Improving the relevance of management research By developing tested and grounded technologiCAL RULES

management research, technological rules

Scientific Argumentation as a Foundation for the Design of Inquiry-Based Science Instruction

Despite the attention that inquiry has received in science education research and policy, a coherent means for implementing inquiry in the classroom has been missing [1]. In recent research, scientific argumentation has received increasing attention for its role in science and in science education [2]. In this article, we propose that organizing a unit of instruction around building a scientific argument can bring inquiry practices together in the classroom in a coherent way. We outline a framework for argumentation, focusing on arguments that are central to science—arguments for the best explanation. We then use this framework as the basis for a set of design principles for developing a sequence of inquiry-based learning activities that support students in the construction of a scientific argument. We show that careful analysis of the argument that students are expected to build provides designers with a foundation for selecting resources and designing supports for scientific inquiry. Furthermore, we show that creating multiple opportunities for students to critique and refine their explanations through evidence-based argumentation fosters opportunities for critical thinking, while building science knowledge and knowledge of the nature of science

Law and Economic Change in Traditional China: A Comparative Perspective

This article offers a critical review of recent literature on Chinese legal tradition and argues that some subtle but fundamental differences between the Western and Chinese legal traditions are highly relevant to our explanation of the economic divergence in the modern era. By elucidating the fundamental feature of traditional Chinese legal system within the framework of a disciplinary mode of administrative justice, this article highlights the contrasting growth patterns of legal professions and legal knowledge in China and Western Europe that would ultimately affect property rights, contract enforcement and ultimately long-term growth trajectories. The paper concludes with some preliminary analysis on the inter-linkages between the historical evolution of political institution and legal regimes.

Understanding analogical reasoning : viewpoints from psychology and related disciplines

Analogy and metaphor have a long history of study in linguistics, education, philosophy and psychology. Consensus over what analogy is or how analogy functions in language and thought, however, has been elusive. This paper, the first in a two part series, examines these various research traditions, attempting to bring out major lines of agreement over the role of analogy in individual human experience. As well as being a general literature review which may be helpful for newcomers to the study of analogy, this paper attempts to extract from these literatures existing theories, models and concepts which may be interesting or useful for computational studies of analogical reasoning

MONETARY POLICY AND NOT MONETARY CONTROL: A RETHINKING

The view that prediction is the only important concern when policy is to be developed has led to the strict adherence to a money supply rule via the Quantity Theory of Money with its debilitating consequences. The monetarists place the emphasis on the level of the money supply in the determination of price level changes and monetary control is exercised. Along with this line of thinking, statistical elegance transcends empirical reality. Thus, the ensuing consequences of monetary control are not surprising. There are continuous increases in the general level of prices and increasing problems of unemployment, which fuel the flames of business downsizing. In this paper, an alternative to the monetarist explanation of the determination of the price level is advanced. The alternative explanation does not rely on changes in the supply of money but on changes in the composition of aggregate demand and supply. Absent monetary dislocation or revaluation of the currency, change in the general price level is attributed to the net effect of the realignment of relative prices. It is argued that a rethinking of the situation would result in monetary policy that is compatible with the economic setting and not monetary control which crowds out fiscal policy.endogenous nature of money; general price level; money supply; Quantity Theory; price instability; consumer loans outstanding; Fisher effect; money supply rule.

Understanding the origins and pace of Africa’s urban transition

In this paper the author argues that urbanisation should be understood as a global historical process driven primarily by population dynamics stimulated by technological and institutional change. In particular, disease control and expanded access to surplus energy supplies are necessary and sufficient conditions for urbanisation to occur given historical evidence of an inherent human propensity to agglomerate. Economic development, which has traditionally been viewed as the primary driving force behind urbanisation, can accelerate the process but is not a necessary condition for it to occur. Informed by this historically-grounded theory of urbanisation, a range of qualitative and quantitative evidence is used to explain the stylised facts of sub-Saharan Africa's urban transition, namely the late onset of urbanisation in Africa vis-a-vis other major world regions, the widely noted but inadequately explained phenomenon of 'urbanisation without growth' observed in Africa in the 1980s and 1990s, and the historically unprecedented rates of urban population growth seen in the region throughout the late twentieth century

Chickens First\ud \ud Speciation by “Hopeful Monsters” in Fraternal Supertwins\ud

The idea of “hopeful monster” was proposed by Goldschmidt who envisioned that speciation could occur instantaneously via major chromosomal rearrangement in a one-step process; but he could not unravel how similar individual in the opposite sex to appear on the same time and location to generate next generation. This paper provides the answer for the challenge. \ud In this paper, a model of speciation in animals is discussed in detail. Only four steps are needed to generate a new species in sexual animals: fraternal twin zygotes, similar gross mutation on the zygotes, self-splitting of mutated zygotes into two groups of identical zygotes of both sexes, development of zygotes with birth of babies, and inbreeding when they mature. The outcome of these steps is generation of new species with chromosomal homozygosity. Viviparous animals (living young not eggs are produced) are used to explain the model. With slight modifications, other asexual organisms could be accommodated. \ud As the model provides the simplest explanation for speciation in all sexual animals, which plausibly explains many puzzles in biology; such as chicken egg, Cambrian explosion, appearance of new organs, etc. The author presents a few predictions that can be falsified. \ud This model needs only one assumption and it is consistent with many well-known observations. \u

Fat-tailed fluctuations in the size of organizations: the role of social influence

Organizational growth processes have consistently been shown to exhibit a fatter-than-Gaussian growth-rate distribution in a variety of settings. Long periods of relatively small changes are interrupted by sudden changes in all size scales. This kind of extreme events can have important consequences for the development of biological and socio-economic systems. Existing models do not derive this aggregated pattern from agent actions at the micro level. We develop an agent-based simulation model on a social network. We take our departure in a model by a Schwarzkopf et al. on a scale-free network. We reproduce the fat-tailed pattern out of internal dynamics alone, and also find that it is robust with respect to network topology. Thus, the social network and the local interactions are a prerequisite for generating the pattern, but not the network topology itself. We further extend the model with a parameter $\delta$ that weights the relative fraction of an individual's neighbours belonging to a given organization, representing a contextual aspect of social influence. In the lower limit of this parameter, the fraction is irrelevant and choice of organization is random. In the upper limit of the parameter, the largest fraction quickly dominates, leading to a winner-takes-all situation. We recover the real pattern as an intermediate case between these two extremes.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figure