Discourse revisited : dimensions and employment of first-order strategy discourse during institutional adoption

Despite decades of research on strategy, we still know little about what the concept of strategy means to actual strategists and how they use it in practice. Working at the intersections of institutional and practice theories, we use exploratory interviews with strategy directors and a longitudinal case study to uncover four dimensions of first-order strategy discourse: functional, contextual, identity, and metaphorical. We also reveal three phases in the interrelation between first-order strategy discourse and institutional work: shaping, settling, and selling and a differential emphasis (selective focusing) on dimensions of the first-order strategy discourse during the institutional adoption process. We contribute to a deeper understanding of the concept of strategy in practice, the process of institutional adoption, and of the role of discourse in this process

“To Cross a Surf Both Alarming and Dangerous”. An Exclusionary Knowledge of Motion in the Madras Surf Zone, 1755–1842

Movement between ship and shore at the English East India Company port of Madras (modern Chennai) was mediated by local boatmen in locally designed and built masula boats from the founding of the city in 1639 through the end of the nineteenth century. Without the masulas and boatmen, Company officials had no alternative methods for landing cargo and passengers and as a result were fully dependent on the continued cooperation of the boatmen. Aware of their linchpin role in the continued operation of Madras as a trade hub, the boat people alternatively supplied and withheld their exclusive knowledge and skill in the surf zone as a means of increasing personal profit and in attempts to improve working conditions. This paper argues that the boatmen’s periodic withholding of expertise and technology allowed the community to assert group agency and limited company control over the system of ship to shore movement.Movement between ship and shore at the English East India Company port of Madras (modern Chennai) was mediated by local boatmen in locally designed and built masula boats from the founding of the city in 1639 through the end of the nineteenth century. Without the masulas and boatmen, Company officials had no alternative methods for landing cargo and passengers and as a result were fully dependent on the continued cooperation of the boatmen. Aware of their linchpin role in the continued operation of Madras as a trade hub, the boat people alternatively supplied and withheld their exclusive knowledge and skill in the surf zone as a means of increasing personal profit and in attempts to improve working conditions. This paper argues that the boatmen’s periodic withholding of expertise and technology allowed the community to assert group agency and limited company control over the system of ship to shore movement

Crossing the threshold of empire: from ship to shore in colonial Madras, 1750-1895: Crossing the threshold of empire

This thesis examines the process of moving between ship and shore at the English East India Company port of Madras (Chennai) between 1750 and 1895. It argues that while the history of technology in the British empire has largely focused on the deployment of Western innovations, the daily administration of empire was instead dependent on indigenous technologies and practitioners. Madras’s dangerous littoral environment meant that trade was facilitated by masula boats and catamarans, built, manned, and owned by skilled local boatmen. Prior to the mid-nineteenth century, British dependency on masulas and catamarans allowed the boat people to control the littoral technologically. This thesis argues that the boatmen dictated the speed and volume of trade, and British administrators struggled to introduce regulatory solutions to issues of boat and labour shortages and theft. Merchant dissatisfaction with the boat-based system of movement in the mid-nineteenth century led in part to the eventual construction of port infrastructure. The decision to build in the littoral was the result of both local and imperial impetuses, but a prioritization of metropolitan theoretical expertise over local nautical expertise by Parliament and imperial administrators resulted in the adoption of designs that were ill-adapted to local conditions and repeatedly damaged by daily and monsoonal conditions. Not only does this thesis find that imperial administrators were dependent on indigenous technology for the daily administration of empire, but its littoral approach to Madras also demonstrates that the relative success of different technologies is based on adaptation to the local physical, commercial, and political context. Acknowledging British reliance on local technologies and skilled knowledge holders for essential day-to-day activities leads to a reevaluation of the nature of empire itself. Rather than based solely on dominance and innovative European technologies, empire required adaptability in its administrators and was maintained by local practitioners and locally developed technologies

Napoleon\u27s Siege of Acre: A Reevaluation of the Historical and Archaeological Record

The modern port of Akko, Israel, has been essential to movement and trade in the eastern Mediterranean since the Hellenistic period, and used as a harbor since the Neolithic. Its many incarnations and occupations over the centuries are documented by the cultural material laying on and under the bed of the harbor, and it is an area of great fascination for historians and underwater archaeologists. One particular pivotal event in the modern history of the port, however, continues to beguile researchers. Napoleon\u27s failed siege of Acre (modern-day Akko), Israel in the spring of 1799 was a turning point in his eastern campaign. Had he succeeded in gaining control of the port, he would have been well-positioned to challenge Britain\u27s influence in the East. It was only through the assistance of the British naval commander Admiral Sir William Sidney Smith that the city was able to withstand the siege; Smith kept up a constant bombardment of Napoleon\u27s position from his fleet for over two months. Understandably, underwater archaeologists have been eager to discover evidence of the siege in the port, but the task is complicated by the presence of wreckage from naval conflicts of the 1830s and 1840, and also the persistence of certain misinformation about how Smith conducted Acre\u27s defense. Using historical maps, letters, drawings, and other documents, this poster presents a new interpretation of the 1799 siege of Acre, and introduces two recently-discovered shipwrecks, one or both of which may have sank as a result of Smith\u27s strategy. The 1799 siege was critical for both the British and Napoleon. Victory for the British here was key—if Napoleon had taken the port and continued on, Britain would have lost her trade routes through the Middle East and never would have become the dominant European superpower that she was in the 19th and early 20th centuries. My original interpretation regarding Smith’s strategy has the potential to change the way this pivotal moment is studied and understood by archaeologists

You: A study of second-person narrative in two postmodern novels

This study analyzes the use of second-person narrative in postmodern fiction, both in terms of narrative mechanics and in relation to certain theories of how fiction is able to represent--and misrepresent--the empirical world. The two works examined in this study, Italo Calvino\u27s If on a winter\u27s night a traveler and Thomas Pynchon\u27s Gravity\u27s Rainbow, exemplify this narrative form and, taken together, seem to exhaust its possibilities; A primary concern of this study, therefore, is to articulate these possibilities, but not merely for the sake of creating a taxonomy. Rather, this study examines how the use of second-person narrative in the two novels both corresponds with and subverts a number of critical approaches. In the process, this study asserts that the second person, as used in postmodern fiction, participates in the larger postmodern program of destabilizing traditional ontological boundaries, especially that separating the fictive world from the real

The Near-Infrared and Optical Spectra of Methane Dwarfs and Brown Dwarfs

We identify the pressure--broadened red wings of the saturated potassium resonance lines at 7700 \AA as the source of anomalous absorption seen in the near-infrared spectra of Gliese 229B and, by extension, of methane dwarfs in general. This conclusion is supported by the recent work of Tsuji {\it et al.} 1999, though unlike them we find that dust need not be invoked to explain the spectra of methane dwarfs shortward of 1 micron. We find that a combination of enhanced alkali abundances due to rainout and a more realistic non-Lorentzian theory of resonant line shapes may be all that is needed to properly account for these spectra from 0.5 to 1.0 microns. The WFPC2 $I$ measurement of Gliese 229B is also consistent with this theory. Furthermore, a combination of the blue wings of this K I resonance doublet, the red wings of the Na D lines at 5890 \AA, and, perhaps, the Li I line at 6708 \AA can explain in a natural way the observed WFPC2 $R$ band flux of Gliese 229B. Hence, we conclude that the neutral alkali metals play a central role in the near-infrared and optical spectra of methane dwarfs and that their lines have the potential to provide crucial diagnostics of brown dwarfs. We speculate on the systematics of the near-infrared and optical spectra of methane dwarfs, for a given mass and composition, that stems from the progressive burial with decreasing \teff of the alkali metal atoms to larger pressures and depths.Comment: Revised and accepted to Ap.J. volume 531, March 1, 2000, also available at http://jupiter.as.arizona.edu/~burrows/papers/BMS.p

Regionalizing Institutional Food at URI

In recent years a demand for locally sourced food has arisen among students, faculty, and staff at the University of Rhode Island. Having now recognized this demand the hour is upon us to organize and create a movement that is as enlightened as it is revolutionary. Published material regarding regionalizing institutional food, however, is fragmented and difficult to apply to URI. The aim of this project is to collect and analyze the existing research in order to produce a cohesive text written in the context of URI. The paper details the motivation behind this movement in the form of a gathering of scientific and anthropological writing on the subject, regional production statistics, and an evaluation of the URI purchasing process. The data compiled in this paper can be drawn upon by the ever increasing population of students, faculty, and staff at URI with an invested interest in eating regionally produced food at the dining hall and will assist those involved in defining ‘real food’ priorities for the completion of the Real Food Challenge at URI

“To Cross a Surf Both Alarming and Dangerous”. An Exclusionary Knowledge of Motion in the Madras Surf Zone, 1755–1842

Movement between ship and shore at the English East India Company port of Madras (modern Chennai) was mediated by local boatmen in locally designed and built masula boats from the founding of the city in 1639 through the end of the nineteenth century. Without the masulas and boatmen, Company officials had no alternative methods for landing cargo and passengers and as a result were fully dependent on the continued cooperation of the boatmen. Aware of their linchpin role in the continued operation of Madras as a trade hub, the boat people alternatively supplied and withheld their exclusive knowledge and skill in the surf zone as a means of increasing personal profit and in attempts to improve working conditions. This paper argues that the boatmen’s periodic withholding of expertise and technology allowed the community to assert group agency and limited company control over the system of ship to shore movement

Biology, Predation Ecology, and Significance of Spiders in Texas Cotton Ecosystems with a Key to the Species.

124 p

Visible Lives: Identifying the Experiences and Needs of Older LGBT People in Ireland

Huge progress has been made in recognising and supporting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in Ireland. In the space of twenty years we have seen the decriminalisation of homosexuality and the introduction of a sophisticated equality infrastructure, with the Employment Equality Act 1998 and the Equal Status Act 2000 having been at the forefront internationally in naming sexual orientation as a specific equality ground and in extending its scope outside the field of employment. More recently, in 2010 comprehensive Civil Partnership legislation was introduced and the Government is determined to bring forward legislation later this year to provide for the recognition of the acquired gender of transgender people, on the basis of the recommendations of the Gender Recognition Advisory Group published in June. This report is the first comprehensive study of the lives of older LGBT people in Ireland. It offers unique insights into the lives of those people who have lived through and been most personally affected by these changes in Irish society. It shows the negative consequences for LGBT people of living through a period where a fundamental aspect of their identity - to be themselves and to live openly and securely with the person they love - was stigmatised, criminalised or even viewed as an illness