Shaking hands: Priming by social action effects

In a semi-naturalistic response-effect compatibility paradigm, participants were given the opportunity to learn that hand-shaking actions would be followed by social effects (human hand-shaking stimuli from a third-person perspective) or inanimate effects (block arrow stimuli). Relative to the actions, these effects appeared on the same or the opposite side of the screen (positional compatibility), and pointed towards or away from the response hand (directional compatibility). After learning, response times indicated a positional compatibility effect for both social and inanimate effects, but a directional compatibility effect occurred only for social action effects. These findings indicate that actions can be represented, not only by their effects on the inanimate world, but also by their effects on the actions of others. They are consistent with ideomotor theory, and with the view that actions are represented by bidirectional response-effect associations. They also have implications with respect to the origins and on-line control of imitation and the systems supporting imitation.

Specialization of right temporo-parietal junction for mentalizing and its relation to social impairments in autism

Over the last 25years, "mindblindness" (deficits in representing mental states) has been one of the primary explanations behind the hallmark social-communication difficulties in autism spectrum conditions (ASC). However, highlighting neural systems responsible for mindblindness and their relation to variation in social impairments has remained elusive. In this study we show that one of the neural systems responsible for mindblindness in ASC and its relation to social impairments is the right temporo-parietal junction (RTPJ). Twenty-nine adult males with ASC and 33 age and IQ-matched Controls were scanned with fMRI while making reflective mentalizing or physical judgments about themselves or another person. Regions of interest within mentalizing circuitry were examined for between-group differences in activation during mentalizing about self and other and correlations with social symptom severity. RTPJ was the only mentalizing region that responded atypically in ASC. In Controls, RTPJ was selectively more responsive to mentalizing than physical judgments. This selectivity for mentalizing was not apparent in ASC and generalized across both self and other. Selectivity of RTPJ for mentalizing was also associated with the degree of reciprocal social impairment in ASC. These results lend support to the idea that RTPJ is one important neural system behind mindblindness in ASC. Understanding the contribution of RTPJ in conjunction with other neural systems responsible for other component processes involved in social cognition will be illuminating in fully explaining the hallmark social-communication difficulties of autism.

Technological change and the challenges for regional development: building social capital in less-favoured regions

The relevance of regional policy for less favoured regions (LFRs) reveals itself when policy-makers must reconcile competitiveness with social cohesion through the adaptation of competition or innovation policies. The vast literature in this area generally builds on an overarching concept of ‘social capital’ as the necessary relational infrastructure for collective action diversification and policy integration, in a context much influenced by a dynamic of industrial change and a necessary balance between the creation and diffusion of ‘knowledge’ through learning. This relational infrastructure or ‘social capital’ is centred on people’s willingness to cooperate and ‘envision’ futures as a result of “social organization, such as networks, norms and trust that facilitate action and cooperation for mutual benefit” (Putnam, 1993: 35). Advocates of this interpretation of ‘social capital’ have adopted the ‘new growth’ thinking behind ‘systems of innovation’ and ‘competence building’, arguing that networks have the potential to make both public administration and markets more effective as well as ‘learning’ trajectories more inclusive of the development of society as a whole. This essay aims to better understand the role of ‘social capital’ in the production and reproduction of uneven regional development patterns, and to critically assess the limits of a ‘systems concept’ and an institution-centred approach to comparative studies of regional innovation. These aims are discussed in light of the following two assertions: i) learning behaviour, from an economic point of view, has its determinants, and ii) the positive economic outcomes of ‘social capital’ cannot be taken as a given. It is suggested that an agent-centred approach to comparative research best addresses the ‘learning’ determinants and the consequences of social networks on regional development patterns. A brief discussion of the current debate on innovation surveys has been provided to illustrate this point.

Data interpretation in social housing management

The use of business management techniques in the public sector is not a new topic. However the increased use of the phrase "housing business management" as against that of "housing administration" reflects a change in the underlying philosophy of service delivery. The paper examines how data collection and use can be related to the operational requirements of the social landlords and highlights the problems of systems dynamics generating functionally obsolete data.

Corporate social responsibility in construction and engineering firms: key elements of effective strategy

Through multiple case studies of firms we argue that firms that have developed corporate responsibility strategies, albeit informally at first, do so by making intentional, informed and collective choices about CSR initiatives. More precisely, we point to the importance of considering corporate identity in making these choices and to the process of adaptive coordination, which includes both responding to and influencing the CSR environment. We conclude that CSR strategic landscape are determined more and more by the astute and careful management of a network of cooperative and competitive stakeholder interests which possess both tangible and intangible value to a firm.

Understanding the long term success of UK construction firms: the extent and role of 'hidden' corporate social responsibility

The construction sector is often described as lagging behind other major industries. At first this appears fair when considering the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR). It is argued that CSR is ill-defined, with firms struggling to make sense of and engage with it. Literature suggests that the short-termism view of construction firms renders the long-term, triple-bottom-line principle of CSR untenable. This seems to be borne out by literature indicating that construction firms typically adopt a compliance-based approach to CSR instead of discretionary CSR which is regarded as adding most value to firms and benefiting the broadest group of stakeholders. However, this research conducted in the UK using a regional construction firm offers a counter argument whereby discretionary CSR approaches are well embedded and enacted within the firms’ business operations even though they are not formally articulated as CSR strategies and thus remain 'hidden'. This raises questions in the current CSR debate. First, is ‘hidden’ CSR relevant to the long term success of construction firms? and to what extent do these firms need to reinvent themselves to formally take advantage of the CSR agenda?

Putting the S-word back into Sustainability: Can we be more social?

In an era dominated by climate change debate and environmentalism there is a real danger that the important ‘social’ pillar of sustainability drops out of our vocabulary. This can happen at a variety of scales from business level through to building and neighbourhood level regeneration and development. Social sustainability should be at the heart of all housing and mixed-use development but for a variety of reasons tends to be frequently underplayed. The recent English city riots have brought this point back sharply into focus. The relationships between people, places and the local economy all matter and this is as true today as it was in the late 19th century when Patrick Geddes, the great pioneering town planner and ecologist, wrote of ‘place-work-folk’. This paper, commissioned from Tim Dixon, explains what is meant by social sustainability (and how it is linked to concepts such as social capital and social cohesion); why the debate matters during a period when ‘localism’ is dominating political debate; and what is inhibiting its growth and its measurement. The paper reviews best practice in post-occupancy social sustainability metric systems, based on recent research undertaken by the author on Dockside Green in Vancouver, and identifi es some of the key operational issues in mainstreaming the concept within major mixed-use projects. The paper concludes by offering a framework for the key challenges faced in setting strategic corporate goals and objectives; prioritising and selecting the most appropriate investments; and measuring social sustainability performance by identifying the required data sources

Organisational semiotics methods to assess organisational readiness for internal use of social media

The paper presents organisational semiotics (OS) as an approach for identifying organisational readiness factors for internal use of social media within information intensive organisations (IIO). The paper examines OS methods, such as organisational morphology, containment analysis and collateral analysis to reveal factors of readiness within an organisation. These models also help to identify the essential patterns of activities needed for social media use within an organisation, which can provide a basis for future analysis. The findings confirmed many of the factors, previously identified in literature, while also revealing new factors using OS methods. The factors for organisational readiness for internal use of social media include resources, organisational climate, processes, motivational readiness, benefit and organisational control factors. Organisational control factors revealed are security/privacy, policies, communication procedures, accountability and fallback.

Coming to grips with 'abandoned arable' land in efforts to enhance communal grazing systems in the Eastern Cape province, South Africa

The communal lands of the Eastern Cape have been regarded as both tools and problems by policy-makers. In particular, communal lands are problematised as environmentally degraded, of suboptimum productivity and constraining economic development. The Eastern Cape Communal Lands Research Project was framed within this policy discourse with the aim of introducing legume-based pasture into ‘abandoned arable lands’. Initial results from community workshops show that the institutional arrangements for these arable lands vary widely and, with them, the capacity to utilise any new technology that may have application to them. Rather than simply draw on social capital, if a participatory research approach is to enhance the agency of the participating communites, it may need to contribute to social capital building and especially to create a dialogical space in which the matters being researched can be discussed meaningfully.

Rhythmic behavior of social insects from single to multibody

Revealing the evolution of well-organized social behavior requires understanding a mechanism by which collective behavior is produced. A well-organized group may be produced by two possible mechanisms, namely, a central control and a distributed control. In the second case, local interactions between interchangeable components function at the bottom of the collective behavior. We focused on a simple behavior of an individual ant and analyzed the interactions between a pair of ants. In an experimental set-up, we placed the workers in a hemisphere without a nest, food, and a queen, and recorded their trajectories. The temporal pattern of velocity of each ant was obtained. From this bottom-up approach, we found the characteristic behavior of a single worker and a pair of workers as follows: (1) Activity of each individual has a rhythmic component. (2) Interactions between a pair of individuals result in two types of coupling, namely the anti-phase and the in-phase coupling. The direct physical contacts between the pair of workers might cause a phase shift of the rhythmic components in individual ants. We also build up a simple model based on the coupled oscillators toward the understanding of the whole colony behavior.

Social and environmental report assurance: some interview evidence

The steady growth of social and environmental reporting (SER) is being accompanied by an increase in social and environmental reporting assurance (SERA). The existing literature on SERA suggests that it is necessary to build credibility and trust among corporate stakeholders. Prior work has also found evidence of managerial and professional capture of SERA. In this paper, we present empirical evidence from interviews with corporate social responsibility representatives from 20 UK listed companies on whether they consider SERA to be necessary. We believe this to be the first research into SERA that uses an interview method. Our interviews revealed mixed feelings. Half of the respondents believed that external SERA would enhance credibility and trust which confirmed the prior literature. However, the other half believed that external SERA was not necessary, believing that internal assurance was sufficient. This was because they saw SERA as predominantly a managerial tool, useful for checking the efficiency of internal management control systems, rather than as a mechanism for enhancing corporate accountability to stakeholders and building credibility and trust. The potential for SERA to be a mechanism whereby greater dialogue is created between companies and their stakeholders on social and environmental issues is not being harnessed. This paper thus demonstrates a fundamental difference between the external prior normative literature and the managerial motivation in the SERA area.

Characterizing intuition in information systems research

The study of intuition is an emerging area of research in psychology, social sciences, and business studies. It is increasingly of interest to the study of management, for example in decision-making as a counterpoint to structured approaches. Recently work has been undertaken to conceptualize a construct for the intuitive nature of technology. However to-date there is no common under-standing of the term intuition in information systems (IS) research. This paper extends the study of intuition in IS research by using exploratory research to cate-gorize the use of the word “intuition” and related terms in papers published in two prominent IS journals over a ten year period. The entire text of MIS Quarterly and Information Systems Research was reviewed for the years 1999 through 2008 using searchable PDF versions of these publications. As far as could be deter-mined, this is the first application of this approach in the analysis of the text of IS academic journals. The use of the word “intuition” and related terms was catego-rized using coding consistent with Grounded Theory. The focus of this research was on the first two stages of Grounded Theory analysis - the development of codes and constructs. Saturation of coding was not reached: an extended review of these publications would be required to enable theory development. Over 400 incidents of the use of “intuition”, and related terms were found in the articles reviewed. The most prominent use of the term of “intuition” was coded as “Intui-tion as Authority” in which intuition was used to validate a research objective or finding; representing approximately 37 per cent of codes assigned. The second most common coding occurred in research articles with mathematical analysis, representing about 19 per cent of the codes assigned, for example where a ma-thematical formulation or result was “intuitive”. The possibly most impactful use of the term “intuition” was “Intuition as Outcome”, representing approximately 7 per cent of all coding, which characterized research results as adding to the intui-tive understanding of a research topic or phenomena. This research contributes to a greater theoretical understanding of intuition enabling insight into the use of intuition, and the eventual development of a theory on the use of intuition in academic IS research publications. It also provides potential benefits to practi-tioners by providing insight into and validation of the use of intuition in IS man-agement. Research directions include the creation of reflective and/or formative constructs for intuition in information systems research.

Semiotic interoperability- a critical step towards systems integration

Information systems integration becomes critical in enhancing organisational competitiveness through effective use of information resource provided by the whole host of information systems. Information systems integration in its nature is a process of bringing about the capability of communication and information exchange between systems; while interoperability, often as the result of systems integration, is such a capability. However currently there is a lack of theoretical foundation for representation and measure of the interoperability in organisations. Organisational semiotics provides a theoretical foundation for systems interoperability. A notion of ‘semiotic interoperability’ is proposed in this paper as a paradigm, guiding systems integration and measuring degree of interoperability, covering aspects from physical properties, transmission structure of signs, placing emphasis on communicating meaning, intention to social consequence of information.

CASCADE: An Agent Based Framework For Modeling The Dynamics Of Smart Electricity Systems

The Complex Adaptive Systems, Cognitive Agents and Distributed Energy (CASCADE) project is developing a framework based on Agent Based Modelling (ABM). The CASCADE Framework can be used both to gain policy and industry relevant insights into the smart grid concept itself and as a platform to design and test distributed ICT solutions for smart grid based business entities. ABM is used to capture the behaviors of diff erent social, economic and technical actors, which may be defi ned at various levels of abstraction. It is applied to understanding their interactions and can be adapted to include learning processes and emergent patterns. CASCADE models ‘prosumer’ agents (i.e., producers and/or consumers of energy) and ‘aggregator’ agents (e.g., traders of energy in both wholesale and retail markets) at various scales, from large generators and Energy Service Companies down to individual people and devices. The CASCADE Framework is formed of three main subdivisions that link models of electricity supply and demand, the electricity market and power fl ow. It can also model the variability of renewable energy generation caused by the weather, which is an important issue for grid balancing and the profi tability of energy suppliers. The development of CASCADE has already yielded some interesting early fi ndings, demonstrating that it is possible for a mediating agent (aggregator) to achieve stable demandfl attening across groups of domestic households fi tted with smart energy control and communication devices, where direct wholesale price signals had previously been found to produce characteristic complex system instability. In another example, it has demonstrated how large changes in supply mix can be caused even by small changes in demand profi le. Ongoing and planned refi nements to the Framework will support investigation of demand response at various scales, the integration of the power sector with transport and heat sectors, novel technology adoption and diffusion work, evolution of new smart grid business models, and complex power grid engineering and market interactions.

Institutional pressures on financial services firms: the role of information systems in regulatory compliance

The financial crisis of 2008 led to new international regulatory controls for the governance, risk and compliance of financial services firms. Information systems play a critical role here as political, functional and social pressures may lead to the deinstitutionalization of existing structures, processes and practices. This research examines how an investment management system is introduced by a leading IT vendor across eight client sites in the post-crisis era. Using institutional theory, it examines changes in working practices occurring at the environmental and organizational levels and the ways in which technological interventions are used to apply disciplinary effects in order to prevent inappropriate behaviors. The results extend the constructs of deinstitutionalization and identify empirical predictors for the deinstitutionalization of compliance and trading practices within financial organizations.