Power and Narrative in Project Management: Lessons Learned in Recognising the Importance of Phronesis

A component part of modern project management practice is the ‘lessons learned’ activity that is designed to transfer experience and best practice from one project to another, thus improving the practice of project management. The departure point for this thesis is: If we are learning lessons from our experiences in project management, then why are we not better at managing projects? It is widely cited in most project management literature that 50–70% of all projects fail for one reason or another, a figure that has steadfastly refused to improve over many years. My contention is that the current rational approach to understanding lessons learned in project management, one entrenched in the if–then causality of first-order systems thinking where the nature of movement is a ‘corrective repetition of the past in order to realise an optimal future state’ (Stacey 2011: 301), does not reflect the actual everyday experience of organisational life. I see this as an experience of changing priorities, competing initiatives, unrealistic timescales, evaporation of resources, non-rational decisions based on power relations between actors in the organisations we find ourselves in; and every other manner of challenge that presents itself in modern large commercial organisations. I propose a move away from what I see as the current reductionist view of lessons learned, with its emphasis on objective observation, to one of involved subjective understanding. This is an understanding rooted in the particular experience of the individual acting into the social, an act that necessarily changes both the individual and the social. My contention is that a narrative approach to sense making as first-order abstractions in the activity of lessons learned within project management is what is required if we are to better learn from our experiences. This narrative approach that I have termed ‘thick simplification’ supports learning by enabling the reader of the lessons learned account to situate the ‘lesson learned’ within their own experience through treating the lessons learned as a potential future understanding .This requires a different view of what is going on between people in organisations – one that challenges the current reliance on detached process and recognises the importance of embedded phronesis, the Aristotelian virtue of practical judgement. It is an approach that necessarily ‘focuses attention directly on patterns of human relating, and asks what kind of power relations, ideology and communication they reflect’ (Stacey 2007: 266)

How head and neck consultants manage patients’ emotional distress during cancer follow-up consultations : a multilevel study

Head and neck cancer (HNC) patients suffer substantial emotional problems. This study aimed to explore how utterance-level variables (source, type and timing of emotional cues) and patient-level variables (e.g. age, gender and emotional well-being) relate to consultants’ responses (i.e. reducing or providing space) to patient expressions of emotional distress. Forty-three HNC outpatient follow-up consultations were audio recorded and coded, for patients’ expressions of emotional distress and consultants’ responses, using the Verona Coding Definitions of Emotional Sequence. Multilevel logistic regression modelled the probability of the occurrence of consultant reduce space response as a function of patient distress cue expression, controlling for consultation and patient-related variables. An average of 3.5 cues/concerns (range 1–20) was identified per consultation where 84 out of 152 total cues/concerns were responded by reducing space. Cue type did not impact on response; likewise for the quality of patient emotional well-being. However, consultants were more likely to reduce space to cues elicited by patients, as opposed to those initiated by themselves. This reduced space response was more pronounced as the consultation continued. However, about 6 min into the consultation, this effect (i.e. tendency to block patients) started to weaken. Head and neck consultants’ responses to negative emotions depended on source and timing of patient emotional expressions. The findings are useful for training programme development to encourage consultants to be more flexible and open in the early stages of the consultation.PostprintPeer reviewe

Optimal Design Of English Auctions With Discrete Bid Levels

This paper considers a form of ascending price English auction widely used in both live and online auctions. This discrete bid auction requires that the bidders submit bids at predetermined discrete bid levels, and thus, there exists a minimal increment by which the bid price may be raised. In contrast, the academic literature of optimal auction design deals almost solely with continuous bid auctions. As a result, there is little practical guidance as to how an auctioneer, seeking to maximize its revenue, should determine the number and value of these discrete bid levels, and it is this omission that is addressed here. To this end, a model of a discrete bid auction from the literature is considered, and an expression for the expected revenue of this auction is derived. This expression is used to determine both numerical and analytical solutions for the optimal bid levels, and uniform and exponential bidder’s valuation distributions are compared. Finally, the limiting case where the number of discrete bid levels is large is considered. An analytical expression for the distribution of the optimal discrete bid levels is derived, and an intuitive understanding of how this distribution maximizes the revenue of the auction is developed

Computational optimization of synthetic water channels.

Membranes for liquid and gas separations and ion transport are critical to water purification, osmotic energy generation, fuel cells, batteries, supercapacitors, and catalysis. Often these membranes lack pore uniformity and robustness under operating conditions, which can lead to a decrease in performance. The lack of uniformity means that many pores are non-functional. Traditional membranes overcome these limitations by using thick membrane materials that impede transport and selectivity, which results in decreased performance and increased operating costs. For example, limitations in membrane performance demand high applied pressures to deionize water using reverse osmosis. In contrast, cellular membranes combine high flux and selective transport using membrane-bound protein channels operating at small pressure differences. Pore size and chemistry in the cellular channels is defined uniformly and with sub-nanometer precision through protein folding. The thickness of these cellular membranes is limited to that of the cellular membrane bilayer, about 4 nm thick, which enhances transport. Pores in the cellular membranes are robust under operating conditions in the body. Recent efforts to mimic cellular water channels for efficient water deionization produced a significant advance in membrane function. The novel biomimetic design achieved a 10-fold increase in membrane permeability to water flow compared to commercial membranes and still maintained high salt rejection. Despite this success, there is a lack of understanding about why this membrane performs so well. To address this lack of knowledge, we used highperformance computing to interrogate the structural and chemical environments experienced by water and electrolytes in the newly created biomimetic membranes. We also compared the solvation environments between the biomimetic membrane and cellular water channels. These results will help inform future efforts to optimize and tune the performance of synthetic biomimetic membranes for applications in water purification, energy, and catalysis

The NASA MSFC Electrostatic Levitation (ESL) Laboratory: Summary of Capabilities, Recent Upgrades, and Future Work

The NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) electrostatic levitation (ESL) laboratory has a long history of providing materials research and thermophysical property data. A summary of the labs capabilities, recent upgrades, and ongoing and future work will be provided. The laboratory has recently added two new capabilities to its main levitation chamber: a rapid quench system and an oxygen control system. The rapid quench system allows samples to be dropped into a quench vessel that can be filled with a low melting point material, such as a gallium or indium alloy. Thereby allowing rapid quenching of undercooled liquid metals. The oxygen control system consists of an oxygen sensor, oxygen pump, and a control unit. The sensor is a potentiometric device that determines the difference in oxygen activity between two gas compartments separated by an electrolyte, which is yttria-stabilized zirconia. The pump utilizes coulometric titration to either add or remove oxygen. The system is controlled by a desktop control unit, which can also be accessed via a computer. This system allows the oxygen partial pressure within the vacuum chamber to be measured and controlled, theoretically in the range from 10-36 to 100 bar. The ESL laboratory also has an emissometer, called the High-Temperature Emissivity Measurement System (HiTEMS). This system measures the spectral emissivity of materials from 600degC to 3,000degC. The system consists of a vacuum chamber, a black body source, and a Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrometer (FTIR). The system utilizes optics to swap the signal between the sample and the black body. The system was originally designed to measure the hemispherical spectral emissivity of levitated samples, which are typically 2.5mm spheres. Levitation allows emissivity measurements of molten samples, but more work is required to develop this capability. The system is currently setup measure the near-normal spectral emissivity of stationary samples, which has been used to take measurements of ablative materials, rocket nozzle coating materials, and materials for spacecraft instruments

Exploring the thermodynamics of a rubber band

We describe an upper-division experiment in thermal physics where students measure the tension of a rubber band as a function of temperature and length, and use a Maxwell relation to find the change in internal energy and entropy for an isothermal stretch. This allows students to experimentally check the predictions of the entropic spring model for elastomers and observe that the entropy does indeed decrease as a rubber band is stretched

The Role of the IL-12 Cytokine Family in Directing T-Cell Responses in Oral Candidosis

Candida albicans is an opportunistic fungal pathogen that normally exists as a harmless commensal in humans. In instances where host debilitation occurs, Candida can cause a range of clinical infections, and whilst these are primarily superficial, effecting mucosal membranes, systemic infections can develop in severely immunocompromised individuals. The mechanism of host immunity during commensal carriage of C. albicans has been intensively studied. In this paper, we present the most recent information concerning host recognition of C. albicans leading to cytokine production and the subsequent T-cell responses generated in response to C. albicans. Particular focus is given to the role of the IL-12 cytokine family including IL-12, IL-23, IL-27, and IL-35, in host immunity to Candida. CD4+ T-cells are considered crucial in the regulation of immunity and inflammation. In this regard, the role of Th1/2, helper cells, together with the recently identified Th17 and Treg cells in candidosis will be discussed. Understanding the detailed mechanisms that underlie host immunity to Candida not only will be of benefit in terms of the infections caused by this organism but could also be exploited in the development of therapeutic interventions for other diseases

Ligand coordination modulates reductive elimination from aluminium(III)

Oxidative addition to low-valent main-group centres is a major class of reactivity for these species. Here, we present a mechanistic study of the much rarer reverse process – reductive elimination – in Al(iii) systems, and unravel ligand effects in this process.</p

Bodies of executive citizenship: embodied rhetorical performances of the presidency from Reagan to Obama

This dissertation contributes to the recent resurgence of scholarship devoted to the American presidency by arguing that the role of the presidential body works as a singularly significant crucial point for notions of citizenship and national identity. Addressing presidential bodies as texts shows that the singularity of the presidential body positions it as a dense site of affect and identification that allows for leadership and the organization of politics to work through the management of emotions. In particular, the emergence of television allows presidents to embody sovereign power in ways that both sentimentalize it and separate the performance of singular, model citizenship from populations more or less abandoned as not-quite-national subjects. By exploring how media imagine the chief executive and how presidents represent themselves on television, in speeches, and in campaign documentaries, I identify national scripts that constitute executive citizenship, a concept I develop and see as crucial to the management of public and private life. By highlighting the fundamental role executive performances play in constructing an image of national citizenship and shaping feelings of belonging, I challenge traditional narratives that figure citizenship in the U.S. as natural rather than deliberately constructed through rhetoric and language