Organisational culture and the value of prioritisation of a firm's intellectual capital : towards a conceptual framework

Ulrich defined intellectual capital as Competence x Commitment. The model was later extended to include Control as a key ingredient to measure and leverage intellectual capital. In an earlier paper, we expanded this model to include two additional dimensions, Creativity and Culture, and defined the relationship between intellectual capital and the following five critical variables: Competence, Commitment, Control, Creativity, and Culture. We showed how the interrelationships between these variables can help firms to define and describe their intellectual capital assets. In this paper, we focus on conceptually exploring organisational culture and its impact on building a strong organisational foundation for intellectual capital. In particular, we focus on the collective dynamics of the type of organisational culture and the characteristics and volatility of the industry in which the firm operates, and its influence on a firm’s ability to develop and leverage its intellectual capital. Underlining the increasingly critical strategic importance of tacit knowledge and resources in competitiveness and sustaining competitive advantage, this paper provides a framework that CEOs and senior managers can use to identify and prioritise the value of intellectual capital to their firm based on the organisation’s culture and industry characteristics in which the firm operates. In concluding we draw together various convergent strands from associated research streams, and present a 2x2 matrix conceptualising intellectual capital complexity in relation to the firm’s level of competitiveness. In this paper we seek to preliminarily explore, as well as encourage additional research to further develop and test this framework in order to establish the interrelationships between organisational culture and intellectual capital.peer-reviewe

Cross Border Consumption and Community: Meanings For Warhammer Enthusiasts

Based on consumption tribe and gaming literature, this article examines similarities and differences between Warhammer gaming tribes in the U.S. and France. We discuss a number of cross-cultural themes based on in-depth interviews in each country. We then argue our results situate and synthesize the Warhammer gaming community in between postmodern and poststructural approaches, which suggests a rethinking is needed in terms of describing consumption experiences

The use of a solar chimney to enhance the productivity of a solar still

Solar distillation is one of the possible solutions to mitigate both the energy and water scarcity issues in remote areas especially those in hot and arid countries. The main advantages of solar stills include the facts that they are passive, inexpensive to construct and maintain, require very low technical expertise and are reliable. However since the productivity is relatively low when compared to other technologies, solar stills are mostly applicable for decentralised water production to provide water to families or small villages which have access to brackish or seawater. This paper analyses the use of a solar chimney which was used to enhance the convective currents within a solar still. Moreover, a condenser was also installed to improve the condensation process. Condensers in solar stills typically consist of fresh seawater flowing through a bank of tubes. However in the configuration presented in this paper, water vapour was forced through a number of ducts immersed in seawater. This solar still was constructed and tested under natural weather conditions using a typical simple solar still as a benchmark. The paper describes how the solar chimney and condensers improved the efficiency of the solar still.peer-reviewe

The Art of Project Management: Orchestrating Multicultural Project Teams

This paper was presented at the Specialized Conference of the EuroMed Academy of Business, May 21-22, 2015 and is reproduced in the Conference book of proceedings

Wandering in the Labyrinth - Enhancing the Accessibility to the Minoan Past Through a Visitor-Sourced Approach

Arising on the island of Crete around 2700 BC, the Minoans are traditionally regarded as the first advanced civilization on the European continent in its modern meaning. The safeguarding of this primordial heritage faces multiple challenges. Besides extrinsic natural and anthropic threats, Minoan remains are also jeopardized by some of their own intrinsic properties. This paper aims to address two of these hazards: first, the preservation state of Minoan sites, leading to their restricted comprehension; secondly, their complex, “labyrinthine”, architecture, further limiting this intelligibility but also challenging the physical access to the remains. The on-going research presented here intends to instrumentalize pathways as a solution to these drawbacks: it seeks to demonstrate that paths can not only be used as mobility vectors to guide and control visitors’ movement but also, when context-aware, as interpretation media to improve on-site experience. Drawing upon phenomenological theories, this paper focusses in particular on the integration of the visitors’ interaction with their surrounding as an innovative approach in the design of such well-informed paths. Based on the outcome of an original experiment conducted among 73 participants on the archaeological site of Malia, this study explores the possibilities of a combined qualitative and quantitative analysis of the visitors’ movement in informing recommendations to increase the visitors’ understanding and orientation abilities on site. The visitors-based approach discussed in this paper is only but one of the three axes to be combined in the general workflow advocated for the formalization of curated visitors’ paths on Minoan archaeological sites

‘<em>Candidatus</em> Phytoplasma solani’ genome project and genetic diversity in the Euro-Mediterranean basin

International audienc

Desalination, (de)securitisation and cooperation

The concepts of securitisation and de-securitisation, drawn from the security studies in international relations, explain the discursive construction and deconstruction of security issues. The management of transboundary water resources has long been a national priority issue. By reducing the interdependence between States, large-scale desalination influences these processes associated with the management of transboundary water resources and tends to place them back in the normal sphere of politics. Scholars have been inclined to describe securitisation and desecuritisation as rather efficient or inefficient processes in terms of cooperation while actually failing to provide a pertinent analysis of the implications of desalination on state interactions.This paper intends to fill in the research gap regarding the nexus between desalination, water (de)securitisation and cooperation. It analyses the theoretical background of the securitisation and desecuritisation theories emanating from the Copenhagen School and applies it to the issue of desalination. Using the Red-Dead canal project between Israel, Jordan and Palestine, it illustrates how desalination can increase or decrease cooperation depending on the sociological context of the (de)securitisation move. Lines of research on the factors and implications of desalination on transboundary hydro-politics are also discussed