Bargaining Power Dynamics and the Negotiation of Commercial Rights and Obligations: A Case of Athlete Agreements

This qualitative case study explored how the structural power imbalance in high performance sport influenced the bargaining process and resulting commercial rights and obligations of a single Canadian national sport organization’s (NSO1) Athlete Agreement. Principles comprising the doctrine of unconscionability, specifically the identification of a power imbalance between contracting parties, and the exploration of how that power imbalance influenced the terms of the contract, provided a framework to analyze factors influencing the commercial contents of NSO1’s Athlete Agreement. The results of this analysis revealed that despite the overarching influence of the inherent structural power imbalance on all aspects of NSO1 and its membership, an athletes’ level of commercial appeal can reach such heights as to balance the bargaining positions of both parties and subsequently influence the commercial contents of the Athlete Agreement.

Achieving socially inclusive practice: analysing power dynamics in a participatory approach to service development

The paper is concerned with what works and why in relation to socially inclusive practice in diverse community services settings. Drawing on the findings from a research study involving a participatory evaluation and service development project in a large community services organisation in Melbourne, Australia, the paper asserts that organisations can become more inclusive by paying attention to the ways in which they perpetuate existing oppression and by intentionally challenging associated limiting power/knowledge formations. The study was situated in rights-based approaches to health and social development and drew on Foucauldian conceptualisations of power that see the point of operation of power as the point of resistance, and therefore containing the possibility for change. The researchers worked in three diverse service contexts: children and families experiencing homelessness, people with disabilities, and older people with a history of homelessness and exclusion. The ongoing analysis of the power relations between and within the different stakeholder groups was important in ensuring that the development of the process did not reinscribe oppression and marginalisation. Within the growing body of work that theorises participatory and inclusive practices, the application of a Foucauldian framework offers new insights for anti-oppressive practice in the context of service development.

Influence of local wind speed and direction on wind power dynamics - Application to offshore very short-term forecasting

Wind power time series usually show complex dynamics mainly due to non-linearities related to the wind physics and the power transformation process in wind farms. This article provides an approach to the incorporation of observed local variables (wind speed and direction) to model some of these effects by means of statistical models. To this end, a benchmarking between two different families of varying-coefficient models (regime-switching and conditional parametric models) is carried out. The case of the offshore wind farm of Horns Rev in Denmark has been considered. The analysis is focused on one-step ahead forecasting and a time series resolution of 10 min. It has been found that the local wind direction contributes to model some features of the prevailing winds, such as the impact of the wind direction on the wind variability, whereas the non-linearities related to the power transformation process can be introduced by considering the local wind speed. In both cases, conditional parametric models showed a better performance than the one achieved by the regime-switching strategy. The results attained reinforce the idea that each explanatory variable allows the modelling of different underlying effects in the dynamics of wind power time series.

The importance of power dynamics in the development of asynchronous online learning communities

This research explored how a more student-directed learning design can support the creation of togetherness and belonging in a community of distance learners in formal higher education. Postgraduate students in a New Zealand School of Education experienced two different learning tasks as part of their online distance learning studies. The tasks centered around two online asynchronous discussions each for the same period of time and with the same group of students, but following two different learning design principles. All messages were analyzed using a twostep analysis process, content analysis and social network analysis. Although the findings showed a balance of power between the tutor and the students in the first high e-moderated activity, a better pattern of group interaction and community feeling was found in the low e-moderated activity. The paper will discuss the findings in terms of the implications for learning design and the role of the tutor.

Mean girls, homosociality and football: an education on social and power dynamics between girls and women

Relationships between girls and women have typically been explored through the lexicon of ‘friendship’ or, where there is a presence of sexual desire, ‘lesbian’. This article suggests the complexity and impact of female (same-sex) sociality, and its relationship to heteronormativity and power dynamics between girls and women runs deeper than the terms ‘friendship’ or ‘lesbian’ give rise to. Exploring social and power dynamics amongst girls and women, this article explores how gender is policed and negotiated within a framework of homosociality. Drawing on empirical research within a women's Australian Rules football team, I explore the complexity of female same-sex bonds, the negotiation of gender embodiment and performance within female homosocial spaces, and the emergence of women's own lexicons in making sense of their relationships with other women in this particular social sphere, further considering how this might be applied to other female homosocial spaces, including same-sex educational and sporting sites.

Work-worlds colliding: Self-reflexivity, power and emotion in organizational ethnography

While organizational ethnographers have embraced the concept of self-reflexivity, problems remain. In this article we argue that the prevalent assumption that self-reflexivity is the sole responsibility of the individual researcher limits its scope for understanding organizations. To address this, we propose an innovative method of collective reflection that is inspired by ideas from cultural and feminist anthropology. The value of this method is illustrated through an analysis of two ethnographic case studies, involving a ‘pair interview’ method. This collective approach surfaced self-reflexive accounts, in which aspects of the research encounter that still tend to be downplayed within organizational ethnographies, including emotion, intersubjectivity and the operation of power dynamics, were allowed to emerge. The approach also facilitated a second contribution through the conceptualization of organizational ethnography as a unique endeavour that represents a collision between one ‘world of work’: the university, with a second: the researched organization. We find that this ‘collision’ exacerbates the emotionality of ethnographic research, highlighting the refusal of ‘researched’ organizations to be domesticated by the specific norms of academia. Our article concludes by drawing out implications for the practice of self-reflexivity within organizational ethnography.

Institutional maintenance work and power preservation in business exchanges: Insights from industrial supplier workshops

This paper aims to offer new theoretical and empirical insights into power dynamics in an industrial supplier workshop setting. Theoretically, it advances an institutional perspective on supplier workshops as an important venue in managing, preserving and instituting industrial market power. Based on a detailed ethnographic analysis of an industrial workshop setting, this article investigates the institutional maintenance work of Retail Co. in preserving the power dynamics of market dominance in business exchanges and market structures. Our findings revealed three previously unreported insights into the subtle, but nonetheless pervasive power from institutional maintenance work in an industrial workshop setting. First, the institutional workshop work comprised a cultural performance; constituting socialization practice through a performance game, the power of numbers in field comprehension and an award ceremony. Second, the institutional workshop work mobilized projective agency, stipulating, directing and appealing for the instituting of distinct market rules and collective identities. Finally, the institutional workshop work increases supplier docility and utility via the regulative technologies-of-the-self to enhance business planning, operations and market decision-making practice, without necessarily being seen to be disciplinarian.

The Gaze and the Circumvention of Power in Richard Strauss’ Salome

Richard Strauss’ opera “Salome” is a musical discourse of the uneven power dynamics between male and female with the idea of the gaze as its central narrative. Under the patriarchal premise of the male gaze, the men emerge as the gazers, while the women are relegated to the role of submissive objectification. This paper examines the way Salome manipulates this patriarchal notion of the gaze for her own gain, voluntarily offering herself as the object of the male gaze. I further postulated that Salome strategically oscillates between the stereotypical image of femme fatale and femme fragile, intentionally succumbing to the masculine-constructed demonization and idealization of female power. Consequently, this paper traces how Strauss’ music realizes those gender portrayals and Salome’s resistance against the male order, reflecting the use of musical analyses as a tool in understanding gender roles and power in operas.

Partnerships:the role that power plays in shaping collaborative buyer-supplier exchanges

The role that power plays in collaborative buyer-supplier exchanges or partnerships is explored in this study. The paper argues that research into business-to-business relationships, although rich, largely marginalises the impact that power differentials have on the formation and long-term success of partnerships. To address this, five cases are presented, drawn from the UK food industry, that show how power dynamics shape partnerships. In addition, the research contends that partnering is more likely to succeed when there are equal power resources, or interdependence, between collaborating parties and this leads us to a more robust definition of partnerships.

Workplace design in the knowledge economy : a case of the NetWorkPlace™©

This thesis explores a way to inform the architectural design process for contemporary workplace environments. It reports on both theoretical and practical outcomes through an exclusively Australian case study of a network enterprise comprised of collaborative, yet independent business entities. The internet revolution, substantial economic and cultural shifts, and an increased emphasis on lifestyle considerations have prompted a radical re-ordering of organisational relationships and the associated structures, processes, and places of doing business. The social milieu of the information age and the knowledge economy is characterised by an almost instantaneous flow of information and capital. This has culminated in a phenomenon termed by Manuel Castells as the network society, where physical locations are joined together by continuous communication and virtual connectivity. A new spatial logic encompassing redefined concepts of space and distance, and requiring a comprehensive shift in the approach to designing workplace environments for today’s adaptive, collaborative organisations in a dynamic business world, provides the backdrop for this research. Within the duality of space and an augmentation of the traditional notions of place, organisational and institutional structures pose new challenges for the design professions. The literature revealed that there has always been a mono-organisational focus in relation to workplace design strategies. The phenomenon of inter-organisational collaboration has enabled the identification of a gap in the knowledge relative to workplace design. This new context generated the formulation of a unique research construct, the NetWorkPlace™©, which captures the complexity of contemporary employment structures embracing both physical and virtual work environments and practices, and provided the basis for investigating the factors that are shaping and defining interactions within and across networked organisational settings. The methodological orientation and the methods employed follow a qualitative approach and an abductively driven strategy comprising two distinct components, a cross-sectional study of the whole of the network and a longitudinal study, focusing on a single discrete workplace site. The complexity of the context encountered dictated that a multi-dimensional investigative framework was required to be devised. The adoption of a pluralist ontology and the reconfiguration of approaches from traditional paradigms into a collaborative, trans-disciplinary, multi-method epistemology provided an explicit and replicatable method of investigation. The identification and introduction of the NetWorkPlace™© phenomenon, by necessity, spans a number of traditional disciplinary boundaries. Results confirm that in this context, architectural research, and by extension architectural practice, must engage with what other disciplines have to offer. The research concludes that no single disciplinary approach to either research or practice in this area of design can suffice. Pierre Bourdieau’s philosophy of ‘practice’ provides a framework within which the governance and technology structures, together with the mechanisms enabling the production of social order in this context, can be understood. This is achieved by applying the concepts of position and positioning to the corporate power dynamics, and integrating the conflict found to exist between enterprise standard and ferally conceived technology systems. By extending existing theory and conceptions of ‘place’ and the ‘person-environment relationship’, relevant understandings of the tensions created between Castells’ notions of the space of place and the space of flows are established. The trans-disciplinary approach adopted, and underpinned by a robust academic and practical framework, illustrates the potential for expanding the range and richness of understanding applicable to design in this context. The outcome informs workplace design by extending theoretical horizons, and by the development of a comprehensive investigative process comprising a suite of models and techniques for both architectural and interior design research and practice, collectively entitled the NetWorkPlace™© Application Framework. This work contributes to the body of knowledge within the design disciplines in substantive, theoretical, and methodological terms, whilst potentially also influencing future organisational network theories, management practices, and information and communication technology applications. The NetWorkPlace™© as reported in this thesis, constitutes a multi-dimensional concept having the capacity to deal with the fluidity and ambiguity characteristic of the network context, as both a topic of research and the way of going about it.

Who Rules Japan? Popular Participation in the Japanese Legal Process

"The dramatic growth of the Japanese economy in the postwar period, and its meltdown in the 1990s, has attracted sustained interest in the power dynamics underlying the management of Japan’s administrative state. Scholars and commentators have long debated over who wields power in Japan, asking the fundamental question: who really governs Japan? This important volume revisits this question by turning its attention to the regulation and design of the Japanese legal system. With essays covering the new lay-judge system in Japanese criminal trials, labour dispute resolution panels, prison policy, gendered justice, government lawyers, welfare administration and administrative transparency, this comprehensive book explores the players and processes in Japan’s administration of justice."--publisher website

Private governance of public rights in Japan: Revisiting the Japanese governance debate

Dramatic growth in the Japanese economy in the postwar period – and its meltdown in the 1990s – has attracted sustained interest in the power dynamics underlying the management of Japan’s administrative state. For a long time, scholars and commentators have debated about who wields power in Japan. The question has been asked in different ways. In the 1970s and 1980s, the question was usually posed as: who orchestrated Japan’s economic miracle in the 1960s and 1970s? Today, the question is usually reframed to: who is accountable for the policy failures that plunged Japan into financial crisis and recession during the 1990s? Yet the core issue remains the same – who governs Japan? (Johnson 1995)...

Animal Spirits

Animal Spirits is multi-channel video portrait of key personalities involved in the Global Financial Crisis. The four-screen installation displays these twelve decapitated apostles of free-market economic theory in a tableau of droning pontification. Trapped in a purgatorial loop, they endlessly spout vague and obfuscating explanations and defenses of their ideologies and (in)actions. The work takes a creatively quotidian approach to understanding the language of economics and the financial services industry. Through its endless loop of sound, image, and spoken text, the installation examines some of the ideas, narratives and power dynamics that foster and reward hubris and greed.