Subsoil mediations: Strategies of contention at the grassroots and the extraction of subsoil resources Global Change

In diesem Working Paper argumentiere ich, dass die Art und Weise, wie Gemeinschaften Strategien der Auseinandersetzung ausüben, durch das vermittelt werden, was ich als „Vorstellungen über den Untergrund“ bezeichne: Wie Bevölkerungsgruppen und Gemeinschaften sich den Untergrund und dessen Gewinnung vorstellen und diesen Bedeutung zuschreiben. Ich nähere mich dem Untergrund als einem Ort, an dem und durch den die Strategien der Auseinandersetzung Gestalt und Inhalt annehmen sowie gleichzeitig als Ressource, die durch solche (politischen) diskursiven und praktischen Aktivitäten produziert wird. Dabei untersucht dieser Artikel Strategien der Auseinandersetzung als eine Aushandlung von Rechten zwischen politischen Subjekten und dem Staat, welche durch Vorstellungen über den Untergrund vermittelt wird. Strategien der Auseinandersetzung werden auf zwei Arten durch Vorstellungen über den Untergrund vermittelt: Erstens sind Konflikte und Auseinandersetzungen um Ressourcen oft in unterschiedlichen Ideen und Vorstellungen von Ressourcennutzung und dem Untergrund verankert. Natürlichen Ressourcen können als indigenes Territorium, als Teil der Lebensgrundlage, in Bezug auf Biodiversität sowie als Kombination davon Bedeutungen zugeschrieben werden. Solche Bedeutungen stehen im Widerspruch zu den monetären Wertzuschreibungen, auf denen die meisten Rohstoffprojekte basieren. Zweitens verursachen Rohstoffprojekte Konflikte über die Verteilung sowie über Anerkennung und Teilhabe. Dabei geht es nicht nur um die ökologischen Folgen der Untergrundgewinnung, sondern auch - wenn nicht sogar in erster Linie - um Macht, Demokratie und Staatsbürgerschaft. Diese Forderungen nach sozialer Gerechtigkeit werden, wie ich zeigen werde, auch durch Vorstellungen über den Untergrund geformt. Der Artikel stützt sich dabei auf Forschung zu Widerstand, Staatsbürgerschaft und Untergrundgewinnung in Lateinamerika, den Philippinen und den Niederlanden seit 2010.In this working paper, I argue that the ways in which communities engage in strategies of contention are mediated by what I call ‘subsoil imaginaries’: how peoples and communities imagine and give meaning to the subsoil and its extraction. In so doing, I approach the subsoil as a site on and through which strategies of contention gain form and content, and at the same time as a resource that is produced through such (political) discursive and practical activities. It is on this site that this paper explores strategies of contention as a negotiation of rights between political subjects and the state that is mediated by subsoil imaginaries. Strategies of contention are mediated by subsoil imaginations in two dimensions. First, conflicts and contestations over resource use are often rooted in different ideas and imaginaries of resource use and the subsoil. Natural resources can be valued as indigenous territory, as a part of livelihood, in terms of biodiversity, and as combinations thereof. Such meanings clash with the monetary valuations on which most extractive projects are based. Second, extractive projects cause conflicts over distribution, as well as over recognition and participation; it is not only about the environmental consequences of subsoil extraction but also (if not foremost) about power, democracy and citizenship. These claims of social justice, as I will show, are also shaped by imaginaries of the subsoil. The paper builds on research on resistance, citizenship and subsoil extraction since 2010 in Latin America, the Philippines and the Netherlands

Hollow Heaps

We introduce the hollow heap, a very simple data structure with the same amortized efficiency as the classical Fibonacci heap. All heap operations except delete and delete-min take $O(1)$ time, worst case as well as amortized; delete and delete-min take $O(\log n)$ amortized time on a heap of $n$ items. Hollow heaps are by far the simplest structure to achieve this. Hollow heaps combine two novel ideas: the use of lazy deletion and re-insertion to do decrease-key operations, and the use of a dag (directed acyclic graph) instead of a tree or set of trees to represent a heap. Lazy deletion produces hollow nodes (nodes without items), giving the data structure its name.Comment: 27 pages, 7 figures, preliminary version appeared in ICALP 201

Organizational Change Perspectives on Software Process Improvement

Many software organizations have engaged in Software Process Improvement (SPI) and experienced the challenges related to managing such complex organizational change efforts. As a result, there is an increasing body of research investigating change management in SPI. To provide an overview of what we know and don’t know about SPI as organizational change, this paper addresses the following question: What are the dominant perspectives on SPI as organizational change in the literature and how is this knowledge presented and published? All journals on the AIS ranking list were screened to identify relevant articles and Gareth Morgan’s organizational metaphors (1996) were used to analyze this literature considering the following dimensions of each article: organizational perspective (metaphor), knowledge orientation (normative versus descriptive), theoretical emphasis (high versus low), main audience (practitioner versus academic), geographical origin (Scandinavia, the Americas, Europe, or the Asia-Pacific), and publication level (high versus low ranked journal). The review demonstrates that the literature on SPI as organizational change is firmly grounded in both theory and practice, and Scandinavia and the Americas are the main contributors to this research. The distribution of articles across Morgan’s metaphors is uneven and reveals knowledge gaps that present new avenues for research. The current literature offers important insights into organizational change in SPI from machine, organism, and brain perspectives. Practitioners may use these articles as a guide to SPI insights relevant to their improvement initiatives. In contrast, the impact of culture, dominance, psychic prison, flux and transformation, and politics in SPI have only received scant attention. We argue that these perspectives offer important insights into the challenges involved in managing change in SPI. Researchers are therefore advised to engage in new SPI research based on one or more of these perspectives. Overall, the paper provides a roadmap to help identify insights and specific articles related to SPI as organizational change.Software Process Improvement; Organizational Change; Organizational Metaphors; Images of Organization; Literature Review

Faster Algorithms for Computing Maximal 2-Connected Subgraphs in Sparse Directed Graphs

Connectivity related concepts are of fundamental interest in graph theory. The area has received extensive attention over four decades, but many problems remain unsolved, especially for directed graphs. A directed graph is 2-edge-connected (resp., 2-vertex-connected) if the removal of any edge (resp., vertex) leaves the graph strongly connected. In this paper we present improved algorithms for computing the maximal 2-edge- and 2-vertex-connected subgraphs of a given directed graph. These problems were first studied more than 35 years ago, with $\widetilde{O}(mn)$ time algorithms for graphs with m edges and n vertices being known since the late 1980s. In contrast, the same problems for undirected graphs are known to be solvable in linear time. Henzinger et al. [ICALP 2015] recently introduced $O(n^2)$ time algorithms for the directed case, thus improving the running times for dense graphs. Our new algorithms run in time $O(m^{3/2})$, which further improves the running times for sparse graphs. The notion of 2-connectivity naturally generalizes to k-connectivity for $k>2$. For constant values of k, we extend one of our algorithms to compute the maximal k-edge-connected in time $O(m^{3/2} \log{n})$, improving again for sparse graphs the best known algorithm by Henzinger et al. [ICALP 2015] that runs in $O(n^2 \log n)$ time.Comment: Revised version of SODA 2017 paper including details for k-edge-connected subgraph

Theorizing Affordance Actualization in Digital Innovation from a Socio-Technical Perspective: The case of the video game industry

Digital technology provides opportunities for new product development and innovation through affordances. However, in digital innovation, human actors are constrained by the design of technology and its interaction with different aspects of the socio-technical context. In this article, we investigate the relationship between digital technology and developers in a video game development company and its role in supporting and hindering digital innovation. We build on theory of affordances and constraints in answering the research question: How does the actualization of affordances in video game development influence the innovation process and outcome? Based on empirical analysis, we identify four affordances: Tool development, prototyping, user testing, and patching. We theorize affordance actualization and distinguish between innovation outcome and process innovation affordances. Furthermore, we theorize the dependencies between human actors, the organization, and technology in the affordance actualization process and mechanism

Creativity and Information Systems in a Hypercompetitive Environment: A Literature Review

In today’s hypercompetitive environment in which markets change rapidly and competitive advantages are difficult to sustain, companies are forced to innovate and identify new business opportunities. However, innovation requires ingenuity and creativity. Product and service development depends on the creativity of employees, but harvesting and bringing novel ideas to fruition is often a chaotic process, which underscores the importance of creativity management within organizations. In this article, we review the literature on creativity in an effort to summarize state-of-the-art knowledge on how to stimulate creativity and spur innovation in modern organizations. For that purpose, we use Rhodes’ 4-Ps model (1961) distinguishing between creative environments (called press), people, products, and processes. Through a review of 110 journals on the AIS journal list, this article offers insights―based on eighty-eight articles―into how creativity can be stimulated and supported by attending to each of these components. The literature teaches us how to utilize, evaluate, and strategize about creativity in organizational settings. Managers are advised to advance creativity and ideation processes, for example by building virtual environments that strengthen collaboration and creativity across organizational boundaries. Researchers are encouraged to investigate the relationship between strategy and information systems (IS) usage in fostering creativity