scholarly journals Organizational Paradox

Management ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simone Carmine ◽  
Wendy K. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
Competing Demands ◽  
External Conditions ◽  
Organizational Paradox ◽  
Paradox Theory ◽  
Foundational Work

Organizational paradox offers a theory of the nature and management of competing demands. Historically, the dominant paradigm in organizational theory depicted competing demands as trade-offs or dilemmas that could be resolved by choosing one option. In the late 1960s, scholars such as Joan Woodward, Paul Lawrence, and Jay Lorsch introduced contingency theory, suggesting that individuals resolve these tensions by taking the context and environment into account. Paradox theory offers an alternative approach, suggesting that these tensions cannot be resolved. By depicting competing demands as tensions that are not only contradictory, but also interdependent and persistent, paradox theory argues that actors need to accept, engage, and navigate tensions rather than resolve them. Foundational work on paradox in organizations emerged starting in the late 1970s and 1980s. This work drew from rich insights across a variety of disciplines, including Eastern philosophy (Taoism, Confucianism), Western philosophies (Hegel, Heraclitus), psychodynamics (Jung, Adler, Frankel), psychology (Schneider, Watzlawick), political science (Marx, Engel), communications and sociology (Taylor, Bateson), and negotiations and conflict resolution (Follett). More recent work has advanced foundational building blocks toward a theory of paradox. Underlying the theory of paradox is ontologies of dualism—two opposing elements that together form an integrated unity—and dynamism— ongoing change. Scholars have defined paradox as tensions that are contradictory, interdependent, and persistent, noting their dynamic, everchanging, cyclical nature. Some scholars describe the origins of paradox as inherent within systems, while others highlight their social construction through cognition, dialogue, and rationality. Still others explore the relationship between the inherent and socially constructed nature of tensions, depicting tensions as latent within a system, becoming salient through social construction and external conditions. Moreover, some scholars focus more on understanding the poles of paradox, while others depict the ongoing dynamic interaction and evolution. As paradox theory continues to grow and expand, scholars have also added complexity to our understanding, emphasizing paradoxes as nested across levels and as knotted and interwoven across various tensions, while also taking into account the power dynamics, uncertainty, plurality, and scarcity of systems within which paradoxes emerge. This article identifies scholarship that depicts these varied approaches and ideas, providing the foundations of paradox theory for scholars new to this field and in-depth analysis for those seeking to expand their understanding. Section 1 offers foundational work. Section 2 introduces early scholarship that launched the field. Section 3 includes work describing foundational building blocks toward a theory of paradox. Section 4 highlights research that recognizes the nested nature of paradox and describes how this theory has been applied across different levels. Section 5 includes papers that address the meta-theoretical and multi-paradigmatic aspect of paradox theory, noting how these ideas have been applied across phenomena and across theoretical lenses. Section 6 describes papers that draw on the varied methodological traditions associated with paradox. Finally, section 7 identifies several handbooks and special issues that offer an introduction to or integration of paradox theory.

Persistent memory hash indexes

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (5) ◽  
pp. 785-798
Author(s):  
Daokun Hu ◽  
Zhiwen Chen ◽  
Jianbing Wu ◽  
Jianhua Sun ◽  
Hao Chen
Keyword(s):  
Future Development ◽  
High Performance ◽  
Performance Metrics ◽  
Comprehensive Evaluation ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Hash Tables ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
Persistent Memory ◽  
Memory Modules

Persistent memory (PM) is increasingly being leveraged to build hash-based indexing structures featuring cheap persistence, high performance, and instant recovery, especially with the recent release of Intel Optane DC Persistent Memory Modules. However, most of them are evaluated on DRAM-based emulators with unreal assumptions, or focus on the evaluation of specific metrics with important properties sidestepped. Thus, it is essential to understand how well the proposed hash indexes perform on real PM and how they differentiate from each other if a wider range of performance metrics are considered. To this end, this paper provides a comprehensive evaluation of persistent hash tables. In particular, we focus on the evaluation of six state-of-the-art hash tables including Level hashing, CCEH, Dash, PCLHT, Clevel, and SOFT, with real PM hardware. Our evaluation was conducted using a unified benchmarking framework and representative workloads. Besides characterizing common performance properties, we also explore how hardware configurations (such as PM bandwidth, CPU instructions, and NUMA) affect the performance of PM-based hash tables. With our in-depth analysis, we identify design trade-offs and good paradigms in prior arts, and suggest desirable optimizations and directions for the future development of PM-based hash tables.

scholarly journals Droplet-Assisted Microfluidic Fabrication and Characterization of Multifunctional Polysaccharide Microgels Formed by Multicomponent Reactions

Polymers ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 1055 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Hauck ◽  
Nalin Seixas ◽  
Silvia Centeno ◽  
Raimund Schlüßler ◽  
Gheorghe Cojoc ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Hyaluronic Acid ◽  
Multicomponent Reactions ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Correlation Spectroscopy ◽  
Droplet Microfluidics ◽  
Phase Imaging ◽  
Colloidal Probe ◽  
Young’S Moduli ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
The Impact

Polysaccharide-based microgels have broad applications in multi-parametric cell cultures, cell-free biotechnology, and drug delivery. Multicomponent reactions like the Passerini three-component and the Ugi four-component reaction are shown in here to be versatile platforms for fabricating these polysaccharide microgels by droplet microfluidics with a narrow size distribution. While conventional microgel formation requires pre-modification of hydrogel building blocks to introduce certain functionality, in multicomponent reactions one building block can be simply exchanged by another to introduce and extend functionality in a library-like fashion. Beyond synthesizing a range of polysaccharide-based microgels utilizing hyaluronic acid, alginate and chitosan, exemplary in-depth analysis of hyaluronic acid-based Ugi four-component gels is conducted by colloidal probe atomic force microscopy, confocal Brillouin microscopy, quantitative phase imaging, and fluorescence correlation spectroscopy to elucidate the capability of microfluidic multicomponent reactions for forming defined polysaccharide microgel networks. Particularly, the impact of crosslinker amount and length is studied. A higher network density leads to higher Young’s moduli accompanied by smaller pore sizes with lower diffusion coefficients of tracer molecules in the highly homogeneous network, and vice versa. Moreover, tailored building blocks allow for crosslinking the microgels and incorporating functional groups at the same time as demonstrated for biotin-functionalized, chitosan-based microgels formed by Ugi four-component reaction. To these microgels, streptavidin-labeled enzymes are easily conjugated as shown for horseradish peroxidase (HRP), which retains its activity inside the microgels.

High Yield Assembly of Compliant MEMS Snap Fasteners

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rakesh Murthy ◽  
Aditya N. Das ◽  
Dan O. Popa
Keyword(s):  
Self Assembly ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Deformation Energy ◽  
High Yield ◽  
3 Dimensional ◽  
Lab Experiments ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Robotic Cells ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Important Design

Heterogeneous assembly at the microscale has recently emerged as a viable pathway to constructing 3-dimensional microrobots and other miniaturized devices. In contrast to self-assembly, this method is directed and deterministic, and is based on serial or parallel microassembly. Whereas at the meso and macro scales, automation is often undertaken after, and often benchmarked against manual assembly, we demonstrate that deterministic automation at the MEMS scale can be completed with higher yields through the use of engineered compliance and precision robotic cells. Snap fasteners have long been used as a way to exploit the inherent stability of local minima of the deformation energy caused by interference during part mating. In this paper we assume that the building blocks are 2 1/2 -dimensional, as is the case with lithographically microfabricated MEMS parts. The assembly of the snap fasteners is done using μ3, a multi-robot microassembly station with unique characteristics located at our ARRI’s Texas Microfactory lab. Experiments are performed to demonstrate that fast and reliable assemblies can be expected if the microparts and the robotic cell satisfy a so-called “High Yield Assembly Condition” (H.Y.A.C.). Important design trade-offs for assembly and performance of microsnap fasteners are discussed and experimentally evaluated.

The political economy of currency internationalisation: the case of the RMB

2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 765-787 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randall Germain ◽  
Herman Mark Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Adjustment Costs ◽  
Critical Element ◽  
International Currency ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Rise Of China ◽  
External Conditions ◽  
The Rise Of China

AbstractThe rise of China has sparked a debate about the economic and political consequences for the global economy of the internationalisation of the renminbi. We argue that the dominant focus of this literature – primarily the external conditions and requirements for a national currency to become an international currency – misspecifies the connections between the international and domestic requirements for currency internationalisation, as well as the potential to become the dominant international reserve currency. We correct this oversight by developing an integrated theoretical framework that highlights the domestic adjustment costs which a state must accommodate before its currency can carry the weight of internationalisation. These costs constitute a critical element of an international currency’s ‘political economy’, and they force states to negotiate contentious social trade-offs among competing domestic claims on finite public resources in a sustainable manner. Our analysis suggests that the likelihood of China being able to successfully negotiate the social costs associated with running a fully internationalised currency is currently very low, precisely because this will place unacceptable pressure on groups benefiting from the economic and political status quo. This further suggests that the American dollar will remain unchallenged as the global economy’s pre-eminent international currency for the foreseeable future.

scholarly journals Contingent evolution of alternative metabolic network topologies determines whether cross-feeding evolves

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeroen Meijer ◽  
Bram van Dijk ◽  
Paulien Hogeweg
Keyword(s):  
Metabolic Networks ◽  
Mechanistic Model ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Division Of Labour ◽  
Ecosystem Structure ◽  
Evolutionary Contingency ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Evolutionary Trajectories ◽  
Network Topologies ◽  
Metabolic Strategies

AbstractMetabolic exchange is widespread in natural microbial communities and an important driver of ecosystem structure and diversity, yet it remains unclear what determines whether microbes evolve division of labor or maintain metabolic autonomy. Here we use a mechanistic model to study how metabolic strategies evolve in a constant, one resource environment, when metabolic networks are allowed to freely evolve. We find that initially identical ancestral communities of digital organisms follow different evolutionary trajectories, as some communities become dominated by a single, autonomous lineage, while others are formed by stably coexisting lineages that cross-feed on essential building blocks. Our results show how without presupposed cellular trade-offs or external drivers such as temporal niches, diverse metabolic strategies spontaneously emerge from the interplay between ecology, spatial structure, and metabolic constraints that arise during the evolution of metabolic networks. Thus, in the long term, whether microbes remain autonomous or evolve metabolic division of labour is an evolutionary contingency.

scholarly journals Governing Food and Agriculture in a Warming World

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 53-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Newell ◽  
Olivia Taylor ◽  
Charles Touni
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Multiple Scales ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Global Institutions ◽  
Food And Agriculture ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Smart Agriculture ◽  
Warming World

Understanding how, why, and whether the trade-offs and tensions around simultaneous implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals are resolved both sustainably and equitably requires an appreciation of power relations across multiple scales of governance. We explore the politics and political economy of how the nexus around food, energy, and water is being governed through initiatives to promote climate-smart agriculture (CSA) as it moves from the global to the local. We combine an analysis of how these interrelationships are being governed (and ungoverned) by key global institutions with reflection on the consequences of this for developing countries that are being targeted by CSA initiatives. In particular, we look at Kenya as a country heavily dependent on agriculture, but also subject to some of the worst effects of climate change and which has been a focus for a range of bilateral and multilateral donors with their preferred visions of CSA. We draw on strands of literature in global environmental politics, political ecology, and the political economy of development to make sense of the power dynamics that characterize the multiscalar politics of how CSA is translated, domesticated, and operationalized in practice.

scholarly journals Identification of Significant Computational Building Blocks through Comprehensive Investigation of NGS Secondary Analysis Methods

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Md Vasimuddin ◽  
Sanchit Misra ◽  
Srinivas Aluru
Keyword(s):  
De Novo ◽  
Secondary Analysis ◽  
Variant Calling ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Software Tools ◽  
Moore’S Law ◽  
Moore's Law ◽  
Sequence Mapping ◽  
Performance Improvements ◽  
Depth Analysis

AbstractRapid advances in next-generation sequencing technologies are improving the throughput and cost of sequencing at a rate significantly faster than the Moore’s law. This necessitates equivalent rate of acceleration of NGS secondary analysis that assembles reads into full genomes and identifies variants between genomes. Conventional improvement in hardware can at best help accelerate this according to the Moore’s law. Moreover, a majority of the software tools used for secondary analysis do not use the hardware efficiently. Therefore, we need hardware that is designed taking into account the computational requirements of secondary analysis, along with software tools that use it efficiently. Here, we take the first step towards these goals by identifying the computational requirements of secondary analysis. We surveyed dozens of software tools from all the three major problems in secondary analysis – sequence mapping, De novo assembly, and variant calling – to select seven popular tools and a workflow for an in-depth analysis. We performed runtime profiling of the tools using multiple real datasets to find that the majority of the runtime is dominated by just four building blocks – Smith-Waterman alignment, FM-index based sequence search, Debruijn graph construction and traversal, and pairwise hidden markov model algorithm – covering 80.5%-98.2%, 63.9%-99.4% and 72%-93% of the runtime, respectively, for sequence mapping, De novo assembly, and variant calling. The key outcome of this result is that by just targeting software and hardware optimizations to these building blocks, major performance improvements for NGS secondary analysis can be achieved.

Legitimation of Illegality in Authoritarian States: The Case of Transnational Illegal Drug Brokerage in China

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Lantian Li
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Illegal Drug ◽  
Legal Authority ◽  
Legal Documents ◽  
The Social ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
The Media

Abstract This paper analyzes how illegality can be legitimized in authoritarian states by examining a contested case of transnational illegal drug brokerage in China. Triangulating news articles, legal documents, and interviews, the study distinguishes between two pathways of illegality legitimation: depoliticized and politicized. I argue that the depoliticized pathway is made possible through pragmatic, moral, and legalistic frames, whereas the politicized pathway builds upon an institutional frame. I also identify the media as essential agents of illegality legitimation. While illegal-practice participants and the legal authority tend to only mobilize depoliticized frames, the media make both depoliticized and politicized efforts. Through this in-depth analysis, the paper deepens our understanding of the social construction of illegality and the intricate relation between law, media, and society within authoritarian states.

The Risk-Averse Static Stochastic Knapsack Problem

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasemin Merzifonluoglu ◽  
Joseph Geunes
Keyword(s):  
Heuristic Algorithms ◽  
Risk Measures ◽  
Critical Element ◽  
Stochastic Knapsack ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Stochastic Resource Allocation ◽  
Numerical Experimentation ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Model Expression

This research proposes and analyzes new models for a stochastic resource allocation problem that arises in a variety of operations contexts. One of the primary contributions of the paper lies in providing a succinct, robust, and general model that can address a range of different risk-based objectives and cost assumptions under uncertainty. Although the model expression is relatively simple, it embeds a reasonably high degree of underlying complexity, as the analysis shows. In addition, in-depth analysis of the model, both in its general form and under various specific risk measures, uncovers some interesting and powerful insights regarding the problem trade-offs. Furthermore, this analysis leads to a highly efficient class of heuristic algorithms for solving the problem, which we demonstrate via numerical experimentation to provide close-to-optimal solutions. This computational benefit is a critical element for solving a class of broadly applicable larger problems for which our problem arises as a subproblem that requires repeated solution.

Global Agricultural Costing and Investment model

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yiorgos Vittis ◽  
Michael Obersteiner
Keyword(s):  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Optimal Allocation ◽  
Production Systems ◽  
Investment Model ◽  
Land Sharing ◽  
Adequate Food ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Competing Demands ◽  
Current Production ◽  
Yield Gaps

<p>Increasing competing demands for land, water and energy along with increasing word population call for strategies to minimise environmental impacts while producing adequate food for 9 billion people. Studies have highlighted trade-offs between yields, biodiversity and socioeconomic goals in alternative land management solutions that share or spare agricultural land, pointing out the necessity of demand-side adjustments to meet environmental and food security goals. On the contrary, research has demonstrated that agricultural intensification through sparing and sharing agricultural land at global scales has the capacity to close yield gaps, reduce land requirements and increase biodiversity. Here we address the fundamental question: Would agricultural systems produce adequate food under a land sharing and targeted sparing scenario at lower financial costs? Optimal allocation of agricultural production, based on biophysical constraints, enables increased efficiencies and thus, we hypothesize that production is going to be less costly at global scales. To address this question, a cost engineering method is employed using crop modelling and inventory data on 16 crops to assess financial implications of sharing and sparing production scenarios. Preliminary findings demonstrate that at national scales, where there are potentials for greater and more efficient food production, there is larger spatial aggregation of production systems and thus higher costs that relate to large inputs of nutrients required to close yield gaps. Further forthcoming research will allow the identification of financial balances at global scales and enable the present study to confirm that current production volumes can be maintained at lower financial and environmental costs.</p>

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