Understanding control in communities of practice: Constructive disobedience in a high-tech firm

2019 ◽  
Vol 73 (6) ◽  
pp. 864-890 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Rennstam ◽  
Dan Kärreman
Keyword(s):  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Management Control ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
High Tech ◽  
Situated Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Use ◽  
Managerial Control ◽  
Contemporary Work ◽  
The One ◽  
Insight Into

Communities of practice (CoPs) represent a broad range of work situations characterized by shared knowledge and situated knowledge use. Although CoPs have been studied rather extensively, discussions of control in CoPs are rarer. This is peculiar because CoPs are characterized by a common tension in contemporary work: on the one hand, CoPs are expected to autonomously “think together,” but on the other they are expected to be responsive to various managerial control attempts. We interrogate this tension in an ethnographic study of engineering work, where we found that in response to management control the engineering communities engaged in constructive disobedience – that is, subversion and displacement of rules and orders to construct a dynamic of control where work can be executed autonomously. By associating constructive disobedience with control in CoPs, our study contributes with insight into and theorization of how management control is dealt with and how control operates in work characterized by CoPs. The study also provides deepened insight into the limits of management control and how professionalism may be maintained despite increased management. These insights may support development of a more knowledgeable and nuanced approach to attempts at managing communities of practice.

Creating communities: the use of technology in craft and DIY communities of practice

2014 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 277-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Holmes ◽  
Anita Greenhill ◽  
Rachel McLean
Keyword(s):  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Deep Understanding ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Original Research ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Use Of Technology ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
Insight Into

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to gain insight into craft and do-it-yourself (DIY) communities of practice (COPs) and how the use of technology provides ways for participants to connect, share and create. Gaining deeper insights into the practices of these communities may provide new opportunities to utilise within this flourishing domain. Design/methodology/approach – Qualitative methods were adopted to collect data and analysed through an interpretivist lens. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with members of craft and DIY COPs to gain a deep understanding of the broader ethnographic study. Existing theoretical perspectives surrounding COPs have been applied to further current perspectives. Findings – Findings from this study suggest that being part of a COP allows participants to connect to others, build creative enterprise and learn or enhance skills. Insights gained from this study indicate some of the detailed ways in which the application of technology redefines craft and DIY COPs. Research limitations/implications – This study provides a succinct exploration of a vast and fluid domain; if presented with more time and wider resources, the research would include further exploration of virtual COPs. Originality/value – The investigation provides a rich insight into the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) within craft and DIY COPs. The application of theoretical perspectives from the area of Information Systems (IS) and Technology Management to this domain is regarded as an original research and furthers knowledge in these areas. Originality/value – The investigation provides a rich insight into the use of ICTs within craft and DIY COPs. The application of theoretical perspectives from the area of IS to the domain of craft and DIY culture is original research and extends existing concepts to include skills sharing as a previously unexplored domain.

When Romania met the Cohesion Policy. Regional governance in-between national conventions and European ideals

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandru Brad
Keyword(s):  
Regional Policy ◽  
Development Planning ◽  
Regional Governance ◽  
Theoretical Ground ◽  
Cohesion Policy ◽  
Redistributive Policy ◽  
Policy Context ◽  
Core Areas ◽  
The One ◽  
Insight Into

This article is about the practice of territorial governance emerging at the junction of European Union-sanctioned ideals and Romanian development-planning traditions. On the one hand, the European agenda emphasises a smart, inclusive, sustainable model of economic growth. However, the persisting centralised workings of the Romanian state significantly alters the scope of regional interventions. As such, while core cities grew their economies swiftly, peripheral places were left in an unrelenting stagnation. My first aim is to provide a theoretical ground for a practicecentred approach to understanding territorial governance. Second, by drawing on Romania’s regional policy context as an example, I give an insight into how practices of partnership and competition fare in a context of ongoing territorial polarisation. I conclude by emphasising the need for a regional redistributive policy mechanism, one which should enable and assist non-core areas to access capacities for defining and implementing development projects.

Marx, Silk Poems, and the Pretext of Qualities

2020 ◽  
Vol 151 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-126
Author(s):  
Kathryn Crim
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Use Value ◽  
Working Day ◽  
The One ◽  
Insight Into

Karl Marx’s comments on silk manufacture in “The Working Day” chapter of Capital, volume 1, demonstrate how “quality”—usually associated with “use value”—has been mobilized by capital to naturalize industrialized labor. Putting his insight into conversation with a recent multimedia poetic project, Jen Bervin’s Silk Poems (2016–17), this essay examines the homology between, on the one hand, poetry’s avowed task of fitting form to content and, on the other, the ideology of labor that fits specific bodies to certain materials and tasks.

scholarly journals Evangelical and Catholic Timespace in Work: An Argument against a Homeless Eschatology

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 199
Author(s):  
Maria Ledstam
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Study ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
The Other ◽  
Faith Based ◽  
Business As Mission ◽  
Achievable Goal ◽  
The Common ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

This article engages with how religion and economy relate to each other in faith-based businesses. It also elaborates on a recurrent idea in theological literature that reflections on different visions of time can advance theological analyses of the relationship between Christianity and capitalism. More specifically, this article brings results from an ethnographic study of two faith-based businesses into conversation with the ethicist Luke Bretherton’s presentation of different understandings of the relationship between Christianity and capitalism. Using Theodore Schatzki’s theory of timespace, the article examines how time and space are constituted in two small faith-based businesses that are part of the two networks Business as Mission (evangelical) and Economy of Communion (catholic) and how the different timespaces affect the religious-economic configurations in the two cases and with what moral implications. The overall findings suggest that the timespace in the Catholic business was characterized by struggling caused by a tension between certain ideals on how religion and economy should relate to each other on the one hand and how the practice evolved on the other hand. Furthermore, the timespace in the evangelical business was characterized by confidence, caused by the business having a rather distinct and achievable goal when it came to how they wanted to be different and how religion should relate to economy. There are, however, nuances and important resemblances between the cases that cannot be explained by the businesses’ confessional and theological affiliations. Rather, there seems to be something about the phenomenon of tension-filled and confident faith-based businesses that causes a drive in the practices towards the common good. After mapping the results of the empirical study, I discuss some contributions that I argue this study brings to Bretherton’s presentation of the relationship between Christianity and capitalism.

What being an owner can also mean: A socio-anthropological study on the development of a forgotten relationship to objects

2021 ◽  
pp. 205157072110144
Author(s):  
Isabelle Dabadie ◽  
Philippe Robert-Demontrond
Keyword(s):  
Economic Models ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
Anthropological Study ◽  
Possessive Individualism ◽  
The One

In a context of ecological crisis, new economic models have developed based on the replacement of ownership by access. While they have been studied at length, the very idea of ownership, which is supposed to be abandoned in this process, has rarely been questioned. This is the aim of our research, which investigates the meanings of the concept of ownership for consumers. A socio-anthropological investigation and an ethnographic study on various sharing systems (for houses, boats and clothes) reveals the development of a relationship to ownership, which differs from the one that prevails in the society. In this paradigm, which questions possessive individualism, the owner appears as the ‘custodian’ of his possessions. The identification of his expectations opens managerial and societal perspectives to build the offers that will enable him to fulfil this role.

Relational Chase Procedures Interpreted as Resolution with Paramodulation1

1991 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-138
Author(s):  
Joachim Biskup ◽  
Bernhard Convent
Keyword(s):  
Alternative Interpretation ◽  
Order Logic ◽  
First Order Logic ◽  
Inference Problem ◽  
First Order ◽  
Inference Problems ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Theoretical Foundations ◽  
Insight Into

In this paper the relationship between dependency theory and first-order logic is explored in order to show how relational chase procedures (i.e., algorithms to decide inference problems for dependencies) can be interpreted as clever implementations of well known refutation procedures of first-order logic with resolution and paramodulation. On the one hand this alternative interpretation provides a deeper insight into the theoretical foundations of chase procedures, whereas on the other hand it makes available an already well established theory with a great amount of known results and techniques to be used for further investigations of the inference problem for dependencies. Our presentation is a detailed and careful elaboration of an idea formerly outlined by Grant and Jacobs which up to now seems to be disregarded by the database community although it definitely deserves more attention.

Recent progress in the freeze-etching technique

1971 ◽  
Vol 261 (837) ◽  
pp. 121-131 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
High Vacuum ◽  
Molecular Size ◽  
Etching Technique ◽  
Structural Distortions ◽  
Shadow Casting ◽  
Structural Details ◽  
Freeze Etching ◽  
The One ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Made In

The freeze-etching technique must be improved if structures at the molecular size level are to be seen. The limitations of the technique are discussed here together with the progress made in alleviating them. The vitrification of living specimens is limited by the fact that very high freezing rates are needed. The critical freezing rate can be lowered on the one hand by the introduction of antifreeze agents, on the other hand by the application of high hydrostatic pressure. The fracture process may cause structural distortions in the fracture face of the frozen specimen. The ‘double-replica’ method allows one to evaluate such artefacts and provides an insight into the way that membranes split. During etching there exists the danger of contaminating the fracture faces with condensable gases. Because of specimen temperatures below —110 °C, special care has to be taken in eliminating water vapour from the high vacuum. An improvement in coating freeze-etched specimens has resulted from the application of electron guns for evaporation of the highest melting-point metals. If heat transfer from gun to specimen is reduced to a minimum, Pt, Ir, Ta, W and C can be used for shadow casting. Best results are obtained with Pt-C and Ta-W . With the help of decoration effects Pt-C shadow castings give the most information about the fine structural details of the specimen.

scholarly journals Teaching the Romanian neighbors Hungarian: language ideologies and the Debrecen Summer School

Multilingua ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Attila Gyula Kiss
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Summer School ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Language Ideologies ◽  
Language Education ◽  
Minority Language ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
The One ◽  
Hungarian Language ◽  
Historical Discourses

AbstractThis article is a contribution to the hitherto scant literature on learning a historical minority language and on language ideologies in the context of a study abroad program in Hungary, Debrecen. I analyse the language ideologies of the decision makers in Hungary and in the Debrecen Summer School in relation to the teaching of Hungarian to the neighboring peoples. Drawing on interactional data of participants from Romania, the perspective of learning Hungarian as a historical minority language is examined. The present article combines a historical approach with language ideologies by focusing on an institution offering language education. Language ideologies are presented as they appear in the larger historical discourses, contemporary documents, and media interviews. I briefly outline the major turning points in the history of the institution which also reflects the changing language ideologies and cultural politics of Hungary. The qualitative discourse analysis of interviews and the conclusion of this ethnographic study demonstrate that language ideological positions in relation to the teaching and learning of Hungarian have been firmly located in historical and cultural contexts. Discourse analysis of various data demonstrates that, on the one hand, the course providers have espoused competing ideologies of who the learners should be as well as how to present the country and the culture, while, on the other hand, showing that the learners have had to negotiate prejudice and stereotype rooted in discourses about the often burdened history.

Evaluation of changes in mechanical properties of O-ring in one-piece and two-piece ball retained implant-supported overdentures: A three-year retrospective study.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fathima Banu Raza ◽  
Anand Kumar
Keyword(s):  
Mechanical Properties ◽  
Wear Resistance ◽  
Retrospective Study ◽  
Statistical Analysis ◽  
Wear Rate ◽  
Digital Camera ◽  
Maximum Displacement ◽  
Pin On Disc ◽  
The One ◽  
Insight Into

The o-rings in ball retained overdentures deteriorate with time and need replacement to restore the retentive quality. We evaluated retrospectively the mechanical properties of o-rings after 3 years in function in one and two-piece implant-supported overdentures. The o-rings were retrieved from one-piece (Myriad snap, Equinox-Straumann, 3.3 x 13mm) and two-piece (Neo Biotech, 3.3 x 13mm) implant-supported overdenture patients. A total of 16 pairs of matrices were tested for wear, type of damage and elasticity using Pin on Disc method, USB Digital Camera in 30x zoom and Universal Tensile Machine respectively. The statistical analysis for independent groups were done with the Mann-Whitney U test. Assessment of used O-rings showed 84% more wear in the two-piece system with an abrasive type of damage while 46% wear in the one-piece system with a compressive type of damage. The o-rings in one-piece system showed increase in elongation and maximum displacement to 2% and 7% respectively, while two-piece system showed decrease in elongation and maximum displacement by 13% and 6% respectively. In one-piece system, the loss of retention was more with slow wear rate and in two-piece system, the wear resistance of O-rings decreased due to increased stiffness. Further studies to evaluate the changes in O-ring with increased sample size and at interval 1 year will pave way for insight into the progressive changes in the mechanical properties of an O-ring.

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