Television production: configuring for sustainability in the digital era

Over recent years leading independent television production companies in the UK and internationally have become prime targets for corporate activity and many have been subject to takeover, often by US media groups. Why is it that nurturing the development of television production companies which achieve scale but, at the same time, remain independent appears to be so challenging? This article considers which factors are crucial to the success of television production businesses and argues that, aside from the ability to make compelling content, two key variables which strongly affect commercial success and sustainability in this sector are, first, effective management and exploitation of intellect property rights (IPRs) and, second, scale and configuration of activities. Focusing primarily on the latter, it analyses how changing technological and market conditions are affecting the advantages conferred by size and by adopting differing cross-ownership configurations thus, in turn, fuelling current processes of industrial re-structurin

Religious Diversity, Education, and the \u27Crisis\u27 in State Neutrality

Education – and particularly public education – has become a crucible for the relationship between state and religious diversity, a principal site for contemporary debates about the meaning of secularism and the management of religious difference. This is so across a variety of national traditions, and despite wide differences in the historical and “emotional inheritances” surrounding the configuration of law, politics, and religion. Through an exploration of Hannah Arendt’s thought about responsibility and freedom in education, this article works towards a better understanding of why education is such a crucial and fraught field in the modern encounter between religion and law. The article turns to the recent jurisprudence of the Supreme Court of Canada to draw out the implications of these ideas, arriving ultimately at a claim about the nature and limits of the concept of state neutrality

Religious Diversity, Education, and the \u27Crisis\u27 in State Neutrality

Education – and particularly public education – has become a crucible for the relationship between state and religious diversity, a principal site for contemporary debates about the meaning of secularism and the management of religious difference. This is so across a variety of national traditions, and despite wide differences in the historical and “emotional inheritances” surrounding the configuration of law, politics, and religion. Through an exploration of Hannah Arendt’s thought about responsibility and freedom in education, this article works towards a better understanding of why education is such a crucial and fraught field in the modern encounter between religion and law. The article turns to the recent jurisprudence of the Supreme Court of Canada to draw out the implications of these ideas, arriving ultimately at a claim about the nature and limits of the concept of state neutrality

Religious Diversity, Education, and the Crisis in State Neutrality

Education – and particularly public education – has become a crucible for the relationship between state and religious diversity, a principal site for contemporary debates about the meaning of secularism and the management of religious difference. This is so across a variety of national traditions, and despite wide differences in the historical and “emotional inheritances” surrounding the configuration of law, politics, and religion. Through an exploration of Hannah Arendt’s thought about responsibility and freedom in education, this article works towards a better understanding of why education is such a crucial and fraught field in the modern encounter between religion and law. The article turns to the recent jurisprudence of the Supreme Court of Canada to draw out the implications of these ideas, arriving ultimately at a claim about the nature and limits of the concept of state neutrality

Comparing nuclear power trajectories in Germany and the UK: from ‘regimes' to ‘democracies’ in sociotechnical transitions and Discontinuities

This paper focuses on arguably the single most striking contrast in contemporary major energy politics in Europe (and even the developed world as a whole): the starkly differing civil nuclear policies of Germany and the UK. Germany is seeking entirely to phase out nuclear power by 2022. Yet the UK advocates a ‘nuclear renaissance’, promoting the most ambitious new nuclear construction programme in Western Europe.Here,this paper poses a simple yet quite fundamental question: what are the particular divergent conditions most strongly implicated in the contrasting developments in these two countries. With nuclear playing such an iconic role in historical discussions over technological continuity and transformation, answering this may assist in wider understandings of sociotechnical incumbency and discontinuity in the burgeoning field of‘sustainability transitions’. To this end, an ‘abductive’ approach is taken: deploying nine potentially relevant criteria for understanding the different directions pursued in Germany and the UK. Together constituted by 30 parameters spanning literatures related to socio-technical regimes in general as well as nuclear technology in particular, the criteria are divided into those that are ‘internal’ and ‘external’ to the ‘focal regime configuration’ of nuclear power and associated ‘challenger technologies’ like renewables. It is ‘internal’ criteria that are emphasised in conventional sociotechnical regime theory, with ‘external’ criteria relatively less well explored. Asking under each criterion whether attempted discontinuation of nuclear power would be more likely in Germany or the UK, a clear picture emerges. ‘Internal’ criteria suggest attempted nuclear discontinuation should be more likely in the UK than in Germany– the reverse of what is occurring. ‘External’ criteria are more aligned with observed dynamics –especially those relating to military nuclear commitments and broader ‘qualities of democracy’. Despite many differences of framing concerning exactly what constitutes ‘democracy’, a rich political science literature on this point is unanimous in characterising Germany more positively than the UK. Although based only on a single case,a potentially important question is nonetheless raised as to whether sociotechnical regime theory might usefully give greater attention to the general importance of various aspects of democracy in constituting conditions for significant technological discontinuities and transformations. If so, the policy implications are significant. A number of important areas are identified for future research, including the roles of diverse understandings and specific aspects of democracy and the particular relevance of military nuclear commitments– whose under-discussion in civil nuclear policy literatures raises its own questions of democratic accountability

Software for physics of tau lepton decay in LHC experiments

Software development in high energy physics experiments offers unique experience with rapidly changing environment and variety of different standards and frameworks that software must be adapted to. As such, regular methods of software development are hard to use as they do not take into account how greatly some of these changes influence the whole structure. The following thesis summarizes development of TAUOLA C++ Interface introducing tau decays to new event record standard. Documentation of the program is already published. That is why it is not recalled here again. We focus on the development cycle and methodology used in the project, starting from the definition of the expectations through planning and designing the abstract model and concluding with the implementation. In the last part of the paper we present installation of the software within different experiments surrounding Large Hadron Collider and the problems that emerged during this process.Comment: Thesis submitted to Applied Computer Science Department in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the MSc degree. This work is partially supported by EU Marie Curie Research Training Network grant under the contract No. MRTN-CT-2006-0355505, Polish Government grant N202 06434 (2008-2011) and EU-RTN Programme: Contract No. MRTN-CT-2006-035482 'Flavianet

Exploring continuous organisational transformation as a form of network interdependence

In this paper we examine the problematic area of continuous transformation. We conduct our analysis from three theoretical perspectives: the resource based view, social network theory, and stakeholder theory. We found that the continuous transformation can be explained through the concept of Network Interdependence. This paper describes Network Interdependence and develops theoretical propositions from a synthesis of the three theories. Our contribution of Network Interdependence offers fresh insights into managing complex change and offers new ways of looking at organisational transformation