Institutional work taken literally: How logics shift as banking lawyers 'get the deal done'

The role of interest and agency in the creation and transformation of institutions, in particular the “paradox of embedded agency” (Seo & Creed, 2002) have long puzzled institutional scholars. Most recently, Lawrence and Suddaby (2006) coined the term “institutional work” to describe various strategies for creating, maintaining and disrupting institutions. This label, while useful to integrate existing research, highlights institutionalists’ lack of attention to work as actors’ everyday occupational tasks and activities. Thus, the objective of this study is to take institutional work literally and ask: How does practical work come to constitute institutional work? Drawing on concepts of “situated change” (Orlikowski, 1996) I supplement existing macro-level perspectives of change with a microscopic, practice-based alternative. I examine the everyday work of English and German banking lawyers in a global law firm. Located at the intersection of local laws, international financial markets, commercial logics and professional norms, banking lawyers’ work regularly bridges different normative settings. Hence, they must constructively negotiate contradictory meanings, practices and logics to develop shared routines that resonate with different normative frameworks and facilitate task accomplishment. Based on observation and interview data, the paper distils a process model of banking transac-tions that highlights the critical interfaces forcing English and German banking lawyers into cross-border sensemaking. It distinguishes two accounts of cross-border sensemaking: the “old story” in which contradictory practices and norms collide and the “new story” of a synthetic set of practices for collaboratively “editing” (Sahlin-Andersson, 1996) legal documentation. Data show how new practices gain shape and legitimacy over a series of dialectic contests unfolding at work and how, in turn, these contests shift institutional logics as lawyers ‘get the deal done’. These micro-mechanisms suggest that as practical and institutional work blend, everyday work-ing practices come to constitute a form of institutional agency that is situated, emergent, dialectic and, therefore, embedded.

True chemical shift correlation maps:a TOCSY experiment with pure shifts in both dimensions

Signal resolution in H NMR is limited primarily by multiplet structure. Recent advances in pure shift NMR, in which the effects of homonuclear couplings are suppressed, have allowed this limitation to be circumvented in 1D NMR, gaining almost an order of magnitude in spectral resolution. Here for the first time an experiment is demonstrated that suppresses multiplet structure in both domains of a homonuclear two-dimensional spectrum. The principle is demonstrated for the TOCSY experiment, generating a chemical shift correlation map in which a single peak is seen for each coupled relationship, but the principle is general and readily extensible to other homonuclear correlation experiments. Such spectra greatly simplify manual spectral analysis and should be well-suited to automated methods for structure elucidation. © 2010 American Chemical Society.

Parametric aggregation in ordered weighted averaging

Incorporating further information into the ordered weighted averaging (OWA) operator weights is investigated in this paper. We first prove that for a constant orness the minimax disparity model [13] has unique optimal solution while the modified minimax disparity model [16] has alternative optimal OWA weights. Multiple optimal solutions in modified minimax disparity model provide us opportunity to define a parametric aggregation OWA which gives flexibility to decision makers in the process of aggregation and selecting the best alternative. Finally, the usefulness of the proposed parametric aggregation method is illustrated with an application in metasearch engine. © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

A simulation study of the shift system at a UK police communications centre

The UK Police Force is required to operate communications centres under increased funding constraints. Staff represent the main cost in operating the facility and the key issue for the efficient deployment of staff, in this case call handler staff, is to try to ensure sufficient staff are available to make a timely response to customer calls when the timing of individual calls is difficult to predict. A discrete-event simulation study is presented of an investigation of a new shift pattern for call handler staff that aims to improve operational efficiency. The communications centre can be considered a specialised case of a call centre but an important issue for Police Force management is the particularly stressful nature of the work staff are involved with when responding to emergency calls. Thus decisions regarding changes to the shift system were made in the context of both attempting to improve efficiency by matching staff supply with customer demand, but also ensuring a reasonable workload pattern for staff over time.

A paradigm shift for mobile interaction:a decade later

In the proceedings of CASCON'2003 we published an article entitled "A Paradigm Shift: Alternative Interaction Techniques for Use with Mobile & Wearable Devices" and were honoured to receive the Best Paper Award for that year's conference. A decade on, we are equally honoured to have the same paper recognised as the Most Influential Paper of the 2003 conference. To this end, we have been asked to provide a brief overview of our intervening research in relation to that original publication, and so that is the purpose of this extended abstract.

Spatially-multiplexed fibre-optic Bragg grating strain and temperature sensor system based on interferometric wavelength-shift detection

A prototype fibre-optic system using interferometric wavelength-shift detection, capable of multiplexing up to 32 fibre-optic Bragg grating strain and temperature sensors with identical characteristics, has been demonstrated. This system is based on a spatially multiplexed scheme for use with fibre-based low-coherence interferometric sensors, reported previously. Four fibre-optic Bragg grating channels using the same fibre grating have been demonstrated for measuring quasi-static strain and temperature.

Design of Raman-based nonlinear loop mirror for all-optical 2R regeneration of differential phase-shift-keying transmission

We present a concept for all-optical regeneration of signals modulated in phase-sensitive modulation formats, which is based on a new design of Raman amplified nonlinear optical loop mirror (RA-NOLM). We demonstrate simultaneous amplitude-shape regeneration and phase-noise reduction in high-speed differential phase-shift-keying transmission systems by use of the RA-NOLM combined with spectral filtering. © 2006 IEEE.

Demonstrating doubly-differential quadrature phase shift keying in the optical domain

We report for the first time the experimental demonstration of doubly differential quadrature phase shift keying (DDQPSK) using optical coherent detection. This method is more robust against high frequency offsets (FO) than conventional single differential quadrature phase shift keying (SDQPSK) with offset compensation. DDQPSK is shown to be able to compensate large FOs (up to the baud rate) and has lower computational requirements than other FO compensation methods. DDQPSK is a simple algorithm to implement in a real-time decoder for optical burst switched network scenarios. Simulation results are also provided, which show good agreement with the experimental results for both SDQPSK and DDQPSK transmissions. © 1989-2012 IEEE.

A bi-objective weighted model for improving the discrimination power in MCDEA

Lack of discrimination power and poor weight dispersion remain major issues in Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Since the initial multiple criteria DEA (MCDEA) model developed in the late 1990s, only goal programming approaches; that is, the GPDEA-CCR and GPDEA-BCC were introduced for solving the said problems in a multi-objective framework. We found GPDEA models to be invalid and demonstrate that our proposed bi-objective multiple criteria DEA (BiO-MCDEA) outperforms the GPDEA models in the aspects of discrimination power and weight dispersion, as well as requiring less computational codes. An application of energy dependency among 25 European Union member countries is further used to describe the efficacy of our approach. © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Reduction of the phase jitter in differential phase-shift-keying soliton transmission systems by in-line Butterworth filters

We examine reduction of phase jitter by use of in-line Butterworth filters in soliton systems in the context of differential phase-shift-keying coding. We also demonstrate numerically that the use of a Butterworth filter in a return-to-zero differential phase-shift-keying system can reduce continuum background radiation.

In-situ XPS study on the reducibility of Pd-promoted Cu/CeO2 catalysts for the oxygen-assisted water-gas-shift reaction

Cu/CeO2, Pd/CeO2, and CuPd/CeO2 catalysts were prepared and their reduction followed by in-situ XPS in order to explore promoter and support interactions in a bimetallic CuPd/CeO2 catalyst effective for the oxygen-assisted water-gas-shift (OWGS) reaction. Mutual interactions between Cu, Pd, and CeO2 components all affect the reduction process. Addition of only 1 wt% Pd to 30 wt% Cu/CeO2 greatly enhances the reducibility of both dispersed CuO and ceria support. In-vacuo reduction (inside XPS chamber) up to 400 °C results in a continuous growth of metallic copper and Ce3+ surface species, although higher temperatures results in support reoxidation. Supported copper in turn destabilizes metallic palladium metal with respect to PdO, this mutual perturbation indicating a strong intimate interaction between the Cu–Pd components. Despite its lower intrinsic reactivity towards OWGS, palladium addition at only 1 wt% loading significantly improved CO conversion in OWGS reaction over a monometallic 30 wt% Cu/CeO2 catalysts, possibly by helping to maintain Cu in a reduced state during reaction.

A paradigm shift:alternative interaction techniques for use with mobile & wearable devices

Desktop user interface design originates from the fact that users are stationary and can devote all of their visual resource to the application with which they are interacting. In contrast, users of mobile and wearable devices are typically in motion whilst using their device which means that they cannot devote all or any of their visual resource to interaction with the mobile application -- it must remain with the primary task, often for safety reasons. Additionally, such devices have limited screen real estate and traditional input and output capabilities are generally restricted. Consequently, if we are to develop effective applications for use on mobile or wearable technology, we must embrace a paradigm shift with respect to the interaction techniques we employ for communication with such devices.This paper discusses why it is necessary to embrace a paradigm shift in terms of interaction techniques for mobile technology and presents two novel multimodal interaction techniques which are effective alternatives to traditional, visual-centric interface designs on mobile devices as empirical examples of the potential to achieve this shift.

Indirect ties in knowledge networks:a social network analysis with ordered weighted averaging operators

This PhD thesis analyses networks of knowledge flows, focusing on the role of indirect ties in the knowledge transfer, knowledge accumulation and knowledge creation process. It extends and improves existing methods for mapping networks of knowledge flows in two different applications and contributes to two stream of research. To support the underlying idea of this thesis, which is finding an alternative method to rank indirect network ties to shed a new light on the dynamics of knowledge transfer, we apply Ordered Weighted Averaging (OWA) to two different network contexts. Knowledge flows in patent citation networks and a company supply chain network are analysed using Social Network Analysis (SNA) and the OWA operator. The OWA is used here for the first time (i) to rank indirect citations in patent networks, providing new insight into their role in transferring knowledge among network nodes; and to analyse a long chain of patent generations along 13 years; (ii) to rank indirect relations in a company supply chain network, to shed light on the role of indirectly connected individuals involved in the knowledge transfer and creation processes and to contribute to the literature on knowledge management in a supply chain. In doing so, indirect ties are measured and their role as means of knowledge transfer is shown. Thus, this thesis represents a first attempt to bridge the OWA and SNA fields and to show that the two methods can be used together to enrich the understanding of the role of indirectly connected nodes in a network. More specifically, the OWA scores enrich our understanding of knowledge evolution over time within complex networks. Future research can show the usefulness of OWA operator in different complex networks, such as the on-line social networks that consists of thousand of nodes.