Community engagement and social organization: introducing concepts, policy and practical applications

This chapter provides an introductory overview of how the term ‘community’ has been conceptualized in sociological literatures, noting that there remains considerable uncertainty with regard to the way in which communities could or should be defined. The chapter examines the salience of underlying concepts of social organization that can shape and influence the extent to which programmes of engagement are likely to be successful. Drawing on recent empirical work some of the key opportunities and challenges for local government in translating the concepts into practice are considered.

Some implications of a sample of practical Turing tests

A series of imitation games involving 3-participant (simultaneous comparison of two hidden entities) and 2-participant (direct interrogation of a hidden entity) were conducted at Bletchley Park on the 100th anniversary of Alan Turing’s birth: 23 June 2012. From the ongoing analysis of over 150 games involving (expert and non-expert, males and females, adults and child) judges, machines and hidden humans (foils for the machines), we present six particular conversations that took place between human judges and a hidden entity that produced unexpected results. From this sample we focus on features of Turing’s machine intelligence test that the mathematician/code breaker did not consider in his examination for machine thinking: the subjective nature of attributing intelligence to another mind.

Bias or rationality? The case of UK commercial real estate investment

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to test the hypothesis that investment decision making in the UK direct property market does not conform to the assumption of economic rationality underpinning portfolio theory. Design/methodology/approach – The developing behavioural real estate paradigm is used to challenge the idea that investor “man” is able to perform with economic rationality, specifically with reference to the analysis of the spatial dispersion of the entire UK “investible stock” and “investible locations” against observed spatial patterns of institutional investment. Location quotients are derived, combining different data sets. Findings – Considerably greater variation in institutional property holdings is found across the UK than would be expected given the economic and stock characteristics of local areas. This appears to provide evidence of irrationality (in the strict traditional economic sense) in the behaviour of institutional investors, with possible herding underpinning levels of investment that cannot be explained otherwise. Research limitations/implications – Over time a lack of distinction has developed between the cause and effect of comparatively low levels of development and institutional property investment across the regions. A critical examination of decision making and behaviour in practice could break this cycle, and could in turn promote regional economic growth. Originality/value – The entire “population” of observations is used to demonstrate the relationships between economic theory and investor performance exploring, for the first time, stock and local area characteristics.

User-friendly free-text keystroke dynamics authentication for practical applications

This paper introduces a novel approach for free-text keystroke dynamics authentication which incorporates the use of the keyboard’s key-layout. The method extracts timing features from specific key-pairs. The Euclidean distance is then utilized to find the level of similarity between a user’s profile data and his/her test data. The results obtained from this method are reasonable for free-text authentication while maintaining the maximum level of user relaxation. Moreover, it has been proven in this study that flight time yields better authentication results when compared with dwell time. In particular, the results were obtained with only one training sample for the purpose of practicality and ease of real life application.

Robust evaluation of fixed-event forecast rationality

In this paper we introduce a new testing procedure for evaluating the rationality of fixed-event forecasts based on a pseudo-maximum likelihood estimator. The procedure is designed to be robust to departures in the normality assumption. A model is introduced to show that such departures are likely when forecasters experience a credibility loss when they make large changes to their forecasts. The test is illustrated using monthly fixed-event forecasts produced by four UK institutions. Use of the robust test leads to the conclusion that certain forecasts are rational while use of the Gaussian-based test implies that certain forecasts are irrational. The difference in the results is due to the nature of the underlying data. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Rationality and momentum in real estate investment forecasts

This study examines the rationality and momentum in forecasts for rental, capital value and total returns for the real estate investment market in the United Kingdom. In order to investigate if forecasters are affected by the general economic conditions present at the time of forecast we incorporate into the analysis Gross Domestic Product(GDP) and the Default Spread (DS). The empirical findings show high levels of momentum in the forecasts, with highly persistent forecast errors. The results also indicate that forecasters are affected by adverse conditions. This is consistent with the finding that they tend to exhibit greater forecast error when the property market is underperforming and vice-versa.

Organisational politics: reconciling leadership's rational-emotional paradox

Purpose – Effective leadership action requires managers to harness power that is intrinsically political. This paper aims to study and characterise the political nature of a manager's behaviour when taking leadership action. Design/methodology/approach – The methodological approach is qualitative and examines three organisations over a three-year period when these entities experienced a major product failure. The paper analyses the actual managerial behaviour of managers and provides insight into the factors that most strongly influence the effectiveness of managers when taking leadership action. Findings – Political behaviour when taking leadership action can be conceptualised in terms of rationality and emotionality. In so doing, it can be clarified how behaviour must be modified to ensure that leadership action is consistently effective. Research limitations/implications – A case study of three multinational engineering companies engaged in the design, development and manufacturing of turbomachinery provides the platform for the research. The concepts presented in the paper will require validating in other organisations of different demographic profiles. Practical implications – The concepts presented and the implications discussed provide insight into the political nature of managerial behaviour when taking leadership action. The paper highlights the practical steps individual managers can embrace to ensure that their behaviour is appropriate to context, even under the most traumatic situations. Thus, the paper provides managers with a model that facilitates effective leadership action. Originality/value – This paper provides insight into how managers behaved in circumstances that mattered to them. Through immersion in events at the time they took place, the authors captured situations in which managers were under real pressure and, in so doing, avoided the bias inherent when interviewing a manager about past events. As such, the paper concludes that the political behaviour in which managers engage when taking leadership action is rooted in the reality of the adversity that the most capable managers have both experienced and overcome. This detailed study reports behaviour in a situation where managers' business and future prospects were in jeopardy. This paper identifies why some managers were able to use the experience positively, helping them to adopt politically intrinsic behaviour to facilitate effective leadership action.

Effects of lying in practical Turing tests

Interpretation of utterances affects an interrogator’s determination of human from machine during live Turing tests. Here, we consider transcripts realised as a result of a series of practical Turing tests that were held on 23 June 2012 at Bletchley Park, England. The focus in this paper is to consider the effects of lying and truth-telling on the human judges by the hidden entities, whether human or a machine. Turing test transcripts provide a glimpse into short text communication, the type that occurs in emails: how does the reader determine truth from the content of a stranger’s textual message? Different types of lying in the conversations are explored, and the judge’s attribution of human or machine is investigated in each test.

Rationality of service composition of Workflow Net in a service oriented architecture

Users’ requirements change drives an information system evolution. Consequently, such evolution affects those atomic services which provide functional operations from one state of their composition to another state of composition. A challenging issue associated with such evolution of the state of service composition is to ensure a resultant service composition remaining rational. This paper presents a method of Service Composition Atomic-Operation Set (SCAOS). SCAOS defines 2 classes of atomic operations and 13 kinds of basic service compositions to aid a state change process by using Workflow Net. The workflow net has algorithmic capabilities to compose the required services with rationality and maintain any changes to the services in a different composition also rational. This method can improve the adaptability to the ever changing business requirements of information systems in the dynamic environment.

Rationality in system dynamics

Special Issue: Selected Papers from the First European System Dynamics Workshop, Mannheim University

An evaluation of the theoretical potential and practical opportunity for using greywater for domestic purposes in Ghana

Assessments concerning the effects of climate change, water resource availability and water deprivation in West Africa have not frequently considered the positive contribution to be derived from collecting and reusing water for domestic purposes. Where the originating water is taken from a clean water source and has been used the first time for washing or bathing, this water is commonly called “greywater”. Greywater is a prolific resource that is generated wherever people live. Treated greywater can be used for domestic cleaning, for flushing toilets where appropriate, for washing cars, sometimes for watering kitchen gardens, and for clothes washing prior to rinsing. Therefore, a large theoretical potential exists to increase total water resource availability if greywater were to be widely reused. Locally treated greywater reduces the distribution network requirement, lower construction effort and cost and, wherever possible, minimising the associated carbon footprint. Such locally treated greywater offers significant practical opportunities for increasing the total available water resources at a local level. The reuse of treated greywater is one important action that will help to mitigate the reducing availability of clean water supplies in some areas, and the expected mitigation required in future aligns well with WHO/UNICEF (2012) aspirations. The evaluation of potential opportunities for prioritising greywater systems to support water reuse takes into account the availability of water resources, water use indicators and published estimates in order to understand typical patterns of water demand. The approach supports knowledge acquisition regarding local conditions for enabling capacity building for greywater reuse, the understanding of systems that are most likely to encourage greywater reuse, and practices and future actions to stimulate greywater infrastructure planning, design and implementation. Although reuse might be considered to increase the uncertainty of achieving a specified quality of the water supply, robust methods and technologies are available for local treatment. Resource strategies for greywater reuse have the potential to consistently improve water efficiency and availability in water impoverished and water stressed regions of Ghana and West Africa. Untreated greywater is referred to as “greywater”; treated greywater is referred to as “treated greywater” in this paper.