An ontology for risk management of digital collections

Maintaining accessibility to and understanding of digital information over time is a complex challenge that often requires contributions and interventions from a variety of individuals and organizations. The processes of preservation planning and evaluation are fundamentally implicit and share similar complexity. Both demand comprehensive knowledge and understanding of every aspect of to-be-preserved content and the contexts within which preservation is undertaken. Consequently, means are required for the identification, documentation and association of those properties of data, representation and management mechanisms that in combination lend value, facilitate interaction and influence the preservation process. These properties may be almost limitless in terms of diversity, but are integral to the establishment of classes of risk exposure, and the planning and deployment of appropriate preservation strategies. We explore several research objectives within the course of this thesis. Our main objective is the conception of an ontology for risk management of digital collections. Incorporated within this are our aims to survey the contexts within which preservation has been undertaken successfully, the development of an appropriate methodology for risk management, the evaluation of existing preservation evaluation approaches and metrics, the structuring of best practice knowledge and lastly the demonstration of a range of tools that utilise our findings. We describe a mixed methodology that uses interview and survey, extensive content analysis, practical case study and iterative software and ontology development. We build on a robust foundation, the development of the Digital Repository Audit Method Based on Risk Assessment. We summarise the extent of the challenge facing the digital preservation community (and by extension users and creators of digital materials from many disciplines and operational contexts) and present the case for a comprehensive and extensible knowledge base of best practice. These challenges are manifested in the scale of data growth, the increasing complexity and the increasing onus on communities with no formal training to offer assurances of data management and sustainability. These collectively imply a challenge that demands an intuitive and adaptable means of evaluating digital preservation efforts. The need for individuals and organisations to validate the legitimacy of their own efforts is particularly prioritised. We introduce our approach, based on risk management. Risk is an expression of the likelihood of a negative outcome, and an expression of the impact of such an occurrence. We describe how risk management may be considered synonymous with preservation activity, a persistent effort to negate the dangers posed to information availability, usability and sustainability. Risk can be characterised according to associated goals, activities, responsibilities and policies in terms of both their manifestation and mitigation. They have the capacity to be deconstructed into their atomic units and responsibility for their resolution delegated appropriately. We continue to describe how the manifestation of risks typically spans an entire organisational environment, and as the focus of our analysis risk safeguards against omissions that may occur when pursuing functional, departmental or role-based assessment. We discuss the importance of relating risk-factors, through the risks themselves or associated system elements. To do so will yield the preservation best-practice knowledge base that is conspicuously lacking within the international digital preservation community. We present as research outcomes an encapsulation of preservation practice (and explicitly defined best practice) as a series of case studies, in turn distilled into atomic, related information elements. We conduct our analyses in the formal evaluation of memory institutions in the UK, US and continental Europe. Furthermore we showcase a series of applications that use the fruits of this research as their intellectual foundation. Finally we document our results in a range of technical reports and conference and journal articles. We present evidence of preservation approaches and infrastructures from a series of case studies conducted in a range of international preservation environments. We then aggregate this into a linked data structure entitled PORRO, an ontology relating preservation repository, object and risk characteristics, intended to support preservation decision making and evaluation. The methodology leading to this ontology is outlined, and lessons are exposed by revisiting legacy studies and exposing the resource and associated applications to evaluation by the digital preservation community.

Hybridity in contemporary commercial organizations: implications for employee trust

This study advances the concept of organizational hybridity (OH). By doing so, it takes into account the individual level of analysis often neglected in organizational theory. More specifically, it aims to understand the implications of organizational hybridity for employees’ trust in contemporary commercial organizations. Informed and guided by current literature, this study argues that the current literature on organizational hybridity fails to adequately address the consequences of hybridity for employees' behaviour. The empirical study was conducted in 2014 using data collected via semi-structured interviews and document analysis. The study was based on a comparison of two case studies in Nigeria: Alter Securities Limited and Barak Petroleum Limited. A total of forty (40) interviews were conducted; twenty (20) from each organization. The data were analysed using thematic analysis. The main findings are that organizational hybridity in this study produced tensions that resulted in negative behavioural responses and employees’ distrust in the commercial hybrid organizations. However, employees’ identification with non-market orientated institutional logics such as family, philanthropic and religious logics is seen to facilitate their commitment, honesty, and trust in the organizations. Nevertheless, caution is required here as religious logics may also lead to an acceptance of unethical behaviour by employees. Overall, this study contributes to the literature on organizational hybridity by extending on Battilana and Lee’s (2014) framework, which highlights governance, leadership, organizational culture and intra-organizational relationships as core organizational attributes in the context of which issues may arise in commercial hybrid organizations. Furthermore, it addresses a gap in Besharov and Smith’s (2014) hybrid typology framework by providing an alternative line of argument focused on understanding how tensions manifest within commercial hybrid organizations. The key recommendations of this research underscore the need for commercial hybrid organizations to invest in mechanisms for improving employees’ trust so as to reap the benefits associated with trust. This could be achieved by involving employees in the decision-making process and clearly communicating the organizations’ values, so as to minimise the misinterpretation of the embodied institutional logics by employees.