Re-articulating Autonomy and Solidarity. The Case of Smart: The Largest European Network of Freelance Cooperatives

This article explores how workers' autonomy is supported by Smart, the largest network of freelance cooperatives in Europe. Based primarily on ethnographic data, we argue that this case shows that workers' autonomy is not necessarily linked to being self-employed but can actually increase in the transition from the status of self-employed to that of salaried employee. In particular, we define Smart as an alternative organisation and show how over the years it has shaped spaces of autonomy for freelancers by also being able to combine autonomy with innovative forms of solidarity. In doing so, we argue that supporting autonomy has an 'alternative' potential only if we adopt a relational conception of autonomy. In the case study analysed, we show that Smart members manage to benefit from enhanced autonomy and forms of solidarity through the construction of a series of relationships, in particular with: (i) welfare institutions through the co-operative; (ii) the co-operative's staff; and (iii) other freelance members of the cooperative. This leads us – in studying a case of alternative organisation – to call for Critical Performativity projects conducted through activist ethnography, a methodological framework based on a constructive approach towards the research objects, and on interpersonal research practices, where the internal knowledge of a specific organisation is combined with the knowledge of organisational scholars in a fully collaborative research effort

Transparent resource sharing framework for internet services on handheld devices

Handheld devices have limited processing power and a short battery lifetime. As a result, computationally intensive applications cannot run appropriately or cause the device to run out of battery too early. Additionally, Internet-based service providers targeting these mobile devices lack information to estimate the remaining battery autonomy and have no view on the availability of idle resources in the neighborhood of the handheld device. These battery-related issues create an opportunity for Internet providers to broaden their role and start managing energy aspects of battery-driven mobile devices inside the home. In this paper, we propose an energy-aware resource-sharing framework that enables Internet access providers to delegate (a part of) a client application from a handheld device to idle resources in the LAN, in a transparent way for the end-user. The key component is the resource sharing service, hosted on the LAN gateway, which can be remotely queried and managed by the Internet access provider. The service includes a battery model to predict the remaining battery lifetime. We describe the concept of resource-sharing-as-a-service that allows users of handheld devices to subscribe to the resource sharing service. In a proof-of-concept, we evaluate the delay to offload a client application to an idle computer and study the impact on battery autonomy as a function of the CPU cycles that can be offloaded

'Learning Styles' and 'Approaches to Studying' in Sports-Related Programmes: Relationships to Academic Achievement and Implications for Successful Learning, Teaching and Assessment: Project Report Summary

There are relatively few recent investigations that have addressed the issues of preferred learning styles and approaches to studying in sports-related disciplines such as: Sports Studies; Sports and Exercise Science; Coaching Science; Sport and Leisure Management and Outdoor Recreation Management. The purpose of this study was therefore to examine student learning across a range of sport-related programmes at a UK University College. It applied tools from two related, but different, educational research paradigms: approaches to learning and learning styles analysis. Thus, these differing means of researching student learning were tested against the same student group. Results were compared to students’ perceptions of their own developing autonomy of learning and achieved grades; insights were generated into the particular learning approaches and styles of sports students; and tentative recommendations are made on the implications of the findings for higher education teachers seeking to promote improvements in the learning of sports subjects

Ten Cities, Four Countries, Five Years: Lessons on the Process of Building Urban Climate Change Resilience

The Rockefeller Foundation initiated a nine-year Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network (ACCCRN) in ten initial cities and four countries1 in 2008. ACCCRN seeks to strengthen the capabilities of cities to plan, finance and implement urban climate change resilience (UCCR) strategies for coping with the inevitable impacts of climate change taking place now, and in the decades to come.The approach also involves capturing details from the various experiences that will be useful to other cities as they realize the critical importance of building resilience to climate change. Although the initiative is ongoing and has expanded to include two more countries and more than 20 additional cities, this brief highlights the key insights we took from analysis of progress in the first ten cities over the first five years and the changes observable thus far

It's money that matters: the financial context of ethical decision-making in modern biomedicine

While the importance of patient autonomy is widely acknowledged and discussed in the bioethics literature, clinicians' autonomy, their ability to make the best choices about patients' care free from outside interference, is far less debated. This paper takes one form of external influence over clinical decisions - the cost of drugs - and applies it to a specific case, that of HER2 positive breast cancer and the use of the drug Herceptin in the UK. Drawing on interviews with clinicians, researchers and policymakers, I explore the way financial decisions about Herceptin shape clinicians' autonomy, and how clinicians as individuals and as professional groups respond to these limits and seek to provide treatment to the highest number of the most deserving patients they can. The point of this paper is not to castigate bioethicists for misguidedly focusing on patient autonomy but point out that clinicians' autonomy may be so circumscribed by external factors that it may make no sense to speak of their actions as stemming from ethical decisions. At the same time, I suggest that financial constraints create areas at the margin of clinical practice which are deserving of bioethical consideration

Atitudes dos gestores face à criatividade e às práticas de inovação nas indústrias criativas

This article aims to demonstrate that the relationship between entrepreneurs' attitudes to creativity and business innovation practices is stronger in the case of creative industries. A sample of 454 managers of micro and medium-sized companies (94 belonging to creative industries) was surveyed using an inventory of innovative business practices and the scale of attitudes towards creativity. The results, derived from a linear regression model (two factors for the scale of attitudes - Leadership and Autonomy - and for the inventory of business practices - Performance and Strategy), confirmed the proposition by revealing the influence of the creative attitudes of managers regarding the company's innovative practices, fundamentally on Strategy, especially in the creative industries segment. The innovative manager appeared as a disciplined individual driven to collaborating with the employees. Although this research requires further evidence, the results suggest interesting characterisations of the managers who develop their activity in the cluster of creative industries.Este artigo tem como objetivo demonstrar que a relação entre as atitudes do empresário face à criatividade e as práticas de inovação é mais forte no caso das indústrias criativas. Foram inquiridos 454 gestores de micro, pequenas e médias empresas (94 pertencentes às indústrias criativas), utilizando um inventário de práticas empresariais e uma escala de atitudes face à criatividade. Os resultados, obtidos utilizando um modelo de regressão linear (dois fatores para a escala de atitudes –Liderança e Autonomia - e dois para o inventário de práticas empresariais – Desempenho e Estratégia) confirmaram a hipótese, ao revelar a influência das atitudes do empresário face à criatividade sobre as práticas inovadoras da empresa, nomeadamente na Estratégia e no segmento das indústrias criativas. O gestor inovador surge como um indivíduo disciplinado, orientado para colaborar com os empregados. Apesar desta investigação necessitar de maior aprofundamento, os resultados sugerem uma caracterização interessante dos gestores que desenvolvem a sua atividade no cluster das indústrias criativasinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Local sourcing of multinational enterprises in China

Purpose – Local sourcing from indigenous firms by multinational enterprises (MNEs) is an important channel through which the former may benefit from the positive externalities generated by the latter. The purpose of this study is to analyze the extent and determinants of local sourcing of MNEs. Design/methodology/approach – Employing a survey dataset covering 493 multinational subsidiaries in China during 1999-2005, this paper applies the two-limit Tobit model. Findings – It is found that an MNE's local sourcing decision is influenced by its strategies, characteristics such as size and learning ability and country-of-origin. More specifically, export-orientation strategy, joint venture strategy and networking with local suppliers positively affect local sourcing. Small and autonomous subsidiaries tend to source more locally. Age has a non-linear effect. The importance of these determinants varies with regions. Research limitations/implications – Aiming at capacity building and competitiveness of indigenous firms, the Chinese government has initiated local content requirement. This study shows that such policy intervention could be counterproductive. The creation of a more competitive business environment by the government could promote more linkages. Originality/value – Given its critical role in economic development, local sourcing by MNEs has attracted much attention. Only limited research has been carried out on FDI linkage effects in China, and the location effect on FDI linkages has not been examined. This study aims to fill the gap by using Chinese survey data

Self-organizing peer-to-peer social networks

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2008 The Authors.Peer-to-peer (P2P) systems provide a new solution to distributed information and resource sharing because of its outstanding properties in decentralization, dynamics, flexibility, autonomy, and cooperation, summarized as DDFAC in this paper. After a detailed analysis of the current P2P literature, this paper suggests to better exploit peer social relationships and peer autonomy to achieve efficient P2P structure design. Accordingly, this paper proposes Self-organizing peer-to-peer social networks (SoPPSoNs) to self-organize distributed peers in a decentralized way, in which neuron-like agents following extended Hebbian rules found in the brain activity represent peers to discover useful peer connections. The self-organized networks capture social associations of peers in resource sharing, and hence are called P2P social networks. SoPPSoNs have improved search speed and success rate as peer social networks are correctly formed. This has been verified through tests on real data collected from the Gnutella system. Analysis on the Gnutella data has verified that social associations of peers in reality are directed, asymmetric and weighted, validating the design of SoPPSoN. The tests presented in this paper have also evaluated the scalability of SoPPSoN, its performance under varied initial network connectivity and the effects of different learning rules.National Natural Science of Foundation of Chin