Social intelligence and top management team: an exploratory study of external knowledge acquisition for strategic change in global IT service providers in India

This paper focuses on the processes by which firms, particularly knowledge intensive firms, can augment their overall knowledge stock by tapping into external sources of knowledge. It is argued that Top Management Teams' (TMTs') social intelligence is a critical learning capability in acquiring external knowledge that leads to strategic change. Social intelligence involves social awareness, social understanding and social skills. The study draws from the experience of 11 of the largest Information Technology Service Providers (ITSPs) in India and based on in-depth interviews. The findings show that TMTs' learning capability in the context of social intelligence to interact with external stakeholders is important to ITSPs in facilitating external knowledge acquisition and allowing new knowledge emerge within and across networks. The findings provide significant insights into ITSPs emerging in other developing countries such as in China. Research limitation and future research direction are also provided.

Potentials of social media for tacit knowledge sharing amongst physicians : preliminary findings

Tacit knowledge sharing amongst physicians, such as the sharing of clinical experiences, skills, or know-how, or know-whom, is known to have a significant impact on the quality of medical diagnosis and decisions. This paper posits that social media can provide new opportunities for tacit knowledge sharing amongst physicians, and demonstrates this by presenting findings from a review of relevant literature and a survey conducted with physicians. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten physicians from around the world who were active users of social media. Initial thematic analysis revealed eight themes as potential contributions of social web tools to facilitate tacit knowledge flow amongst physicians. The emergent themes are defined, linked to the literature, and supported by instances of interview transcripts. Findings presented here are preliminary, and final results will be reported after accomplishing all phases of data collection and analysis.

The assessment of motivation for behaviour change among sex offenders against children: an investigation of the utility of the Stages of Change Questionnaire

A better understanding of motivation for behaviour change among sex offenders against children would improve treatment programmes designed to modify sexual offending behaviour. However, investigation of this issue is limited by lack of theoretically and empirically sound measures of motivation for behaviour change among sex offenders. This paper reports on two studies that were conducted to investigate the psychometric properties (validity, reliability, and social desirability) of the Stages of Change Questionnaire, adapted to measure motivation for behaviour change among sex offenders against children. In Study 1, the psychometric properties of the questionnaire were assessed for sex offenders against children (n=36) who were on a treatment waiting list. In Study 2, the psychometric properties of the questionnaire were assessed for sex offenders against children (n=47) at pre-treatment, mid-treatment, and post-treatment. Both studies supported the validity and reliability of the adapted Stages of Change Questionnaire, and the influence of social desirability upon responding was less than expected. The results of this investigation supported the potential utility of the Stages of Change Questionnaire as a measure of motivation for behaviour change for sex offenders against children.

The social construction of child maltreatment: the role of medical practitioners

• Summary: This paper explores how medical knowledge in child protection practice operates, in conjunction with social work knowledge and legal knowledge, as a social process of constructing meaning as ‘maltreatment’ (or not) in which the physical body of the child and perceived abnormalities represent ‘evidence’. Through discourse analysis of two case studies, this paper makes explicit and problematizes the social processes by which meanings are given by medical practitioners, social workers, police and parents to material experiences, the preference given to some meanings over others, and the econsequences of particular meanings for children and families and social work practice.

• Findings: Medical, social and legal knowledge are not neutral but embedded in power relations. The case studies show, through a sociological analysis of professional practice in child protection, how preferred versions of knowledge and meaning may override or dismiss alternative meanings, with particular consequences for parents and children and for practice outcomes.

• Applications: The case studies offer opportunities by which critically to engage with child protection knowledge, policy and practice in keeping with contemporary approaches that advocate dialogue, critical reflection and reflexivity, so that professional knowledge and professional power may be deployed constructively rather than oppressively.

A review of the scope of scientific studies relating indoor environment and student performance

In 2006-7 the Australian government will invest $9.3 billion in state government and nongovernment educational facilities (DEST 20061). One area of particular interest to both government and school designers is maximising this investment through providing students with healthy and
productive indoor learning environments. The lack of post-occupancy evaluations carried out in schools (Lackney 2001) means that designers are reliant on “best practice” indoor environment quality guidelines developed primarily from scientific studies. The problem with scientific evaluation is that often the complexity of the influences upon student performance is simplified in order to gather information, rather than necessarily providing a more holistic and realistic explanation of any improved outcomes. This paper examines the scope of various studies of classroom indoor environment qualities that have thus far contributed to current understanding of their impact on student learning outcomes. The review demonstrates the lack of comprehensive research into the full range of influences on student performance and offers a better understanding of the limitations of knowledge about indoor environment qualities. This information provides valuable input to research development and post-occupancy evaluation that can better integrate the full range of influences upon students of school facilities and test the assumptions made about “best practice”.

Social structures of science and approaches to outcomes-based medical research

Recently, two seemingly divergent approaches have emerged in outcomes-based medical research. Proponents of evidence-based medicine (EBM) argue that the most effective treatments will be found by adopting a hierarchical approach that gives pre-eminence to randomized controlled clinical trials, where these are available. Proponents of participatory medical research argue that research undertaken with consumers and other partners in the community will produce the best outcomes. While one approach marginalizes consumer experience the other approach draws consumers into it. EBM assumes a high level of consensus in a scientific community, while participatory medical research relies on co-opting consumer experience. This paper indicates that each approach involves a particular view of social structure in science. The paper uses theories of social relations among scientists for the purpose of critically assessing EBM and the participatory model.

Kristevan aesthetics, performativity and the production of situated knowledge

In this paper, I will draw on the work of Julia Kristeva to argue that performativity can be understood in terms of a materialist ontology that underpins creative production and the knowing subject. To understand this, we need to examine the relationship between individual history, biology and culture and processes through which creative practice attributes value by translating psychic representations of affect and drive into verbal and visual signs. Kristeva's aesthetics does not plunge us into an obscure metaphysics, but provides a model for articulating material-discursive practices that emerge from corporeal responses. Enactments, predicated by desire give rise to agency and judgement allowing practice to test theory through the production of situated knowledge.

Kristeva's psychoanalytical position reveals the necessity of linking material and individual practices of art with the social through language and interpretation. Material-discursive practices can only acquire meaning through their relationship between the speaking subject and addressees. Art itself provides us with the means for discovering the knowledge it produces. In and through material practice, the work of art is capable of transferring back to the artist as viewer, structures of meaning that have hitherto been hidden. In practice, this involves a constant movement between the biological self (the self as 'other') and the social self, the ego. In artistic research, it can be said that the first addressee is the artist her/himself, as social other. Constant movement between the two in creative practice can thus be understood as a performative production of knowledge.

Exchange as a determinant in corporate citizenship : exploratory action research into the social construction of corporate citizenship

This study attempts to achieve two things. Firstly it contextualizes corporate citizenship drawing on scholarly, government, media, legal and business discourses which when viewed as a whole, reveals the importance of exchange as a central determinant in how all the major themes or subfields of corporate citizenship function and subsequently become valued within public discourse. Secondly, it reports on exploratory action research where I as a researcher occupied a central role in understanding and contributing towards how organizational settings socially construct and evolve corporate citizenship in real time through various exchange behaviour, drawing from four years field research within BP and its interactions with the external world. This research contributes to new knowledge by building a rare contextual understanding into how cultural change evolves over time within an organization, from its public face, through policy, down into employee and stakeholder reactions, including identifying the crucial role played by Cultural bridges’ in shifting entrenched organizational culture towards embracing new, more sustainable ways of doing business, and additionally how practitioners can legitimately act as a researcher in facilitating this process by assisting an organization to move from simple, transactional relationships to more sustainable integrated social, financial and environmental exchange between business and its broader context. Importantly, this research develops entirely new theoretical models for understanding the social application and commercial value of corporate citizenship to both business and society.

Contestation and continuity in educational reform : a critical study of innovations in environmental education

This study explores the notion of contestation in environmental education. Contestation is a process in which self-interested individuals and groups in a social organisation cooperate, compete and negotiate in a complex interaction aimed at solving social problems. A "framework for critique" is developed, comprising technicist, liberalof scientific knowledge, educational innovation, educational research and education itself. This framework forms the basis from which a critique is mounted of contesting perspectives in environmental education at international, national and local levels. The thesis argues, firstly, that contestation takes place in the domains of (a) language or "policy in environmental education; (b) organisational strategies aimed at initiating or improving environmental education; (c) educational practices conducted in the name of environmental education; and (d) within perspectives between these domains. The thesis argues, secondly, that the presently dominant techniqist models of innovation expressed in the organisation of environmental education are part of an hegemonic relationship which acts to "technologise" the innovation: they provide an organisational strategy for establishing environmental and educational progress without offering a theory for self-reflection and ideology-critique. The incompatibility of certain contesting perspectives and practices is masked, thus contributing to continuity, rather than reform. The thesis characterises this "educational problem of environmental education" as a series of theory-practice gaps at all levels, where "theory" is the set of beliefs and assumptions held by individual practitioners, and in. terms of which they understand their educational practices. An educational problem exists because these theory-practice gaps exist; the educational problem continues because these theory-practice gaps exist unacknowledged within the infrastructure of environmental education due to the effects of false consciousness and hegemony. The thesis addresses the issue of which of several contesting forms of educational research offers the most coherent response to the educational problem of environmental education, and argues that, for the time being, approaches grounded in the critical social sciences are both the best justified and most promising approaches . to educational research for environmental education.

The mediatization of the knowledge based economy : an Australian field based account

This paper presents an empirical account of mediatization from a Bourdieuian perspective, based on the development of a number of new concepts, such as cross-field effects and the rescaling of such effects as linked to processes of globalization. Built on an Australian empirical case relating to educational policy and the knowledge based economy, this paper argues that mediatization can be understood in relation to the cross-field effects of different fields of journalism on subsequent fields, which have their genesis in forms of practice that cross different social fields. Specifically, the case analysis details interactions between the field of print journalism and the field of policy over the course of an Australian science capability review, chaired by the then chief scientist, Dr Robin Batterham, which led to Australia adopting a national version of the knowledge economy. The empirical case also leads us to consider the impact of both global and national fields of journalism on fields of educational policy in relation to mediatization.

Investigating directionality for a media consumption construct : establishing the utility of confirmatory vanishing tetrad analysis

Purpose – When assessing the psychometric properties of measures and estimate relations among latent variables, many studies in the social sciences (including management and marketing) often fail to comprehensively appraise the directionality of indicants. Such failures can lead to model misspecification and inaccurate parameter estimates. The purpose of this paper is to apply a post hoc test called confirmatory vanishing tetrad analysis (CTA hereafter) to a single construct called mass media consumption information exposure, which antecedent studies conceptually posited to be a formative (causative) representation.
Design/methodology/approach – This paper analyses a consumer sample of 585 US respondents and applies the CTA test to a single construct by its inclusion in various matrices within a statistical analysis system-macro that takes into account nonnormal data characteristics. The matrices are derived from Mplus 5 through the estimation of a single-factor congeneric model. The CTA test calculates a test statistic similar to an asymptotic x2 distribution with degrees of freedom equal to the number of nonredundant tetrads tested.
Findings – The preliminary data analyses reveal that the data characteristics are nonnormal which is not uncommon in social research. The CTA results reveal that the reflective (emergent) item orientation cannot be fully ruled out as being the correct model representation. This is in contrast to prior theoretical conceptual work which would strongly support this construct being a formative representation.
Originality/value – Insofar as the authors are aware, there is no paper with a particular focus on how the CTA might not provide sound results with a demonstrated example. The paper makes a valuable contribution by discussing modelling philosophy and a procedure for directionality testing. The authors advocate the implementation of pre and post hoc tests as a key component of standard research practice.

Health, behavioral, cognitive, and social correlates of breakfast skipping among women living in socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods

Breakfast skipping is a potentially modifiable behavior that has negative effects on health and is socioeconomically patterned. This study aimed to examine the intrapersonal (health, behavioral, and cognitive) and social factors associated with breakfast skipping. Nonpregnant women (n = 4123) aged 18-45 y from socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods throughout Victoria, Australia, completed a postal questionnaire. Sociodemographic characteristics, diet, physical activity, sedentary behaviors, and cognitive and social factors were assessed by self-report. Breakfast skipping was defined in 2 ways: 1) "rarely/never" eating breakfast (n = 498) and 2) eating breakfast ≤2 d/wk (includes those who rarely/never ate breakfast; n = 865). Poisson regression was used to calculate prevalence ratios and linear trends, adjusting for covariates. The P values for linear trends are reported below. Compared with breakfast consumers, women who reported rarely/never eating breakfast tended to have poorer self-rated health (P-trend < 0.001), be current smokers (P-trend < 0.001), pay less attention to health (P-trend < 0.001), not prioritize their own healthy eating when busy looking after their family (P-trend < 0.001), have less nutrition knowledge (P-trend < 0.001), and a lower proportion were trying to control their weight (P-trend < 0.020). When breakfast skipping was defined as eating breakfast ≤2 d/wk, additional associations were found for having lower leisure-time physical activity (P-trend = 0.012) and less self-efficacy for eating a healthy diet (P-trend < 0.043). In conclusion, a range of intrapersonal and social factors were significantly associated with breakfast skipping among women living in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas. Acknowledging the cross-sectional design and need for causal confirmation, programs that aim to promote breakfast consumption in this population group should consider targeting family-related barriers to healthy eating and nutrition knowledge.

Psychological contract development: An integration of existing knowledge to form a temporal model

The psychological contract has received substantial theoretical attention over the past two decades as a popular framework within which to examine contemporary employment relationships. Previous research mostly examines breach and violation of the psychological contract and its impact on employee organization outcomes. Few studies have employed longitudinal, prospective research designs to investigate the psychological contract and as a result, psychological contract content and formation are incompletely understood. It is argued that employment relationships may be better proactively managed with greater understanding of formation and changes in the psychological contract. We examine existing psychological contract literature to identify five key factors proposed to contribute to the formation of psychological contracts. We extend the current research by integrating these factors for the first time into a temporal model of psychological contract development.