Who Could Best Complement a Team of Family Business Researchers—Scholars Down the Hall or in Another Building?

This study explores which fields might potentially collaborate in family business research. It compares 14 research fields for their structure of topical attention. The most convenient collaborations, such as those between entrepreneurship, family business, and strategy researchers, prove to be the most appropriate for some research purposes. However, less common collaborations, particularly with scholars from law, history, and anthropology, appear to be the most appropriate for other projects. Family and marital therapy prove to be a less promising collaborator than one might expect because of their strong skewing to familial rather than commercial topics. Correspondingly, entrepreneurship also proves to be an outlier field, skewed to the commercial rather than the familial, with surprisingly little in common with the topical interests of family business researchers

Configurational Analysis and Organization Design: Towards a Theory of Structural Heterogeneity

This chapter reconstructs the roots, evolution and some prospects of configurational analysis (CA) in organization theory (OT) and organizational economics (OE), focusing on those components of CA that are particularly relevant to organizational design. This excursus leads to: a) revealing the presence of elements of CA in many OT and OE approaches - a continuity that is seldom acknowledged and arguably extends (rather than diminishes) the implications and applications of CA; b) identifying ‘structural heterogeneity’ (SH) -both ‘internal’ among organizational attributes within a configuration, and ‘external’ among configurations under the same conditions (or ‘equifinality’)- as an organizational property that can be distinctively studied by CA. This claim, as well as the substantive insights that can be gained by a configurational analysis of structural heterogeneity, is substantiated by an empirical analysis on a multi-sector sample of firm

IntelliGO: a new vector-based semantic similarity measure including annotation origin

International audienceThe Gene Ontology (GO) is a well known controlled vocabulary describing the biological process, molecular function and cellular component aspects of gene annotation. It has become a widely used knowledge source in bioinformatics for annotating genes and measuring their semantic similarity. These measures generally involve the GO graph structure, the information content of GO aspects, or a combination of both. However, only a few of the semantic similarity measures described so far can handle GO annotations differently according to their origin (i.e. their evidence codes). RESULTS: We present here a new semantic similarity measure called IntelliGO which integrates several complementary properties in a novel vector space model. The coefficients associated with each GO term that annotates a given gene or protein include its information content as well as a customized value for each type of GO evidence code. The generalized cosine similarity measure, used for calculating the dot product between two vectors, has been rigorously adapted to the context of the GO graph. The IntelliGO similarity measure is tested on two benchmark datasets consisting of KEGG pathways and Pfam domains grouped as clans, considering the GO biological process and molecular function terms, respectively, for a total of 683 yeast and human genes and involving more than 67,900 pair-wise comparisons. The ability of the IntelliGO similarity measure to express the biological cohesion of sets of genes compares favourably to four existing similarity measures. For inter-set comparison, it consistently discriminates between distinct sets of genes. Furthermore, the IntelliGO similarity measure allows the influence of weights assigned to evidence codes to be checked. Finally, the results obtained with a complementary reference technique give intermediate but correct correlation values with the sequence similarity, Pfam, and Enzyme classifications when compared to previously published measures. CONCLUSIONS: The IntelliGO similarity measure provides a customizable and comprehensive method for quantifying gene similarity based on GO annotations. It also displays a robust set-discriminating power which suggests it will be useful for functional clustering. AVAILABILITY: An on-line version of the IntelliGO similarity measure is available at: http://bioinfo.loria.fr/Members/benabdsi/intelligo_project

Proceedings of the ECCS 2005 satellite workshop: embracing complexity in design - Paris 17 November 2005

Embracing complexity in design is one of the critical issues and challenges of the 21st century. As the realization grows that design activities and artefacts display properties associated with complex adaptive systems, so grows the need to use complexity concepts and methods to understand these properties and inform the design of better artifacts. It is a great challenge because complexity science represents an epistemological and methodological swift that promises a holistic approach in the understanding and operational support of design. But design is also a major contributor in complexity research. Design science is concerned with problems that are fundamental in the sciences in general and complexity sciences in particular. For instance, design has been perceived and studied as a ubiquitous activity inherent in every human activity, as the art of generating hypotheses, as a type of experiment, or as a creative co-evolutionary process. Design science and its established approaches and practices can be a great source for advancement and innovation in complexity science. These proceedings are the result of a workshop organized as part of the activities of a UK government AHRB/EPSRC funded research cluster called Embracing Complexity in Design (www.complexityanddesign.net) and the European Conference in Complex Systems (complexsystems.lri.fr). Embracing complexity in design is one of the critical issues and challenges of the 21st century. As the realization grows that design activities and artefacts display properties associated with complex adaptive systems, so grows the need to use complexity concepts and methods to understand these properties and inform the design of better artifacts. It is a great challenge because complexity science represents an epistemological and methodological swift that promises a holistic approach in the understanding and operational support of design. But design is also a major contributor in complexity research. Design science is concerned with problems that are fundamental in the sciences in general and complexity sciences in particular. For instance, design has been perceived and studied as a ubiquitous activity inherent in every human activity, as the art of generating hypotheses, as a type of experiment, or as a creative co-evolutionary process. Design science and its established approaches and practices can be a great source for advancement and innovation in complexity science. These proceedings are the result of a workshop organized as part of the activities of a UK government AHRB/EPSRC funded research cluster called Embracing Complexity in Design (www.complexityanddesign.net) and the European Conference in Complex Systems (complexsystems.lri.fr)

New Zealand public management - tensions of a model from the 1980s

This year, the systems established in the late 1980s to reform the New Zealand public sector turn 21, and, as in the 1980s, economic pressures and the election of political leaders of a different generation from those they defeated are prompting a rethink about how best to organise and deliver public services. This paper explores the extent to which policies from the 1980s might affect the development of a 21st century public sector

Community-based risk management arrangements : an overview and implications for social fund programs

Risk and its consequences pose a formidable threat to poverty reduction efforts. This study reviews a plethora of community-based risk management arrangements across the developing world. These types of arrangements are garnering greater interest in light of the growing recognition of the relative prominence of household or individual-specific idiosyncratic risk as well as the increasing shift towards community-based development funding. The study discusses potential advantages (such as targeting, cost, and informational) and disadvantages (such as exclusion and inability to manage correlated risk) of these arrangements, and their implications for the design of innovative social fund programs.Rural Poverty Reduction,Labor Policies,Insurance&Risk Mitigation,Currencies and Exchange Rates,Debt Markets

Trusted community : a novel multiagent organisation for open distributed systems

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The Fragility-Grievances-Conflict Triangle in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)

Several problems related to violence, grievances, and states’ lack of legitimacy and capacity to manage economic, social, and political issues are clustered together as an interactive structure in the Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA) region. The effect of one of these problems is difficult to identify in the absence of analyses of the others. Global generalisations on the effects of these problems can bring us closer to the understanding of state fragility and the associated problems in the MENA region, although the study of MENA specifically also reveals region- and sub-region-specific features. Some of them pertain to the MENA region only, whereas others help develop the understanding and sophistication of global generalisations. This book offers a much-needed overview and several explanations on the otherwise confusing triangular problems of state fragility, grievance, and conflict, focusing on one of the conflict hotspots of the world. It compiles expertise on the triangular relationship between fragility, grievances, and conflict of an international MENA Social Policy Network. In addition to the analyses, two datasets are referenced, on which some of the book’s chapters are based

De facto riigid rahvusvahelises süsteemis. (Mitte-)formaalse kaasamise tingimused

Doktoritöö „De facto states in the international system: Conditions for (in-)formal engagement” uurib rahvusvaheliste suhete ääremaid – de facto riike. Tegemist on üksustega, mis vastavad riigi tunnustele, kuid milledel puudub teiste riikide heakskiit: rahvusvaheline tunnustus. Hoolimata sellest on mõned de facto riigid maailmas ellu jäänud ning suhtlevad teiste, tunnustatud riikidega. Käesoleva töö peamine eesmärk ongi leida tingimusi, mis sellist mitte-formaalset suhtlust põhjustavad. Kuid me ei piirdu ainult tingimuste leidmisega vaid otsime ka kombinatsioone, kuidas need tingimused omavahel sobitudes de facto riike rahvusvahelisse süsteemi kaasata aitavad. Selleks kasutame töös meetodit, mis on jõudsalt järgijaid kogumas, kuid rahvusvaheliste suhete distsipliinis endiselt vähekasutatud – Qualitative Comparative Analysis. Analüüsitavad tingimusi on kokku neli: setsessioon; võimas patroon; inimõigused ning majanduslikud tingimused. Viimased koosnevad omakorda kolmest komponendist: eksport; välisinvesteeringud ning kaubanduspartnerite hulk, mida analüüsitakse eraldi disjunktsiooni ja konjunktsioonina. Tingimusi, milledeni eelmainitud viia võivad on samuti mitu: välisriikide esindused de facto riigis; formaalne tunnustamine ja osalemine rahvusvaheliste organisatsioonide töös. Töö tulemusel selgus, et de facto riikidel on mitteformaalse kaasamise saavutamiseks erinevad teed, samuti võivad erinevad teed viia sama tulemuseni. Piisavate tingimuste kombinatsioonide hulgas on esindatud kõik analüüsitud tingimused, mistõttu saab väita, et nad kõik omavad kombinatsioonis mõne teise tingimusega mõju de facto riikide positsioonile rahvusvahelises süsteemis. Individuaalset mõju omavad tingimused mitte piisavate vaid vajalikena. Eraldi tasub välja tuua majanduslike tingimuste mõju. Käsitletuna konjunktsioonis oli majanduse mõju kaasamisele väike, kuid käsitletuna disjunktsioonina oli mõju märgatav. Üldiselt annab töö de facto riike käsitleva võrdleva raamistiku, mille põhjal saaks teha edasisi sügavamaleminevaid analüüse.Doctoral dissertation ‘De facto states in the international system: Conditions for (in-)formal engagement’ deals with periphery of international relations – the de facto states. These are entities that fulfil the criteria for statehood but lack the acceptance of other states – international recognition. Despite this several de facto states have survived in the world and are engaging with recognised states. The main purpose of this thesis is to find conditions that cause the informal engagement. But the research is not limited to finding conditions. We also search for combinations of conditions that help de facto states to be involved in the international system. To achieve this goal we use a method that is increasingly gaining popularity but remains little used in the analysis of international relations – Qualitative Comparative Analysis. There are four conditions to be analysed: secession; powerful patron; human rights; and economic conditions. The latter consist in turn from three components: exports from de facto state; foreign direct investment; and number of trading partners. Economic conditions are analysed twice, as a conjunction and as a disjunction. There are also three outcome conditions: foreign representations; formal recognition; and involvement in international organisations. The work shows that de facto states have different paths to achieve informal engagement and that the same outcome can be reached by different paths. Also, all tested conditions featured in at least one combination to some outcome. Hence we can say that all the conditions have some imapct, in combination with others, on the position of de facto states in the international system. Individual impact of conditions is visible through necessety rater than sufficiency. Special attention can be given to economic conditions that have little impact as a conjunction but visible as a disjunction. Overall contribution of the ork is to give a comparative framework which can be used as a platform for further more in depth analysis

Controlling the Autonomous

During the late 20th century, large parts of the contributions to management theory consisted of concepts on management control systems. The purposes of these were often focused on manual labor and they directed the effort to control employees in order to get competitive advantage, typically through increased productivity (Simons, 1990). Today, however, the focus has shifted from control in labor-intensive firms to control in the knowledge-intensive firm (Drucker 2007). The purpose of this thesis is therefore to get a richer understanding of management control systems in a knowledge-intensive firm, as well as contributing with illustrative empirical data on the subject. Through a qualitative case study of a highly technological firm we seek to understand how control mechanisms affect the knowledge-worker and his or hers productivity. During our study we found two positive areas of effect the control mechanisms can have on the knowledge-worker. They can (1) structure the work of the knowledge-worker, as well as (2) be used to increase the productivity. The study is based on the management control system package by Malmi and Brown (2008), together with various theories on knowledge and knowledge-intensive firms. We argue for customization of control mechanisms in order to get desired effect, which should be done in adherence to Drucker’s (1999) six factors of productivity