102 research outputs found

    Making sense of sensemaking in organization studies

    Get PDF
    types: Article© 2014 Annie Pye. Post print version deposited in accordance with SHERPA RoMEO guidelines. The definitive version is available at:http://oss.sagepub.com/content/36/2/265'Sensemaking’ is an extraordinarily influential perspective with a substantial following among management and organization scholars interested in how people appropriate and enact their ‘realities’. Organization Studies has been and remains one of the principal outlets for work that seeks either to draw on or to extend our understanding of sensemaking practices in and around organizations. The contribution of this paper is fourfold. First, we review briefly what we understand by sensemaking and some key debates which fracture the field. Second, we attend critically to eight papers published previously in Organization Studies which we discuss in terms of five broad themes: (i) how sense is made through discourse; (ii) the politics from which social forms of sensemaking emerge and the power that is inherent in it; (iii) the intertwined and recursive nature of micro-macro sensemaking processes; (iv) the strong ties which bind sensemaking and identities; and (v) the role of sensemaking processes in decision making and change. Third, while not designed to be a review of extant literature, we discuss these themes with reference to other related work, notably that published in this journal. Finally, we raise for consideration a number of potentially generative topics for further empirical and theory-building research

    Capturing the distributional impacts of long-term low-carbon transitions

    Get PDF
    Major policy proposals often require a distributional impact assessment, focusing on differential financial and other impacts across population segments. Such assessments are rare, however, at the multi-decadal scale addressed in long-term (e.g. to 2050) low carbon transition modelling. There is therefore a risk of socially inequitable outcomes, which in turn presents a socio-political risk for decision-makers driving transitions. This paper uses a literature review and expert interviews to identify mechanisms by which low carbon transitions could differentially impact population sub-groups. As well as impacts of policy costs on bills, this includes factors such as ability to connect to heat networks or install onsite generation or storage. An approach to exploring distributional impacts across a range of long term scenarios from a United Kingdom energy model (ESME), is proposed. This sets out how bill changes and other costs associated with low carbon transition could impact different income quintiles in the UK

    Studies of burrows in recent sublittoral fine sediments off the west coast of Scotland

    Get PDF
    The burrows of the smaller macrofauna, principally polychaetes, bivalves and echinoderms are described from aquarium studies and from X-ray radiographs of boxcore subsamples obtained with a Reineck boxcorer from both sealochs and open marine sites encompassing a range of depths from 25-2l6m and sediments from sandy to fine muds. A model relating burrow types to depth is presented. Shallow sea loch sites are characterised by the deep U-burrows of the bivalve Thracia, deep sea lochs by a paucity of burrows due to the low oxygen levels found in the overlying waters. Shallow marine sites display a diverse suite of polychaete burrows and tubes and the burrows of the ophiuroid Amphiura. Two deep marine areas (>I00m) have been sampled, each characterised by capitellid polychaetes: in the Firth of Clyde the wavy burrows of Dasybranchus are found whereas in the Sound of Jura the spiral burrows of Notomastua are abundant. Trophic group amensalism does not occur in these muds; the suspension feeding bivalves Thracia. Mya and Arctica are found as there is no tidal resuspension of the sediment. From boxcores obtained in the vicinity of the Garroch Head Sludge Dumping Ground, Firth of Clyde and near a pulp-paper mill situated between Lochs Linnhe and Eil, a model relating burrow types to organic enrichment of the sediment is presented. In the transitory zone there is an increased number of burrows compared to the normal situation. In the polluted zone the normal fauna is replaced by opportunistic polychaetes, chiefly Capitella capitata. and the upper layers of the sediment are riddled with their burrows. The method developed of serially X-raying boxcores allows quantitative studies of the density and depth distribution of burrows. The total length of burrows in a boxcore shows a peak of around 250cm in shallow sea loch and deep marine sites. The reduced length of burrows in shallow marine sites may be due to the presence of the burrowing echinoid Brissopsis which does not create a distinctive biogenic trace in these fine grained sediments. On average, burrows occupy 0.1% by volume of the top 5cm of the sediment but represent an increase in surface area of 10%. Studies of the spatial distribution of burrow entrances, an important diversity regulating mechanism, reveal patches of various dimensions at some sites especially in the Arran Beep. This ichnocoenose is compared to others from Recent sublittoral, fine sediments inhabited by brittle star communities in the Atlantic, Mediterranean and North Sea and to the ichnocoenoses of sheltered, intertidal sandflats in the U.S.A. The results of this study are used to suggest the possible producers of trace fossils commonly found in fine grained sediments: Chondrites and Planolites are ascribed to polychaetes, Scolicla to gastropods and Thalasainoides to crustaceans

    Social Work with Children in the Youth Justice System - Messages from Practice

    Get PDF
    This article is about policy and practice within the youth justice system in England and Wales. The article argues that actively engaging and using emotions, both in terms of the practitioner and service user, enables a deeper social work approach to take place and enables the forming of relationships. Such relationships can then be used as the tool themselves to bring about positive changes for children and families who are receiving intervention from youth justice social workers. Social workers working within the youth justice system know through their experience what is most likely to be effective in meeting the aims of the system – that is prevention of offending. To achieve this means real questions need to be asked about the effectiveness of the technical-rational risk focused approach of the current youth justice system in favour of a system which adopts the principles of Munro (2011) and empowers social workers to actively use critically reflective and reflexive practice and supports the use of self to build powerful social work relationships with the vulnerable children they work with

    Trialling the Cambridge Personal Styles Questionnaire: Measuring and profiling values of BSc nursing students.

    Get PDF
    Collaborative project between Bucks New University and Cambridge Assessment (University of Cambridge Examinations). We are one of the institutions (including City University) trialling the CPSQ (Cambridge Personal Styles Questionnaire)

    A supramolecular assembly mediates lentiviral DNA integration

    Get PDF
    Retroviral integrase (IN) functions within the intasome nucleoprotein complex to catalyze insertion of viral DNA into cellular chromatin. Using cryo–electron microscopy, we now visualize the functional maedi-visna lentivirus intasome at 4.9 angstrom resolution. The intasome comprises a homo-hexadecamer of IN with a tetramer-of-tetramers architecture featuring eight structurally distinct types of IN protomers supporting two catalytically competent subunits. The conserved intasomal core, previously observed in simpler retroviral systems, is formed between two IN tetramers, with a pair of C-terminal domains from flanking tetramers completing the synaptic interface. Our results explain how HIV-1 IN, which self-associates into higher-order multimers, can form a functional intasome, reconcile the bulk of early HIV-1 IN biochemical and structural data, and provide a lentiviral platform for design of HIV-1 IN inhibitors

    Optical and Thermal Performance of Bladed Receivers

    Get PDF
    Bladed receivers use conventional receiver tube-banks rearranged into bladed/finned structures, and offer better light trapping, reduced radiative and convective losses, and reduced tube mass, based on the presented optical and thermal analysis. Optimising for optical performance, deep blades emerge. Considering thermal losses leads to shallower blades. Horizontal blades perform better, in both windy and no-wind conditions, than vertical blades, at the scales considered so far. Air curtains offer options to further reduce convective losses; high flux on blade-tips is still a concern.This work was is supported by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, grant 2014/RND010. Sandia National Laboratories is a multi-program laboratory managed and operated by Sandia Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin Corporation, for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-AC04-94AL85000

    The impact of catchment source group classification on the accuracy of sediment fingerprinting outputs

    Get PDF
    The objective classification of sediment source groups is at present an under-investigated aspect of source tracing studies, which has the potential to statistically improve discrimination between sediment sources and reduce uncertainty. This paper investigates this potential using three different source group classification schemes. The first classification scheme was simple surface and subsurface groupings (Scheme 1). The tracer signatures were then used in a two-step cluster analysis to identify the sediment source groupings naturally defined by the tracer signatures (Scheme 2). The cluster source groups were then modified by splitting each one into a surface and subsurface component to suit catchment management goals (Scheme 3). The schemes were tested using artificial mixtures of sediment source samples. Controlled corruptions were made to some of the mixtures to mimic the potential causes of tracer non-conservatism present when using tracers in natural fluvial environments. It was determined how accurately the known proportions of sediment sources in the mixtures were identified after unmixing modelling using the three classification schemes. The cluster analysis derived source groups (2) significantly increased tracer variability ratios (inter-/ intra-source group variability) (up to 2122%, median 194%) compared to the surface and subsurface groupings (1). As a result, the composition of the artificial mixtures was identified an average of 9.8% more accurately on the 0e100% contribution scale. It was found that the cluster groups could be reclassified into a surface and subsurface component (3) with no significant increase in composite uncertainty(a 0.1% increase over Scheme 2). The far smaller effects of simulated tracer non-conservatism for the cluster analysis based schemes (2 and 3) was primarily attributed to the increased inter-group variability producing a far larger sediment source signal that the non-conservatism noise (1). Modified cluster analysis based classification methods have the potential to reduce composite uncertainty significantly in future source tracing studies

    The Role of CT Scanning in Multidimensional Phenotyping of COPD

    Get PDF
    BackgroundCOPD is a heterogeneous disease characterized by airflow obstruction and diagnosed by lung function. CT imaging is emerging as an important, noninvasive tool in phenotyping COPD. However, the use of CT imaging in defining the disease heterogeneity above lung function is not fully known.MethodsSeventy-five patients with COPD (58 men, 17 women) were studied with CT imaging and with measures of airway inflammation. Airway physiology and health status were also determined.ResultsThe presence of emphysema (EM), bronchiectasis (BE), and bronchial wall thickening (BWT) was found in 67%, 27%, and 27% of subjects, respectively. The presence of EM was associated with lower lung function (mean difference % FEV1, −20%; 95% CI, −28 to −11; P < .001). There was no difference in airway inflammation, exacerbation frequency, or bacterial load in patients with EM alone or with BE and/or BWT ± EM. The diffusing capacity of the lung for carbon monoxide/alveolar volume ratio was the most sensitive and specific parameter in identifying EM (area under the receiver operator characteristic curve, 0.87; 95% CI, 0.79-0.96). Physiologic cluster analysis identified three clusters, two of which were EM predominant and the third characterized by a heterogeneous combination of EM and BE.ConclusionsThe application of CT imaging can be useful as a tool in the multidimensional approach to phenotyping patients with COPD
    corecore