Knowledge management, innovation and big data: Implications for sustainability, policy making and competitiveness

This Special Issue of Sustainability devoted to the topic of “Knowledge Management, Innovation and Big Data: Implications for Sustainability, Policy Making and Competitiveness” attracted exponential attention of scholars, practitioners, and policy-makers from all over the world. Locating themselves at the expanding cross-section of the uses of sophisticated information and communication technology (ICT) and insights from social science and engineering, all papers included in this Special Issue contribute to the opening of new avenues of research in the field of innovation, knowledge management, and big data. By triggering a lively debate on diverse challenges that companies are exposed to today, this Special Issue offers an in-depth, informative, well-structured, comparative insight into the most salient developments shaping the corresponding fields of research and policymaking

Social media in collaborative learning in higher education : a qualitative case study of teachers’ and students’ views

In this study, it was investigated how social media are used in collaborative learning in higher education and also how it can be better used in teaching and learning according to the students and teachers. The research questions of this study were: 1) How social media are used in collaborative learning by the teachers and students in higher education for educational purposes? 2) How could social media be used in collaborative learning process in higher education, according to the students and teachers? Qualitative interviews were conducted to collect the data from ten students and five teachers from the different faculties of University of Lapland and Lapland University of Applied Sciences. In conclusion it was found that, social media were not much used in collaboration with teachers by the students of both institutions. In case of teachers, it was found that all of them were using social media in their collaborative ways of teaching design and they have found social media as useful tool to deliver their teaching. Most of the students and all the teachers found social media to be useful in their teaching and learning. But there were also some challenges faced and areas of improvements identified by them. Thus the higher educational institutions should understand the importance of using social media in teaching and learning and take initiatives to overcome the current challenges identified by the students and teachers

Advancing Stability in an Era of Change

Argues for an integrated grantmaking strategy for world security, stewardship, and the peaceful management of change. Focuses on the individual, the nation-state, civil society organizations, private sector corporations, and multilateral institutions

Improving WASH Service Delivery in Protracted Crises: The Case of the Democratic Republic of Congo

Delivering Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) services during humanitarian emergencies and immediate recovery phases is essential for saving lives and responding to basic needs, yet choices about how WASH services are delivered can undermine future development and peace. Longer-term interventions can also overlook how they equip communities, households and government to prepare and respond to future emergencies. This is increasingly evident in protracted or recurrent crises, in which overlapping and cyclical phases of emergency, relief, recovery and development interventions coexist. In these contexts, practitioners and academics alike have acknowledged the problem of reconciling the fundamentally different institutional cultures, assumptions, values, structures and ways of working that characterise the humanitarian and the development communities.In this report, we analyse humanitarian and development approaches in a specific sector, in a particular country: WASH interventions in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). We consider how and why siloes have arisen. We argue that the problem is not so much about filling a 'gap' between humanitarian and development siloes, but about aligning the principles and practices of both communities in specific contexts so that the overall response can meet changing needs and constraints. We identify a number of ways through which improved complementarity might be achieved, differentiating between national and sub-national levels

Human Computation and Convergence

Humans are the most effective integrators and producers of information, directly and through the use of information-processing inventions. As these inventions become increasingly sophisticated, the substantive role of humans in processing information will tend toward capabilities that derive from our most complex cognitive processes, e.g., abstraction, creativity, and applied world knowledge. Through the advancement of human computation - methods that leverage the respective strengths of humans and machines in distributed information-processing systems - formerly discrete processes will combine synergistically into increasingly integrated and complex information processing systems. These new, collective systems will exhibit an unprecedented degree of predictive accuracy in modeling physical and techno-social processes, and may ultimately coalesce into a single unified predictive organism, with the capacity to address societies most wicked problems and achieve planetary homeostasis.Comment: Pre-publication draft of chapter. 24 pages, 3 figures; added references to page 1 and 3, and corrected typ

Sharing Global Governance: The Role of Civil Society Organizations

This report explores the multiple roles and potential of CSOs in international policymaking and examines the strengths and weaknesses of CSOs and state-based organizations in global governance. It looks particularly closely at the resources, access, skills and experience that each group of actors brings to the table. It concludes that the infrastructure used to incorporate CSOs into the United Nations and other multilaterals must be strengthened and expanded if more integrated and effective forms of collaboration are to be developed and outlines policy recommendations how this goal can be accomplished