Ambiguity and ambivalence: organizational change in government departments

The way in which workers and managers interpret change at work has been an important focus of interest for researchers. This interpretation may find them assimilating change as they listen to accounts from other workers experienced in the outcomes of such events. On the other hand, there may be a divergence among workers concerning the value and meaning to be ascribed to the change events. If this is the case, a culture of ambiguity may be said to exist, where the nature, degree and value of the cultural change are highly contested and remarkably unclear (McLoughlin et al;., 2005). Following Piderit (2000), this paper suggests this may explain the disparity between an individual’s expectancy of change and their response to it, and also that, individuals’ ambivalence may influence whether they accept change, adapt to it, or reject it out-of-hand, . We show how different dimensions of ambivalence in different individuals can lead not only to different responses to imposed change at work, but can also account for individuals coming to terms with the demands of change

Building research capacity in Education: evidence from recent initiatives in England, Scotland and Wales.

There is a pressing need to build research capacity in Education across the UK to combat the effects of the ageing research population and the increasing polarisation between research-intensive institutions and the remainder of the field. This paper draws data from three evaluations of recent initiatives across the UK to explore the necessary conditions for effectively building research capacity. Technicist and situated learning models are explored in relation to the immediate and longer term professional development of the research workforce, and we identify that central to the effectiveness of this professional learning is: (1) interpersonal support from more experienced colleagues; and (2) institutional support for research engagement, primarily in the provision of time and an infrastructure which can support research activity. We conclude that the development of, and engagement with, inter-institutional, inter-project communities is imperative to this process

Predicting the impact of urban flooding using open data

This paper aims to explore whether there is a relationship between search patterns for flood risk information on the Web and how badly localities have been affected by flood events. We hypothesize that localities where people stay more actively informed about potential flooding experience less negative impact than localities where people make less effort to be informed. Being informed, of course, does not hold the waters back; however, it may stimulate (or serve as an indicator of) such resilient behaviours as timely use of sandbags, relocation of possessions from basements to upper floors and/or temporary evacuation from flooded homes to alternative accommodation. We make use of open data to test this relationship empirically. Our results demonstrate that although aggregated Web search reflects average rainfall patterns, its eigenvectors predominantly consist of locations with similar flood impacts during 2014–2015. These results are also consistent with statistically significant correlations of Web search eigenvectors with flood warning and incident reporting datasets

Predicting floods with Flickr tags

Increasingly, user generated content (UGC) in social media postings and their associated metadata such as time and location stamps are being used to provide useful operational information during natural hazard events such as hurricanes, storms and floods. The main advantage of these new sources of data are twofold. First, in a purely additive sense, they can provide much denser geographical coverage of the hazard as compared to traditional sensor networks. Second, they provide what physical sensors are not able to do: By documenting personal observations and experiences, they directly record the impact of a hazard on the human environment. For this reason interpretation of the content (e.g., hashtags, images, text, emojis, etc) and metadata (e.g., keywords, tags, geolocation) have been a focus of much research into social media analytics. However, as choices of semantic tags in the current methods are usually reduced to the exact name or type of the event (e.g., hashtags ‘#Sandy’ or ‘#flooding’), the main limitation of such approaches remains their mere nowcasting capacity. In this study we make use of polysemous tags of images posted during several recent flood events and demonstrate how such volunteered geographic data can be used to provide early warning of an event before its outbreak

From Kontrollverlust to Kontrollgewinn : rediscovering a meso-Level normative hierarchy for integrated water management in England using on-line activities

This paper presents a unique study into how to identify a meso-level normative (i.e., institutional) hierarchy of procedures that aim to deliver the ecological status of waterbodies in the UK. Using traditional survey and workshop methods, the majority of recent studies concentrate on engagement practices between macro- (government bodies) and micro- (local residents) level structures, which can be potentially replicated elsewhere. Meso-level elements (middle-level structures of control) are often regarded as ‘subjective institutional change’, e.g., failures to implement programs locally or misinterpretations of reflexive dialogs with communities. Nevertheless, it is often only meso-level structures that are capable of promoting and replicating policies elsewhere. At the same time, there is increasing appeal by governmental departments for communities to ‘selforganize’ and take responsibility for prioritizing environmental tasks, which themselves might be instigated by local trusts and voluntary organizations, the existence of which remains largely unaccounted for by central offices. The recent proliferation of Twitter accounts, with the prominent themes of water, ecology and ecosystems, which include people, organizations, businesses and ‘bots’ of various types, presents new opportunities for digital methods to gain insights into structures and functions of these virtual communities. We hypothesize that our methods can produce invaluable insights into the ‘crafting’ of environmental institutions through approaches commonly ignored by traditional ‘analog’ meso-level mechanisms. We use the example of Integrated Catchment Management in the UK, and specifically the Tamar Catchment in southwest England, in order to demonstrate how well Twitter can capture this transitory meso-level environmental political system

Evidence-based primary health care and local research: a necessary but problematic partnership

Background Front-line NHS staff undertake small research projects to answer questions about local patients and services, but these projects often face considerable challenges. This paper reports on one such project. Aims and methods of study The study used structured interviews in order to find out about the knowledge of nutrition among Bangladeshis using an NHS Walk-in Centre. Development of the study Time constraints posed considerable difficulties in progressing and completing the study; flaws in the methodology emerged; and underpinning assumptions about health promotion and ethnic minority health beliefs were open to challenge. Learning from the study Despite this, some findings were valuable and have considerable potential as a stimulus to critical thinking among practitioners about their own attitudes, as well as raising issues that future research would find it useful to addres

Teamworking and Lean revisited: a reply to Carter et al

This paper is a reply to Carter et al.’s response to an earlier paper of ours in this journal on the subject of teamworking under Lean in the UK public services . Our reply covers the following issues which Carter et al. have raised: the literature we used to structure our findings; the way in which we used concepts such as autonomy and teamworking; our research methods and approach; how Carter et al.’s newly available data on teamworking might be interpreted; and how data drawn from an official employee attitude survey might best be understood. On the basis of this, we conclude that Carter et al.’s paper fails to meet its objectives. On some things, the authors are simply wrong; on others, they grossly misrepresent our position; on still others, their interpretations are, at best, highly questionable

Basal metabolism, endogenous nitrogen, creatinine and neutral sulphur excretions as a function of body weight.

Publication authorized September 18, 1934.Includes bibliographical references

Evidence-based primary health care and local research: a necessary but problematic partnership

Background: Front-line NHS staff undertake small research projects to answer questions about local patients and services, but these projects often face considerable challenges. This paper reports on one such project. Aims and methods of study:The study used structured interviews in order to find out about the knowledge of nutrition among Bangladeshis using an NHS Walk-in Centre. Development of the study: Time constraints posed considerable difficulties in progressing and completing the study; flaws in the methodology emerged; and underpinning assumptions about health promotion and ethnic minority health beliefs were open to challenge. Learning from the study: Despite this, some findings were valuable and have considerable potential as a stimulus to critical thinking among practitioners about their own attitudes, as well as raising issues that future research would find it useful to address