Scaling without growth? The scaling approaches of Social Agricultural Cooperatives in Italy

This research is an exploratory study into the scaling approaches of Social Agricultural Cooperatives (SACs) in Italy. Indigenous to the Italian context and rooted in the Civil Economy tradition, SACs are Social Cooperatives that operate in the agricultural sector. They are a rapidly-expanding type of social enterprise, combining a non-profit institutional identity (i.e. the social element), an entrepreneurial core (i.e. the agricultural element) and democratic governance (i.e. the cooperative element). SACs are framed in the wider context of diverse organisations – i.e. holding different ethical approaches and different modus operandi from the capitalist enterprise. This research focuses on scaling as a grand challenge for diverse organisations. While in the context of capitalist organisations scaling is often considered as a synonym for organisational growth (e.g. scaling is mostly expressed in terms of scaling-up), diverse organisations consider scaling as a more complex matter (e.g. introducing concepts such as scaling-out and scaling-deep). Embracing a social constructionist view of management and organisation studies, this research adopts qualitative multiple-case-study methods to advance a diverse theory of scaling. Scaling is considered as the combination of processes that allow an organisation to fulfil the needs it was constituted to address, while undertaking its vision of system change. In the context of SACs, needs and system change emerge in close relation to ecological standpoints and environmental virtue ethics respectively, while scaling routes emerge as multi-layered and multi-faceted processes, including, but not limited to, organisational growth. These include: scaling-up-inwards (i.e. vertical organisational growth), scaling-out-inwards (i.e. horizontal organisational growth), scaling-down (i.e. organisational de-growth), scaling-up-outwards (i.e. organisational impact on policies), scaling-out-outwards (i.e. organisational multiplication), scaling-deep-inwards (i.e. organisational impact on internal culture), scaling-deep-outwards (i.e. organisational impact on societal culture), scaling-with-inwards (i.e. organisational aggregation of existing organisations) and scaling-with-outwards (i.e. organisational aggregation of new organisations). Rather than in scaling-up, the key process to fulfil SACs’ needs while undertaking their vision of system change was identified as scaling-deep. At the same time scaling-up was never considered as exponential growth. On the contrary, it emerged as being a limited (i.e. by social and environmental values), temporary (i.e. until a point of equilibrium is reached) and contextual (i.e. small scale) process. The importance of ecological relations and ecological virtues for SACs allows a redefinition of the traditional mission of Social Cooperatives (i.e. from human to ecological promotion) as well as their vision (i.e. from human to ecological flourishing). In addition, appreciating scaling and growing as two different and related processes allows the decoupling of scaling (i.e. including growth) from the growth paradigm (i.e. exponential growth in a planet with finite resources), opening up the understanding of scaling to degrowth approaches. In turn, that enables a focus on local initiatives, appreciating the transformative and emancipatory potential of their actions

Spectra of dynamical Dark Energy cosmologies from constant-w models

WMAP5 and related data have greatly restricted the range of acceptable cosmologies, by providing precise likelihood ellypses on the the w_0-w_a plane. We discuss first how such ellypses can be numerically rebuilt, and present then a map of constant-w models whose spectra, at various redshift, are expected to coincide with acceptable models within ~1%

Thinking of a sub-field of strategic thinking from a pluralistic approach to knowledge-invention

This article elaborates on the need for a sub-field of ‘Strategic Thinking’ as the science exploring the hidden side of strategy emergence. The site of our exploration is the discourse. We will investigate the intersystemic link between self-reflection and communication embedded in discourses among strategists for paradigm deconstruction and reconstruction. The rationale for a sub-field of Strategic Thinking is related to applying new research ‘technologies’. By engaging in action-research, researchers can observe self-reflection as embedded participants and super-observers. A pluralist perspective on self-reflection, as well as transformative competencies and attitudes will allow intentionality to regain a foundational role in knowledge-invention

Tight-Binding Molecular Dynamics Simulations on Point Defects Diffusion and Interactions in Crystalline Silicon

Tight-binding molecular dynamics (TBMD) simulations are performed (i) to evaluate the formation and binding energies of point defects and defect clusters, (ii) to compute the diffusivity of self-interstitial and vacancy in crystalline silicon, and (iii) to characterize the diffusion path and mechanism at the atomistic level. In addition, the interaction between individual defects and their clustering is investigated

Multiple IgE recognition on the major allergen of the Parietaria pollen Par j 2

tThe interaction between IgE antibodies and allergens is a key event in triggering an allergic reaction. Thecharacterization of this region provides information of paramount importance for diagnosis and therapy.Par j 2 Lipid Transfer Protein is one of the most important allergens in southern Europe and a well-established marker of sensitization in Parietaria pollen allergy. The main aim of this study was to map theIgE binding regions of this allergen and to study the pattern of reactivity of individual Parietaria-allergicpatients. By means of gene fragmentation, six overlapping peptides were expressed in Escherichia coli, andtheir IgE binding activity was evaluated by immunoblotting in a cohort of 79 Parietaria-allergic patients.Our results showed that Pj-allergic patients display a heterogeneous pattern of IgE binding to the differentrecombinant fragments, and that patients reacted simultaneously against several protein domains spreadall the over the molecule, even in fragments which do not contain structural features resembling thenative allergen. Our results reveal the presence of a large number of linear and conformational epitopeson the Par j 2 sequence, which probably explains the high allergenic activity of this allergen