‘And if I don’t want to work like an artist...?’ How the study of artistic resistance enriches organizational studies

An increasing number of artists, from theatre makers to painters, critique recent aesthetic developments in organizational life.* One of their topics is the relation between work and freedom, as employees, like artists, are required to bring fully into work their subjectivity and emotional motivation. This paper presents several contemporary examples and a case of the theatre maker Ren� Pollesch whose plays show the dark side of these role models, leaving the audience to draw its own, bitter conclusions. It is proposed in this paper that organizational studies should consider these forms of ?artistic resistance? more systematically. Artistic resistance goes beyond extant critical intellectual approaches to organization studies: Its presentational form provides an aesthetic experience, and conveys both embodied and tacit forms of knowing in fuller, richer and stimulating ways. The paper discusses implications for organizational theory building (for example with regard to work models and the use of arts for organizational development), and research methods (scholarly applications of arts-based methods for the generation and presentation of research findings)

Phase transitions in soft-committee machines

Equilibrium statistical physics is applied to layered neural networks with differentiable activation functions. A first analysis of off-line learning in soft-committee machines with a finite number (K) of hidden units learning a perfectly matching rule is performed. Our results are exact in the limit of high training temperatures. For K=2 we find a second order phase transition from unspecialized to specialized student configurations at a critical size P of the training set, whereas for K > 2 the transition is first order. Monte Carlo simulations indicate that our results are also valid for moderately low temperatures qualitatively. The limit K to infinity can be performed analytically, the transition occurs after presenting on the order of N K examples. However, an unspecialized metastable state persists up to P= O (N K^2).Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure

Field research on the spectral properties of crops and soils, volume 1

The experiment design, data acquisition and preprocessing, data base management, analysis results and development of instrumentation for the AgRISTARS Supporting Research Project, Field Research task are described. Results of several investigations on the spectral reflectance of corn and soybean canopies as influenced by cultural practices, development stage and nitrogen nutrition are reported as well as results of analyses of the spectral properties of crop canopies as a function of canopy geometry, row orientation, sensor view angle and solar illumination angle are presented. The objectives, experiment designs and data acquired in 1980 for field research experiments are described. The development and performance characteristics of a prototype multiband radiometer, data logger, and aerial tower for field research are discussed

Modeling one-dimensional island growth with mass-dependent detachment rates

We study one-dimensional models of particle diffusion and attachment/detachment from islands where the detachment rates gamma(m) of particles at the cluster edges increase with cluster mass m. They are expected to mimic the effects of lattice mismatch with the substrate and/or long-range repulsive interactions that work against the formation of long islands. Short-range attraction is represented by an overall factor epsilon<<1 in the detachment rates relatively to isolated particle hopping rates [epsilon ~ exp(-E/T), with binding energy E and temperature T]. We consider various gamma(m), from rapidly increasing forms such as gamma(m) ~ m to slowly increasing ones, such as gamma(m) ~ [m/(m+1)]^b. A mapping onto a column problem shows that these systems are zero-range processes, whose steady states properties are exactly calculated under the assumption of independent column heights in the Master equation. Simulation provides island size distributions which confirm analytic reductions and are useful whenever the analytical tools cannot provide results in closed form. The shape of island size distributions can be changed from monomodal to monotonically decreasing by tuning the temperature or changing the particle density rho. Small values of the scaling variable X=epsilon^{-1}rho/(1-rho) favour the monotonically decreasing ones. However, for large X, rapidly increasing gamma(m) lead to distributions with peaks very close to and rapidly decreasing tails, while slowly increasing gamma(m) provide peaks close to /2$ and fat right tails.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figure

'I'm as much an anarchist in theory as I am in practice': Fernando Pessoa's 'Anarchist banker' in a management education context

The performance of Fernando Pessoa?s novel The Anarchist Banker serves as an example for critical management education and allows for further insights into how anarchist theories may be reflected upon and practiced in a business school context. We explore elements of an ?anarchist aesthetics? that are created through dramaturgy, narration, and collective production and reception. The Anarchist Banker fits well with arts-based education in business schools and efforts to learn lessons for leadership through the use of drama. The literary source encourages to rethink salient issues in today?s global and finance-dominated capitalism and offers opportunities to search for alternative forms of organizing society and the economy by questioning charismatic leadership and managerial rhetoric in favor of collective reasoning. Elements of an anarchist aesthetic include the deconstruction of the hero and authoritarian discourse, dialogue and polyphony, collectivity and obstructionism that are at play artistically and socially, integrating anarchist theory and practice in content and form. The topic links to new forms of resistance, with critical artists opposing the business world and academics attempting to play out the ?banker? versus the ?anarchist?

Phase transitions in optimal unsupervised learning

We determine the optimal performance of learning the orientation of the symmetry axis of a set of P = alpha N points that are uniformly distributed in all the directions but one on the N-dimensional sphere. The components along the symmetry breaking direction, of unitary vector B, are sampled from a mixture of two gaussians of variable separation and width. The typical optimal performance is measured through the overlap Ropt=B.J* where J* is the optimal guess of the symmetry breaking direction. Within this general scenario, the learning curves Ropt(alpha) may present first order transitions if the clusters are narrow enough. Close to these transitions, high performance states can be obtained through the minimization of the corresponding optimal potential, although these solutions are metastable, and therefore not learnable, within the usual bayesian scenario.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures, submitted to PRE, This new version of the paper contains one new section, Bayesian versus optimal solutions, where we explain in detail the results supporting our claim that bayesian learning may not be optimal. Figures 4 of the first submission was difficult to understand. We replaced it by two new figures (Figs. 4 and 5 in this new version) containing more detail

Iron Oxide Genesis and Its Influence on the Spectral Reflectance Properties of Gossans

Gossans in the Mt. Bross area of the Alma mining district, Colorado, were characterized by use of iron oxide mineralogy and spectral reflectance as a possible aid to mineral exploration using remotely sensed data. Mine site gossan samples produced by the weathering of lead-zinc replacement deposits were found to be composed primarily of goethite, and nonmine samples produced by the weathering of pyrite in the local country rock were found to be composed primarily of jarosite. A three stage genetic model was proposed to explain the observed iron oxide assemblages, whereby goethite precipitated early and was followed by jarosite and hematite. Bidirectional reflectance factor was measured on undisturbed sample surfaces with an Exotech 20C spectroradiometer from 0.5 µm to 2.35 µm. A pressed barium sulfate powder reference was used for calibration. The samples were organized into two groups. The first contained goethite as the major oxide. The spectra showed a 0.65 µm shoulder, broad 0.94 µm absorption, and low reflectance factor in the visible and near infrared (13 percent at 0.75 µm). The other group was mainly hematite; the spectra showed a weak 0.65 µm shoulder, sharp 0.85 um absorption, and high reflectance factor (37 percent at 0.75 µm.) It appeared that hematite, although a minor constituent in the nonmine gossans when compared to jarosite, was spectrally dominant. Exploration programs, using spectral reflectance studies to characterize gossan types, should be undertaken with care because iron oxide genesis is influenced by a number of physio-chemical factors that can produce similar mineralogies and spectral characteristics from different parent sulfide assemblages. In the Alma district, the observed spectral differences between gossans appeared to be indirectly a function of wall rock chemistry and not parent sulfide assemblage