The evolution of collaborative networks: A social network analysis of Chinese environmental protection policy

2021 ◽  
pp. 095207672110346
Author(s):  
Yanwei Li ◽  
Jing Huang

Interagency collaboration helps governments to better resolve various complex societal problems. This contribution examines the mechanisms underlying the collaboration of disparate national government agencies engaged in Chinese environmental protection. We test three dominant mechanisms, namely, the institutionalization of collaborative networks, resource interdependence and exchange, and preferential attachment. It is concluded that a collaborative network over time becomes cohesive, that national government agencies prefer to collaborate with popular agencies and tend to collaborate with those whose resources are different from their own, and that popular agencies tend to maintain their core positions over time. Our study enriches the current governance and policy literature through adding building blocks for the evolution of collaborative network and network partner selection.

2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 181-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aire Mill ◽  
Anu Realo ◽  
Jüri Allik

Abstract. Intraindividual variability, along with the more frequently studied between-person variability, has been argued to be one of the basic building blocks of emotional experience. The aim of the current study is to examine whether intraindividual variability in affect predicts tiredness in daily life. Intraindividual variability in affect was studied with the experience sampling method in a group of 110 participants (aged between 19 and 84 years) during 14 consecutive days on seven randomly determined occasions per day. The results suggest that affect variability is a stable construct over time and situations. Our findings also demonstrate that intraindividual variability in affect has a unique role in predicting increased levels of tiredness at the momentary level as well at the level of individuals.


10.28945/2120 ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 001-019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danny Wee Hock Quik ◽  
Nevan Wright ◽  
Ammar Rashid ◽  
Sivadass Thiruchelvam

The purpose of the study is to identify influential factors in the use of collaborative networks within the context of manufacturing. The study aims to investigate factors that influence employees’ learning, and to bridge the gap between theory and praxis in collaborative networks in manufacturing. The study further extends the boundary of a collaborative network beyond enterprises to include suppliers, customers, and external stakeholders. It provides a holistic perspective of collaborative networks within the complexity of the manufacturing environment, based on empirical evidence from a questionnaire survey of 246 respondents from diverse manufacturing industries. Drawing upon the socio-technical systems (STS) theory, the study presents the theoretical context and interpretations through the lens of manufacturing. The results show significant influences of organizational support, promotive interactions, positive interdependence, internal-external learning, perceived effectiveness, and perceived usefulness on the use of collaborative networks among manufacturing employees. The study offers a basis of empirical validity for measuring collaborative networks in organizational learning and knowledge/information sharing in manufacturing.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Naomi A. Arnold ◽  
Raul J. Mondragón ◽  
Richard G. Clegg

AbstractDiscriminating between competing explanatory models as to which is more likely responsible for the growth of a network is a problem of fundamental importance for network science. The rules governing this growth are attributed to mechanisms such as preferential attachment and triangle closure, with a wealth of explanatory models based on these. These models are deliberately simple, commonly with the network growing according to a constant mechanism for its lifetime, to allow for analytical results. We use a likelihood-based framework on artificial data where the network model changes at a known point in time and demonstrate that we can recover the change point from analysis of the network. We then use real datasets and demonstrate how our framework can show the changing importance of network growth mechanisms over time.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergei P. Sidorov ◽  
Sergei V. Mironov ◽  
Alexey A. Grigoriev

AbstractMany empirical studies have shown that in social, citation, collaboration, and other types of networks in real world, the degree of almost every node is less than the average degree of its neighbors. This imbalance is well known in sociology as the friendship paradox and states that your friends are more popular than you on average. If we introduce a value equal to the ratio of the average degree of the neighbors for a certain node to the degree of this node (which is called the ‘friendship index’, FI), then the FI value of more than 1 for most nodes indicates the presence of the friendship paradox in the network. In this paper, we study the behavior of the FI over time for networks generated by growth network models. We will focus our analysis on two models based on the use of the preferential attachment mechanism: the Barabási–Albert model and the triadic closure model. Using the mean-field approach, we obtain differential equations describing the dynamics of changes in the FI over time, and accordingly, after obtaining their solutions, we find the expected values of this index over iterations. The results show that the values of FI are decreasing over time for all nodes in both models. However, for networks constructed in accordance with the triadic closure model, this decrease occurs at a much slower rate than for the Barabási–Albert graphs. In addition, we analyze several real-world networks and show that their FI distributions follow a power law. We show that both the Barabási–Albert and the triadic closure networks exhibit the same behavior. However, for networks based on the triadic closure model, the distributions of FI are more heavy-tailed and, in this sense, are closer to the distributions for real networks.


2013 ◽  
Vol 44 (7) ◽  
pp. 1349-1360 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Wichers

The examination of moment-to-moment, ‘micro-level’ patterns of experience and behaviour using experience sampling methodology has contributed to our understanding of the ‘macro-level’ development of full-blown symptoms and disorders. This paper argues that the micro-level perspective can be used to identify the smallest building blocks underlying the onset and course of mental ill-health. Psychopathology may be the result of the continuous dynamic interplay between micro-level moment-to-moment experiences and behavioural patterns over time. Reinforcing loops between momentary states may alter the course of mental health towards either a more or less healthy state. An example with observed data, from a population of individuals with depressive symptoms, supports the validity of a dynamic network model of psychopathology and shows that together and over time, this continuous interplay between momentary states may result in the cluster of symptoms we call major depressive disorder. This approach may help conceptualize the nature of mental disorders, and generate individualized insights useful for diagnosis and treatment in psychiatry.


Author(s):  
Jeannette K. Nixon ◽  
Karen L. Etherington

Currently, under Alberta’s Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act and regulations, all pipelines transporting natural gas with an index of 2690 or greater require an approval (Conservation and Reclamation Approval) for the conservation and reclamation activities associated with construction and reclamation of a pipeline. Administratively, Alberta Environmental Protection considers a pipeline requiring an Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act approval as a “Class 1” pipeline. The index is a calculation of length of pipe (in kilometers) multiplied by the outside pipe diameter (in millimeters). NOVA Gas Transmission Ltd. (NGTL) has developed and implemented a Conservation & Reclamation (C&R) Standard to streamline the provincial C&R Application process. By re-formatting the currently accepted C&R Application into a Standard document, textual information submitted for an individual project has been reduced, without affecting the quality of environmental planning. The Standard document compiles NGTL’s environmental standard practices and mitigative measures undertaken for all pipelines. It also explains NGTL’s decision-making processes during the design phase of a project. The project-specific document presents issue focused site-specific environmental details in a simplified format The C&R Standard in combination with the project-specific submission form the NGTL C&R Application. NGTL’s C&R Standard was developed within a concept which uses key building blocks to achieve industry accountability. This concept requires an organization to have performance measurement tools in place, and to demonstrate commitment to that performance in order to earn public confidence. Once this confidence is established and maintained, an organization can realize industry accountability. Considering this concept, NGTL leveraged past performance and experience by documenting our consistent approach to pipeline design, and our performance measurement criteria into the C&R Standard. Fundamental to the development of the Standard was NGTL’s Platform Design Concept. Initially this design concept was adopted as an integral component of NGTL’s business need to reduce and streamline internal processes. This concept was then applied to external processes in an effort to meet business needs. The Standard includes two primary components, Guiding Principles and Platforms. By combining NGTL Guiding Principles (‘What’ and ‘Why’) and NGTL Platforms (‘How’), the Concept provides a systematic design guide for all projects that allows NGTL to make the right decisions based on the right design criteria. NGTL submitted the C&R Standard document to Alberta Environmental Protection for review in July 1997 and is currently implementing the Standard for all C&R Applications. This paper describes the development of the document as well as the implementation process and experience of the Standard.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Max Boholm

Abstract This paper explores how cyber threats are represented in Swedish newspapers. The sample comprises 1269 articles from three newspapers (Aftonbladet, Göteborgs-Posten, and Svenska Dagbladet) covering 25 years (1995–2019). The study provides a text-near and detailed analysis of the threats covered. The study analyzes these threats along several dimensions: their modality (e.g. unauthorized access or manipulation); to what extent ambiguous themes (e.g. attack, crime, and warfare) are specified in context; how cyber-threat coverage has changed over time; and the event orientation of the coverage, i.e. whether articles address topical events and, if so, which ones. There are five main findings. First, the Swedish newspaper cybersecurity discourse covers multiple threats; in total, 34 themes (present in at least 4% of articles) have been identified. Second, the representation of cyber threats varies in specificity. While generic themes such as attack and warfare are mostly specified in terms of their modality, they sometimes are not, leaving the representation vague. Third, this study, given its general approach, provides insights into media representations of particular cyber threats. For example, this study finds the meaning of “hacking” in the media to be more diversified and nuanced than previously assumed (e.g. as simply meaning “computer break-in”). Fourth, newspaper coverage of cyber threats has changed over time, in both quantity (i.e. the amount of coverage has increased) and quality, as three general trends have been observed: the state-ification and militarization of threats (i.e. increased attention to, e.g. nations and warfare as threats), the organization-ification of threats (i.e. increased attention to, e.g. government agencies and companies as threats), and the diversification and hyping of threats (i.e. cumulatively more threats are added to the cybersecurity discourse, although attention to particular threats is sometimes restricted in time). Finally, parallel to coverage of particular topical events (e.g. the “I love you” virus), newspaper representations of cyber threats largely exemplify “amplification without the event,” i.e. threats are covered without linking them to topical events, as is otherwise typical of news reports. The findings in relation to previous studies of cybersecurity discourse and the implications for informal learning and threat perception are discussed.


Author(s):  
John S. Huntington

Willis E. Stone watched aghast as mid-century liberals expanded the size and power of the federal government. Stone, a former industrial engineer and unbending anti-statist, believed this liberal surge obfuscated and abetted an imminent red tide of communism. He founded the American Progress Foundation and its flagship periodical, American Progress , to spread a hardline libertarian message, hoping to spark conservative resistance against federal power. In the pages of American Progress , Stone and a coterie of other right-wingers published conspiratorial, anti-statist diatribes and promoted Stone’s proposal, the Liberty Amendment, to repeal the Sixteenth Amendment. Right-wing business owners joined the fray, sponsoring American Progress through advertisements, and over time Stone’s movement expanded to form a collaborative network with other far-right groups. This article illustrates how American Progress served as an activist and ideological nexus for the broader ultraconservative movement, which helped establish a hardline brand of libertarianism that reverberated throughout the modern American Right. Furthermore, by analysing the scope and influence of radical right-wing publications, this article provides a critical counterweight to the traditional left-wing focus of periodical studies.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 73-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Cochrane ◽  
Vickel Narayan

In this article, we present the development of a framework for supporting and facilitating collaborative networks of reflective practice using mobile social media. Developed throughout a two-year collaborative mobile learning project #NPF14LMD, the framework has subsequently been used to support two wider international networks of mobile learning researchers and practitioners. The #NPF14LMD project was a national project comprised of three universities and three polytechnics across New Zealand. One of the goals of the #NPF14LMD project was to create a collaborative network of practice across the six institutions participating in the project. The network provided a support and communication structure linking the six institutional communities of practice, enabling sharing of their experiences and a sense of belonging to a wider national and international community. This article outlines the use of mobile social media to facilitate the #NPF14LMD network, and the subsequent application of this framework to support two international networks.


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