Discovery as abductive mechanism for reorienting habits within organizational change

Process studies of organizational and strategic change have drawn attention to the dynamics that generate such change, but we still know little about how discovery unfolds within change. A field study of efforts to create a new system for delivering inpatient medical care revealed that surprises and discoveries, and constructively oriented responses to them, occurred continuously throughout organizational change, not merely at the outset. Seeking to understand this empirical puzzle, I drew on the concept of abduction from pragmatism and organizational studies. This study makes two contributions to theory about the relation between discovery and change. First, I develop a framework that explicates the central role of discovery as an abductive mechanism that enables participants to reorient prevailing habits. Analyses reveal discovery to operate through what I call abduction sequences, or loosely connected and overlapping episodes of creative social activity. Three key motors and their attendant feelings drive discovery via abduction sequences: surprise, doubt and inquiry. Second, I provide a methodology for use in future research on discovery. Specifically, I propose abduction sequences as a useful analytic means for examining discovery within change and other inquiry processes, such as innovation and learning that generate fundamentally new ways of working.Published versio

Mental health conceptualization and resilience factors in the Kalasha youth: An indigenous ethnic and religious minority community in Pakistan

The Kalasha are a religious, ethnic, and linguistic minority community in Pakistan. They are indigenous people living in remote valleys of the Hindu Kush Mountains in northern Pakistan, neighboring Afghanistan. The Kalasha are pastoral, as well as agricultural people to some extent, although they are increasingly facing pressures from globalization and social change, which may be influencing youth and community development. Their traditional world view dichotomizes and emphasizes on the division of the pure (Onjeshta) and the impure (Pragata). There remains a scarcity of literature on mental health and resilience of indigenous communities in South Asia and Pakistan generally, and the polytheistic Kalasha community specifically. Thus, the current study was conducted with the aim to explore the cultural protective factors (resilience) of the Kalasha youth (adolescents and emerging adults) and to explore their perceived etiological understandings and preferred interventions for mental health support systems. The theoretical framework of Bronfenbrenner's (1, 2) ecological systems model was used. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was conducted, considering the advantage of its idiographic approach and the “double hermeneutic” analytic process. This methodology was consistent with the aim to understand and make sense of mental health and resilience from the Kalasha indigenous perspective. A total of 12 in-depth interviews were conducted with adolescents and emerging adults (5 males, 7 females), along with ethnographic observations. The analysis revealed 3 superordinate themes of mental health perceptions and interventions, each with more specific emergent themes: (1) Psychological Resilience/Cultural Protective Factors Buffering Against Mental Health Problems (Intra-Communal Bonding & Sharing; Kalasha Festivals & Traditions; Purity Concept; Behavioral Practice of Happiness and Cognitive Patterns); (2) Perceived Causes of Mental Health Issues (Biological & Psychosocial; Supernatural & Spiritual; Environmental); and (3) Preferred Interventions [Shamanic Treatment; Ta'awiz (Amulets); Communal Sharing & Problem Solving; Medical Treatment; Herbal Methods]. The overall findings point to the need for developing culturally-sensitive and indigenous measures and therapeutic interventions. The findings highlighted the Kalasha cultural practices which may promote resilience. The findings also call for indigenous sources of knowledge to be considered when collaboratively designing public health program

Put you in the problem:effects of self-pronouns on mathematical problem solving

Self-cues such as personal pronouns are known to elicit processing biases, such as attention capture and prioritisation in working memory. This may impact the performance of tasks that have a high attentional load like mathematical problem-solving. Here, we compared the speed and accuracy with which children solved numerical problems that included either the self-cue “you,” or a different character name. First, we piloted a self-referencing manipulation with N = 52, 7 to 11 year-olds, testing performance on addition and subtraction problems that had either a single referent (“You”/“Sam”) or more than one referent. We took into account operation and positioning of the pronoun and also measured performance on attention and working memory tasks. We found a robust accuracy advantage for problems that included “you,” regardless of how many characters were included. The accuracy advantage for problems with a self-pronoun was not statistically associated with individual differences in attention or working memory. In our main study (9 to 11 year-olds, N = 144), we manipulated problem difficulty by creating consistently and inconsistently worded addition and subtraction problems. We found significantly higher speed and accuracy for problems that included “you.” However, this effect varied by task difficulty, with the self-pronoun effect being strongest in the most difficult inconsistently worded, subtraction problems. The advantage of problems with a self-pronoun was not associated with individual differences in working memory. These findings suggest that self-cues like the pronoun “you” can be usefully applied in numerical processing tasks, an effect that may be attributable to the effects of self-cues on attention.</p

Corrosion Inhibition Effect of Pyridine-2-Thiol for Brass in An Acidic Environment

Article states that the inhibitive performance of pyridine-2-thiol added to a corrosive solution was investigated for brass using potentiodynamic polarization, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Scanning electron microscopy showed defect free and less scale formation for the inhibited surface but the bare brass surface had larger amounts of scale formation. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and UV-vis spectroscopy was used to investigate surface chemical composition and inhibitor structural changes over time

Mycoplasma genitalium in the US (MyGeniUS): Surveillance data from sexual health clinics in 4 US regions

BACKGROUND: Mycoplasma genitalium (MG) is on the CDC Watch List of Antimicrobial Resistance Threats, yet there is no systematic surveillance to monitor change. METHODS: We initiated surveillance in sexual health clinics in 6 cities, selecting a quota sample of urogenital specimens tested for gonorrhea and/or chlamydia. We abstracted patient data from medical records and detected MG and macrolide-resistance mutations (MRMs) by nucleic acid amplification testing. We used Poisson regression to estimate adjusted prevalence ratios (aPRs) and 95% CIs, adjusting for sampling criteria (site, birth sex, symptom status). RESULTS: From October-December 2020 we tested 1743 urogenital specimens: 57.0% from males, 46.1% from non-Hispanic Black persons, and 43.8% from symptomatic patients. MG prevalence was 16.6% (95% CI: 14.9-18.5%; site-specific range: 9.9-23.5%) and higher in St Louis (aPR: 1.9; 1.27-2.85), Greensboro (aPR: 1.8; 1.18-2.79), and Denver (aPR: 1.7; 1.12-2.44) than Seattle. Prevalence was highest in persons \u3c18 years (30.4%) and declined 3% per each additional year of age (aPR: .97; .955-.982). MG was detected in 26.8%, 21.1%, 11.8%, and 15.4% of urethritis, vaginitis, cervicitis, and pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), respectively. It was present in 9% of asymptomatic males and 15.4% of asymptomatic females, and associated with male urethritis (aPR: 1.7; 1.22-2.50) and chlamydia (aPR: 1.7; 1.13-2.53). MRM prevalence was 59.1% (95% CI: 53.1-64.8%; site-specific range: 51.3-70.6%). MRMs were associated with vaginitis (aPR: 1.8; 1.14-2.85), cervicitis (aPR: 3.5; 1.69-7.30), and PID cervicitis (aPR: 1.8; 1.09-3.08). CONCLUSIONS: MG infection is common in persons at high risk of sexually transmitted infections; testing symptomatic patients would facilitate appropriate therapy. Macrolide resistance is high and azithromycin should not be used without resistance testing

Factor structure of Urdu version of the flourishing scale

Background: A great deal of research has been carried out on the assessment of the eudaimonic perspective of psychological well-being and the hedonic perspective of subjective well-being. The Flourishing Scale (FS) has been extensively used in research and practice, as it assesses the fundamental aspects of social psychological functioning. Nevertheless, the psychometric properties of Urdu versions of eudaimonic measures, such as the FS, have not yet been ascertained. The translation and validation of the FS in the Urdu language was not available, and hence this study was planned with the aim to validate the Urdu version of the FS. Methods: We assessed the psychometric properties of the FS in a sample of adults aged 18 years and above in Pakistan (N = 130) using exploratory factor analysis based on principal component analysis with varimax rotation and confirmatory factor analysis. Results: The exploratory factor analysis confirmed the unidimensional nature of the 8-item FS. We assessed that the Urdu version of the FS showed a high internal consistency reliability (α = 0.914) with a significant intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), p < 0.001). In our study, the Kaiser–Mayer–Olkin value was 0.915 with a chi-square test value (χ2) of 637.687, and Bartlett's test of sphericity was significant (df = 28, p < 0.001). The intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) at test–retest for all domains were statistically significant (p < 0.001) and showed excellent agreement for all the items. The revised confirmatory factor analysis revealed a good-fit model, but with item 8—“People respect me”—removed due to its lower factor loading. Conclusions: The findings suggest that the FS is a psychometrically sound instrument for assessing social psychological functioning among adults in Pakistan. Therefore, the validated Urdu version of the FS may be used in future studies of well-being in clinical psychology and positive psychology

Process of diffusing cancer survivorship care into oncology practice

The LIVESTRONG Centers of Excellence were funded to increase the effectiveness of survivorship care in oncology practice. This study describes the ongoing process of adopting and implementing survivorship care using the framework of the diffusion of innovation theory of change. Primary data collection included telephone interviews with 39 members from the eight centers and site visits. Organizational characteristics, overall progress, and challenges for implementation were collected from proposals and annual reports. Creating an awareness of cancer survivorship care was a major accomplishment (relative advantage). Adoption depended on the fit within the cancer center (compatibility), and changed over time based on trial and error (trialability). Implementing survivorship care within the existing culture of oncology and breaking down resistance to change was a lengthy process (complexity). Survivorship care became sustainable as it became reimbursed, and more new patients were seen (observability). Innovators and early adopters were crucial to success. Diffusion of innovation theory can provide a strategy to evaluate adoption and implementation of cancer survivorship programs into clinical practice

Buffy the vampire slayer: what being Jewish has to do with it

This article examines the whiteness in the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The author argues that the show’s overwhelming whiteness is a product of a generalized white anxiety about the numerical loss of white dominance across the United States and, in particular, in California. The article goes on to think through the role that Jewishness plays in the program, discussing the relationship between the apparently Anglo-American Buffy, played by a Jewish actor, and her sidekick, Willow, who is characterized as Jewish but is played by a non-Jewish actor. The evil master in the first series is given Nazi characteristics and the destruction that he wants to inflict carries connotations of the Holocaust. Structurally, Buffy is produced as the Jew who saves the United States from this demonic destruction. In this traumatic renarrativising, the Holocaust comes to stand for the white-experienced crisis of the loss of white supremacy in the United States. With this reading we can begin to understand the show’s popularity among early adult, predominantly white Americans

Variability in the use of mobile ICTs by homeworkers and its consequences for boundary management and social isolation

We examine how the use of mobile information and communication technologies (ICTs) among self-employed homeworkers affects their experience of work, focusing particularly on where work is carried out, how the work/non-work boundary is managed, and people's experiences of social and professional isolation. Positively, their use enhanced people's sense of spatio-temporal freedom by allowing them to leave the home without compromising their work availability. This also helped reduce people's feelings of social isolation. More negatively, their use enhanced people's sense of 'perpetual contact', creating a sense that work was difficult to escape from. However, the extent to which mobile ICTs were used, and the extent to which their impact on people's experiences of work were understood, were found to vary significantly, highlighting the agency that users have with regard to technology use. The findings are framed by combining Nippert-Eng's boundary work theory, with an 'emergent process' perspective on socio-technical relations

Adult cancer survivorship care: experiences from the LIVESTRONG centers of excellence network

The objectives of this study were to characterize survivorship models of care across eight LIVESTRONG Survivorship Center of Excellence (COE) Network sites and to identify barriers and facilitators influencing survivorship care