Understanding contextualised rational action - author's response

Understanding contextualised rational action - author's respons

Discontinuity in the Environment, Firm Response and Dynamic Capabilities

This paper identifies and focuses on a specific type of environmental development called discontinuity. Discontinuities in the forms of rapid technological innovations, regulatory reforms, institutional overhauls, and socio-cultural developments are the source of opportunities and threats to the firm. Firm responds to these discontinuities in specific ways in sustaining its existence at different points of time. This paper conceptualizes discontinuity and identifies its natures; explores the possible types of responses by the firm, and their enablers. The capability of sensing, seizing and re-shaping are captured to establish the linkages in the framework of interrelations. It posits a set of propositions based on conceptual development and illustration of two cases.

Minimal SUGRA Model and Collider Signals

The SUSY signals in the dominant stau-neutralino coannihilation region at a 500(800) GeV linear collider are investigated. The region is consistent with the WMAP measurement of the cold dark matter relic density as well as all other current experimental bounds within the mSUGRA framework. The signals are characterized by an existence of very low-energy tau leptons in the final state due to small mass difference between stau_1 and chi_1 (5-15 GeV). We study the accuracy of the mass difference measurement with a 1^deg active mask to reduce a huge SM two-photon background.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, Talk presented at ICHEP04, Aug.16-22, Beijing, China, Numerical typos in Table 5 and 6 are corrected, no changes in figures and in other numerical result

The limits of process: On (re)reading Henri Bergson

This article offers a reading of the work of Henri Bergson as it pertains to organizations through the lens of ideas drawn from critical realism. It suggests an alternative to interpretations based on a stark division between process and realist perspectives. Much of the existing literature presents a rather partial view of Bergson’s work. A review suggests some interesting parallels with themes in critical realism, notably the emergence of mind. Critical realism has a focus on process at its heart, but is also concerned with how the products of such processes become stabilized and form the conditions for action. This suggests that attention might usefully be paid to the relationship between organizational action and the sedimented practices grouped under the heading of ‘routines’. More attention to Bergson’s account of the relationship between instinct, intuition and intelligence provides a link to the social character of thought, something which can be mapped on to Archer’s work on reflexivity and the ‘internal conversation’. This suggests that our analyses need to pay attention to both memory and history, to building and dwelling, rather than the one-sided focus found in some process theory accounts