scholarly journals Guardians of Public Value: How Public Organizations Become and Remain Institutions

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-35
Author(s):  
Arjen Boin ◽  
Lauren A. Fahy ◽  
Paul ‘t Hart

AbstractIt’s an institution—a phrase we have all come across or may have used. We intuitively understand what it means. There is something special, perhaps mythical, about them. We value these institutions. We may even find it hard to imagine a life without some of these institutions. In this chapter, we offer a definition of institutions and introduce our theoretical framework (based on the work of Philip Selznick). We introduce the case studies in this book and identify patterns of institution building.

Author(s):  
Ilya Volkov

This article examines the definition of the term 'niche market' particularly in how to find a niche and make it your own. It argues definition of niche and that in order to progress in this field, there needs to be a clearer understanding of the objectives. After examining current theory and definitions, the article uses the examples of niche market's companies as case studies to explore current thinking around niche market. The author suggests possible ways for development of the niche market in the future. The article gives a comprehensive and clear idea of the current understanding of niche market. This article will be useful in my own research as I develop a clear theoretical framework to improve policy of niche market's companies and possible ways of framing niche market's situation for the future.


2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (Special Issue) ◽  
pp. 87-103
Author(s):  
Noémi Bíró

"Feminist Interpretations of Action and the Public in Hannah Arendt’s Theory. Arendt’s typology of human activity and her arguments on the precondition of politics allow for a variety in interpretations for contemporary political thought. The feminist reception of Arendt’s work ranges from critical to conciliatory readings that attempt to find the points in which Arendt’s theory might inspire a feminist political project. In this paper I explore the ways in which feminist thought has responded to Arendt’s definition of action, freedom and politics, and whether her theoretical framework can be useful in a feminist rethinking of politics, power and the public realm. Keywords: Hannah Arendt, political action, the Public, the Social, feminism "


Author(s):  
Ross McKibbin

This book is an examination of Britain as a democratic society; what it means to describe it as such; and how we can attempt such an examination. The book does this via a number of ‘case-studies’ which approach the subject in different ways: J.M. Keynes and his analysis of British social structures; the political career of Harold Nicolson and his understanding of democratic politics; the novels of A.J. Cronin, especially The Citadel, and what they tell us about the definition of democracy in the interwar years. The book also investigates the evolution of the British party political system until the present day and attempts to suggest why it has become so apparently unstable. There are also two chapters on sport as representative of the British social system as a whole as well as the ways in which the British influenced the sporting systems of other countries. The book has a marked comparative theme, including one chapter which compares British and Australian political cultures and which shows British democracy in a somewhat different light from the one usually shone on it. The concluding chapter brings together the overall argument.


Author(s):  
Claude Markovits

This chapter deals with the question of innovation in Indian business from a historical perspective. After a brief survey of the literature, emphasizing how divided scholarly opinion was regarding the existence of forms of innovation in Indian business prior to the colonial era, the focus shifts to the British period. It is shown that Schumpeter’s definition of innovation equating it with technological innovation cannot be fruitfully applied to the Indian business scene. Two case studies are then proposed: Tata Iron & Steel, the largest Indian industrial firm, is shown to have been innovative in the specific context of India’s backward industrial scene, while the Sindwork merchants of Hyderabad are an instance of an Indian trading network which extended its range to the entire world. Concluding remarks interrogate post-Independence developments and stress the limits of the innovativeness of Indian business, prior to the recent liberal reforms.


Author(s):  
Nicholas J. Wheeler

This Introduction to the book does three things. First, it introduces the concept of trust and develops a definition of trust as the ‘expectation of no harm in contexts where betrayal is always a possibility’. Next, it identities two conceptions of trust that guide the book, ‘calculative trust’ and ‘trust as suspension’, which provide very different explanations for how actors form expectations that another will be trustworthy. It then shows how trust as suspension opens up a new theory of accurate signal interpretation and demonstrates how this theory is superior to costly signalling-based theories of accurate signal interpretation. The final section of the Introduction sets out the rationale for the case studies and the key assumptions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 1627-1636
Author(s):  
Aurora Berni ◽  
Yuri Borgianni

AbstractThe concept of User Experience (UX) dates back to the 1990s, but a shared definition of UX is not available. As design integrates UX, different interpretations thereof can complicate the possibility to build upon previous literature and develop the field autonomously. Indeed, by analysing the literature, UX emerges as a cauldron of related and closely linked concepts. However, it is possible to find recurring attributes that emerge from those definitions, which are ascribable to two foci: the fundamental elements of the interaction (user, system, context) and typologies of experience (ergonomic, cognitive, and emotional). Those are used to build a framework. We have preliminarily investigated how UX is dealt with in design by mapping a sample of UX-related experimental articles published in design journals. We classified UX case studies based on the framework to individuate the UXs that emerge most frequently and the most studied ones in the design field. The two-focus framework allows the mapping of experiments involving UX in design, without highlighting specific favorable combinations. However, comprehensive studies dealing with all elements and UX typologies have not been found.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 366
Author(s):  
Renato Macciotta ◽  
Michael T. Hendry

Transportation infrastructure in mountainous terrain and through river valleys is exposed to a variety of landslide phenomena. This is particularly the case for highway and railway corridors in Western Canada that connect towns and industries through prairie valleys and the Canadian cordillera. The fluidity of these corridors is important for the economy of the country and the safety of workers, and users of this infrastructure is paramount. Stabilization of all active slopes is financially challenging given the extensive area where landslides are a possibility, and monitoring and minimization of slope failure consequences becomes an attractive risk management strategy. In this regard, remote sensing techniques provide a means for enhancing the monitoring toolbox of the geotechnical engineer. This includes an improved identification of active landslides in large areas, robust complement to in-place instrumentation for enhanced landslide investigation, and an improved definition of landslide extents and deformation mechanisms. This paper builds upon the extensive literature on the application of remote sensing techniques and discusses practical insights gained from a suite of case studies from the authors’ experience in Western Canada. The review of the case studies presents a variety of landslide mechanisms and remote sensing technologies. The aim of the paper is to transfer some of the insights gained through these case studies to the reader.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Joschka Briese

AbstractThis article presents a sign- and usage-based model of intentionality following the works of Robert B. Brandom and T. L. Short. The concept of discursive intentionality is established within Brandom’s theory of language explains discursive and practical reasoning as well as attributive and ascriptive practices. Discursive intentionality is distinguished from other intentionalities of conceptual proximity. Because Brandom’s concept of signs is underdetermined in his works, it will be complemented with T. L. Short’s theory of intentional signs. This dual theoretical framework leads to an innovative analysis of verbs which locates discursive intentionality at the semantic/pragmatic interface. After giving a definition of discursive intentionality, it will be diagrammed by breaking it down into different components (relata, relations, and predicates). Finally, it is tested regarding the plausibility of the diagrammatics of discursive intentionality, using the intentional verb “to promise” to differentiate between the ascription of intentionality and intention.


Languages ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 125
Author(s):  
Lisa Lai-Shen Cheng ◽  
Laura J. Downing

It is widely agreed that prosodic constituents should mirror syntactic constituents (unless high-ranking prosodic constraints interfere). Because recursion is a feature of syntactic representations, one expects recursion in prosodic representations as well. However, it is of current controversy what kinds of syntactic representation motivate prosodic recursion. In this paper, the use of Phonological Phrase recursion is reviewed in several case studies, chosen because prosodic recursion mostly does not reflect syntactic recursion as defined in current syntactic theory. We provide reanalyses that do not appeal to prosodic recursion (unless syntactically motivated), showing that Phonological Phrase recursion is not necessary to capture the relevant generalizations. The more restrictive use of prosodic recursion we argue for has the following conceptual advantages. It allows for more consistent cross-linguistic generalizations about the syntax–prosody mapping so that prosodic representations more closely reflect syntactic ones. It allows the fundamental syntactic distinctions between clause (and other phases) and phrase to be reflected in the prosodic representation, and it allows cross-linguistic generalizations to be made about the prosodic domain of intonational processes, such as downstep and continuation rise.


Author(s):  
Hanseung Woo ◽  
Kyoungchul Kong

Safety is one of important factors in control of mechatronic systems interacting with humans. In order to evaluate the safety of such systems, mechanical impedance is often utilized as it indicates the magnitude of reaction forces when the systems are subjected to motions. Namely, the mechatronic systems should have low mechanical impedance for improved safety. In this paper, a methodology to design controllers for reduction of mechanical impedance is proposed. For the proposed controller design, the mathematical definition of the mechanical impedance for open-loop and closed-loop systems is introduced. Then the controllers are designed for stable and unstable systems such that they effectively lower the magnitude of mechanical impedance with guaranteed stability. The proposed method is verified through case studies including simulations.


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