Making sense of continuous development of digital infrastructures

2021 ◽  
pp. 026839622110466
Author(s):  
Karen Osmundsen ◽  
Bendik Bygstad

Continuous development extends the agile approach and focuses on bringing valuable services to users with the aim of achieving a continuous flow of learning and development in short cycles. The objective of this work is to theorize the idea of continuous development in the context of digital infrastructure evolution and explore the organizational interactions underlying continuous development. By drawing on literature on digital infrastructure theory and continuous development as it has emerged as an idea from the DevOps thinking expanded from agile, we outline main characteristics of continuous development and propose a theoretical definition of continuous development in organizational contexts. Then, in answering our research question “which patterns of interactions can be identified in the continuous development of digital infrastructures?”, we conducted a longitudinal case study at a Norwegian grid company and explored how a specific digital infrastructure evolved through continuous development. We identified generic interaction patterns with two cycles of sense-giving and sense-making between organizational actors, enabling the continuous development of the digital infrastructure. Our findings and model of interaction patterns offer a nuanced perspective on both digital infrastructure evolution and established views of sense-making and sense-giving mechanisms, as well as new ways to think about digitalization in incumbent firms.

2015 ◽  
Vol 29 (6) ◽  
pp. 445-457 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Blackwood ◽  
Anna Round ◽  
Lee Pugalis ◽  
Lucy Hatt

Entrepreneurial learning is complex, reflecting the distinctive dispositions of entrepreneurs (including nascent entrepreneurs at an early stage in their entrepreneurial life course). The surge in entrepreneurship education programmes over recent decades and the attendant increase in scholarship have often contributed to this convoluted field. Consequently, universally applicable articulations of entrepreneurship education can be problematic, especially demarcating between more formal and less formal learning experiences that are not necessarily confined to traditional educational institutions. The authors explore the ways in which nascent entrepreneurs experience and articulate their own ‘learning’ and development during the first year of a specific three-year experientially-based programme. Drawing attention to their deployment of sense-making narratives, the paper presents key findings that have implications for theory and practice.


2014 ◽  
Vol 116 (7) ◽  
pp. 1-42
Author(s):  
James P. Spillane ◽  
Lauren Anderson

Background While teaching and school-level administrative work remain stepping stones in most pathways to the principal's office, these formal experiences—alongside informal or formal apprenticeships—do not immunize newcomers to the struggles of occupational socialization. To the contrary, crossing over to the principal's office represents a sizable shift as newcomers assume a multifaceted job that spans instructional, managerial, and political realms. Purpose This manuscript explores novice school principals’ efforts to make sense of their new occupation immediately following their boundary passage into the principalship. To frame this work, we draw from the literature on occupational and organizational socialization and newcomer sense making. Sense making—with its emphasis on how meanings materialize in situ, thus informing and constraining identity and action—offers a utile lens given the particular challenges that new principals face as they navigate today's pluralistic institutional environment. Design/Data Data are drawn from a multiple-methods study of newly hired first-time principals in one large urban school district. Specifically, our analysis focuses on interview data collected from a sample of 18 purposefully selected new principals just after they were hired and just prior to the start of their first year on the job. Findings We find that, contending with a plurality, diversity, and simultaneity of stakeholder expectations, novices’ sense making centered on challenges related to organizational legitimacy and organizational integrity; however, the relative prominence of these dual imperatives differed based on the position of principals’ schools in the broader institutional field. Depending upon how imperatives interacted in local organizational contexts, novices faced puzzles of different kind and character. For some, localized puzzles called for a kind of institutional work that we term repairing; for others, puzzles called more for (re-)presenting, refining, and/or maintaining. In crafting courses of action, novices drew on institutional logics and metaphors from personal experience, which they used as resources in their efforts to resist exploding out organizationally and personally in response to multiple stakeholders’ diverse demands. Doing so, novices constructed occupational selves that were not unitary and that encompassed inconsistencies and contradictions. Conclusions Our analysis suggests the need to consider principals’ socialization as it unfolds in schools as they are situated within the broader institutional landscape. In addition, whereas much of the sense making literature focuses on microprocesses, our analysis attends to how the institutional environment enters sense making. In doing so, it adds to the knowledge base concerning the microfoundations of institutional theory as it plays out in the education field, and it enriches the empirical research base concerning new principals’ expectations and experiences in contemporary public schools.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 237802312110244
Author(s):  
Katrin Auspurg ◽  
Josef Brüderl

In 2018, Silberzahn, Uhlmann, Nosek, and colleagues published an article in which 29 teams analyzed the same research question with the same data: Are soccer referees more likely to give red cards to players with dark skin tone than light skin tone? The results obtained by the teams differed extensively. Many concluded from this widely noted exercise that the social sciences are not rigorous enough to provide definitive answers. In this article, we investigate why results diverged so much. We argue that the main reason was an unclear research question: Teams differed in their interpretation of the research question and therefore used diverse research designs and model specifications. We show by reanalyzing the data that with a clear research question, a precise definition of the parameter of interest, and theory-guided causal reasoning, results vary only within a narrow range. The broad conclusion of our reanalysis is that social science research needs to be more precise in its “estimands” to become credible.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 2571-2580
Author(s):  
Filip Valjak ◽  
Angelica Lindwall

AbstractThe advent of additive manufacturing (AM) in recent years have had a significant impact on the design process. Because of new manufacturing technology, a new area of research emerged – Design for Additive Manufacturing (DfAM) with newly developed design support methods and tools. This paper looks into the current status of the field regarding the conceptual design of AM products, with the focus on how literature sources treat design heuristics and design principles in the context of DfAM. To answer the research question, a systematic literature review was conducted. The results are analysed, compared and discussed on three main points: the definition of the design heuristics and the design principles, level of support they provide, as well as where and how they are used inside the design process. The paper highlights the similarities and differences between design heuristics and design principles in the context of DfAM.


Children ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (6) ◽  
pp. 525
Author(s):  
Emily von Scheven ◽  
Bhupinder K. Nahal ◽  
Rosa Kelekian ◽  
Christina Frenzel ◽  
Victoria Vanderpoel ◽  
...  

Promoting hope was identified in our prior work as the top priority research question among patients and caregivers with diverse childhood-onset chronic conditions. Here, we aimed to construct a conceptual model to guide future research studies of interventions to improve hope. We conducted eight monthly virtual focus groups and one virtual workshop with patients, caregivers, and researchers to explore key constructs to inform the model. Discussions were facilitated by Patient Co-Investigators. Participants developed a definition of hope and identified promotors and inhibitors that influence the experience of hope. We utilized qualitative methods to analyze findings and organize the promotors and inhibitors of hope within three strata of the socio-ecologic framework: structural, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. Participants identified three types of interventions to promote hope: resources, navigation, and activities to promote social connection. The hope conceptual model can be used to inform the selection of interventions to assess in future research studies aimed at improving hope and the specification of outcome measures to include in hope research studies. Inclusion of the health care system in the model provides direction for identifying strategies for improving the system and places responsibility on the system to do better to promote hope among young patients with chronic illness and their caregivers.


PEDIATRICS ◽  
1990 ◽  
Vol 86 (5) ◽  
pp. 806-807
Author(s):  
CHRIS MULFORD

To the Editor.— I read with interest the article "Relationship Between Infant Feeding and Infectious Illness: A Prospective Study of Infants During the First Year of Life" by Rubin et al in the April issue.1 Two things puzzle me. The first is that, despite the authors' stated goal of paying close attention to methodology, their definition of breast-feeding fails to meet the standards set forth by most experts on lactation. The second is that, given their substantial investment of time and money in obtaining detailed data on 500 babies for a full year, the authors chose to ask their particular research question.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 33-46
Author(s):  
Antonio C. Cuyler

This article represents a snapshot and analysis of U. S. service arts organizations’ DEI statements and activities in 2018. At that time, many primarily White-serving U. S. cultural organizations responded defensively to accusations of elitism and a harmful rigged funding system that maintained the status quo by awarding most cultural funding to these organizations while undermining the health and vitality of cultural organizations by and for historically oppressed communities (Sidford, 2011). Furthermore, Helicon Collaborative (2017) found that even with a host of cultural equity, “diversity” projects (Tseng 2016), and public-facing DEI statements, little had changed within six years. Therefore, this study uses directed and summative content analysis to investigate the research question “what do cultural equity and diversity statements communicate about cultural organizations’ positions on DEI?” This study also uses Frankfurt’s (2005) essay On Bullshit and Laing’s (2016) two-prong definition of accountability as a theoretical framework to examine if and how cultural organizations hold themselves accountable for achieving DEI in the creative sector. Lastly, readers should keep in mind that the public murder of Geor-ge Floyd in 2020 has hastened all of the service arts organizations’ access, diversity, equity, and inclusion (ADEI) work examined in this study.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 201-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brahm Norwich

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine variations within lesson study (LS) practices and their connections with related traditions: teacher research/enquiry approaches, professional development models, professional learning communities and group problem-solving approaches. Questions are addressed about the relationships between different professional learning approaches in terms of definitions and frameworks. Design/methodology/approach Academic databases and website sources were searched in a purposive way to identify 20 practices associated with these traditions for comparative analysis. Findings A conceptual framework consisting of eight dimensions was constructed to account for the variations within and between these professional learning traditions: for instance, about the settings in which the practices take place, the purposes of the practices and the specific procedures involved. By illustrating how specific practices fitted within this framework it is concluded that the variations within the LS tradition are wide enough to make it difficult to identify a set of necessary and sufficient features of LS to distinguish LS practices from the other non-LS professional learning practices. Reasons are also given for considering whether a polythetic type of definition of professional learning/development practices might be constructed. Research limitations/implications The possibility for a more systematic review of professional learning approaches for the construction of a conceptual framework is discussed. Practical implications Ways in which this kind of conceptualisation can be useful in promoting clarity about professional learning practices and in developing these practices are discussed. Originality/value The originality of this paper lies in the construction of a conceptual framework to analyse similarities and differences within and between various professional learning traditions.


2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tiina Soini ◽  
Janne Pietarinen ◽  
Kirsi Pyhältö

Curriculum reform that has an effect on the everyday practices in schools always entails translation of new ideas into new educational practices. This takes place primarily through shared sense making. However, our understanding of the different ways in which shared sense making is carried out is still scarce. In Finland, the district level plays an important intermediary role in orchestrating curriculum development work at the municipalities and in translating and mediating reform into school-level development work. The study explores different shared sense-making strategies employed by 12 district-level curriculum reform steering groups around Finland, including participants from 54 municipalities. Three hands-on strategies of shared sense making including comparison, standardisation and transformation were identified. The results indicated that different hands-on strategies have different functions in the process of making sense of the reform objectives. To a certain extent, the strategies can be viewed as hierarchical. Overall, results suggest that district-level actors aim to foster shared sense making; however, a more intentional use of strategies is needed.


2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 138-146
Author(s):  
Svitlana MALONOHA

The importance of digital infrastructure for the transformation of emergency medical services as one of the priority areas of public policy and public authorities are considered. Some approaches to the definition of digital infrastructure are studied. This study made it possible to identify the components of the digital infrastructure of emergency medical services and outline its role in the health care ecosystem. The approach to the application of the modular architecture of the digital infrastructure of emergency medical services as a conceptual basis for the integration of information systems of different departments into a single emergency system is considered. Exist two groups of mechanisms that influence the formation of the digital infrastructure of emergency medical services and indicate the causal links that explain how their use can lead to the transformation of emergency medical services. The range of tasks that are solve due to the digital infrastructure aimed at improving the efficiency, accuracy of diagnosis and provision of emergency medical services is outlined. New opportunities are opening up to improve the quality of emergency medical services provision in a human-centered health care system based on a digital infrastructure, the central elements of which are the exchange of information contained in electronic records and patient health cards and mobile digital devices, diagnostics and information transfer. The list of problems on the way of emergency medical services transformation is formulated and some recommendations for their solution are offered, the formulation of which is based on the analysis of existing practices and own long-term experience at the emergency medical services system.


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