Chapter 2 Big stories and small stories in the psychological relief work after the earthquake disaster

"This edited book focuses on the organization and meaning of craft work in contemporary society. It considers the relationship between craft and place and how this enables the construction of a meaningful relationship with objects of production and consumption. The book explores the significance of raw materials, the relationship between the body, the crafted object and the mind, and the importance of skill, knowledge and learning in the making process. Through this, it raises important questions about the role of craft in facing future challenges by challenging the logic of globalized production and consumption. The Organization of Craft Work encompasses international analyses from the United States, France, Italy, Australia, Canada, the UK and Japan involving a diverse range of sectors, including brewing, food and wine production, clothing and shoe making, and perfumery. The book will be of interest to students and academic researchers in organization studies, marketing and consumer behaviour, business ethics, entrepreneurship, sociology of work, human resource management, cultural studies, geography, and fashion and design. In addition, the book will be of interest to practitioners and organizations with an interest in the development and promotion of craft work.

Do institutional logics predict interpretation of contract rules at the dental chair-side?

In quasi-markets, contracts find purchasers influencing health care providers, although problems exist where providers use personal bias and heuristics to respond to written agreements, tending towards the moral hazard of opportunism. Previous research on quasi-market contracts typically understands opportunism as fully rational, individual responses selecting maximally efficient outcomes from a set of possibilities. We take a more emotive and collective view of contracting, exploring the influence of institutional logics in relation to the opportunistic behaviour of dentists. Following earlier qualitative work where we identified four institutional logics in English general dental practice, and six dental contract areas where there was scope for opportunism; in 2013 we surveyed 924 dentists to investigate these logics and whether they had predictive purchase over dentists' chair-side behaviour. Factor analysis involving 300 responses identified four logics entwined in (often technical) behaviour: entrepreneurial commercialism, duty to staff and patients, managerialism, public good

The grammar of human rights: A Wittgensteinian analysis.

Abstract not available

Tame, messy and wicked problems in risk management

Heathrow's Terminal Five presents a case study in risk management that shows the importance of understanding and incorporating the behavioural and perception aspects of risk. At the outset of the project, risk was conceived technically, its management was sequentially driven and problems met with linear solutions. The case study follows a change in perspective experienced by the Terminal Five project teams alerting the project to important, but previously ignored, aspects of risk. This change required different ways of conceiving problem, and the paper describes how this can be done using a typology of: 'tame', 'wicked' and 'messy' problems. This requires risk managers to identify project stakeholders and seek resolutions between their varying perspectives, as much as deliver singular, optimal solutions. Typically, because wicked and messy problems cannot be modelled, they have been ignored, so undermining the ability of the project team to control the project effectively. This case study shows how risk management can embrace behavioural and systems complexity without undermining either clarity of information or control of project processes

New Business Ventures (NBVs) as activity systems

The first objective in this paper is to review the work of authors who have linked organizational theory with entrepreneurship. Secondly, the intention is to explore the possibilities of utilising activity theory as a conceptual framework for the study of new venture creation. The model developed by Engeström (1999) has six interlinked factors: subject, object, community, mediating artefacts, organizational rules and divisions of labour and knowledge. Relationships between subject (the entrepreneur) and object (the new business venture) are mediated through what Vikkunen (1996) describes as 'culturally formed artefacts' which include language, rules, division of labour and community. It is suggested that there is a direct link between 'the entrepreneurial process' and 'expansive learning' which is key to the effective enactment of new business ventures

Contracting with General Dental Services: a mixed-methods study on factors influencing responses to contracts in English general dental practice

Background: Independent contractor status of NHS general dental practitioners (GDPs) and general medical practitioners (GMPs) has meant that both groups have commercial as well as professional identities. Their relationship with the state is governed by a NHS contract, the terms of which have been the focus of much negotiation and struggle in recent years. Previous study of dental contracting has taken a classical economics perspective, viewing practitioners’ behaviour as a fully rational search for contract loopholes. We apply institutional theory to this context for the first time, where individuals’ behaviour is understood as being influenced by wider institutional forces such as growing consumer demands, commercial pressures and challenges to medical professionalism. Practitioners hold values and beliefs, and carry out routines and practices which are consistent with the field’s institutional logics. By identifying institutional logics in the dental practice organisational field, we expose where tensions exist, helping to explain why contracting appears as a continual cycle of reform and resistance. Aims: To identify the factors which facilitate and hinder the use of contractual processes to manage and strategically develop General Dental Services, using a comparison with medical practice to highlight factors which are particular to NHS dental practice. Methods: Following a systematic review of health-care contracting theory and interviews with stakeholders, we undertook case studies of 16 dental and six medical practices. Case study data collection involved interviews, observation and documentary evidence; 120 interviews were undertaken in all. We tested and refined our findings using a questionnaire to GDPs and further interviews with commissioners. Results: We found that, for all three sets of actors (GDPs, GMPs, commissioners), multiple logics exist. These were interacting and sometimes in competition. We found an emergent logic of population health managerialism in dental practice, which is less compatible than the other dental practice logics of ownership responsibility, professional clinical values and entrepreneurialism. This was in contrast to medical practice, where we found a more ready acceptance of external accountability and notions of the delivery of ‘cost-effective’ care. Our quantitative work enabled us to refine and test our conceptualisations of dental practice logics. We identified that population health managerialism comprised both a logic of managerialism and a public goods logic, and that practitioners might be resistant to one and not the other. We also linked individual practitioners’ behaviour to wider institutional forces by showing that logics were predictive of responses to NHS dental contracts at the dental chair-side (the micro level), as well as predictive of approaches to wider contractual relationships with commissioners (the macro level) . Conclusions: Responses to contracts can be shaped by environmental forces and not just determined at the level of the individual. In NHS medical practice, goals are more closely aligned with commissioning goals than in general dental practice. The optimal contractual agreement between GDPs and commissioners, therefore, will be one which aims at the ‘satisfactory’ rather than the ‘ideal’; and a ‘successful’ NHS dental contract is likely to be one where neither party promotes its self-interest above the other. Future work on opportunism in health care should widen its focus beyond the self-interest of providers and look at the contribution of contextual factors such as the relationship between the government and professional bodies, the role of the media, and providers’ social and professional networks. Funding: The National Institute for Health Research Health Services and Delivery Research programme

Comparative and Cumulative Energetic Costs of Odontocete Responses to Anthropogenic Disturbance

Odontocetes respond to vessels and anthropogenic noise by modifying vocal behavior, surface active behaviors, dive patterns, swim speed, direction of travel, and activity budgets. Exposure scenarios and behavioral responses vary across odontocetes. A literature review was conducted to determine relevant sources of disturbance and associated behavioral responses for several odontocete species (bottlenose dolphin, killer whale, harbor porpoise, and beaked whales). The energetic costs of species-specific responses to anthropogenic disturbance were then estimated. The energetic impact varies across species and scenarios as well as by behavioral responses. Overall, the cumulative energetic cost of ephemeral behavioral responses (e.g., performing surface active behaviors, modifying acoustic signals) and modifying swim speeds and activity budgets likely increases daily energy expenditure by ≤4%. In contrast, the reduction in foraging activity in the presence of vessels and/or exposure to sonar has the potential to significantly reduce individuals’ daily energy acquisition. Indeed, across all odontocete species, decreased energy acquisition as a result of reduced foraging undoubtedly has a larger impact on individuals than the increased energy expenditure associated with behavioral modification. This work provides a powerful tool to investigate the biological significance of multiple behavioral responses that are likely to occur in response to anthropogenic disturbance

Autism and family involvement in the right to education in the EU: policy mapping in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany.

Introduction:In recent years, the universal right to education has been emphasised by the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. In this paper, we mapped policies relevant to special education needs and parental involvement of children with autism at an international level and in the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium. Methods:A policy path analysis was performed using a scoping review as an underlying methodological framework. This allowed for a rapid gathering of available data from which a timeline of adopted policies was derived. Results and discussion:Internationally, the universal right to education has been reinforced repeatedly and the values of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights have been reiterated with every reinforcement. Also, the additional support that a child with special education needs requires is acknowledged and measures are taken to facilitate access to any education for all children. There are slight cross-country differences between the countries under study, attributable to differences in national regulation of education. However, all countries have progressed to a state where the right to education for all children is integrated on a policy level and measures are taken to enable children with special needs to participate in education. Recently, an attempt to implement a form of inclusive education was made as a form of special needs provision. Nevertheless, nowhere has this been implemented successfully yet. Conclusion:The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was a critical juncture in international policy and created an environment where the universal right to education has been implemented for all children in the countries under study

Multiwavelength quasi-periodic pulsations in a stellar superflare

We present the first multiwavelength simultaneous detection of quasi-periodic pulsations (QPPs) in a superflare (more than a thousand times stronger than known solar flares) on a cool star, in soft X-rays (SXRs, with XMM-Newton) and white light (WL, with Kepler). It allowed for the first ever analysis of oscillatory processes in a stellar flare simultaneously in thermal and nonthermal emissions, conventionally considered to come from the corona and chromosphere of the star, respectively. The observed QPPs have periods 1.5 ± 0.15 hr (SXR) and 3 ± 0.6 hr (WL), and correlate well with each other. The unique relationship between the observed parameters of QPPs in SXR and WL allowed us to link them with oscillations of the electric current in the flare loop, which directly affect the dynamics of nonthermal electrons and indirectly (via ohmic heating) the thermal plasma. These findings could be considered in favor of the equivalent LCR contour model of a flare loop, at least in the extreme conditions of a stellar superflare