The governance of co-operatives and mutual associations: a paradox perspective

This paper presents a new theoretical framework for understanding the governance of co-operative and mutual organisations. The theoretical literature on the governance of co-operatives is relatively undeveloped in comparison with that on corporate governance. The paper briefly reviews some of the main theoretical perspectives on corporate governance and discusses how they can be usefully extended to throw light on the governance of co-operatives and mutuals. However, taken individually these different theories are rather one dimensional, only illuminating a particular aspect of the board's role. This has lead to calls for a new conceptual framework that can help integrate the insights of these different theories. The paper argues that a paradox perspective offers a promising way forward. Contrasting the different theoretical perspectives highlights some of the important paradoxes, ambiguities and tensions that boards face

Governing Boards and Profound Organizational Change in Hospitals

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/69047/2/10.1177_107755878904600204.pd

Hierarchy of Scales in Language Dynamics

Methods and insights from statistical physics are finding an increasing variety of applications where one seeks to understand the emergent properties of a complex interacting system. One such area concerns the dynamics of language at a variety of levels of description, from the behaviour of individual agents learning simple artificial languages from each other, up to changes in the structure of languages shared by large groups of speakers over historical timescales. In this Colloquium, we survey a hierarchy of scales at which language and linguistic behaviour can be described, along with the main progress in understanding that has been made at each of them − much of which has come from the statistical physics community. We argue that future developments may arise by linking the different levels of the hierarchy together in a more coherent fashion, in particular where this allows more effective use of rich empirical data sets

Monitoring global rates of biodiversity change: challenges that arise in meeting the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) 2010 goals

By agreeing to strive for ‘a significant reduction in the current rate of loss of biological diversity’ by the year 2010, political leaders at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (held in Johannesburg, South Africa) presented conservation scientists with a great opportunity, but also one of their most significant challenges. This is an extremely exciting and laudable development, but this reporting process could be made yet more powerful if it incorporates, from the outset, independent scientific assessment of the measures, how they are analysed, and practical ways of plugging key gaps. This input is crucial if the measures are to be widely owned, credible and robust to the vigorous external scrutiny to which they will doubtless be exposed. Assessing how rates of biodiversity loss have changed from current levels by 2010 will require that a given attribute has been measured at least three times; however, most habitats, species, populations and ecosystem services have not been assessed even once. Furthermore, the best data on which to base estimates of biodiversity loss are biased towards the charismatic vertebrate species; unfortunately, these supply minimal services to the human economy. We have to find ways to redress this taxonomic imbalance and expand our analyses to consider the vast diversity of invertebrate, fungal and microbial species that play a role in determining human health and economic welfare. In the first part of this paper I will use examples from local and regional monitoring of biological diversity to examine the desired properties of ‘ideal indicators’. I will then change focus and examine an initial framework that asks how we might monitor changes in the economic goods and services provided by natural ecosystems. I will use this exercise to examine how the set of possible indicators given by the Convention on Biological Diversity might be modified in ways that provide a more critical assay of the economic value of biological diversity. Here I will emphasize that we need not only to monitor these benefits, but also to significantly increase public awareness of human dependence upon the role that non-voting species play in driving the world's financial economy