Banking on Web 2.0 Approaches to Build a Sustainable Enterprise

This paper approaches the issue of sustainability in business in a less traditional manner by considering more than just the competitive advantage a company has to build in the rivalry with its competitors. Building enterprise sustainability requires a broader understanding of the interdependencies between the company and its human and natural environments. Effective stakeholder engagement is key and online openness and cooperation bring about new conditions for corporate social responsibility. The paper discusses the potential of the Web 2.0 tools for the interaction between the company and its stakeholders and the impact of those tools on the organizational culture in support of sustainability is analyzed. This is particularly relevant during the current economic crisis when most of the efforts go into cutting costs in order to survive.sustainable corporation; corporate social responsibility; organizational change; Web 2.0 culture; CSR 2.0.

The Sustainable University

The paper attempts to leverage theoretical constructs and practical ideas into conceptualizing the “sustainable university”. We propose an academic management approach that could improve the prospects for sustainability of a university’s evolution. Based on a literature review and documentary research, we researched modern trends, patterns and practices of academic management, supportive of sustainability. Like any organization, a university is a structure subjected to the pressures of change and affected by its consequences. Due to its mission and social function, a university should follow an ascending road to high performance and demonstrate staying power and lasting success. It is in this view that we investigated concepts and practices of corporate management applicable to academic management. Our paper is a first attempt to define the concept of sustainability in the academic world.sustainable academic performance; sustainable university; academic management; university branding; university organizational culture; academic leadership.

Cross-border Investigative Journalism: a critical perspective

Focusing on power relationships in the context of Cross-Border Journalistic Investigations (CBIJ) this study takes into account a critical approach of the emerging field. The thesis differs from other accounts on CBIJ, be it from practitioners or academics. Although studies in global media have examined new frameworks and developments, as well as emerging new practices in global investigative journalism in a digitally networked society, this has usually come from a positivist view of strengthening democracy, with an added techno-euphoria. This research presents an analysis of the power relationships in CBIJ as well as its challenges in the global context. Going beyond the usual positive tech-determinist approach the thesis explores how journalistic practices in this field are shaped in two different CBIJ networks when their two major CBIJ projects overlap, through the study of data generated by participatory observation, autoethnography and archival research. The analysis is giving a special attention to both technology communication infrastructures and non-profit funding models and is showing power inequalities and limitations of CBIJ networks as well as implications of contemporary platform investigative journalism and their unintended consequences. As such, this study is providing the insight of an Eastern-European journalist, a long-time practitioner and CBIJ network facilitator, so the analytic focus on the backstages of managing access control in two major cross-border investigations enables another contribution. This thesis finds that CBIJ has been building up based on a (white male) elitist identity for investigative journalists, first in the US in the ’70s and then in Europe and beyond in the context of Post-Cold War globalisation. To add credibility to this identity, scientific techniques have been replicated in what was called 'precision journalism ' which later became data journalism and now has been used in the mega-leaks CBIJ projects. Such data-sets have been building up to such an extent that they create the authoritative source many journalists would like to have access to (i.e. Panama Papers or Football Leaks data). While shifting CBIJ to rely heavy on big data-sets (leaks) and expensive software and computing power (to process data and to share information securely across borders), statistical techniques do not reveal main stories and most of the data work is done by engineers to index and clean data and make it available for the easiest search operations possible (type and click). Because of this dependency, this research shows that today CBIJ networks incur high costs which, in the case of the largest CBIJ organisations, are not paid by media partners of such organisations but are subsidised by media assistance or philanthropy, both governmental and private. This double capture in the technology and non-profit realms gives an unusual strong leverage to the few financial donors and platforms owners, without any accountability, on influencing the CBIJ field at a global level. Contrary to the public claim, this thesis finds that investigative platforms can act as amplifying agents of national commercial (and non-profit) competitive interests at an international network level. Furthermore, journalists accepted as members of a given investigative platform work for free in the platform realm; such network technological infrastructures and the hosted data-sets are not co-owned (in some cases not even co-managed) by all participants in the network. Without decentralised technology design and without governance documents, such platform are totalitarian governance systems (surveillance and control build in) putting access control for collaborations in the hand of a few people. Thus modern CBIJ systems re-create the past pain points of commercial news industry, creating even less gatekeepers than before. I conclude that CBIJ network centralization of socio-tech access control, bankrolled by philanthropy, are building more walls and barriers contrary to current claims and past configurations. As such, the current combination of data journalism, network structures, non-profit and commercial models, and the contemporary 'precariat' indicates that cross-border investigative networks are in the data feudalism realm. Combined with the standardising of the field to be platform ready, CBIJ becomes also ready for its own colonisations. This research makes an original contribution to existing literature, especially in the global media studies, more specifically in journalism studies with a focus on collaborative journalistic practices from a political economy angle. Last but not least, I hope this thesis contributes to the de-Westernizing process of journalism studies

Measuring and Reporting on Sustainability Performance in the Cement Industry

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) performance assessment and reporting has drawn a considerable amount of attention. In this context, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) has been among the first organizations to develop a framework for sustainability performance reporting, which is synonymous with reporting on CSR actions and results. Now at its 3rd edition, GRI offers a very detailed set of indicators that describe CSR performance as envisioned by the framework. Yet, GRI itself warns that its set of performance indicators is not universally applicable to companies in all industries and, in addition, certain areas of industrial activities may need additional indicators for a reliable and realistic assessment of CSR performance. The Cement Sustainability Initiative (CSI), a global project of a group of cement producers with worldwide presence, that are also members of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), has been early to recognize the limits of GRI and develop an industry specific approach. The paper analyzes the pathway the cement industry has pursued in order to improve its performance in mitigating social and environmental impacts, and report on the results. Based on direct experience with and firsthand knowledge of the cement industry, the set of alternative performance indicators developed by CSI is presented and a parallel is drawn between that set and the general-purpose indicators developed by GRI. The approach taken by CSI to assure compliance of the quantitative data with accepted reporting principles such as accuracy, reliability, and comparability is also detailed and commented on.cement; measuring; reporting; sustainability.

Middleware-based Database Replication: The Gaps between Theory and Practice

The need for high availability and performance in data management systems has been fueling a long running interest in database replication from both academia and industry. However, academic groups often attack replication problems in isolation, overlooking the need for completeness in their solutions, while commercial teams take a holistic approach that often misses opportunities for fundamental innovation. This has created over time a gap between academic research and industrial practice. This paper aims to characterize the gap along three axes: performance, availability, and administration. We build on our own experience developing and deploying replication systems in commercial and academic settings, as well as on a large body of prior related work. We sift through representative examples from the last decade of open-source, academic, and commercial database replication systems and combine this material with case studies from real systems deployed at Fortune 500 customers. We propose two agendas, one for academic research and one for industrial R&D, which we believe can bridge the gap within 5-10 years. This way, we hope to both motivate and help researchers in making the theory and practice of middleware-based database replication more relevant to each other.Comment: 14 pages. Appears in Proc. ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data, Vancouver, Canada, June 200

This is (not) like that

A review comment as part of a symposium on Peter Van der Veer's book The Value of Comparison

Sortir de «son» territoire en périphérie parisienne : un mouvement géographique, langagier et idéologique

International audienceThis paper deals with a group rarely studied, that of « good students » of schools considered as difficult, in working-class suburbs of Paris ; our presentation focuses on students admitted to the competition for admission in « Sciences Po », a prestigious high school in Paris, according to a special procedure created as an affirmative action, in order to promote the diversification of students’ profiles.We show, through examples, how successful candidates are firstly required to form a project to go outside the territory (from suburbs to the high school in Paris) and to have a social ambition. This encourages them to bring it in line their ideology and language resources (including the "suburb" accent). The jury seems to validate this linguistic and discursive progress by deciding whether or not each candidate is admitted to a new geographical and social territory.Cet article traite d'un public peu étudié, celui des « bons élèves » d'un lycée considéré comme difficile, situé en périphérie parisienne ; notre présentation se focalise sur les élèves admis au concours de Sciences Po, grande école parisienne, selon une procédure spéciale d'admission mise en place comme action positive, pour favoriser la diversification du public. Nous montrerons, par des exemples, comment les candidats et candidates qui réussissent sont amenés à former tout d'abord un projet de sortie du territoire (du lycée de périphérie vers la grande école parisienne) et une ambition sociale. Ceci les incite à mettre en conformité leur idéologie et leurs ressources langagières (notamment l'accent « de banlieue ») avec ce projet. Le jury semble surtout valider ce mouvement langagier et discursif en décidant d'accorder ou non l'admission dans un nouveau territoire géographique et social