36 research outputs found
Towards Relational Leadership In the Cultural Sector
The thesis is an inquiry into how leadership is performed narratively in the cultural sector.
Chapter 1 draws the cultural sector as a narrative landscape, and the reader is invited on
a tour around this narrative landscape as seen through the eyes of some of the top guns in
the cultural sector. Seen from this vantage, leadership in the cultural sector seems to be
predominantly performed by relating narratives with reference to the metanarrative of the
Enlightenment. The inquiry, however, draws on Lyotard (1984) to argue that such
extralinguistic legitimization is in a crisis of legitimacy, wherefore the inquiry embarks on
a problematization of the dominant understanding of leadership in the cultural sector with
the activist aspiration of suggesting a postmoderning understanding of leadership in the
cultural sector being performatively legitimized. Chapter 2 argues in favor of a relational,
non-entitative understanding of narratives and it points to emplotment as a process of
finding the best fit. This relational understanding of narratives allows the project to inquire
into leadership performed narratively in all kinds of empirical settings, not confining itself
to formal leadership contexts. Chapter 3 offers a genealogic approach to what the project
has defined as the dominant narrative in the cultural sector, the narrative of art for artâs
sake (the AFAS narrative), which the project argues function as an implicit standard. This
includes notions of aesthetic autonomy such as suggested by Kant in 1790, artistic freedom
and art for its own sake such as claimed by artists in the Romantic era, and the armâs
length principle as the âconstitution of cultural policiesâ in the post WW2 Western world.
Chapter 4 provides an overview of alternative voices which have challenged the dominant
narrative. These include post colonial studies, cultural entrepreneurial studies and
consumer behavior studies which in various ways propose alternative ways to lead and
support the cultural sector. Chapter 5 links the discussions in chapter 3 and chapter 4 to
leadership studies, notably to discussions of leader-centered orientations versus leading
relationally orientations. The chapter concludes by suggesting a new sensibility towards
understanding leadership and meditates on how this might be achieved, paying attentions
to the possibilities of overcoming the putative crisis of legitimacy the inquiry is placed in.
Chapter 6 relates a case-study of Malmoe City Library which endeavors into a difficult,
yet very promising process of reformulating what a library may become in a contemporary
context. This process challenges the dominant narrative and thus the current
understanding of what a library should be, and this deviation from the dominant narrative
challenges leadership. Chapter 7 assembles three different approaches to challenges the dominant narrative and to make new interpretive resources available to the understanding
of leadership in the cultural sector. First, givrum.nu, a social movement working with arts,
second, Mogens Holm, a leader in the cultural sector in a transition phase, and third,
Copenhagen Phil, a classical symphony orchestra striving to avoid becoming a parallel
society phenomenon. These case studies are conducted as written interviews with the
cases, in an attempted un-edited form to also introduce relational processes informed by a
power with relation to my own research project. Chapter 8 reflects on the case-studies in
chapter 6 and chapter 7 in light of the two approaches to leadership discussed in chapter 5.
It does so by linking my study to relational leadership theory in order to see how this
theoretical field might inform my inquiry and how my inquiry might inform this field. It
equally offers five possible reconstructions of the cases before concluding the research
project by summing up contributions to the empirical field and the research fields, as well
as by pointing to areas which could be further developed in future research.
In line with the aspirations of the relational constructionist framework of the project, the
inquiry does not offer a conclusion. Instead it encourages further reconstructions, thus
submitting itself to the performative legitimization it argues in favor of
Genomics-Based Identifcation of Microorganisms in Human Ocular Body Fluid
Abstract Advances in genomics have the potential to revolutionize clinical diagnostics. Here, we examine the microbiome of vitreous (intraocular body fluid) from patients who developed endophthalmitis following cataract surgery or intravitreal injection. Endophthalmitis is an inflammation of the intraocular cavity and can lead to a permanent loss of vision. As controls, we included vitreous from endophthalmitis-negative patients, balanced salt solution used during vitrectomy and DNA extraction blanks. We compared two DNA isolation procedures and found that an ultraclean production of reagents appeared to reduce background DNA in these low microbial biomass samples. We created a curated microbial genome database (>5700 genomes) and designed a metagenomics workflow with filtering steps to reduce DNA sequences originating from: (i) human hosts, (ii) ambiguousness/contaminants in public microbial reference genomes and (iii) the environment. Our metagenomic read classification revealed in nearly all cases the same microorganism that was determined in cultivation- and mass spectrometry-based analyses. For some patients, we identified the sequence type of the microorganism and antibiotic resistance genes through analyses of whole genome sequence (WGS) assemblies of isolates and metagenomic assemblies. Together, we conclude that genomics-based analyses of human ocular body fluid specimens can provide actionable information relevant to infectious disease management
Safe Recreational Lake Waters II:Protection and warning against faecal bacteria and toxic algae in bathing lakes
Heterogeneous distribution of plankton within the mixed layer and its implications for bloom formation in tropical seas
Intensive sampling at the coastal waters of the central Red Sea during a period of thermal stratification, prior to the main seasonal bloom during winter, showed that vertical patches of prokaryotes and microplankton developed and persisted for several days within the apparently density uniform upper layer. These vertical structures were most likely the result of in situ growth and mortality (e.g., grazing) rather than physical or behavioural aggregation. Simulating a mixing event by adding nutrient-rich deep water abruptly triggered dense phytoplankton blooms in the nutrient-poor environment of the upper layer. These findings suggest that vertical structures within the mixed layer provide critical seeding stocks that can rapidly exploit nutrient influx during mixing, leading to winter bloom formation