Constructing institutional change: emergence, contestation and convergence of business models in the field of Java application servers

How are innovative new business models established if organizations constantly compare themselves against existing criteria and expectations? The objective is to address this question from the perspective of innovators and their ability to redefine established expectations and evaluation criteria. The research questions ask whether there are discernible patterns of discursive action through which innovators theorize institutional change and what role such theorizations play for mobilizing support and realizing change projects. These questions are investigated through a case study on a critical area of enterprise computing software, Java application servers. In the present case, business practices and models were already well established among incumbents with critical market areas allocated to few dominant firms. Fringe players started experimenting with a new business approach of selling services around freely available opensource application servers. While most new players struggled, one new entrant succeeded in leading incumbents to adopt and compete on the new model. The case demonstrates that innovative and substantially new models and practices are established in organizational fields when innovators are able to refine expectations and evaluation criteria within an organisational field. The study addresses the theoretical paradox of embedded agency. Actors who are embedded in prevailing institutional logics and structures find it hard to perceive potentially disruptive opportunities that fall outside existing ways of doing things. Changing prevailing institutional logics and structures requires strategic and institutional work aimed at overcoming barriers to innovation. The study addresses this problem through the lens of (new) institutional theory. This discourse methodology traces the process through which innovators were able to establish a new social and business model in the field.

Accountability, organisational learning and risks to patient safety in England: conflict or compromise?

This article examines the current risk regulation regime, within the English National Health Service (NHS), by investigating the two, sometimes conflicting, approaches to risk embodied within the field of policies towards patient safety. The first approach focuses on promoting accountability and is built on legal principles surrounding negligence and competence. The second approach focuses on promoting learning from previous mistakes and near-misses, and is built on the development of a ‘safety culture’. Previous work has drawn attention to problems associated with risk-based regulation when faced with the dual imperatives of accountability and organisational learning. The article develops this by considering whether the NHS patient safety regime demonstrates the coexistence of two different risk regulation regimes, or merely one regime with contradictory elements. It uses the heuristic device of ‘institutional logics’ to examine the coexistence of and interrelationship between ‘organisational learning’ and ‘accountability’ logics driving risk regulation in health care.

Internationalization in a business school:co-existing and entwined professional and organizational narratives

This empirical paper adopts a narrative approach to explain how a strategic goal of internationalization within a UK business school developed over a three year period and in particular how two conflicting institutional logics - a market logic and a professional logic - were given meaning and played out within a specific organizational context. The paper is in four parts. First, the theoretical framework explains the business school as characteristic of a professional organization, with a professional academic workforce, ambiguous strategic goals and multiple competing but legitimate demands. We then frame our methodological approach of narrative as a means of understanding how professional actors are co-opted into enabling organizational goals, even where these are perceived as antithetical to professional interests. We do this by showing how actors within organizations that exist with multiple, potentially competing institutional logics draw upon those logics and embed them in narratives to give meaning to their actions. Second, the research design, which followed the pursuit of an internationalization goal within a UK business school over three years, based on a dataset of three rounds of interviews, documentary analysis and meeting observations is explained, showing how we used a narrative approach for analysis. Third the results are presented as a series of co-existing and entwined narratives: organizational/managerial narratives, professional narratives of resistance, and professional narratives of engagement. Finally our findings show that narrative is a useful theoretical lens for explaining how multiple, ambiguous and conflicting strategic goals within professional organizations may coexist, enabling the organization to act both as a collective unit and also to fulfil the sometimes contradictory professional interests of its constituents. These findings contribute to understanding about strategy in professional organizations and also to narrative theory by showing how organizations may comprise multiple, entwined narratives, in which actors change roles according to their varying interests in the 'central' narrative.

Urban politics and the social practices of critique and justification:conceptual insights from French pragmatism

Recent times have witnessed a growing belief in urban spaces as 'assemblages' produced through interwoven and spatially differentiated forces that converge at particular sites. There is also continuing interest in the nature of neoliberal tendencies and the rise of post-politics and democracy in urban governance. These accounts typically lack attention towards the comprehensive conceptualization of the heterogeneous logics and mechanics of relations and negotiations between actors. This paper seeks to advance these perspectives by exploring the potential contribution of French pragmatism thinking to how social life is produced through practical dialogue between actors through critique, argumentation and justification. © The Author(s) 2012.

Evaluating the impact of institutional logic on the corporate Internet reporting by Egyptian listed companies

This study explores the institutional logic(s) governing the Corporate Internet Reporting (CIR) by Egyptian listed companies. In doing so, a mixed methods approach was followed. The qualitative part seeks to understand the perceptions, believes, values, norms, that are commonly shared by Egyptian companies which engaged in these practices. Consequently, seven cases of large listed Egyptian companies operating in different industries have been examined. Other stakeholders and stockholders have been interviewed in conjunction with these cases. The quantitative part consists of two studies. The first one is descriptive aiming to specify whether the induced logic(s) from the seven cases are commonly embraced by other Egyptian companies. The second study is explanatory aiming to investigate the impact of several institutional and economic factors on the extent of CIR, types of the online information, quality of the websites as well as the Internet facilities. Drawing on prior CIR literature, four potential types of logics could be inferred: efficiency, legitimacy, technical and marketing based logics. In Egypt, legitimacy logic was initially embraced in the earlier years after the Internet inception. latter, companies confronted radical challenges in their internal and external environments which impelled them to raise their websites potentialities to defend their competitive position; either domestically or internationally. Thus, two new logics emphasizing marketing and technical perspectives have emerged, in response. Strikingly, efficiency based logic is not the most prevalent logic driving CIR practices in Egypt as in the developed countries. The empirical results support this observation and show that almost half of Egyptian listed companies 115 as on December 2010 possessed an active website, half of them 62 disclosed part of their financial and accounting information, during December 2010 to February 2011. Less than half of the websites 52 offered latest annual financial statements. Fewer 33(29%) websites provided shareholders and stock information or included a separate section for corporate governance 25 (22%) compared to 50 (44%) possessing a section for news or press releases. Additionally, the variations in CIR practices, as well as timeliness and credibility were also evident even at industrial level. After controlling for firm size, profitability, leverage, liquidity, competition and growth, it was realized that industrial companies and those facing little competition tend to disclose less. In contrast, management size, foreign investors, foreign listing, dispersion of shareholders and firm size provided significant and positive impact individually or collectively. In contrast, neither audit firm, nor most of performance indicators (i.e. profitability, leverage, and liquidity) did exert an influence on the CIR practices. Thus, it is suggested that CIR practices are loosely institutionalised in Egypt, which necessitates issuing several regulative and processional rules to raise the quality attributes of Egyptian websites, especially, timeliness and credibility. Beside, this study highlights the potency of assessing the impact of institutional logic on CIR practices and suggests paying equal attention to the institutional and economic factors when comparing the CIR practices over time or across different institutional environments in the future.

Formalization of Interaction Events in Multi-agent Systems

The problem of the description of interaction between spatially divided agents in the form of dialogues is explored. The concept of processes synchronization is analyzed to formalize the specification of interaction at the level of events constituting the processes. The approach to formalization of the description of conditions of synchronization when both the independent behavior and the communications of agents can be presented at a logic level is offered. It is shown, that the collective behavior of agents can be specified by the synthetic temporal logic that unites linear and branching time temporal logics.

Complex Protection System of Metadata-based Distributed Information Systems

A description of architecture and approaches to the implementation of a protection system of metadatabased adaptable information systems is suggested. Various protection means are examined. The system described is a multilevel complex based on a multiagent system combining IDS functional abilities with structure and logics protection means.

Understanding dynamics of strategic decision-making in venture creation:a process study of effectuation and causation

This study draws upon effectuation and causation as examples of planning-based and flexible decision-making logics, and investigates dynamics in the use of both logics. The study applies a longitudinal process research approach to investigate strategic decision-making in new venture creation over time. Combining qualitative and quantitative methods, we analyze 385 decision events across nine technology-based ventures. Our observations suggest a hybrid perspective on strategic decision-making, demonstrating how effectuation and causation logics are combined, and how entrepreneurs’ emphasis on these logics shifts and re-shifts over time. We induce a dynamic model which extends the literature on strategic decision-making in venture creation.

Applications of Nonclassical Logic Methods for Purposes of Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining

* The work is partially supported by Grant no. NIP917 of the Ministry of Science and Education – Republic of Bulgaria.

Methods for Solving Necessary Equivalences

Nonmonotonic Logics such as Autoepistemic Logic, Reflective Logic, and Default Logic, are usually defined in terms of set-theoretic fixed-point equations defined over deductively closed sets of sentences of First Order Logic. Such systems may also be represented as necessary equivalences in a Modal Logic stronger than S5 with the added advantage that such representations may be generalized to allow quantified variables crossing modal scopes resulting in a Quantified Autoepistemic Logic, a Quantified Autoepistemic Kernel, a Quantified Reflective Logic, and a Quantified Default Logic. Quantifiers in all these generalizations obey all the normal laws of logic including both the Barcan formula and its converse. Herein, we address the problem of solving some necessary equivalences containing universal quantifiers over modal scopes. Solutions obtained by these methods are then compared to related results obtained in the literature by Circumscription in Second Order Logic since the disjunction of all the solutions of a necessary equivalence containing just normal defaults in these Quantified Logics, is equivalent to that system.

Non-Linear Network-Flow Model of Lukasiewicz’s Multivalue Logic

The paper presents a new network-flow interpretation of Łukasiewicz’s logic based on models with an increased effectiveness. The obtained results show that the presented network-flow models principally may work for multivalue logics with more than three states of the variables i.e. with a finite set of states in the interval from 0 to 1. The described models give the opportunity to formulate various logical functions. If the results from a given model that are contained in the obtained values of the arc flow functions are used as input data for other models then it is possible in Łukasiewicz’s logic to interpret successfully other sophisticated logical structures. The obtained models allow a research of Łukasiewicz’s logic with specific effective methods of the network-flow programming. It is possible successfully to use the specific peculiarities and the results pertaining to the function ‘traffic capacity of the network arcs’. Based on the introduced network-flow approach it is possible to interpret other multivalue logics – of E.Post, of L.Brauer, of Kolmogorov, etc.

Методы Интеграции Учебных Материалов для Дистанционного Обучения

The process of training is the most difficult for effective realization through information technologies. Is suggested the methods for the most complete implementation of original techniques of material description, ensuring versatility of development environment and functioning of interactive systems of training process. The given technology requires as the exact description of teaching model, as application of modern methods of development intelligent skills.

A copa do mundo FIFA na África do Sul/2010:como foi a experiência e o que podemos aprender com ela?

Neste ensaio pretendemos problematizar algumas lógicas sociais não explícitas que se articulam ao domínio de realização da Copa do Mundo FIFA. Para tanto, privilegiamos como recorte analítico a edição de 2010 deste evento, de modo a desvelarmos algumas das retóricas e ações estratégicas que permearam o contexto de sua realização na África do Sul. Com base em dados obtidos na literatura acadêmica e mídia, buscamos apresentar que as motivações para o evento se baseavam em discursos desenvolvimentistas por parte tanto da FIFA quanto das elites locais sul-africanas visando o convencimento e apoio por parte de diferentes grupos sociais. Entretanto, as consequências não foram necessariamente aquelas prometidas, sendo essas instituições as reais beneficiadas em seus interesses econômicos e políticos. Nesse ponto, argumentamos que a sociedade brasileira pode e deve aprender com essa experiência para avaliar de forma crítica os motivos menos aparentes de sediar eventos desse porte. In this essay, we intend to discuss some social logics not explicit that articulate the domain of the FIFA World Cup. Therefore, the 2010 edition of this event is used as analytical approach to reveal some of the rhetoric and strategic actions that permeated the context of its realization. Based on data obtained in the academic literature and media, we present that the motivations for the event were based on developmental discourses by both FIFA as well as local elites South African aiming to convince different social groups and conquer their support. However, the consequences are not necessarily those promised, and these institutions were the real beneficiaries in their economic and political mutual interests. At this point, we argue that Brazilian society can and should learn from the experience of South Africa to assess critically the motives less apparent to host such events.

Queer sex work

Sex work is a subject of significant contestation across academic disciplines, as well as within legal, medical, moral, feminist, political and socio-cultural discourses. A large body of research exists, but much of this focuses on the sale of sex by women to men and ignores other performances, practices, meanings and embodiments in the contemporary sex industry. A queer agenda is important in order to challenge hetero-centric gender norms and to develop new insights into how gender, sex, power, crime, work, migration, space/place, health and intimacy are understood in the context of commercial sexual encounters. Queer Sex Work explores what it might mean to 'be', 'do' and 'think' queer(ly) in the study and practice of commercial sex. It brings together a multiplicity of empirical case studies - including erotic dance venues, online sex working, pornography, grey sexual economies, and BSDM - and offers a variety of perspectives from academic scholars, policy practitioners, activists and sex workers themselves. In so doing, the book advances a queer politics of sex work that aims to disrupt heteronormative logics whilst also making space for different voices in academic and political debates about commercial sex. This unique and multidisciplinary volume will be indispensable for scholars and students of the global sex trade and of gender, sexuality, feminism and queer theory more broadly, as well as policymakers, activists and practitioners interested in the politics and practice of sex work in local, national and international contexts.

Reconstructing institutional complexity in practice:a relational model of institutional work and complexity

This article develops a relational model of institutional work and complexity. This model advances current institutional debates on institutional complexity and institutional work in three ways. First, it provides a relational and dynamic perspective on institutional complexity by explaining how constellations of logics - and their degree of internal contradiction - are constructed rather than given. Second, it refines our current understanding of agency, intentionality and effort in institutional work by demonstrating how different dimensions of agency interact dynamically in the institutional work of reconstructing institutional complexity. Third, it situates institutional work in the everyday practice of individuals coping with the institutional complexities of their work. In doing so, it reconnects the construction of institutionally complex settings to the actions and interactions of the individuals who inhabit them. © The Author(s) 2013.