scholarly journals Installing an Action Space for Resilience in Surprising Situations

2021 ◽  
pp. 65-90
Author(s):  
Johannes M. Lehner ◽  
Eva Born ◽  
Peter Kelemen ◽  
Rainer Born
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Background Knowledge ◽  
Action Space ◽  
Organizational Resilience ◽  
Field Action ◽  
Different Types ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Robust Evidence ◽  
Critical Situations

AbstractThis chapter develops a model of resilient action in situations where established rules or behavioural routines are either not available or are misleading, thus exposing actors to high means-end ambiguity. The model suggests that an ‘action space’ must be created by stabilizing the action system and expanding options for action. It is based on our qualitative research in the Austrian Military (high degree of publicness) on cases of resilient field action, especially as regards ‘bouncing back’ incidents. We contend that different types of drill combined with the acquisition of background knowledge are essential for organizational resilience, the management of unexpected situations and the explanation of success, leading to controlled reproducibility solutions of typical problems. As such, the model intends to explain exploitation types of learning. However, as an antecedent for installing the action space, we explore so-called the ‘exaptation’ of drilled procedures, pertaining to the transfer of procedures to serve novel requirements, thus located in the exploration domain. This phenomenon leads to properties that contribute to recovery from shock in critical situations, through innovation. In short, the chapter provides novel empirical evidence that applying rules does not lead to resilient action in the case of unknown or unexpected situations. Instead, we show robust evidence that a corrective understanding and reflective use of rules and routines is causally related to the ability to deal with surprise and fostering resilience.

scholarly journals Management of Zakah Distribution: Empirical Evidence From Indonesia

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (02) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Rahmatina A. Kasri
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Key Management ◽  
Research Approach ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Management Personnel ◽  
Online Platforms ◽  
Different Types

<p>Despite the importance of zakah distribution, few studies attempt to evaluate practices in managing the distribution. The paper, thus, aims to explore approaches and evaluate practices in managing the zakah distribution. It employs qualitative research approach with semi-structured interviews with key management personnel of seven largest zakah organizations in Indonesia. The main finding identifies two approaches in distributing zakah in Indonesia, namely consumptive disbursement and productive utilization approaches. Each approaches is different in terms of purpose/expected impact, types/nature of programs and methods of distributing the zakah proceeds. It is also found that different types of zakah organizations tend to focus on different zakah distribution approach. Moreover, some challenges are identified particularly in relation to selection/coverage of mustahik and threat or ‘competition’ in distributing zakah funds. Overall, the study highlights the increasing relevance of productive utilization approach as well as importance of enhancing outreach and availability of information related to zakah programs (including through online platforms) and continuously educate all zakah stakeholders. The findings are expected to provide insights in managing zakah distribution in Indonesia and ultimately in increasing effectiveness of zakah institution to achieve its objectives.</p><p><br />Keywords: Indonesia, qualitative research, zakah distribution, zakah management, zakah organizations</p>

scholarly journals Being a Patient Representative Is More Work Than Being a Patient Advocate—Done Right, It Is Also Likely to Be More Effective

2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 1017-1019
Author(s):  
Richard Wassersug
Keyword(s):  
Health Outcomes ◽  
Background Knowledge ◽  
Positive Influence ◽  
Patient Advocate ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Health Related ◽  
Patient Representative

For a patient to be effective as a “patient representative” within a health-related organization, work and more than just accepting an honorific title is required. I argue that for a patient to be most effective as a patient representative requires different types of background knowledge and commitment than being a “patient advocate”. Patients need to be cautious about how, when, and where they take on an official role of either an “advocate” or “representative”, if they truly want to be a positive influence on health outcomes.

scholarly journals Thinking Globally, Acting Locally: Distantly Supervised Global-to-Local Knowledge Selection for Background Based Conversation

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (05) ◽  
pp. 8697-8704
Author(s):  
Pengjie Ren ◽  
Zhumin Chen ◽  
Christof Monz ◽  
Jun Ma ◽  
Maarten De Rijke
Keyword(s):  
Local Knowledge ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Background Knowledge ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
Conversational Context ◽  
Human Evaluation ◽  
Text Fragment ◽  
Selection For ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Transition Vector

Background Based Conversation (BBCs) have been introduced to help conversational systems avoid generating overly generic responses. In a BBC, the conversation is grounded in a knowledge source. A key challenge in BBCs is Knowledge Selection (KS): given a conversational context, try to find the appropriate background knowledge (a text fragment containing related facts or comments, etc.) based on which to generate the next response. Previous work addresses KS by employing attention and/or pointer mechanisms. These mechanisms use a local perspective, i.e., they select a token at a time based solely on the current decoding state. We argue for the adoption of a global perspective, i.e., pre-selecting some text fragments from the background knowledge that could help determine the topic of the next response. We enhance KS in BBCs by introducing a Global-to-Local Knowledge Selection (GLKS) mechanism. Given a conversational context and background knowledge, we first learn a topic transition vector to encode the most likely text fragments to be used in the next response, which is then used to guide the local KS at each decoding timestamp. In order to effectively learn the topic transition vector, we propose a distantly supervised learning schema. Experimental results show that the GLKS model significantly outperforms state-of-the-art methods in terms of both automatic and human evaluation. More importantly, GLKS achieves this without requiring any extra annotations, which demonstrates its high degree of scalability.

Do Development and Democracy Positively Affect Gender Equality in Cabinets?

2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 332-356 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN HÖGSTRÖM
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Comparative Studies ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Political Regimes ◽  
The World ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
Positive Effect

AbstractIt has been argued that economic development and democracy create new opportunities and resources for women to access political power, which should increase gender equality in politics. However, empirical evidence from previous research that supports this argument is mixed. The contribution of this study is to expand the research on gender equality in politics through an in-depth examination of the effect of development and democracy on gender equality in cabinets. This has been completed through separate analyses that include most of the countries in the world across three levels of development (least-developed, developing, and developed) and across different types of political regimes (democracies, royal dictatorships, military dictatorships, and civilian dictatorships). The results demonstrate that economic development and democracy only affect gender equality in cabinets positively in a few environments. Accordingly, the context is important and there seem to be thresholds before development and democracy have any effect. Development has a positive effect in developed countries and in democracies, but it has a negative effect in dictatorships, and the negative effect is strongest in military dictatorships. The level of democracy has a positive effect mainly in dictatorships, and the strongest effect is in civilian dictatorships. The article demonstrates the importance of dividing samples into subsets to increase understanding of what affects women's representation in cabinets in different environments, and I ask scholars to subset samples and run separate analyses more often in comparative studies.

Probiotics for the Chemoprotective Role Against the Toxic Effect of Cancer Chemotherapy

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aafrin Waziri ◽  
Charu Bharti ◽  
Mohammed Aslam ◽  
Parween Jamil ◽  
Aamir Mirza ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Side Effects ◽  
Clinical Management ◽  
Clinical Evidence ◽  
Unmet Need ◽  
Chemotherapeutic Agents ◽  
Antitumor Effects ◽  
Anti Cancer ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Growth Promoting ◽  
High Degree

Background: The processes of chemo- and radiation therapy-based clinical management of different types of cancers are associated with toxicity and side effects of chemotherapeutic agents. So, there is always an unmet need to explore agents to reduce such risk factors. Among these, natural products have generated much attention because of their potent antioxidant and antitumor effects. In the past, some breakthrough outcomes established that various bacteria in the human intestinal gut are bearing growth-promoting attributes and suppressing the conversion of pro-carcinogens into carcinogens. Hence, probiotics integrated approaches are nowadays being explored as rationalized therapeutics in the clinical management of cancer. Methods: Here, published literature was explored to review chemoprotective roles of probiotics against toxic and side effects of chemotherapeutics. Results: Apart from excellent anti-cancer abilities, probiotics are bearing and alleviate toxicity and side effects of chemotherapeutics, with a high degree of safety and efficiency. Conclusion: Preclinical and clinical evidence suggested that due to the chemoprotective roles of probiotics against side effects and toxicity of chemotherapeutics, their integration in chemotherapy would be a judicious approach.

Toxicity And Surface Modification Of Dendrimers: A Critical Review

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rohini Kharwade ◽  
Payal Badole ◽  
Nilesh Mahajan ◽  
Sachin More
Keyword(s):  
Surface Modification ◽  
Positive Charge ◽  
Haematological Toxicity ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Hemolytic Toxicity ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Core Functionality ◽  
Polymeric Structures

: As compared to other nano polymers, dendrimers have novel three dimensional, synthetic hyperbranched, nano-polymeric structures. The characteristic of these supramolecular dendritic structures has a high degree of significant surface as well as core functionality in the transportation of drugs for targeted therapy, specifically in host-guest response, gene transfer therapy and imaging of biological systems. However, there are conflicting shreds of evidence regarding biological safety and dendrimers toxicity due to their positive charge at the surface. It includes cytotoxicity, hemolytic toxicity, haematological toxicity, immunogenicity and in vivo toxicity. Therefore to resolve these problems surface modification of the dendrimer group is one of the methods. From that point, this review involves different strategies which reduce the toxicity and improve the biocompatibility of different types of dendrimers. From that viewpoint, we broaden the structural and safe characteristics of the dendrimers in the biomedical and pharmaceutical fields.

The Limits of Observation for Understanding Mass Violence

2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (02) ◽  
pp. 237-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan Price ◽  
Patrick Ball
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Statistical Methods ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Legal Responsibility ◽  
Mass Violence ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Observable Data ◽  
Quantitative Analyses

Abstract Quantitative analyses have the potential to contribute to transitional justice mechanisms, via empirical evidence supporting the memory of victims, allocating proportional responsibility among perpetrators, determining legal responsibility, and supporting historical memory and clarity. However, most data available in transitional justice settings are incomplete. Conducting quantitative analyses relying solely on what is observable and knowable leads to not only incomplete but often incorrect analytical results. This can harm rather than contribute to transitional justice mechanisms. This article outlines different types of data, the ways in which observable data, on their own, are insufficient for most quantitative analyses of interest, presents these limitations via a case study from Syria, and introduces statistical methods to overcome these limitations.

Popular Support for the Welfare State: A Comparison Between Institutional Regimes

1993 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-254 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elim Papadakis ◽  
Clive Bean
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Popular Support ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Institutional Regimes ◽  
The Welfare State

AbstractApart from the preoccupation with raising revenue for the welfare state, the question of popular support is central to its future. Arguments about the prospects for the welfare state, about its social and political bases of support and about classifying different types of regime provide the context of our investigation. Our approach is to examine empirical evidence of the connection between support for the welfare state and (a) different types of regime and (b) social and political factors. The analysis of these relationships has important implications for policy-makers who are concerned about consent to their programmes and about the experiences of comparable regimes.

scholarly journals The Economic Impact of New Firms in Punjab

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (Sspecial Edition) ◽  
pp. 143-182
Author(s):  
Azam Chaudhry ◽  
Maryiam Haroon
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Socioeconomic Impact ◽  
Firm Entry ◽  
New Firms ◽  
Socioeconomic Outcomes ◽  
Different Types ◽  
New Firm ◽  
New Firm Entry ◽  
Over Time

Despite the consensus that new firms have a significant economic and socioeconomic impact, there is very little empirical evidence to support this claim in the Pakistani context. In this paper, we start by looking at how new firm entry varies across districts in Punjab over time. We then look at how the establishment of different types of firms across these districts has affected district-level socioeconomic outcomes in the province. We find that firm entry has a positive impact on economic outcomes such as employment and enrollment, and that this impact can vary by the scale of the firms that enter.

scholarly journals Success-Driving Business Model Characteristics of IaaS Providers – Towards a Quantitative Evaluation

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Sebastian Floerecke ◽  
Florian Felix Röck ◽  
Franz Lehner
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Business Model ◽  
Quantitative Evaluation ◽  
Limited Resources ◽  
Business Success ◽  
Minor Importance ◽  
Competitive Situation ◽  
Web Based ◽  
The Individual ◽  
High Degree

Despite the highly competitive situation within the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) market and the resulting pressure and uncertainty for the involved providers, only little knowledge is available about business model characteristics (BMCs) related to success. Merely few qualitative studies are existing that propose hypotheses on success-driving business model characteristics (SDBMCs), however, a general and comparative quantitative evaluation and thus an evidence for their impact on business success is still missing. But this knowledge is essential for IaaS providers as it would allow them to focus their limited resources and efforts on the truly decisive BMCs and, at the same time, save costs by avoiding activities and investments of minor importance. Aiming to reduce this gap, a web-based survey was carried out, in which representatives of IaaS providers of different size rated the level of relevance of the proposed SDBMCs. As this study is still going on, this paper focuses on presenting the study design and an analysis of the data collected so far. As a preliminary result, nearly 80 % of the SDBMCs were rated as extremely important or important, meaning that the existing qualitative research results were confirmed to a high degree. The relevance of the individual SDBMCs varies greatly depending on the IaaS provider’s size

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