Causality and replication in concurrent processes

The replication operator was introduced by Milner for obtaining a simplified description of recursive processes. The standard interleaving semantics denotes the replication of a process P, written !P, a shorthand for its unbound parallel composition, operationally equivalent to the process P | P | …, with P repeated as many times as needed. Albeit the replication mechanism has become increasingly popular, investigations on its causal semantics has been scarce. In fact, the correspondence between replication and unbound parallelism makes it difficult to recover basic properties usually associated with these semantics, such as the so-called concurrency diamond. In this paper we consider the interleaving semantics for the operator proposed by Sangiorgi and Walker, and we show how to refine it in order to capture causality. Furthermore, we prove it coincident with the standard causal semantics for recursive process studied in the literature, for processes defined by means of constant invocations

Envisioning and evolving: Future evolution of the concept and the practice of service design

ervice Design is evolving from an emerging field, breaking new ground in the design and service research areas, to a more mature stage, developing a set of fundamental concepts, methods and principles that can provide the foundation for its further significance and impact in both research and practice. This paper reflects on the roots and recent evolution of service design in terms of fundamental concepts, methods and outcomes, taking into account the papers in the Envisioning and Evolving track. It considers how the growing interrelation with close fields of service research is introducing useful “contaminations” and reports how the Service perspective is revealing its potential to bring life to technical and entrenched systems. It goes on to argue that design should aim to bring services to life to prove its real, distinguishing value and contribution

Fostering a sustained design capability in non-design-intensive organizations: a knowledge transfer perspective

Service designers have been increasingly involved in the transmission of design knowledge to enable non-professional designers to apply design skills and approaches in their work. However, the understanding of the factors that favor the effective transmission of design knowledge is limited, making the goal to achieve a sustainable capability in organizations a challenge. In this paper, the authors adopt a knowledge transfer lens to identify the key determinants in the transference of knowledge in organizations and conduct a preliminary review of how they have been addressed in design research literature. This review revealed an unbalanced interpretation with limited consideration of the knowledge senders’ characteristics and contextual factors affecting the dissemination of design knowledge. The paper, therefore, concludes with the proposal of an initial model where the four groups of determinants identified in the knowledge transfer literature (knowledge, receivers, senders, and context) could constitute the core elements for studying this phenomenon

On Bisimilarity and Substitution in Presence of Replication

International audienceWe prove a new congruence result for the pi-calculus: bisimilarity is a congruence in the sub-calculus that does not include restriction nor sum, and features top-level replications. Our proof relies on algebraic properties of replication, and on a new syntactic characterisation of bisimilarity. We obtain this characterisation using a rewriting system rather than a purely equational axiomatisation. We then deduce substitution closure, and hence, congruence. Whether bisimilarity is a congruence when replications are unrestricted remains open

Social report framing: Evidence from a major Italian bank

This study aims to analyse the development of a social report in a major Italian bank from its formation in 2007 to 2012.The Italian banking sector plays an important role in the Italian economy.Several Italian frameworks for social reports have been published and used by Italian companies.However, an important framework for social reports in Italy is the GRI.The paper aims to answer the following research questions: 1) what international guidelines have been used by the Bank in its social reports, during the period considered? 2) What have been the structural changes in the social report over time? The aim of these questions is to analyse the structure of the Bank’s six social reports.The paper relies on documentary analysis, applied to six social reports. It is based on G3 Guidelines and Performance Indicators (PIs).The paper finds that in the six-year period several changes in social reports are highlighted.We conclude that the Bank has engaged in a process of continuous improvement in the information content of the social report, including recently indicating that a PI is only partially disclosed if not in accordance with the guidelines

On the relative expressiveness of higher-order session processes

By integrating constructs from the λ-calculus and the π-calculus, in higher-order process calculi exchanged values may contain processes. This paper studies the relative expressiveness of HOπ, the higher-order π-calculus in which communications are governed by session types. Our main discovery is that HO, a subcalculus of HOπ which lacks name-passing and recursion, can serve as a new core calculus for session-typed higher-order concurrency. By exploring a new bisimulation for HO, we show that HO can encode HOπ fully abstractly (up to typed contextual equivalence) more precisely and efficiently than the first-order session π-calculus (π). Overall, under session types, HOπ, HO, and π are equally expressive; however, HOπ and HO are more tightly related than HOπ and π

Developing recovery oriented services and co-production in mental healthcare: Building- up on existing promising organisational practices

Recovery, as a patient-centred emergent transformative concept in mental healthcare, requires a change in the culture and practice of organisations at different levels. This paper investigates the potential of nurturing existing recovery oriented initiatives as promising practices for the re-orientation of mental healthcare provision. In the field of social innovation, promising practices are intended as very context-linked sustainable practices which open up possibilities of societal radical transformation based on people’s real needs and existing assets. Similarly, in mental healthcare services, the authors argue that emergent promising recovery oriented and co-produced practices can favour the shift from a traditional top-down culture to a more collaborative one. This paper is based on an experimental action-research project, Recovery CO–LAB, developed in collaboration with the Mental Health Department of Spedali Civili di Brescia, aiming to explore how service design could help the organisation to increase its orientation toward recovery