Critical analysis of the use of absorptive capacity theory in IS research

This paper critically analyzes the use of Absorptive Capacity (ACAP) theory in information systems (IS) research. Drawing on a comprehensive review of the evolution of ACAP theory and models for the construct, we empirically investigate a number of ACAP-related papers published in reputable IS journals. The analysis involves four main areas: 1) summary analysis of ACAP in IS papers; 2) domains of ACAP usage; 3) analysis of hypotheses to show how ACAP is being used to explain various organizational phenomena in IS research; and 4) analysis of measures to gain insights into the operationalization of ACAP in IS research. This research advocates that organization-level ACAP should be applied as the dependent variable in studying the impact of IS. Furthermore, ACAP should be conceptualized as a “capability,” rather than an “asset.” This paper contributes to IS and ACAP studies by investigating and clearly specifying the utility of ACAP in IS research.

A Jamesonian theory of theological practice: a critical response to the work of Roland Boer

In a conjuncture marked by the “resurgence of religion,” the problem of historical materialism’s relation to religious ideologies has acquired a new urgency. The work of Roland Boer, recently awarded the Deutscher Prize for his magnum opus on Marxism and Theology poses this question from a surprising perspective. While his main claim is that religious influences in Marxist theory represent a sort of theological unconscious in historical materialism, at the same time Boer also advances an original Marxist interpretation of the Abrahamic religions, especially Christianity. This line of research, which extends from his dissertation on Jameson and Jeroboam through to his most recent work on The Sacred Economy, proposes that theology is a reflective representation of the social totality. In this article, I criticise Boer’s valorisation of theology as a practical discourse that is post-ideological but non-theoretical, and conclude by indicating an alternative.

Global democratic theory: a critical introduction

Global Democratic Theory is the first comprehensive introduction to the changing contours of democracy in today’s hyperconnected world. Accessibly written for readers new to the topic, it considers the impact of globalization and global forms of governance and activism on democratic politics and examines how democratic theory has responded to address these challenges, including calls for new forms of democracy to be developed beyond the nation-state and for greater public participation and accountability in existing global institutions. Divided into two parts, the book shows how globalization provides both new obstacles and new opportunities for democracy. Part I explores the shifts underway at the national and international levels that are challenging democracy within nation-states around the world. In response, new proposals for global and transnational democracy have emerged. Part II critically analyses five main approaches of ‘global democratic theory’ Ð liberal internationalism, cosmopolitan democracy, deliberative democracy, social democracy and radical democracy, focusing on their specific interpretation of the problems facing democracy, their normative claims, and the feasibility of their proposed pathways of democratization. The book’s extensive account of the problems and possibilities facing democracy today will be essential reading for students and scholars of politics, political theory and political philosophy.

Curriculum as colour and curves: a synthesis of Black theory, design and creativity realised as critical curriculum writing

This article looks to three inspirational Black women, bell hooks, Stacey McBride-Irby and Patricia Williams, in the pursuit of radical curriculum. While today curriculum is critiqued as racialised, gendered, sexualised and classed, the formats of curriculum documents such as text books, units of work and lesson plans have changed little. These documents are often conceived as linear sequences of steps leading to outcomes, and their voices are distanced and ‘neutral’. Drawing on a doctoral study of curriculum design in Australia, this article embraces a different approach by opening up a unit of work on girls’ popular culture to hooks’ invocations to teach to transgress, so that curriculum might be experienced as colour and curves, rather than a monochrome route to a pre-determined end point. Through this, along with hooks, I invite teachers to live pedagogy, rather than to deliver it.

Curriculum as colour and curves: a synthesis of black theory, design and creativity realised as critical curriculum writing

This article looks to three inspirational Black women, bell hooks, Stacey McBride-Irby and Patricia Williams, in the pursuit of radical curriculum. While today curriculum is critiqued as racialized, gendered, sexualised and classed, the formats of curriculum documents such as text books, units of work and lesson plans have changed little. These documents are often conceived as linear sequences of steps leading to outcomes, and their voices are distanced and “neutral”. Drawing on a doctoral study of curriculum design in Australia, this article embraces a different approach by opening up a unit of work on girls’ popular culture to hooks’ invocations to teach to transgress, so that curriculum might be experienced as colour and curves, rather than a monochrome route to a pre-determined end point. Through this, along with hooks, I invite teachers to live pedagogy, rather than to deliver it.

Towards a critical practice of educational administration [Turkish]

Beginning with a brief critique of the behavioral science approach to educational administration, this paper traces the roots of an alternative perspective through examination of the new sociology of education and critical social theory. Arguing then for the location of a critical practice of educational administration in a cultural analysis of the habitus of education, the author discusses the metaphorical, ritualistic, and linguistic features of that habitus with reference to empirical studies. Fianlly, it is argued that the practice of a critical and reflexive educational administration is necessarily located within a critique of domination and a commitment to struggle in the interest of a better world.

Behavioral versus demographic predictors of early adoption : a critical analysis and comparative test

Predicting which consumers will be amongst the first to adopt an innovative product is a difficult task but is valuable in allowing effective and efficient use of marketing resources. This paper examines the accuracy of predictions made about likely first adopters based on the most widely accepted theory and compares them to predictions made by examining the relevant past behavior of consumers. A survey of over 1000 consumers examined adoption of an innovative technology: compact fluorescent lightglobes. The results show that variables which were derived from a utility and awareness perspective were a more accurate and managerially useful predictor than the demographic variables derived from the widely accepted theory based on the work of Rogers. It is suggested that these alternative variables could be utilized more readily by marketing managers in many circumstances.

Changing vistas in public relations theory

Contemporary theorists are opening new ways to think about public relations. Public relations textbook authors have hitherto borrowed theories from the adjacent disciplines of communication, psychology, sociology, and organisation studies. At the end of the twentieth century, J. Grunig’s four-model concept of public relations was the only modern theoretical approach that could be said to have originated from within public relations scholarship. And as we will see, even J. Grunig’s perspective is rooted in political theory. But the 21st century’s burgeoning critical and professional interest in ethical public relations has produced a flurry of discipline-specific, theoretical initiatives.

Foucault's 'What is an author' : towards a critical discourse of practice as research

A vexed issue for many artistic researchers is related to the need for the artist/researcher to write about his or her own work in the research report or exegesis. In the creative arts, the outcomes that emerge from an alternative logic of practice are not easily quantifiable and it can be difficult to articulate conclusions objectively given the emotional and ideological investments and the intrinsically subjective dimension of the artistic process. How then, might the artist as researcher avoid on the one hand, what has been referred to as 'auto-connoisseurship', the undertaking of a thinly veiled labour of valorising what has been achieved in the creative work, or alternatively producing a research report that is mere description or history?

In this paper I suggest that a way of overcoming such a dilemma is for creative arts researchers to shift the critical focus away from the notion of the work as product, to an understanding of both studio enquiry and its outcomes as process. I’d like to draw on Michel Foucault’s essay ‘What is An Author ‘ to explore how we might move away from art criticism to the notion of a critical discourse of practice-led enquiry that involves viewing the artist as a researcher, and the artist/critic as a scholar who comments on the value of the artistic process as the production of knowledge.

Foucault’s essay provides artistic researchers with a template for more objective and distanced discourse on the practice-led research process and its writing. It allows researchers to locate themselves within contexts of theory and practice and provides an analytical framework though which researchers might locate themselves and their work within the broader social arena and field of research, As I will show with reference to the work of Donna Haraway and a number of commentaries on Pablo Picasso’s Demioselles d’Avignon, an application of Foucault’s ideas need not negate those subjective and situated aspects of practice as research.

Reflexivity, its meanings and relevance for social work: a critical review of the literature

The concept of "reflexivity" has become increasingly significant in social work literature in relation to social work education, theory and practice. However, our reading of the literature indicates that there is a lack of clarity about the concept in terms of who is being exhorted to be "reflexive," when and how. This article addresses these questions through a critical review of social work literature since the 1990s that discusses the concept of "reflexivity." Given that many authors seem to use the concepts of "reflexivity" and "(critical) reflection" interchangeably, we also apply this analysis to "reflection" and "critical reflection." This article raises important questions about how the concepts of "reflexivity," "critical reflection" and "reflectivity" are defined and the different consequences such definitions might have for social work education, theory and practice.

Decades of research efforts to link economic and environmental performance: still data in search of a theory?

With the proliferation of social investment vehicles, stakeholders, particularly investors, are increasingly aware of the relationship between economic, social and environmental performance, and disclosure to external parties. This is particularly evident in The Securities and Exchange Commission's Environmental Disclosure Rules. The thesis of this paper is that, after three decades of academic and professional research efforts, there are still no firm proactive guidelines to firmly link the financial performance with environmental and social performance. The purpose of this paper is to revisit empirical research efforts spanning three decades in order to delineate potential links that may assist in systematic, comparable reporting

Rhetorical theory of public relations: opening the door to semiotic and pragmatism approaches

The 2001 Handbook of Public Relations edited by Robert Heath contains a prominent article advocating the use of rhetorical theory or ‘rhetorical enactment rational’ as a fruitful way of advancing theoretical understandings of public relations. In 2004 Heath and Dan Millar edited: Responding to Crisis: A Rhetorical Approach to Crisis Communication. These are the latest excursions into a perspective on public relations reflecting the extensive study of rhetoric in North America. Other examples are Public Relations Inquiry as Rhetorical Criticism (Elwood, 1995); Rhetorical and Critical Approaches to Public Relations (Toth and Heath, 1992); and a chapter Public Relations? No, Relations with Publics: A Rhetorical-Organisational Approach to Contemporary Corporate Communication (Cheney and Dionisopoulos, in Botan and Hazleton (Eds.) 1989).

The conventional notion of rhetoric is argumentation and persuasion stemming from the ancient Greek sophists, such as Aristotle, and from the Romans, particularly Cicero and Quintillion. Rhetoric became a fundamental plank of the trivium of ancient and medieval education: grammar, logic and rhetoric. Then in the 20th century Kenneth Burke, Stephen Toulmin and Chaim Perelman with Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca extended Aristotle’s suggestion that: “Rhetoric is the counterpart of dialectic” Aristotle (trans. 1991). To use the rhetorical approach to argue that rational discourse cannot describe the world on its own. Instead living, enculturated human beings have to perceive ‘their’ truths. They take a perceptual ‘position’ on reason.

Public relations, is an industry for influencing perceptual ‘positions’. But the study of perception and attempts to influence perception cannot be claimed by rhetorical scholars alone. Semioticians and linguists who take the perspective of linguistic pragmatics also claim this field. This paper takes the example of ‘public relations’ as a focus for the confluence of rhetorical, semiotic and pragmatism approaches to the ‘problematic’ of understanding and truth.

Excess and mimesis in organization theory: emancipation from within?

In organizational analysis it can be argued that 'radical separatism'—in the guise of the original 'agenda' for Radical Organization Theory (see Benson, 1977a; Burrell and Morgan, 1979; Clegg and Dunkerley, 1980) or more recently that for Critical Management Studies (see Alvesson and Willmott, 1992; Fournier and Grey, 2000; Casey, 2002; Grey, 2004)—has failed to breach the hegemony of functionalist orthodoxy, and notably so when it comes to practice. Given this failure, we speculate, upon the potential for a different emancipatory approach, one based theoretically on the fluid process of 'undecidability'. Unusually our approach attempts to undermine the conventions of functionalist organization theory from within. In brief, we speculate upon the adoption and enactment of Luce Irigaray's (1985, 1991) strategy of mimicry as a means to illuminate the notion of 'excess' in organization theory. To liberate the feminine, Irigaray mimics the symbolic representation of the female body to excess so as to expose the contradictions of phallocentric discourse. When applied to organization theory, this sees a deliberate mimicking of critiques of radical separatism so as to make explicit the latter's imprisonment within functionalism. Through excessive mimicking of the functionalists' critique, the radical/critical organization theorist may become cognizant of, but perhaps not so subjugated by, the hegemony of functionalist discourse.

Critical incident analyses : a practice learning tool for students and practitioners

The development of critical skills in social work students and practitioners has been a major focus of social work education and training in recent years. Critical incident analysis has developed as a tool to aid critical reflection in practice, in health and social work. This paper provides an overview of the use of the tool in these fields. It then reports on a demonstration project which sought to examine how critical incident analysis might be used as a form of assessment and as a supervisory tool by social work students and practice teachers. An evaluation of the project is provided. Completion of critical incident analyses using the framework was found to provide a structured approach to critical reflection. It assisted the integration of theory and practice and the examination of value issues. Students and practice teachers identify its use in supervision and its potential as an assessment tool. The paper concludes with a discussion on the potential uses of critical incident analyses, with particular attention given to its use to develop anti-oppressive practice.

A gaze through the lens of decision theory toward knowledge translation science

Research findings become evidence when an individual decides that the information is relevant and useful to a particular circumstance. Prior to that point, they are unrelated facts. For research translation to occur, research evidence needs filtering, interpretation, and application by individuals to the specific situation. For this reason, decision science is complementary to knowledge translation science. Both aim to support the individual in deciding the most appropriate action in a dynamic environment where there are masses of uncensored and nonprioritized information readily available. Decision science employs research theories to study the cognitive processes underpinning the filtering and integration of current scientific information into changing contexts. Two meta-theories, coherence and correspondence theories, have been used to provide alternative views and prompt significant debate to advance the science. The aim of this article is to stimulate debate about the relationship between decision theory and knowledge translation. Discussed is the critical role of cognition in clinical decision making, with a focus on knowledge translation. A critical commentary of the knowledge utilization modeling papers is presented from a decision science perspective. The article concludes with a discussion on the implications for knowledge translation when viewed through the lens of decision science.