Metalogue: trying to talk about (un)sustainability - a reflection on experience

This paper considers dilemmas for organization and management scholars studying and writing about environmental sustainability. It suggests that sustainability requires new ways of thinking which in turn require new forms of representation to help foster their emergence. Consequently, the paper partly takes the experimental form of a ‘metalogue’ (Bateson, 1972), in which the structure of the conversation between the authors is intended to be reflective of the content of the problematic subject discussed, in this case their experiences of trying to raise critical questions about scholarship for sustainability. This experimental form, which invites the reader to eschew expectations of typical points of orientation, enables an appreciation of how forms of argument seem to replicate epistemological challenges in the sustainability field. The paper shows how metaloguing becomes not only an alternative form but also an inquiry process for considering sustainability that can support embodied reflexivity, critical questioning and appreciation of entanglements of people-scholars

Living with contradictions: the dynamics of senior managers in relation to sustainability

In this article, we investigate how senior managers located in Northern Europe in the energy and power industry coordinate their recognition of sustainability challenges with other things they say and do. Identity theory is used to examine the fine-grained work through which the managers navigate identities and potentially competing narratives. In contrast with other studies we find that pursuing cohering identities and resolving potential tensions and contradictions does not appear to matter for most of the managers. We explore the dynamics of how managers live with apparent contradictions and tensions without threat to their narrative coherence. We extend existing research into managerial identities and sustainability by: showing how managers combine different potentially contrasting identity types; identifying nine discursive processes through which the majority of managers distance and deflect sustainability issues away from themselves and their companies; and, showing the contrasting identity dynamics in the case of one manager to whom narrative coherence becomes important and prompts alternative action

Climate change adaptation through coastal and use management: The context of environmental justice

Despite an increasing literary focus on climate change adaptation, the facilitation of this adaptation is occurring on a limited basis (Adger et al. 2007) .This limited basis is not necessarily due to inability; rather, a lack of comprehensive cost estimates of all options specifically hinders adaptation in vulnerable communities (Adger et al. 2007). Specifically the estimated cost of the climate change impact of sea-level rise is continually increasing due to both increasing rates and the resulting multiplicative impact of coastal erosion (Karl et al., 2009, Zhang et al., 2004) Based on the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, minority groups and small island nations have been identified within these vulnerable communities. Therefore the development of adaptation policies requires the engagement of these communities. State examples of sea-level rise adaptation through land use planning mechanisms such as land acquisition programs (New Jersey) and the establishment of rolling easements (Texas) are evidence that although obscured, adaptation opportunities are being acted upon (Easterling et al., 2004, Adger et al.2007). (PDF contains 4 pages

A Spectrophotometric Study Of The Nitrogen(Doublet-D) And Nitrogen(Doublet-P) States In The Aurora

Thesis (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 198

VALIDITY AND RELIABILITY OF FINAL SAY DECISION MEASURES OF MARITAL POWER

The final say decision measure of marital power has fared poorly in several studies which have examined its validity. This research was designed to explore two possible explanations for these findings: (1) inadequate or inappropriate procedures in previous validity studies, and (2) weaknesses of the final say measure itself, including insensitivity to item saliency and the discrepancies in responses between family members. Several US samples and one from India provided the data for this study. These samples had been gathered in other studies in which husbands\u27, wives\u27 and/or children had responded to the final say decision index. Up to three versions of the final say index were computed for each respondent. In the first version, decision items were unweighted (FSD index). In the other two versions, items were weighted by their relative importance (WFSD index) or by the amount of conflict associated with the particular decision area (CFSD index). The reliability and validity of these measures and of measures based on the responses of husbands, wives and children was assessed through analytical procedures such as (1) analysis of item-removed alpha coefficients and (2) external criterion correlation analysis. The major findings of the study are: (1) The final say decision measure has cross-cultural validity, evidenced by consistent patterns among the validity coefficients across samples (though the coefficients were generally low). (2) Weighting the final say decision measure by importance or conflict does not improve validity and reliability. (3) The reliability of power measures based on wives\u27 reports is higher than measures using husbands\u27 reports. (4) The validity of measures derived from husbands\u27 and wives\u27 reports is basically equivalent. (5) Although there is some indication that power measures based on children\u27s reports have the highest reliability and validity, the small sample size and other problems make such comparisons tenuous. The results indicate that the simple unweighted final say measure is a more valid and reliable instrument than previous research has suggested

Assessing the Risk of an Adaptation using Prior Compliance Verification

Autonomous systems must respond to large amounts of streaming information. They also must comply with critical properties to maintain behavior guarantees. Compliance is especially important when a system self-adapts to perform a repair, improve performance, or modify decisions. There remain significant challenges assessing the risk of adaptations that are dynamically configured at runtime with respect to critical property compliance. Assuming compliance verification was performed for the originally deployed system, the proof process holds valuable meta-data about the variables and conditions that impact reusing the proof on the adapted system. We express this meta-data as a verification workflow using Colored Petri Nets. As dynamic adaptations are configured, the Petri Nets produce alert tokens suggesting the potential proof reuse impact of an adaptation. Alert tokens hold risk values for use in a utility function to determine the least risky adaptations. We illustrate the modeling and risk assessment using a case study

Evaluating Security Assurance Case Adaptation

Security certification processes for information systems involve expressing security controls as functional and non-functional requirements, monitoring deployed mechanisms that satisfy the requirements, and measuring the degree of confidence in system compliance. With the potential for systems to perform runtime self-adaptation, functional changes to remedy system performance may impact security control compliance. This impact can extend throughout a network of related controls causing significant degradation to the system’s overall compliance status. We represent security controls as security assurance cases and implement them in XML for management and evaluation. The approach maps security controls to softgoals, introducing achievement weights to the assurance case structure as the foundation for determining security softgoal satisficing levels. Potential adaptations adjust the achievement weights to produce different satisficing levels. We show how the levels can be propagated within the network of related controls to assess the overall security control compliance of a potential adaptation

Was Dale Carnegie the Father of Modern Management?

As academics, we like to believe that our research leads and informs the best practice of industry. Much of what is taught in college classrooms in business and economics departments is the application of the theoretical work of our colleagues past and present. Three examples of this pattern are Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (Malsow, 1954) Herzberg’s Motivation-Hygiene theory (Herzberg, Mausnar & Snyderman, 1959) and Emotional Intelligence (Salovey & Mayer, 1990, Goleman, 1995). This paper shows that all of these theories were in the popular press years before they were discovered and studied by academics. Each of these theories is at least partially explored in Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, first published in 1936

Endogeneous Versus Exogeneous Shocks in Systems with Memory

Systems with long-range persistence and memory are shown to exhibit different precursory as well as recovery patterns in response to shocks of exogeneous versus endogeneous origins. By endogeneous, we envision either fluctuations resulting from an underlying chaotic dynamics or from a stochastic forcing origin which may be external or be an effective coarse-grained description of the microscopic fluctuations. In this scenario, endogeneous shocks result from a kind of constructive interference of accumulated fluctuations whose impacts survive longer than the large shocks themselves. As a consequence, the recovery after an endogeneous shock is in general slower at early times and can be at long times either slower or faster than after an exogeneous perturbation. This offers the tantalizing possibility of distinguishing between an endogeneous versus exogeneous cause of a given shock, even when there is no ``smoking gun.'' This could help in investigating the exogeneous versus self-organized origins in problems such as the causes of major biological extinctions, of change of weather regimes and of the climate, in tracing the source of social upheaval and wars, and so on. Sornette, Malevergne and Muzy have already shown how this concept can be applied concretely to differentiate the effects on financial markets of the Sept. 11, 2001 attack or of the coup against Gorbachev on Aug., 19, 1991 (exogeneous) from financial crashes such as Oct. 1987 (endogeneous).Comment: Latex document of 14 pages with 3 eps figure