task than just producing a numerical result our library will never be a replacement to imperative implementations of Taylor models such as Cosy Infinity. Our library should mainly be used to validate small to medium size results that are involved in safety or life critical applications

Legitimizing Indigenous Knowledge in Zimbabwe: A Theoretical Analysis of Postcolonial School Knowledge and Its Colonial Legacy

This article is a theoretical discussion on the social construction of knowledge in colonial and postcolonial Zimbabwe. It examines effects of hegemonic knowledge constructions and how they may be delegitimated through incorporating indigenous knowledge in postcolonial school curricular. The article questions the importance attached to Eurocentric school knowledge and the devaluation of indigenous knowledge in postcolonial states. It further argues that indigenous knowledge as informal knowledge plays a major role in society and should be formalized in educational institutions to constitute a transformative and inclusive educational system. The article proposes hybridization of knowledge to give voice to the formerly marginalized in school curricular in Zimbabwe. It also proposes that knowledge as a historical, cultural, social, spiritual and ideological creation should be a product of collaborated efforts from all possible stakeholders to foster social development and self-confidence in individuals

Moving outside the box: Researching e-learning in disruptive times

Indexación: Scopus.The rise of technology’s influence in a cross-section of fields within formal education, not to mention in the broader social world, has given rise to new forms in the way we view learning, i.e. what constitutes valid knowledge and how we arrive at that knowledge. Some scholars have claimed that technology is but a tool to support the meaning-making that lies at the root of knowledge production while others argue that technology is increasingly and inextricably intertwined not just with knowledge construction but with changes to knowledge makers themselves. Regardless which side one stands in this growing debate, it is difficult to deny that the processes we use to research learning supported by technology in order to understand these growing intricacies, have profound implications. In this paper, my aim is to argue and defend a call in the research on ICT for a critical reflective approach to researching technology use. Using examples from qualitative research in e-learning I have conducted on three continents over 15 years, and in diverse educational contexts, I seek to unravel the means and justification for research approaches that can lead to closing the gap between research and practice. These studies combined with those from a cross-disciplinary array of fields support the promotion of a research paradigm that examines the socio-cultural contexts of learning with ICT, at a time that coincides with technology becoming a social networking facilitator. Beyond the examples and justification of the merits and power of qualitative research to uncover the stories that matter in these socially embodied e-learning contexts, I discuss the methodologically and ethically charged decisions using emerging affordances of technology for analyzing and representing results, including visual ethnography. The implications both for the consumers and producers of research of moving outside the box of established research practices are yet unfathomable but excitinghttp://www.ejel.org/volume15/issue1/p5

Communities as allies

A popular axiom attributed to British policing is the police are the public and the public are the police. Inherent in this term is a blurring of the distinction between the police and the public they serve; the police are cast as being little different from the citizenry and citizens are cast into a role of responsibility for the safety and well-being of the community. In effect, communities are framed as allies in the fight to ensure safe and secure neighborhoods. Across space and time this idea has held uneven sway within American policing ideologies. This essay considers the relationship between the police and the policed, as well as how that relationship might be influenced be technological and social evolutions. The essay begins with an overview of the very notion of ―community‖ and their relationship with crime and disorder. This is followed by a brief review of the historical trajectory of police-community interactions within American policing. We then consider how emerging and future technologies might modify what ―community‖ means. The essay concludes with a consideration of police and community interactions and partnerships in the digital age

Trojans in Early Design Steps—An Emerging Threat

Hardware Trojans inserted by malicious foundries during integrated circuit manufacturing have received substantial attention in recent years. In this paper, we focus on a different type of hardware Trojan threats: attacks in the early steps of design process. We show that third-party intellectual property cores and CAD tools constitute realistic attack surfaces and that even system specification can be targeted by adversaries. We discuss the devastating damage potential of such attacks, the applicable countermeasures against them and their deficiencies

Expression and expropriation : the dialectics of autonomy and control in creative labour

Creative labour occupies a highly contradictory position in modern, global, ‘knowledge-based’ economies. On the one hand, companies have to balance their insatiable need for a stream of innovative ideas with the equally strong imperative to gain control over intellectual property and manage a creative workforce. On the other, creative workers have to find a balance between the urge for self-expression and recognition and the need to earn a living. This article explores the interplay between these doubly contradictory impulses, drawing on the results of European research carried out within the scope of the WORKS project as well as other research by the author. It argues that the co-existence of multiple forms of control makes it difficult for workers to find appropriate forms of resistance. Combined with increasing tensions between the urges to compete and to collaborate, these contradictions pose formidable obstacles to the development of coherent resistance strategies by creative workers.Peer reviewe