9,343 research outputs found

    An empirical investigation of the relationship between integration, dynamic capabilities and performance in supply chains

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    This research aimed to develop an empirical understanding of the relationships between integration, dynamic capabilities and performance in the supply chain domain, based on which, two conceptual frameworks were constructed to advance the field. The core motivation for the research was that, at the stage of writing the thesis, the combined relationship between the three concepts had not yet been examined, although their interrelationships have been studied individually. To achieve this aim, deductive and inductive reasoning logics were utilised to guide the qualitative study, which was undertaken via multiple case studies to investigate lines of enquiry that would address the research questions formulated. This is consistent with the author’s philosophical adoption of the ontology of relativism and the epistemology of constructionism, which was considered appropriate to address the research questions. Empirical data and evidence were collected, and various triangulation techniques were employed to ensure their credibility. Some key features of grounded theory coding techniques were drawn upon for data coding and analysis, generating two levels of findings. These revealed that whilst integration and dynamic capabilities were crucial in improving performance, the performance also informed the former. This reflects a cyclical and iterative approach rather than one purely based on linearity. Adopting a holistic approach towards the relationship was key in producing complementary strategies that can deliver sustainable supply chain performance. The research makes theoretical, methodological and practical contributions to the field of supply chain management. The theoretical contribution includes the development of two emerging conceptual frameworks at the micro and macro levels. The former provides greater specificity, as it allows meta-analytic evaluation of the three concepts and their dimensions, providing a detailed insight into their correlations. The latter gives a holistic view of their relationships and how they are connected, reflecting a middle-range theory that bridges theory and practice. The methodological contribution lies in presenting models that address gaps associated with the inconsistent use of terminologies in philosophical assumptions, and lack of rigor in deploying case study research methods. In terms of its practical contribution, this research offers insights that practitioners could adopt to enhance their performance. They can do so without necessarily having to forgo certain desired outcomes using targeted integrative strategies and drawing on their dynamic capabilities

    Endogenous measures for contextualising large-scale social phenomena: a corpus-based method for mediated public discourse

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    This work presents an interdisciplinary methodology for developing endogenous measures of group membership through analysis of pervasive linguistic patterns in public discourse. Focusing on political discourse, this work critiques the conventional approach to the study of political participation, which is premised on decontextualised, exogenous measures to characterise groups. Considering the theoretical and empirical weaknesses of decontextualised approaches to large-scale social phenomena, this work suggests that contextualisation using endogenous measures might provide a complementary perspective to mitigate such weaknesses. This work develops a sociomaterial perspective on political participation in mediated discourse as affiliatory action performed through language. While the affiliatory function of language is often performed consciously (such as statements of identity), this work is concerned with unconscious features (such as patterns in lexis and grammar). This work argues that pervasive patterns in such features that emerge through socialisation are resistant to change and manipulation, and thus might serve as endogenous measures of sociopolitical contexts, and thus of groups. In terms of method, the work takes a corpus-based approach to the analysis of data from the Twitter messaging service whereby patterns in users’ speech are examined statistically in order to trace potential community membership. The method is applied in the US state of Michigan during the second half of 2018—6 November having been the date of midterm (i.e. non-Presidential) elections in the United States. The corpus is assembled from the original posts of 5,889 users, who are nominally geolocalised to 417 municipalities. These users are clustered according to pervasive language features. Comparing the linguistic clusters according to the municipalities they represent finds that there are regular sociodemographic differentials across clusters. This is understood as an indication of social structure, suggesting that endogenous measures derived from pervasive patterns in language may indeed offer a complementary, contextualised perspective on large-scale social phenomena

    Plantation America: the US South and the Caribbean in the literary culture of empire, 1898-1959

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    The American plantation system, far from an idiosyncrasy of the southern United States, was a transnational formation that spread across the US South, the Caribbean, and parts of Latin America, forming a cross-border cultural sphere often called “Plantation America.” How have US and Caribbean writers understood the United States’ relationship to this broader landscape through its most alienated region, the South? And how did the South’s ties to the plantation zone impact how writers imagined the United States as an emerging global empire in the twentieth century? “Plantation America: The US South and the Caribbean in the Literary Culture of Empire, 1898-1959,” explores works by white American, African American, and Black Caribbean writers produced during a period of heightened US colonial intervention in the Americas, from the Spanish-American War of 1898, to the Cuban Revolution of 1959. It contributes to recent US-based scholarship on the plantation origins of Western modernity and draws on an older Black and Caribbean critical discourse on the plantation as a prototypically modern institution. Building on this scholarship, this project demonstrates that US expansion southward prompted writers to reckon with the South’s highly ambivalent relationship with Plantation America, and that doing so served as a fault line for deeply held anxieties over the modern United States’ indebtedness to the plantation complex and its creolized cultural legacies. Its chapters thus show how US empire provoked modern writers to respond to the plantation as a driver of racial capitalism and industrialized labor systems, a blueprint for modern empires, a key site for the emergence and repression of cross-culturality, and a root source for traumatic forms of psychic and spiritual alienation associated with modern subjecthood. Through the lens of Caribbean critical theory, including work by Édouard Glissant, Fernando Ortiz, and C. L. R. James, I examine Richard Wright’s postplantation perspective in his little studied Haitian manuscript, transculturation in Ernest Hemingway’s Key West and Cuban works, the modern plantation empire in stories of the Panama Canal Zone by the Caribbean-born writer Eric Walrond, and William Faulkner’s transnational plantation economy in The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying

    A Transcendent View of Things: The Persistence of Metaphysics in Modern German Lyric Poetry, 1771–1908

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    This dissertation explores the lyric poetry of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Eduard Mörike, and Rainer Maria Rilke, and it contends that these modern poets retain, albeit uneasily, a view of things as symbols of the transcendent divine. It thus disputes the secularization theory of post-Enlightenment aesthetics. This study specifically challenges the view of symbolism as mere metaphor—an image constructed of arbitrary signs (Nietzsche)—by showing how the epiphanies of modern lyric poetry remain grounded in the metaphysics of analogia, even where (as in Mörike) the writer seems to have left such entanglements behind. The modern poet’s desire to unveil a significant reality beyond subjective impression reveals that symbolic vision necessarily unfolds within the difference between the visible world and the transcendent divine. If signification entails likeness, yet lyric poetry always signifies in and through difference, then a constitutive analogy—that is, the simultaneity of likeness and even greater difference—emerges from within the dynamism of the lyric image itself. Part 1 begins by describing the symbolic image in Goethe’s lyric poetry to recover his view of things as expressing the “holy open mystery” of the cosmos. I show how his symbolism overcomes Enlightenment naturalism by depicting the antecedent order of analogia. Drawing primarily on Neoplatonic metaphysics, the Goethean symbol reveals the partial yet indisputable relatedness of things to the transcendent. Turning to Mörike, part 2 charts his transition to an equivocal understanding of symbol that would sever the image from its numinous source of significance by confining the image to the scope of the poet’s own gaze. Yet Mörike’s poetry also evinces a counter-veiling tendency to de-subjectivize the image, thus yielding a vision of things as they are prior to epistemic concerns, sentiment, and subjective preference. Part 3 contends that Rilke’s thing-poetry evinces a similar tendency to neutralize modernity’s biases against metaphysics. For his poetry recovers an apophatic understanding of symbolism as grounded in analogia that draws on Dionysian theology. His poems thus focus our attention on the thing’s unfathomable capacity for initiating a vision of the divine, of which the thing itself is a partial and fleeting manifestation.Doctor of Philosoph

    Two Project on Information Systems Capabilities and Organizational Performance

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    Information systems (IS), as a multi-disciplinary research area, emphasizes the complementary relationship between people, organizations, and technology and has evolved dramatically over the years. IS and the underlying Information Technology (IT) application and research play a crucial role in transforming the business world and research within the management domain. Consistent with this evolution and transformation, I develop a two-project dissertation on Information systems capabilities and organizational outcomes. Project 1 examines the role of hospital operational effectiveness on the link between information systems capabilities and hospital performance. This project examines the cross-lagged effects on a sample of 217 hospitals measured over three years, to ascertain the effect of Hospital IS capability variants on Hospital performance in terms of quality of care and profitability, as mediated by hospital operational effectiveness. Hospital operational effectiveness was studied as process efficiency and service efficiency. The results of our study provide evidence for a considerable causal impact of hospital IS capabilities on hospital performance as mediated by hospital operational effectiveness. Project 2 investigates the impact of CEO’s communication styles on organizational performance using text-mining approach on CEOs tweets from social media. The contribution of our study is three-folded: 1) From a methodological standpoint, we present a model to establish a relationship between CEO communication styles on social media and firm performance. Additionally, we apply text mining to identify communication styles of CEOs. 2) From a performance management, we evaluate organizational performance in three types: Operational, Financial, and Reputational. 3) From a management practice and policy perspective, our study results will help organizations evaluate the CEO candidates from a communication style standpoint

    Valuing people and work in work and organisational psychology: A critical perspective on the paradoxes of meaningful work

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    In questi ultimi anni, le complesse dinamiche delle trasformazioni del lavoro e delle pressioni economiche e finanziarie hanno avuto notevoli riflessi nel campo della psicologia del lavoro e delle organizzazioni in relazione al bisogno dell’individuo di soddisfare il proprio bisogno di senso. Proprio sul bisogno di senso, la psicologia del lavoro e delle organizzazioni si è quindi concentrata sul cosiddetto fenomeno del meaningful work, o dell’esperienza e percezione del la-voro come portatore di un valore significativo che può essere individualmente costruito, socialmente determinato o significativo indipendentemente dalle ri-spettive rappresentazioni. Come tale il fenomeno del meaningful work rappre-senta oggi un fenomeno meramente positivo verso le quali sia il lavoratore che le organizzazioni riflettono la propria attenzione (si pensi al bisogno di senso da parte di un lavoratore nello svolgere un compito lavorativo o al potenziale per-formativo associato ad un gruppo di lavoratori motivato dal senso del proprio la-voro). I riflessi contestuali e la messa in parola di tali dinamiche personali han-no portato gli studiosi devoti allo studio del lavoro e delle organizzazioni ad as-sistere ad una crescita notevole dell’interesse e degli impegni di ricerca sul tema del meaningful work negli ultimi 20 anni. Non sorprende dunque la presenza di numerose prospettive dalla natura disciplinare varie sul tema. Ciò fa si che ri-suoni l’importanza del fenomeno in oggetto ma ha reso e lo rende tuttora un fe-nomeno contestato attorno al quale le domande di ricerca non hanno fatto altro che aumentare anziché ridurre. Secondo la letteratura, alla base di tali domande stanno tre dilemmi teorici, paradossi di ricerca, che comprendono quelli che so-no i vuoti della conoscenza attorno al fenomeno del meaningful work. Il presente lavoro ha l’obiettivo di proporre un tentativo di avanzamento della teoria e dell’evidenza relativa alla natura e ai processi sottostanti del fe-nomeno del meaningful work secondo una prospettiva psicologia critica nel pre-supposto di svolgere un lavoro di ricerca che valorizzi la persona e il lavoro. Quattro macro-capitoli costituiscono le riflessioni e le investigazioni centrali del presente lavoro dove vengono prese in considerazione i paradossi di ricerca evi-denziati nell’introduzione. Infatti, i tre paradossi di ricercar relative al fenomeno del meaningful work verranno enucleati e presentati all’inizio della tesi focaliz-zandosi anche sugli apporti della letteratura scientifica sin qui prodotta e gli im-perativi per la conduzione di un lavoro critico e multidisciplinare. Il Capitolo 1 affronterà il primo paradosso relativo alla natura temporale del fenomeno, ovvero analizzando le condizioni entro cui considerare il fenome-no come prettamente personale e stabile o come occasionale e situazionale. Per fare questo, il Capitolo 1 riporta una vasta rassegna della letteratura narrative con la quale si è tentato di proporre alcune risposte iniziali ed un’agenda di ri-cerca. Capitolo 2 e Capitolo 3 rappresentano la parte squisitamente empirica della tesi e interesseranno i paradossi 1 e 2. Per quanto riguarda il Capitolo 2, qui si darà conto della necessità di comprendere la dimensione contestuale relativa al fenomeno del meaningful work considerandolo quindi come doppiamente de-finito come inerentemente soggettivo ma riflesso contestualmente. Tale parados-so è presente in letteratura per via della mancanza di un corpo empirico che sia in grado di proporre una comprensione distintiva e comprensiva. Si è condotto quindi uno studio trasversale tramite cui si è validata una scala di misura il MEaning in Work Inventory (ME-Work) in grado di evidenziare entrambe le dimensioni e le relative associazioni. Il Capitolo 3 estende sia la componente teorica sviluppata nel Capitolo 1 sia le evidenze del Capitolo 2 considerendo en-trambi i paradossi in un’unica investigazione empirica longitudinale basata sul metodo dei Diary Studies. Qui si darà conto dei fattori psicologici e lavorativi giornalieri in combinazione con la dimensione personale determinanti l’esperienza di significato al lavoro nel quotidiano. Il Capitolo 4 invece tenterà di rispondere il nodo di ricerca relativo ad una concettualizzazione del lavoro che dia motivo di pensare al lavoro come fon-te di senso. Infatti, un problema in letteratura riguarda l’impeto verso questo fe-nomeno positivo che è il meaningful work che tuttavia avviene in mancanza di una concettualizzazione del lavoro all’interno della disciplina. Si è condotta una lettura tematica di un testo narrativo nel tentativo di proporre una metodologia che, sebbene piuttosto trascurata nel campo di ricerca, fosse in grado di dare al-cune risposte iniziali su un tema di ricerca difficile da esplorare. Infine, la tesi darà voce alle maggiori conclusioni e al percorso di ricerca condotto in quella che viene definita essere una narrazione dei risultati in pre-senza di una sintesi di un percorso multidisciplinare e pluralistico. In tal modo, la tesi si conclude tentando di avanzare alcune iniziali indicazioni di ricerca sul fenomeno e sulle possibilità offerte da una prospettiva di ricerca come quella della psicologia critica.In these current times of labour transformation and worldwide changes, one of the most significant discussions in work and organisational psychology centres on the ways in which individuals can satisfy their wish for meaning. In respect to this, the phenomenon of meaningful work, which refers to the individual experi-ence and perception of work as holding significant value individually, socially, and/or independently, gains momentum. As such, meaningful work represents a positive phenomenon that people wish to have and organisations wish to provide. In the last decades, scholars devoted to the study of the individual, work, and or-ganisations have witnessed the growing interest and efforts into its exploration. As a result, multiple perspectives have been raised from within various disci-plines. While this demonstrates the importance of meaningful work, it also ren-ders meaningful work a contested topic that raises more questions than it an-swers. In particular, three main paradoxes on the nature and process of meaning-ful work lie at the heart of the current gaps in the literature on the phenomenon of meaningful work. The aim of this dissertation is the advancement of theory and evidence about the nature and processes of meaningful work via a psychological critical perspective in order for the value of people and work to be recognised. To reach these aims, the present dissertation consists of four main chapters reporting the four studies conducted. Each of these will be presented in the general introduc-tion chapter, where we will explain the imperatives that led to the realisation of the dissertation and the rationale for a psychological critical perspective within the context of valuing people and work. Chapter 1 presents a literature review covering the conceptual uncertainty represented in Paradox 1, that is, on the nature of meaningful work through its temporal view. Here, we conducted a broad literature review in order to answer questions on how to define meaningful work. We tried to understand to what ex-tent meaningful work can be considered as a subjective stable/permanent or an episodic/state experience of meaningfulness. Chapters 2 and 3 represent the empirical part of the dissertation and will cover Paradoxes 1 and 2. The uncertainty around meaningful work in work and organisational psychology regards the tension between (a) meaningful work as a purely subjective evaluation and (b) the impact of contextual features. This un-answered question is mainly due to the lack of empirical knowledge capable of offering indications on the distinctions between the two contraposing elements. Chapter 2 will present the cross-sectional study for the validation of a novel in-ventory aimed at the assessment of meaningful work and its facets, the MEaning in Work Inventory (ME-Work). The study presents the psychometrical properties of the scale and advances knowledge on the contextual features of meaningful work. Chapter 3 will extend this knowledge by investigating what makes a work-day meaningful given the exploration of the variations and fluctuations of mean-ingful work on a daily basis. A Daily Diary Study has been conducted with the aim to comprehend the role of daily work and the psychological conditions for the episodic experience of meaningful work. Moreover, cross-level analysis has been applied to investigate the role of subjective meaningful work. Chapter 4 will cover the intricate knot regarding the proposition of a normative and emancipatory ideal of what is work in the context of work and or-ganisational psychology (i.e. Paradox 3). The study of meaningful work occurs in a context that lacks the comprehension of what it is and what represents work that could be considered as a source of meaning. Given these questions, a literary analysis of a fictional narrative has been conducted. The chapter will shed light on what work means from a subjective stance by presenting the conditions for meaningful work and linked experience. The last part of the dissertation will present the narrative results. Given the interdisciplinary and pluralistic nature of the research, the dissertation will narratively propose an initial understanding of what is meaningful work through a critical work and organisational perspective

    New Research and Trends in Higher Education

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    This book aims to discuss new research and trends on all dimensions of Higher Education, as there is a growing interest in the field of Higher Education, regarding new methodologies, contexts, and technologies. It includes investigations of diverse issues that affect the learning processes in Higher Education: innovations in learning, new pedagogical methods, and new learning contexts.In this sense, original research contributions of research papers, case studies and demonstrations that present original scientific results, methodological aspects, concepts and educational technologies, on the following topics:a) Technological Developments in Higher Education: mobile technology, virtual environments, augmented reality, automation and robotics, and other tools for universal learning, focusing on issues that are not addressed by existing research;b) Digital Higher Education: mobile learning, eLearning, Game-based Learning, social media in education, new learning models and technologies and wearable technologies for education;c) Case Studies in Higher Education: empirical studies in higher education regarding digital technologies, new methodologies, new evaluation techniques and tools, perceptions of learning processes efficiency and digital learning best practice

    Genetic Polymorphisms

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    This book provides a glimpse into the dynamic process of genetic polymorphism by presenting studies carried out on different kinds of organisms at the DNA level or gene expression level. Chapters address such topics as genetic polymorphism in animals, gametocyte biomarkers, thrombotic disorders, prostate cancer, and more
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