138 research outputs found
The 'law of requisite variety' may assist climate change negotiations:a review of the Kyoto and Durban meetings
Ashby wrote about cybernetics, during which discourse he described a Law that attempts to resolve difficulties arising in complex situations â he suggested using variety to combat complexity. In this paper, we note that the delegates to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meeting in Kyoto, 1997, were offered a âsimplifying solutionâ to cope with the complexity of discussing multiple pollutants allegedly contributing to âclimate changeâ. We assert that the adoption of CO2eq has resulted in imprecise thinking regarding the âcarbon footprintâ â that is, âCO2â â to the exclusion of other pollutants. We propose, as Ashby might have done, that the CO2eq and other factors within the âclimate changeâ negotiations be disaggregated to allow careful and specific individual solutions to be agreed on each factor. We propose a new permanent and transparent âaction groupâ be in charge of agenda setting and to manage the messy annual meetings. This body would be responsible for achieving accords at these annual meetings, rather than forcing this task on national hosts. We acknowledge the task is daunting and we recommend moving on from Ashby's Law to Beer's Viable Systems approach
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Institutional fields as linked arenas: Inter-field resource dependence, institutional work and institutional change
Theories of institutional change have paid limited attention to the ways in which relations between institutional fields might facilitate or hinder institutional change. I introduce inter-field resource dependence as an important condition explaining institutional change between fields. Building on resource dependence theory, I conceptualize two dimensions of inter-field resource dependence: mutual dependence and power imbalance. I argue that these two dimensions have opposite effects on the likelihood of institutional change between fields. Mutual dependence between two fields increases the chances of institutional change by inducing actors in both the fields to work at creating new shared institutions in order to regulate their mutual dependence. Power imbalance between two fields decreases the chances of institutional change by inducing actors in the dominant field to work at maintaining existing institutions in order to preserve their power. Thus, different types of inter-field resource dependence motivate actors to undertake different forms of institutional work, which in turn shape the likelihood of institutional change between fields. Developing this core argument, I theorize that whether the institutional change occurring between two fields is radical or incremental is a function of the type of resource dependence linking the two fields; for example, when power imbalance is high, institutional change is unlikely but when it occurs it tends to be radical
"Meaning" as a sociological concept: A review of the modeling, mapping, and simulation of the communication of knowledge and meaning
The development of discursive knowledge presumes the communication of meaning
as analytically different from the communication of information. Knowledge can
then be considered as a meaning which makes a difference. Whereas the
communication of information is studied in the information sciences and
scientometrics, the communication of meaning has been central to Luhmann's
attempts to make the theory of autopoiesis relevant for sociology. Analytical
techniques such as semantic maps and the simulation of anticipatory systems
enable us to operationalize the distinctions which Luhmann proposed as relevant
to the elaboration of Husserl's "horizons of meaning" in empirical research:
interactions among communications, the organization of meaning in
instantiations, and the self-organization of interhuman communication in terms
of symbolically generalized media such as truth, love, and power. Horizons of
meaning, however, remain uncertain orders of expectations, and one should
caution against reification from the meta-biological perspective of systems
theory
âStructurationâ by intellectual organization: the configuration of knowledge in relations among structural components in networks of science
Using aggregated journalâjournal citation networks, the measurement of the knowledge base in empirical systems is factor-analyzed in two cases of interdisciplinary developments during the period 1995â2005: (i) the development of nanotechnology in the natural sciences and (ii) the development of communication studies as an interdiscipline between social psychology and political science. The results are compared with a case of stable development: the citation networks of core journals in chemistry. These citation networks are intellectually organized by networks of expectations in the knowledge base at the specialty (that is, above-journal) level. The âstructurationâ of structural components (over time) can be measured as configurational information. The latter is compared with the Shannon-type information generated in the interactions among structural components: the difference between these two measures provides us with a measure for the redundancy generated by the specification of a model in the knowledge base of the system. This knowledge base incurs (against the entropy law) to variable extents on the knowledge infrastructures provided by the observable networks of relations
Persistent Place-Making in Prehistory: the Creation, Maintenance, and Transformation of an Epipalaeolithic Landscape
Most archaeological projects today integrate, at least to some degree, how past people engaged with their surroundings, including both how they strategized resource use, organized technological production, or scheduled movements within a physical environment, as well as how they constructed cosmologies around or created symbolic connections to places in the landscape. However, there are a multitude of ways in which archaeologists approach the creation, maintenance, and transformation of human-landscape interrelationships. This paper explores some of these approaches for reconstructing the Epipalaeolithic (ca. 23,000â11,500 years BP) landscape of Southwest Asia, using macro- and microscale geoarchaeological approaches to examine how everyday practices leave traces of human-landscape interactions in northern and eastern Jordan. The case studies presented here demonstrate that these Epipalaeolithic groups engaged in complex and far-reaching social landscapes. Examination of the Early and Middle Epipalaeolithic (EP) highlights that the notion of âNeolithizationâ is somewhat misleading as many of the features we use to define this transition were already well-established patterns of behavior by the Neolithic. Instead, these features and practices were enacted within a hunter-gatherer world and worldview
A rational model for assessing and evaluating complex interventions in health care
Background: understanding how new clinical techniques, technologies and other complex interventions become normalized in practice is important to researchers, clinicians, health service managers and policy-makers. This paper presents a model of the normalization of complex interventions.Methods: between 1995 and 2005 multiple qualitative studies were undertaken. These examined: professional-patient relationships; changing patterns of care; the development, evaluation and implementation of telemedicine and related informatics systems; and the production and utilization of evidence for practice. Data from these studies were subjected to (i) formative re-analysis, leading to sets of analytic propositions; and to (ii) a summative analysis that aimed to build a robust conceptual model of the normalization of complex interventions in health care.Results: a normalization process model that enables analysis of the conditions necessary to support the introduction of complex interventions is presented. The model is defined by four constructs: interactional workability; relational integration; skill set workability and contextual integration. This model can be used to understand the normalization potential of new techniques and technologies in healthcare settingsConclusion: the normalization process model has face validity in (i) assessing the potential for complex interventions to become routinely embedded in everyday clinical work, and (ii) evaluating the factors that promote or inhibit their success and failure in practic
Organisationskultur. Eine Konkretisierung aus systemtheoretischer Perspektive
KĂŒhl S. Organisationskultur. Eine Konkretisierung aus systemtheoretischer Perspektive. Managementforschung. 2018;28(1):7-35.Die Bestimmung des VerhĂ€ltnisses von InformalitĂ€t und Organisationskultur bereitet in der Organisationstheorie Schwierigkeiten. Das liegt daran, dass der Begriff InformalitĂ€t hĂ€ufig stillschweigend durch den Begriff der Organisationskultur ersetzt wurde, ohne dass dafĂŒr eine prĂ€zise, abgrenzungsscharfe Definition vorgenommen worden wĂ€re. Unter RĂŒckgriff auf Ăberlegungen von Dario RodrĂguez argumentiert dieser Artikel, dass die beiden Begriffe Organisationskultur und InformalitĂ€t das gleiche PhĂ€nomen bezeichnen: die nichtentschiedenen EntscheidungsprĂ€missen einer Organisation. Dabei wird systematisch zwischen âunentscheidbaren EntscheidungsprĂ€missenâ und âprinzipiell entscheidbaren, aber nicht entschiedenen EntscheidungsprĂ€missenâ unterschieden. Es wird gezeigt, wie sich mit einer prĂ€zisen Bestimmung ĂŒber das Konzept der EntscheidungsprĂ€missen Ordnung in die âwilden Merkmallistenâ der Literatur sowohl ĂŒber InformalitĂ€t als auch Organisationskultur bringen lĂ€sst und empirische PhĂ€nomene genauer erfasst werden können
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