Personal Autonomic Computing Reflex Reactions and Self-Healing

The overall goal of this research is to improve theself-awareness and environment-awareness aspect of personal au-tonomic computing (PAC) to facilitate self-managing capabilitiessuch as self-healing. Personal computing offers unique challengesfor self-management due to its multiequipment, multisituation, andmultiuser nature. The aim is to develop a support architecture formultiplatform working, based on autonomic computing conceptsand techniques. Of particular interest is collaboration among per-sonal systems to take a shared responsibility for self-awareness andenvironment awareness. Concepts mirroring human mechanisms,such as reflex reactions and the use ofvital signsto assess oper-ational health, are used in designing and implementing the PACarchitecture. As proof of concept, this was implemented as a self-healing tool utilizing a pulse monitor and a vital signs health moni-tor within the autonomic manager. This type of functionality opensnew opportunities to provide self-configuring, self-optimizing, andself-protecting, as well as self-healing autonomic capabilities topersonal computing

Understanding Organizations: Interpreting Organizational Communication Cultures

The organizational communication culture method has been used in more than 200 analyses of "real-world" organizations (e.g., a legal services office, a cooperative food store, an engineering unit of a major corporation, a rock band) and organizations presented in literature (e.g., the U.S. Army of Joseph Heller's Catch-22). By using the OCC method interpreters come to understand the symbolic world of the organization they study as well as the process by which members construct, maintain, and transform organizations. By presenting the method and presenting Gerald Pepper's case study illustration of the method (chap. 10), the book seeks three sets of readers. First, the role of communication in the construction of symbolic realities is an important intellectual question that is receiving a great deal of scholarly attention (e.g., witness the impact of Fisher's 1987 book Human Communication as Narration); this book will contribute to those discussions. Second, the OCC method has been valuable for helping students analyze organizations; the book makes the OCC method available to students of organizational communication and organizational theory. Third, given the intense practical interest in organizational culture in the 1980s (e.g., Peters's and Waterman's In Search of Excellence [1982]), managers of organizations and those studying to be managers will find a systematic approach to understanding organizational culture helpful. The book is useful, then, to scholars, students, and managers of organizations

Management and resistance in the digital newsroom

What happens when there is conflict between the profit motivations of a news outlet and the professional values of its journalists? Questions of managerial influence and journalistic autonomy have interested media scholars from the seminal work of Warren Breed onwards. However, there have only been a handful of studies since the introduction of audience metrics which, this research suggests, allow managers to more efficiently monitor and discipline their journalists. This article presents an ethnographic case study of a Reuters newswire bureau during a time of conflict between the management and journalists. The article outlines the strategies that management used to incentivize their journalists to change their reporting priorities. These included the strategic dissemination of audience metrics and praise, and the hiring and promotion of ‘appropriate’ journalists to positions of influence. These interventions changed who was considered a ‘good journalist’ at the newswire, disrupting existing hierarchies, and eventually changing the culture of the newsroom. The article draws on the insights of Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory to help explain how managerial power operates, and the role that individual journalists play producing and reinforcing newsroom norms

Renegotiating media in the post-Soviet era: western journalistic practices in the Armenian radio programme <I>Aniv</I>

This study explored the interplay of Soviet-style and western journalistic conventions by examining an Armenian commercial radio news programme, Aniv, which is broadcast nationally and produced through an American-funded non-governmental organization, Internews. Six issues guided the inquiry: (1) objectivity, (2) newsworthiness, (3) social role of journalism, (4) competition, (5) professional values, (6) education and employment. Results of personal interviews and observations indicated that success in promoting societal discourse is dependent on adapting imported practices to local circumstances