Message Management Systems: Concepts, Motivations, and Strategic Effects

This paper motivates the need for system-level message management software. It begins by considering information flows in the workplace as a source of potential gains in efficiency. We next investigate work-flow automation and electronic data interchange (EDI) as indicative of current technologies applied to work processes and message management. Having described current technology and our vision of work processes, we propose an alternative, general-purpose, software technology for supporting application-to-application communication. Problems of EDI, of process-to-process communication, and of describing information items are discussed in terms of the communication problems they present. We then justify the need for this kind of software and layout the criteria (or plausibility conditions) for evaluating a proposal for this sort of system software. The use of a formal communication language is proposed as a common solution to these problems. This proposal is examined in the context of the EDI problem, in order to demonstrate how the proposal might work in practice. Practical benefits of the proposal are discussed that highlight the impact such a technology might have on business practices. The proposed solution is measured against the plausibility conditions presented earlier in the paper; it is found to be sufficient in some cases and in need of further investigation in others. We then discuss the industrial-organizational implications of the availability of such a technology, and hypothesize that it would affect the number and form of cooperative business relationships as well as their scope and depth. We also hypothesize that it would provide advantages to those firms that quickly adopt the technology

Transforming Imaginations? Multiple dimensionalities and temporalities in transformations to sustainability

This paper examines some key issues around the core roles played by ‘sociotechncial imaginaries’ in the shaping of ‘sustainability transformations’. As part of a wider project on ‘the governance of sociotechnical transformations’ (GOST), this research examines prospective transformations and associated imaginaries of cities in Kenya and energy infrastructures in the UK (and, less so, Germany). Although currently only interim, these developing ideas and findings may hold significant implications for onward research and policy actions

Rethinking conflict studies: towards a critical realist approach

The study of intra-state conflict has increased exponentially during the post-Cold War period. This has given rise to a variety of competing approaches, which have (i) adopted differing methodological and social theoretical orientations, and (ii) produced contradictory accounts of the causes and nature of violent conflict. This project intervenes in the debates which have resulted from this situation, and develops a critical realist approach to conflict studies. In doing so it rethinks the discipline from the philosophical ground up, by extending the ontological and epistemological insights which are provided by critical realism into more concrete reflections about methodological and social theoretical issues. In addition to engaging in reflection about philosophical, methodological, and social theoretical issues, however, the project also incorporates the insights of two largely neglected literatures into conflict studies. These are, first, the insights of the gender-studies literature, and second, the insights of decolonial/postcolonial forms of thought. It claims that the discipline is strengthened by incorporating the insights of these literatures, and that the critical realist framework provides us with the philosophical basis which is required in order to do so

Organising knowledge in the age of the semantic web: a study of the commensurability of ontologies

 This study is directed towards the problem of conceptual translation across different data management systems and formats, with a particular focus on those used in the emerging world of the Semantic Web. Increasingly, organisations have sought to connect information sources and services within and beyond their enterprise boundaries, building upon existing Internet facilities to offer improved research, planning, reporting and management capabilities. The Semantic Web is an ambitious response to this growing demand, offering a standards-based platform for sharing, linking and reasoning with information. The imagined result, a globalised knowledge network formed out of mutually referring data structures termed "ontologies", would make possible new kinds of queries, inferences and amalgamations of information. Such a network, though, is premised upon large numbers of manually drawn links between these ontologies. In practice, establishing these links is a complex translation task requiring considerable time and expertise; invariably, as ontologies and other structured information sources are published, many useful connections are neglected. To combat this, in recent years substantial research has been invested into "ontology matching" - the exploration of algorithmic approaches for automatically translating or aligning ontologies. These approaches, which exploit the explicit semantic properties of individual concepts, have registered impressive precision and recall results against humanly-engineered translations. However they are unable to make use of background cultural information about the overall systems in which those concepts are housed - how those systems are used, for what purpose they were designed, what methodological or theoretical principles underlined their construction, and so on. The present study investigates whether paying attention to these sociological dimensions of electronic knowledge systems could supplement algorithmic approaches in some circumstances. Specifically, it asks whether a holistic notion of commensurability can be useful when aligning or translating between such systems.      The first half of the study introduces the problem, surveys the literature, and outlines the general approach. It then proposes both a theoretical foundation and a practical framework for assessing commensurability of ontologies and other knowledge systems. Chapter 1 outlines the Semantic Web, ontologies and the problem of conceptual translation, and poses the key research questions. Conceptual translation can be treated as, by turns, a social, philosophical, linguistic or technological problem; Chapter 2 surveys a correspondingly wide range of literature and approaches.      The methods employed by the study are described in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 critically examines theories of conceptual schemes and commensurability, while Chapter 5 describes the framework itself, comprising a series of specific dimensions, a broad methodological approach, and a means for generating both qualitative and quantitative assessments. The second half of the study then explores the notion of commensurability through several empirical frames. Chapters 6 to 8 applies the framework to a series of case studies. Chapter 6 presents a brief history of knowledge systems, and compares two of these systems - relational databases and Semantic Web ontologies. Chapter 7, in turn, compares several "upper-level" ontologies - reusable schematisations of abstract concepts like Time and Space . Chapter 8 reviews a recent, widely publicised controversy over the standardisation of document formats. This analysis in particular shows how the opaque dry world of technical specifications can reveal the complex network of social dynamics, interests and beliefs which coordinate and motivate them. Collectively, these studies demonstrate the framework is useful in making evident assumptions which motivate the design of different knowledge systems, and further, in assessing the commensurability of those systems. Chapter 9 then presents a further empirical study; here, the framework is implemented as a software system, and pilot tested among a small cohort of researchers. Finally, Chapter 10 summarises the argumentative trajectory of the study as a whole - that, broadly, an elaborated notion of commensurability can tease out important and salient features of translation inscrutable to purely algorithmic methods - and suggests some possibilities for further work

Drawing division : emerging and developing multiplicative structure in low-attaining students representational strategies

This thesis examines the particular difficulties with multiplicative thinking experienced by students with very low attainment in school mathematics, and the representational strategies they use for multiplication and division-based tasks.\ud Selected students in two mainstream secondary schools, all performing significantly below age-related expectations in mathematics, placed in ‘bottom sets’, and described by their teachers as having particularly weak numeracy, received a series of tuition sessions (individual or paired). These involved ongoing qualitative diagnosis of their arithmetical strengths and weaknesses, and personalised, flexible learning support, delivered by the author. Students engaged mainly in division-based scenario tasks designed to encourage their engagement in multiplicative thinking, and explored various visuospatial representational strategies tailored to their specific areas of conceptual and procedural difficulty.\ud Multimodal audiovisual data collected from tuition sessions was analysed qualitatively across multiple analytic dimensions using a microgenetic approach. This led to the development of an adaptable framework for the analysis of nonstandard visuospatial representations of arithmetical structures and relationships. Analysis of changes in individual students’ strategies provided insight into some possible learning trajectories for multiplicative thinking. Parallel comparison of students’ varied representational strategies resulted in evidence for the psychological power of certain fundamental representation types, such as unit arrays and containers.\ud The main findings of this thesis concern: the fundamentally componential nature of the concept and practice of division, the potential difficulties this causes in understanding, and the importance of modelling and manipulating unitary multiplicative structures; and the relationship between representational strategies, economy and efficiency in carrying out multiplication and division-based tasks.\ud Conclusions are drawn on the relationship between the development of representational strategies and multiplicative thinking. Recommendations are given regarding learning and teaching practice for students with severe and milder difficulties in mathematics, and particularly the nature of 1:1 support provision for those considered to have Special Educational Needs

Health of People, Places and Planet. Reflections based on Tony McMichael’s four decades of contribution to epidemiological understanding

This book has three main goals. The first is to celebrate the work of a great public health figure, the late A.J. (Tony) McMichael (1942–2014). The second is to position contemporary public health issues in an interdisciplinary context and in ways that highlight the interdependency between the environment, human institutions and behaviours; a broad approach championed by Tony. The third is to encourage emerging and future public health leaders to advocate for policies and cultural change to sustain and improve human health, from a foundation of objective scholarship. The book’s foreword and 38 chapters were written by people who were inspired by Tony; many of whom worked with him at some point in the last 40 years. Its structure reflects five major public health domains, each of which Tony made major contributions to in an extremely productive academic life: occupational health and safety; environmental and social epidemiology; nutrition and food systems; climate change and health; and ecosystem change and infectious disease. The final section, ‘Transformation’, is dedicated to Tony’s desire for public health scientists to propose adaptive and mitigating solutions to the problems they were observing. Each section contains at least one key publication involving Tony. There is also a selection of artworks from an exhibition which formed part of the conference held to honour Tony at The Australian National University in 2012. This conference formed the first part of Tony’s festschrift, completed by this book