Organizations in time:history, theory, methods

Book review: Organizations in Time, edited by R Daniel Wadhwani and Marcelo Bucheli, Oxford University Press, 2014. The title of this edited volume is slightly misleading, as its various contributions explore the potential for more historical analysis in organization studies rather than addressing issues associated with time and organizing. Hopefully this will not distract from the important achievement of this volume—important especially for business historians—in further expanding and integrating business history into management and organization studies. The various contributions, elegantly tied together by R. Daniel Wadhwani and Marcelo Bucheli in their substantial introduction (which, by the way, presents a significant contribution in its own right), opens up new sets of questions, especially in terms of future methodological and theoretical developments in the field. This book also reflects the changing institutional location of business historians, who increasingly make their careers in business schools rather than history departments, especially in Europe, reopening old questions of history as a social science. There have been several calls to teach more history in business education, such as the Carnegie Foundation report (2011) that found undergraduate business education too narrow in focus and highlighted the need to integrate more liberal arts teaching into the curriculum. However, in the contemporary research-driven environment of business and management schools, historical understanding is unlikely to permeate the curriculum if historical analysis cannot first deliver significant theoretical contributions. This is the central theme around which this edited volume revolves, and it marks a milestone in this ongoing debate. (In the spirit of full disclosure, I should add that even though I did not contribute to this volume, I have coauthored with several of its contributors and view this book as central to my current research practice.)

FROM GENES TO GENOMES: LOCAL ADAPTATION AND ADAPTIVE POTENTIAL IN TWO ARCTIC SEABIRDS

By investigating the mechanisms underlying the evolution and the maintenance of local adaptations we can help predict how species will adapt to future environmental change. In this thesis I investigate local adaptation and adaptive potential in thick-billed and common murres (Uria lomvia and U. aalge), two arctic seabirds of international conservation concern. Thanks to the recent development of new genomic methods, I address three major themes that are relevant for both the development of evolutionary theory and conservation: 1) the role of gene flow in the origin and maintenance of adaptation; 2) levels and distribution of standing genetic variation, and their contribution to adaptive potential; and 3) the genomic mechanisms maintaining an adaptive dimorphism within a single interbreeding population. First, I review the literature on genomics of local adaptation with gene flow and find that adaptation can be maintained despite gene flow, that gene flow itself can promote adaptation, and that genetic architecture is important in the origin and maintenance of local adaptations. Second, I genotype genome-wide markers and toll-like receptor genes (TLRs) to investigate local adaptation and adaptive potential in thick-billed murres. Thick-billed murres do not show signatures of local adaptation to their breeding grounds, but outlier loci group birds according to their non-breeding distributions, suggesting that selection and/or demographic connectivity in the winter may explain patterns of differentiation in this species. Genetic variation at TLRs does not decrease with increasing latitude as predicted, but tests of selection and measures of genetic diversity suggest differences in local selective regimes at most genes. Thick-billed murres show high levels of standing genetic variation and their adaptive potential will mostly depend on rate and magnitude of environmental change. Finally, I improve and annotate the assembly of the highly heterozygous genome of the thick-billed murre. Using this assembly as a reference, I perform whole genome analyses to investigate the genomic basis of an adaptive dimorphism in Atlantic common murres. I show for the first time that a 60 kb complex copy number variant in a non-coding region maintains differences in plumage and cold adaptation despite high gene flow.

Theory and optimisation of 1.3 and 1.55 μm (Al)InGaAs metamorphic quantum well lasers

The use of InGaAs metamorphic buffer layers (MBLs) to facilitate the growth of lattice-mismatched heterostructures constitutes an attractive approach to developing long-wavelength semiconductor lasers on GaAs substrates, since they offer the improved carrier and optical confinement associated with GaAs-based materials. We present a theoretical study of GaAs-based 1.3 and 1.55 μm (Al)InGaAs quantum well (QW) lasers grown on InGaAs MBLs. We demonstrate that optimised 1.3 μm metamorphic devices offer low threshold current densities and high differential gain, which compare favourably with InP-based devices. Overall, our analysis highlights and quantifies the potential of metamorphic QWs for the development of GaAs-based long-wavelength semiconductor lasers, and also provides guidelines for the design of optimised devices.

Knowledge and writing in school mathematics : a communicational approach

This thesis is about young students’ writing in school mathematics and the ways in which this writing is designed, interpreted and understood. Students’ communication can act as a source from which teachers can make inferences regarding students’ mathematical knowledge and understanding. In mathematics education previous research indicates that teachers assume that the process of interpreting and judging students’ writing is unproblematic. The relationship between what students’ write, and what they know or understand, is theoretical as well as empirical. In an era of increased focus on assessment and measurement in education it is necessary for teachers to know more about the relationship between communication and achievement. To add to this knowledge, the thesis has adopted a broad approach, and the thesis consists of four studies. The aim of these studies is to reach a deep understanding of writing in school mathematics. Such an understanding is dependent on examining different aspects of writing. The four studies together examine how the concept of communication is described in authoritative texts, how students’ writing is viewed by teachers and how students make use of different communicational resources in their writing. The results of the four studies indicate that students’ writing is more complex than is acknowledged by teachers and authoritative texts in mathematics education. Results point to a sophistication in students’ approach to the merging of the two functions of writing, writing for oneself and writing for others. Results also suggest that students attend, to various extents, to questions regarding how, what and for whom they are writing in school mathematics. The relationship between writing and achievement is dependent on students’ ability to have their writing reflect their knowledge and on teachers’ thorough knowledge of the different features of writing and their awareness of its complexity. From a communicational perspective the ability to communicate [in writing] in mathematics can and should be distinguished from other mathematical abilities. By acknowledging that mathematical communication integrates mathematical language and natural language, teachers have an opportunity to turn writing in mathematics into an object of learning. This offers teachers the potential to add to their assessment literacy and offers students the potential to develop their communicational ability in order to write in a way that better reflects their mathematical knowledge.

Clinical interventions, implementation interventions, and the potential greyness in between - a discussion paper

Background: There is increasing awareness that regardless of the proven value of clinical interventions, the use of effective strategies to implement such interventions into clinical practice is necessary to ensure that patients receive the benefits. However, there is often confusion between what is the clinical intervention and what is the implementation intervention. This may be caused by a lack of conceptual clarity between 'intervention' and 'implementation', yet at other times by ambiguity in application. We suggest that both the scientific and the clinical communities would benefit from greater clarity; therefore, in this paper, we address the concepts of intervention and implementation, primarily as in clinical interventions and implementation interventions, and explore the grey area in between. Discussion: To begin, we consider the similarities, differences and potential greyness between clinical interventions and implementation interventions through an overview of concepts. This is illustrated with reference to two examples of clinical interventions and implementation intervention studies, including the potential ambiguity in between. We then discuss strategies to explore the hybridity of clinical-implementation intervention studies, including the role of theories, frameworks, models, and reporting guidelines that can be applied to help clarify the clinical and implementation intervention, respectively. Conclusion: Semantics provide opportunities for improved precision in depicting what is 'intervention' and what is 'implementation' in health care research. Further, attention to study design, the use of theory, and adoption of reporting guidelines can assist in distinguishing between the clinical intervention and the implementation intervention. However, certain aspects may remain unclear in analyses of hybrid studies of clinical and implementation interventions. Recognizing this potential greyness can inform further discourse.

Tail conditional expectation for multivariate distributions : a game theory approach

This paper proposes using the Shapley values in allocating the total tail conditional expectation (TCE) to each business line (X j, j = 1, ... , n) when there are n correlated business lines. The joint distributions of X j and S (S = X1 + X2 + ⋯ + X n) are needed in the existing methods, but they are not required in the proposed method.

Interdisciplinary mathematics education: a state of the art

This book provides an essential introduction to the state-of the-art in interdisciplinary Mathematics Education. First, it begins with an outline of the field’s relevant historical, conceptual and theoretical backgrounds, what “discipline” means and how inter-, trans-, and meta-disciplinary activities can be understood. Relevant theoretical perspectives from Marx, Foucault and Vygotsky are explained, along with key ideas in theory, e.g. boundaries, discourses, identity, and the division of labour in practice. Second, the book reviews research findings of mainly empirical studies on interdisciplinary work involving mathematics in education, in all stages of education that have become disciplined. For example, it reports that a common theme in studies in middle and high schools is assessing the motivational benefits for the learner of subsuming disciplinary motives and even practices to extra-academic problem-solving activities; this is counter-balanced by the effort needed to overcome the disciplinary boundaries in academic institutions, and in professional identities. These disciplinary boundaries are less obviously limitations in middle and primary schools, and in some vocational courses. Third and finally, it explores selected case studies that illustrate these concepts and findings, both in terms of the motivational benefits for learners and the institutional and other boundaries involved.

Graph theory based QoE-driven cooperation stimulation for content dissemination in device-To-device communication

With multimedia dominating the digital contents, Device-To-Device (D2D) communication has been proposed as a promising data offloading solution in the big data area. As the quality of experience (QoE) is a major determining factor in the success of new multimedia applications, we propose a QoEdriven cooperative content dissemination (QeCS) scheme in this work. Specifically, all users predict the QoE of the potential connections characterized by the mean opinion score (MOS), and send the results to the content provider (CP). Then CP formulates a weighted directed graph according to the network topology and MOS of each potential connection. In order to stimulate cooperation among the users, the content dissemination mechanism is designed through seeking 1-factor of the weighted directed graph with the maximum weight thus achieving maximum total user MOS. Additionally, a debt mechanism is adopted to combat the cheat attacks. Furthermore, we extend the proposed QeCS scheme by considering a constrained condition to the optimization problem for fairness improvement. Extensive simulation results demonstrate that the proposed QeCS scheme achieves both efficiency and fairness especially in large scale and density networks.

Liderazgo y autoeficacia en el comportamiento organizacional positivo

El objetivo que tiene este proyecto es revisar los conceptos básicos acerca de las relaciones que crean los líderes con sus colaboradores dentro de las organizaciones, dichas relaciones y vínculos pueden afectar positiva o negativamente el desempeño de sus actividades diarias dentro de una organización. Para darle inicio a la investigación se estudió como primer paso el concepto de liderazgo transformacional, capital psicológico y que componentes hacían parte de este factor. El desarrollo de la investigación se enfatizó entre el liderazgo transformacional y la autoeficacia ya que son factores claves dentro del desarrollo de las actividades organizacionales debido a que afectan claramente el capital humano de las compañías y están directamente relacionados con el crecimiento de las mismas, lo que nos llevó a preguntarnos ¿qué relación tendrá el liderazgo transformacional y la autoeficacia en la productividad de las empresas? Es aquí donde radica la importancia de esta investigación ya que el cambio de pensamiento de las organizaciones hacia un liderazgo transformacional podría lograr una maximización del desempeño del personal de trabajo en relación al objetivo de la compañía. Como conclusión llegamos a que efectivamente hay un efecto positivo en los individuos que desarrollan un capital psicológico específicamente en el factor de autoeficacia para lograr un desempeño destacable, productivo y eficiente dentro de las organizaciones.

Aplicaciones de los modelos de predicción bio-inspirados en la administración

Las organizaciones y sus entornos son sistemas complejos. Tales sistemas son difíciles de comprender y predecir. Pese a ello, la predicción es una tarea fundamental para la gestión empresarial y para la toma de decisiones que implica siempre un riesgo. Los métodos clásicos de predicción (entre los cuales están: la regresión lineal, la Autoregresive Moving Average y el exponential smoothing) establecen supuestos como la linealidad, la estabilidad para ser matemática y computacionalmente tratables. Por diferentes medios, sin embargo, se han demostrado las limitaciones de tales métodos. Pues bien, en las últimas décadas nuevos métodos de predicción han surgido con el fin de abarcar la complejidad de los sistemas organizacionales y sus entornos, antes que evitarla. Entre ellos, los más promisorios son los métodos de predicción bio-inspirados (ej. redes neuronales, algoritmos genéticos /evolutivos y sistemas inmunes artificiales). Este artículo pretende establecer un estado situacional de las aplicaciones actuales y potenciales de los métodos bio-inspirados de predicción en la administración.

Mathematics and fiber arts

Mathematics can be found all over the world, even in what could be considered an unrelated area, like fiber arts. In knitting, crochet, and counted-thread embroidery, we can find concepts of algebra, graph theory, number theory, geometry of transformations, and symmetry, as well as computer science. For example, many fiber art pieces embody notions related with groups of symmetry. In this work, we focus on two areas of Mathematics associated with knitting, crochet, and cross-stitch works – number theory and geometry of transformations.

Detailed analysis of a conservative difference approximation for the time fractional diffusion equation

Diffusion equations that use time fractional derivatives are attractive because they describe a wealth of problems involving non-Markovian Random walks. The time fractional diffusion equation (TFDE) is obtained from the standard diffusion equation by replacing the first-order time derivative with a fractional derivative of order α ∈ (0, 1). Developing numerical methods for solving fractional partial differential equations is a new research field and the theoretical analysis of the numerical methods associated with them is not fully developed. In this paper an explicit conservative difference approximation (ECDA) for TFDE is proposed. We give a detailed analysis for this ECDA and generate discrete models of random walk suitable for simulating random variables whose spatial probability density evolves in time according to this fractional diffusion equation. The stability and convergence of the ECDA for TFDE in a bounded domain are discussed. Finally, some numerical examples are presented to show the application of the present technique.

Feminist Disability Theory: Domestic Violence Against Women with a Disability

Women with a disability continue to experience social oppression and domestic violence as a consequence of gender and disability dimensions. Current explanations of domestic violence and disability inadequately explain several features that lead women who have a disability to experience violent situations. This article incorporates both disability and material feminist theory as an alternative explanation to the dominant approaches (psychological and sociological traditions) of conceptualising domestic violence. This paper is informed by a study which was concerned with examining the nature and perceptions of violence against women with a physical impairment. The emerging analytical framework integrating material feminist interpretations and disability theory provided a basis for exploring gender and disability dimensions. Insight was also provided by the women who identified as having a disability in the study and who explained domestic violence in terms of a gendered and disabling experience. The article argues that material feminist interpretations and disability theory, with their emphasis on gender relations, disablism and poverty, should be used as an alternative tool for exploring the nature and consequences of violence against women with a disability.