Pattern Recognition: Industry seeking regulation – the case of crowdfunding. Bruges Political Research Papers 79/2020

At first it seems counterintuitive that an industry would seek regulation over itself, but from the point of view of crowdfunding, it was a logical step. Crowdfunding, as part of FinTech, is changing and challenging traditional financial institutions. The fragmentation of the EU market by national legislation on crowdfunding hindered its growth, and although FinTech is a diffuse interest, crowdfunding, as a pragmatic diffuse interest, formed legitimacy coalitions with the regulators. Utilizing Trumbull’s framework on pragmatic diffuse interest, my aim is to demonstrate through this case study that the industry lobby had influenced the agenda-setting and the policy-shaping, but only to the extent that there wasn’t conflicting interest from consumer groups. This is in line with previous finding on financial industry lobbying and some preliminary findings emerge, although as the proposal is still in first reading stage, the end results and conclusions remains to be see

An integrative framework for an enterprise-wide information and knowledge management system

The purpose of this study is to outline an integrative framework for an enterprise-wide information and knowledge management system (KMS) that is aligned with the ultimate business strategy to create and manage organizational knowledge within a human-technological environment. In this comprehensive KMS framework all enterprise systems and their supporting technologies are interrelated as a potential or designated KMS source or resource. The correlation between the potential and the designated knowledge-enabled system functionalities can be captured by the paradigm shift of information technologies towards knowledge technologies through deploying both traditional and advanced systems in the support of KM features in a broader sense and on a broader basis than the tools designed to deliver knowledge functionality per se. Such a knowledge-centered enterprise system architecture requires the revision of the existing knowledge taxonomies and the development of a new conceptual and functional framework that facilitates an integrative systematic technological backbone of a KMS. The proposed framework is completed with an up-to-date functionality-technology mapping, offered as a guide to theoreticians and practitioners to continue research in any direction from the main areas of knowledge management and knowledge management systems

Recognition of personality disorder and anxiety disorder comorbidity in patients treated for depression in secondary psychiatric care

Objectives Depression is a common illness with substantial economic consequences for society and a great burden for affected individuals. About 30% of patients with depression do not respond to repeated treatments. Psychiatric comorbidity is known to affect duration, recurrence and treatment outcome of depression. However, there is a lack of knowledge on the extent to which psychiatric comorbidity is identified in the clinical setting for depressed patients in secondary psychiatric care. Therefore, the aim of this study was to compare the agreement between traditional diagnostic assessment (TDA) and a structured and comprehensive diagnostic procedure (SCDP) for identification of personality and anxiety disorder comorbidity in depressed patients in secondary psychiatric care. Methods 274 patients aged 18–77 were referred from four secondary psychiatric care clinics in Sweden during 2012–2017. ICD-10 diagnoses according to TDA (mostly unstructured by psychiatric specialist and residents in psychiatry), were retrieved from medical records and compared to diagnoses resulting from the SCDP in the study. This included the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview, the Structured Interview for DSM Axis II Personality Disorders and semi-structured questions on psychosocial circumstances, life-events, psychiatric symptoms, psychiatric treatments, substance use, and suicidal and self-harm behaviour. The assessment was carried out by psychiatric specialists or by residents in psychiatry with at least three years of psychiatric training. Results SCDP identified personality disorder comorbidity in 43% of the patients compared to 11% in TDA (p<0,0001). Anxiety disorder comorbidity was identified in 58% with SCDP compared to 12% with TDA (p<0,0001). Conclusions Important psychiatric comorbidity seems to be unrecognized in depressive patients when using TDA, which is routine in secondary psychiatric care. Comorbidities are better identified using the proposed model involving structured and semi-structured interviews together with clinical evaluations by clinical experts