Giving Voice to the Voiceless: The Use of Digital Technologies by Marginalized Groups

This paper reports on a workshop hosted at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in September, 2018. The workshop, called “Giving Voice to the Voiceless: The Use of Digital Technologies by Marginalized Groups”, focused on discussing how marginalized groups use digital technologies to raise their voices. At the workshop, a diverse group of scholars and doctoral students presented research projects and perspectives on the role that digital technologies have in activist projects that represent marginalized groups that have gained momentum in the last few years. The studies and viewpoints presented shed light on four areas in which IS research can expand our understanding about how marginalized groups use digital technologies to address societal challenges: 1) the rise of cyberactivism, 2) resource mobilization for cyberactivism, 3) cyberactivism by and with marginalized groups, and 4) research methods for examining how marginalized groups use digital technologies

Emotions in business-to-business service relationships

Emotion in business-to-business service relationships regarding cargo services is explored. The service relationship is characterised by mutual trust and cooperation. Contact is mainly via telephone or e-mail with some face-to-face interactions and participants providing a complex, multi-skilled seamless service. Experience rather than training plays a vital role with long-term service relationships built up and maintained. Emotional sensitivity is acquired partly by experience and a repeat customer base but mainly through a genuine desire to help and get to know others. In contrast to the view of emotional labour bringing managerial control or adverse affects to service staff, the emotion engendered by this work is authentic expression bringing personal satisfaction

Co-expression of CD39 and CD103 identifies tumor-reactive CD8 T cells in human solid tumors.

Identifying tumor antigen-specific T cells from cancer patients has important implications for immunotherapy diagnostics and therapeutics. Here, we show that CD103+CD39+ tumor-infiltrating CD8 T cells (CD8 TIL) are enriched for tumor-reactive cells both in primary and metastatic tumors. This CD8 TIL subset is found across six different malignancies and displays an exhausted tissue-resident memory phenotype. CD103+CD39+ CD8 TILs have a distinct T-cell receptor (TCR) repertoire, with T-cell clones expanded in the tumor but present at low frequencies in the periphery. CD103+CD39+ CD8 TILs also efficiently kill autologous tumor cells in a MHC-class I-dependent manner. Finally, higher frequencies of CD103+CD39+ CD8 TILs in patients with head and neck cancer are associated with better overall survival. Our data thus describe an approach for detecting tumor-reactive CD8 TILs that will help define mechanisms of existing immunotherapy treatments, and may lead to future adoptive T-cell cancer therapies

Resist or Comply:The Power Dynamics of Organizational Routines during Mergers

The role of power and agency in the development of organizational routines is under-theorized. In this paper, we draw on an in-depth qualitative case study of a merger between two academic institutions, a college of art and a university, and examine the diverging responses of two organizational routines (admissions and budgeting) during the course of the merger to understand how power dynamics contribute to resistance/compliance of routines. Our findings suggest that the differences in routines’ responses to a merger initiative can be explained by applying Bourdieu's theory of practice and by employing the concepts of field and symbolic capital to unpack power relations in the context of organizational routines, and to disclose why some routine participants can exercise their agency while others cannot. We find that (a) the field within which a routine operates and (b) the actors’ symbolic capital and position-taking during change implementation shape routines’ responses to organizational change initiatives

Managing talent across advanced and emerging economies: HR issues and challenges in a Sino-German strategic collaboration

The human resource (HR) practices involved in global talent management continue to advance and evolve. A majority of talent management commentary is from multinational corporation (MNC) perspectives. However, the less commented small-to-medium-sized enterprise (SME) also confronts challenges grounded in economic (i.e. resources, finance), organisational (i.e. size, scope and structure) and consequent behavioural rationales (i.e. mindsets and stances). This paper establishes and examines a number of propositions which consider how these factors impact on an advanced economy SME’s talent management in emerging economy collaborations. An interpretive qualitative methodology is employed using interviews conducted within two cases – SME and an MNC comparator case. The SME case is used as the driving force of the paper and its theoretical focus and findings. The MNC is used to develop issues as a comparator case. The findings show SME economic and organisational drivers producing behavioural dynamics in relation to mimesis of planned actions yet informal serendipitous responses in reality; a predilection for the proximate and familiar; design configurations of short-term expatriate visits and inpatriates; cumulating in ongoing inpatriate acculturisation and re-acculturation oscillation. Consequently, the implication is that the SME needs a HR practices encompassing resignation to the situation, flexibility and resilience in order to survive and progress

Geospatial data analysis in Russia’s geoweb

The chapter examines the role of geospatial data in Russia’s online ecosystem. Facilitated by the rise of geographic information systems and user-generated content, the distribution of geospatial data has blurred the line between physical spaces and their virtual representations. The chapter discusses different sources of these data available for Digital Russian Studies (e.g., social data and crowdsourced databases) together with the novel techniques for extracting geolocation from various data formats (e.g., textual documents and images). It also scrutinizes different ways of using these data, varying from mapping the spatial distribution of social and political phenomena to investigating the use of geotag data for cultural practices’ digitization to exploring the use of geoweb for narrating individual and collective identities online

The Impact of Digital Storytelling on Social Agency: Early Experience at an Online University

Digital Storytelling\u27 is a term often used to refer to a number of different types of digital narrative including web-based stories, hypertexts, videoblogs and computer games. This emergent form of creative work has found an outlet in a wide variety of different domains ranging from community social history, to cookbooks, to the classroom. It is the latter domain that provides the focus for this paper, specifically the online classroom at the tertiary level...Early feedback from students suggests that listening to and telling \u27true stories\u27 was a compelling and emotionally-engaging experience, providing an opportunity for \u27transformative reflection\u27 (Lambert 2000). By including multimedia, learners were able to build upon the fundamentals, presenting content in an easy-to-absorb and compelling way. In terms of team assignments students learned to become more effective actors in collaborative work environments