Adult Learning Theory: Insights Relevant to the Appropriation of Ideas, Theories, Concepts and Models by Management Practitioners.

The core aim of the overall research project is to explore the appropriation of ideas, theories, concepts and models by individual management practitioners

The appropriation of ideas, theories, concepts and models by management practitioners

During the second half of the 20th century there has been both a burgeoning intellectual interest in business and management as a topic and an exponential growth in the formal study of business and management as an academic subject. Indeed by the end of the century it was\ud estimated that worldwide there were 8,000 business schools and more than 13 million students of business and management. In addition, it was estimated that worldwide annual expenditure on university level business and management education had reached US $15 billion (The\ud Global Foundation for Management Education, 2008).\ud However, despite this there is a lack of clarity regarding both the scale and the nature of the influence that academic scholarship exerts over managers. Accordingly this research study has sought to investigate the appropriation of ideas, theories, concepts and models by management practitioners. The thesis has reviewed and evaluated the two most obvious, most established and most influential potential explanations. These were diffusion of innovations (Rogers, 1962) and fashion theory (Abrahamson, 1991 & 1996; Abrahamson & Fairchild, 1999). It has been concluded that whilst both these potential explanations provided important insights, neither was able to provide a comprehensive theoretical foundation for this research study. Accordingly, a much broader range of pertinent scholarship was reviewed and evaluated. This included, but is not limited to, the scholarship that is associated with learning by adults (Dewey, 1933; Bartlett, 1967; Schank & Abelson, 1976; Mezirow, 1977). Although this additional scholarship provided a further range of potential explanations, the extent to which any of these would be found within the particular setting of management\ud practitioners remained unclear. In addition, the literature review highlighted a number of unresolved debates regarding issues such as (i) whether management was a science or an\ud applied science; (ii) whether it was a craft or a profession; (iii) whether in reality there were\ud fashionable trends in management practice or whether in fact such practices were remarkably stable; and (iv) whether management theoreticians, gurus and consultants actually exerted significant influence over management practitioners. The literature review also highlighted\ud methodological concerns relating to the use of citation analysis as a proxy for primary information regarding managerial practice. \ud Hence, this research is situated in a gap which is delineated by the unresolved issues that are associated with both diffusion theory and fashion theory; the applicability of the broader range of scholarship to a management setting; the unresolved debates within this field of interest and the need to obtain primary information relating to management practice, rather than being dependant upon citation analysis.\ud The research study has utilised qualitative data and inductive reasoning to examine these matters and the overarching research philosophy has been that of realism (Ritchie & Lewis, 2003). Ultimately, 39 semi-structured, recorded interviews were undertaken using the critical\ud incident technique (Flanagan, 1954). Collectively these interviews lasted for 35 hours and obtained information relating to 160 critical incidents. The verbatim transcripts of the interviews totalled 350,000 words.\ud A case study analysis of this data was undertaken to examine the decision making of the interviewees in relation to some of their most challenging managerial situations. This analysis concluded that for the ‘generality’ of these interviewees; theory played little, or no, overt part in\ud their decision making. The data was also subjected to a content analysis using a bespoke compendium of 450 ‘terms’ that represented the development of theorising about management over the whole of the 20th century. This analysis concluded that the influence of the 20th\ud century’s management theoreticians over these interviewees was weak. Finally, the possibility that any such influence might be a covert, rather than an overt; phenomenon was examined using both the insights of intertextuality (Allen, 2000; Bazerman, 2004) and the framework analysis technique (Ritchie, Spencer & O’Connor, 2003). This analysis demonstrated that the discourse, dialogue and language of these interviewees could be indexed to four domains; (i)\ud the theoretical; (ii) the conceptual; (iii) the tactical; and (iv) the practical.\ud The intertextual indexing outcomes were corroborated both by substantial extracts from the verbatim interview transcripts and by three unrelated strands of scholarship. These were (i)\ud adaptive memory systems (Schacter, 2001); (ii) the realities of management (Carlson, 1954;\ud Stewart, 1983; Mintzberg, 1989) and (iii) the role of concepts and conceptual thinking in nursing\ud (McFarlane, 1977; Gordon, 1998; Orem, 2001).\ud On this basis it has been concluded that management can be characterised as a conceptual discipline; that in its essential nature management is at least as conceptual as it is either theoretical or practical; and that managers appropriate concepts and ideas, rather than theories\ud and models per se

The Trypanosoma brucei AIR9-like protein is cytoskeleton-associated and is required for nucleus positioning and accurate cleavage furrow placement

AIR9 is a cytoskeleton-associated protein in Arabidopsis thaliana with roles in cytokinesis and cross wall maturation, and reported homologues in land plants and excavate protists, including trypanosomatids. We show that the Trypanosoma brucei AIR9-like protein, TbAIR9, is also cytoskeleton-associated and colocalises with the subpellicular microtubules. We find it to be expressed in all life cycle stages and show that it is essential for normal proliferation of trypanosomes in vitro. Depletion of TbAIR9 from procyclic trypanosomes resulted in increased cell length due to increased microtubule extension at the cell posterior. Additionally, the nucleus was re-positioned to a location posterior to the kinetoplast, leading to defects in cytokinesis and the generation of aberrant progeny. In contrast, in bloodstream trypanosomes, depletion of TbAIR9 had little effect on nucleus positioning, but resulted in aberrant cleavage furrow placement and the generation of non-equivalent daughter cells following cytokinesis. Our data provide insight into the control of nucleus positioning in this important pathogen and emphasise differences in the cytoskeleton and cell cycle control between two life cycle stages of the T. brucei parasite

The Contribution of Academic Scholarship to Management Development.

Purpose: This paper explores the impact of academic scholarship on the development and practice of experienced managers. Design / Methodology: Semi-structured interviews with experienced managers, modelled on the critical incident technique. ‘Intertextuality’ and framework analysis technique are used to examine whether the use of academic scholarship is a sub-conscious phenomenon. Findings: Experienced managers make little direct use of academic scholarship, using it only occasionally to provide retrospective confirmation of decisions or a technique they can apply. However, academic scholarship informs their practice in an indirect way, their understanding of the ‘gist’ of scholarship comprising one of many sources which they synthesise and evaluate as part of their development process. Practical implications: Managers and management development practitioners should focus upon developing skills of synthesising the ‘gist’ of academic scholarship with other sources of data, rather than upon the detailed remembering, understanding and application of specific scholarship, and upon finding / providing the time and space for that ‘gisting’ and synthesis to take place. Originality / Value: The paper addresses contemporary concerns about the appropriateness of the material delivered on management education programmes for management development. It is original in doing this from the perspective of experienced managers, and in using intertextual analysis to reveal not only the direct but also the indirect uses of they make of such scholarship. The finding of the importance of understanding the ‘gist’ rather than the detail of academic theory represents a key conceptual innovation

The contribution of ancestry, chance, and past and ongoing selection to adaptive evolution

The relative contributions of ancestry, chance, and past and ongoing election to variation in one adaptive (larval feeding rate) and one seemingly nonadaptive (pupation height) trait were determined in populations of Drosophila melanogaster adapting to either low or high larval densities in the laboratory. Larval feeding rates increased rapidly in response to high density, and the effects of ancestry, past selection and chance were ameliorated by ongoing selection within 15-20 generations. Similarly, in populations previously kept at high larval density, and then switched to low larval density, the decline of larval feeding rate to ancestral levels was rapid (15-20 generations) and complete, providing support for a previously stated hypothesis regarding the costs of faster feeding in Drosophila larvae. Variation among individuals was the major contributor to variation in pupation height, a trait that would superficially appear to be nonadaptive in the environmental context of the populations used in this study because it did not diverge between sets of populations kept at low versus high larval density for many generations. However, the degree of divergence among populations (FST) for pupation height was significantly less than expected for a selectively neutral trait, and we integrate results from previous studies to suggest that the variation for pupation height among populations is constrained by stabilizing selection, with a flat, plateau-like fitness function that, consequently, allows for substantial phenotypic variation within populations. Our results support the view that the genetic imprints of history (ancestry and past selection) in outbreeding sexual populations are typically likely to be transient in the face of ongoing selection and recombination. The results also illustrate the heuristic point that different forms of selection-for example directional versus stabilizing selection-acting on a trait in different populations may often not be due to differently shaped fitness functions, but rather due to differences in how the fitness function maps onto the actual distribution of phenotypes in a given population. We discuss these results in the light of previous work on reverse evolution, and the role of ancestry, chance, and past and ongoing selection in adaptive evolution

Studies on Herpes Simplex Virus Type 1 Latency in Tissue Culture Cells

After primary infection, herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) remains latent in neurons of the host. To facilitate studies on HSV-1 latency, models of latency have been developed in tissue culture. The HSV-1 protein Vmw65 is an essential structural component of the virus tegument. Following fusion of the virus envelope with the cell membrane Vmw65 is released into the cell and forms a complex with cellular factors which bind to TAATGARAT (where R is a purine) elements upstream of the viral immediate early (IE) genes. Once the complex has bound to DNA, the acidic carboxy-terminal domain of Vmw65 stimulates transcription by recruiting components of the RNA polymerase II transcription initiation complex to the promoter. The mutant ml814 has a4 amino acid insertion in Vmw65 which disrupts its ability to form the transactivation complex, as a consequence levels of IE transcription are reduced. During infection of cells with in1814 at low multiplicity of infection (MOI), only a minor proportion of infecting viruses undergo replication, whereas the majority of viral genomes enter a quiescent state. These quiescent genomes can be reactivated by expression within the cell of the HSV-1 encoded protein Vmwl 10 and probably by other herpesvirus proteins functionally equivalent to Vmw110. At high MOI in1814 replicates as efficiently as wild type virus. To perform structural and functional studies on the quiescent ml814 genomes, it is necessary to permit infection of cultured cells at high MOI. An in vitro latency system has been developed by D.R.S. Jamieson and C.M. Preston using two modifications which further reduce the expression of viral IE proteins, thereby enabling infection of human foetal lung (HFL) cells with in1814 at high MOI without extensive cell destruction. Firstly, the regulatory region controlling transcription of the gene encoding the IE protein Vmwl 10 has been replaced by the Moloney murine leukaemia virus (MMLV) enhancer. Since the MMLV enhancer is a relatively inefficient promoter in HFL cells the resulting mutant, named ml820, exhibits a phenotype equivalent to that of a Vmwl 10 deletion mutant of in1814 when titrated on HFL cells. Another modification is pretreatment of the cells with human interferon alpha (IFNalpha). Treatment of cells with IFNalpha results in an antiviral state against HSV-1 which has been attributed to reduced viral IE gene expression. Previous studies demonstrated that infection of IFNalpha-treated HFL cells with ml820 at high MOI results in high efficiency retention of viral genomes in a transcriptionally repressed state. The purpose of the study reported here was to extend previous analysis by D.R.S. Jamieson on the structure of the ml820 genome during latency in vitro, and to characterise early events in the establishment of latency. Initial experiments confirmed previous data showing that the ml820 genome is nonlinear in the in vitro latency system, as was reported to occur in neurons in vivo. Quantification of Southern blots revealed that after an initial input MOI of 120 particles of in820 per cell, approximately 84% of the total nuclear viral DNA was nonlinear and that on average each cell retained approximately 12 viral genomes. Upon reactivation of latent in820 by superinfection of latently infected HFL cells in the presence of an inhibitor of DNA replication, the reactivated genomes remained nonlinear, demonstrating that a change from a nonlinear to a linear form is not a requirement for reactivation. The configuration of the linear genomes also remained unchanged upon reactivation. During in vitro latency, the nonlinear viral genomes were more sensitive to nucleases than the linear genomes. Linearity and resistance to nucleases is indicative of genomes which are not uncoated and are thus unable to circularise. Comparison of rates of uncoating after infection of BHK, HeLa, CV-1 and HFL cells revealed that uncoating appeared significantly slower in HFL cells than in the other cell types tested. Latent HSV-1 DNA in the brainstems of mice is associated with nucleosomes in a chromatin structure. Previous studies examining the structure of in820 in the in vitro latency system showed that the thymidine kinaase (TK) gene is not bound by nucleosomes with regular spacing. The study reported here also showed the absence of a regular chromatin structure on the TK gene and furthermore that the nature of the inhibitor of DNA replication used to prevent the spread of nonlatent virus was not a significant variable. Fascinatingly, the LAT/Vmw110 encoding region, the only region transcriptionally active during latency in vivo, was in a regular chromatin structure in the in vitro latency system. However, when the LAT / Vmwl 10 encoding region and the TK gene were examined in a parallel experiment, both regions exhibited a possible regular nucleosomal structure suggesting that a regular nucleosomal structure exists on the entire genome and is not confined to the LAT/Vmw110 region. Thus the previous inability to detect chromatin on the TK gene may have been caused by differences in the arrangement of nucleosome between experiments or experimental differences in the ability to detect nucleosome-associated DNA. (Abstract shortened by ProQuest.)

Changes Suggested in Washington Practice and Procedure: Comparative Analysis of State Rules and Statutes with New Federal Rules Points to Desirable Amendments

In accordance with action taken at the July Convention of the Washington State Bar Association, the Board of Governors appointed a committee (Paul P. Ashley of Seattle, chairman) on Judicial Administration to concern itself with the matters considered and reported upon by the section on Judicial Administration of the American Bar Association. This committee divided itself into sections, and to each was assigned one of the subjects under consideration, including Pre-trial Procedure, Improvement in the Law of Evidence, Trial Practice and Administrative Agencies and Tribunals. Among other things the American Bar Association recommended that the State Bar Associations undertake to bring state practice into close conformity with the Rules of Civil Procedure for the District Courts of the United States, as recently adopted. The section on this subject consists of Honorable George Donworth, formerly District Judge for the Western District of Washington and member of the advisory committee appointed by the United States Supreme Court for the drafting of the new federal rules; the Honorable John S. Robinson, Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of Washington; Mr. Elwood Hutchinson, member of the Yakima Bar and winner of the Ross A. B. A. award in 1937, and Mr. L. B. Hamblen of Spokane, chairman. Already noted for their leadership in matters of judicial reform, the Bench and Bar of the state of Washington now have at their disposal the specific proposals formulated after careful study by these able men. Suggestions and criticisms from the Bar are invited and, in light of those received, further study will be given to this material before it is presented to the annual convention in July

Economists and politicians : the influence of economic ideas upon labor politicians and governments, 1931-1949

Throughout the period 1931-1949, the Australian Labor Party tended to be preoccupied with the role of money as a cause of, and cure for, economic instability. The party was very much influenced by a long tradition of economic thought which saw the business cycle as an essentially monetary phenomenon. In part, this tradition affected the A.L.P. through the influence of 'quack' writers in the 'monetary radical' tradition, who combined a monetary view of the business cycle with a fear of financial manipulation and a commitment to the abolition of interest. At least as significant as this unorthodox. influence was, however, the impact upon Labor thinking of the monetary views of the main school of expansionist economics of the 1920s. Labor's preoccupation with money was due in no small measure to the way in which much of the 'mainstream' economic debate focussed upon money in the 1920s and into the 1930s. Labor economic thinking was not suddenly transformed as a result of a 'Keynesian revolution' following the publication of the General Theory in 1936. The party had absorbed much of the 'Keynesian' policy message - in particular, about the centrality of counter-cyclical public works - well before 1936. Nevertheless, because of its long attachment to purely monetary theories of capitalist economic instability, Labor did not readily absorb the 'Keynesian' view of the way in which the economic mechanism operates. The party was, for example, inclined to view public works not so much as an instrument of 'fiscal' policy, as a conduit for monetary expansion. Even in the 1940s, the A.L.P. remained deeply imbued with the traditional view that monetary mechanisms played an all-important role in the economy. In government, Labor's ideological zeal was directed towards banking reform. By contrast, Labor politicians were not greatly interested in the issues (concerning the role of planning in normal peacetime economic management, and the form and social content of a full employment program) which were dividing economists and public servants at the time

Emergeables: Deformable Displays for Continuous Eyes-Free Mobile Interaction

International audienceWe present the concept of Emergeables - mobile surfaces that can deform or 'morph' to provide fully-actuated, tangible controls. Our goal in this work is to provide the flexibility of graphical touchscreens, coupled with the affordance and tactile benefits offered by physical widgets. In contrast to previous research in the area of deformable displays, our work focuses on continuous controls (e.g., dials or sliders), and strives for fully-dynamic positioning, providing versatile widgets that can change shape and location depending on the user's needs. We describe the design and implementation of two prototype emergeables built to demonstrate the concept, and present an in-depth evaluation that compares both with a touchscreen alternative. The results show the strong potential of emergeables for on-demand, eyes-free control of continuous parameters, particularly when comparing the accuracy and usability of a high-resolution emergeable to a standard GUI approach. We conclude with a discussion of the level of resolution that is necessary for future emergeables, and suggest how high-resolution versions might be achieved

Social science quantitative methods capacity building in Wales: ESRC/HEFCW scoping study

Previous research undertaken by the ESRC has revealed a “deficit” of quantitative social science researchers and identified that this should be tackled early in the academic life course. However, there is substantial heterogeneity across disciplines with previous studies indicating what while some subjects suffer serious deficits in quantitative methods research capacity, other disciplines such as economics and psychology are perceived to have strengths in quantitative methods training and research. There may be a particular problem in quantitative social science in Wales (possibly relating to the visible “Welsh deficit” in social science funding); however it is difficult to identify the configuration, strengths and weaknesses of quantitative social science in Wales from routine data. To provide more data on the current position of quantitative social science in Wales, and to identify potential ways forward to improve the situation in Wales, ESRC and HEFCW jointly funded this scoping study. The study mapped quantitative social science research (and training) expertise in Wales by undertaking an all-Wales questionnaire survey of social scientists in Higher Education Institutions in Wales. This was complemented by a number of semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders with an interest or expertise in quantitative social science research methods. A workshop including key stakeholders was then held to discuss the outcomes of the survey and interviews and recommendations for future action. This report presents the main findings of the study, which include the need for future actions to recognise the differences between disciplines, to not solely focus on advanced quantitative methods, and to be linked with wider initiatives to improve social science research methods training and capacity more generally. Many issues identified were not Wales specific and optimal solutions include increasing access to and participation in wider UK initiatives rather than solely Wales based actions. The report recommends the creation of a Centre in Wales to co-ordinate and deliver Wales-based solutions, link with UK initiatives and break down disciplinary and methodological barriers. Other recommendations address the deficit at different stages in the academic life course; undergraduate, postgraduate, post-doctoral and continued professional development, as well as suggestions for building wider quantitative capacity in Wales, monitoring and further research