scholarly journals The Purpose and Types of Organizational Gossip

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Boróka Tímea Pápay

Gossip, one of the core human activities, enforces cooperation, and influences reputation. It is safe to assume that it is a more complex phenomenon than just having a cooperation-building function. Gossip can be linked to a wide variety of mechanisms that are relevant in small groups such as workplaces. The social structure behind gossip is a complex one where individual motivations; relationships between the sender, the receiver, and the target of the gossip; and organizational norms and contexts also play a role in its formation. The current dissertation conducts a thorough, mixed-method analysis of gossip on multiple analytical levels using novel, unique data sources. The questions of the analysis were the following: What are the motivations of the sender for gossiping? Is there a personal or financially driven envy as an explanation for negative gossip? Is perceived fairness and cooperation influencing gossip dynamics within an organization? Does gossip only circulate between the sender and receiver when they have a trusting relationship? What set of relationships between the sender, receiver, and target facilitate the sharing of gossip? How do these different sets of relationships lead to different social functions of gossip? How do gossip texts look structurally? How are the gossip triad members represented in a gossip speech, and what does that tell us about the gossip's intended purpose? What are the organizational determinants of gossip? How does perceived fairness and cohesiveness contribute to gossip in an organization? In the dissertation, we relied on two main datasets. The primary one was an online survey conducted with employees from multiple organizations, from 9 workgroups operating in different sectors, recording employee opinions and networks. Our second dataset was a unique, spontaneous speech corpus based on about 550 hours of audio recordings captured during a Hungarian entertainment program, transcribed, annotated, and validated by manual transcribers. The analysis uses quantitative methods such as descriptive statistics, probability theory; classification methods such as decision trees, hierarchical clustering; part-of-speech (POS) tagging; and social network analysis methods such as Exponential Random Graph Model or Triadic Relation Models. We also used qualitative methods as semi-structured interviews and gossip speech interpretation.

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristiana Sessa ◽  
Caecilia Schmid ◽  
Angela Tolotti ◽  
Annette Magnin ◽  
David Haerry ◽  
...  

Background: The European Patients' Academy on Therapeutic Innovation Switzerland (EUPATI CH) was established as an association in 2016 with the mission to improve patient empowerment in Switzerland, raise public awareness of EUPATI's education material, and foster multi-stakeholder partnerships in order to promote public involvement in all aspects of medicines research and development (R&D). In order to achieve its goal of improving patient involvement (PI) in all processes of medicines R&D in Switzerland and to obtain guidance and recommendations for future activities, EUPATI CH initiated a multi-stakeholder survey on PI experiences, hurdles, and best practices. The survey enabled EUPATI CH to obtain and analyze the views of various stakeholders and shape its workplan.Methods: Data collection occurred between January and July 2019 using a survey and semi-structured interviews with individual stakeholders from different groups. The online survey responses were analyzed using quantitative methods and the interviews were analyzed using qualitative methods.Results: The online survey was completed by 55 respondents (10%), and the semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 stakeholders. Respondents to the online survey were patient representatives (45%), researchers from academia (25%), individuals from the pharmaceutical industry (9%), healthcare professionals (23%), and representatives from government agencies (6%). Some respondents were also members of EUPATI CH. Thirty-eight percent of respondents consider PI in Switzerland to be limited or absent. They identified the main barriers to PI as, first and foremost, a lack of funds and human resources (65%), followed by a lack of information and a lack of education on how to become a patient advocate (21%), a lack of collaboration with other stakeholders (16%), and a lack of adequate resources. Respondents' expectations of EUPATI CH's role in supporting PI were to provide education for active PI and improve networking and collaboration among stakeholders.Conclusions: EUPATI CH's multi-stakeholder research identified some of the difficulties in promoting PI in medicines R&D in Switzerland, in particular the complex collaboration among stakeholders and a lack of funds, human resources, and knowledge. To respond to these difficulties, EUPATI CH has begun preparing a basic training course for patients that is adapted to Switzerland.


Author(s):  
Nindian Puspa Dewi ◽  
Ubaidi Ubaidi

POS Tagging adalah dasar untuk pengembangan Text Processing suatu bahasa. Dalam penelitian ini kita meneliti pengaruh penggunaan lexicon dan perubahan morfologi kata dalam penentuan tagset yang tepat untuk suatu kata. Aturan dengan pendekatan morfologi kata seperti awalan, akhiran, dan sisipan biasa disebut sebagai lexical rule. Penelitian ini menerapkan lexical rule hasil learner dengan menggunakan algoritma Brill Tagger. Bahasa Madura adalah bahasa daerah yang digunakan di Pulau Madura dan beberapa pulau lainnya di Jawa Timur. Objek penelitian ini menggunakan Bahasa Madura yang memiliki banyak sekali variasi afiksasi dibandingkan dengan Bahasa Indonesia. Pada penelitian ini, lexicon selain digunakan untuk pencarian kata dasar Bahasa Madura juga digunakan sebagai salah satu tahap pemberian POS Tagging. Hasil ujicoba dengan menggunakan lexicon mencapai akurasi yaitu 86.61% sedangkan jika tidak menggunakan lexicon hanya mencapai akurasi 28.95 %. Dari sini dapat disimpulkan bahwa ternyata lexicon sangat berpengaruh terhadap POS Tagging.


Author(s):  
Mark Newman

A discussion of the most fundamental of network models, the configuration model, which is a random graph model of a network with a specified degree sequence. Following a definition of the model a number of basic properties are derived, including the probability of an edge, the expected number of multiedges, the excess degree distribution, the friendship paradox, and the clustering coefficient. This is followed by derivations of some more advanced properties including the condition for the existence of a giant component, the size of the giant component, the average size of a small component, and the expected diameter. Generating function methods for network models are also introduced and used to perform some more advanced calculations, such as the calculation of the distribution of the number of second neighbors of a node and the complete distribution of sizes of small components. The chapter ends with a brief discussion of extensions of the configuration model to directed networks, bipartite networks, networks with degree correlations, networks with high clustering, and networks with community structure, among other possibilities.


Author(s):  
Mark Newman

An introduction to the mathematics of the Poisson random graph, the simplest model of a random network. The chapter starts with a definition of the model, followed by derivations of basic properties like the mean degree, degree distribution, and clustering coefficient. This is followed with a detailed derivation of the large-scale structural properties of random graphs, including the position of the phase transition at which a giant component appears, the size of the giant component, the average size of the small components, and the expected diameter of the network. The chapter ends with a discussion of some of the shortcomings of the random graph model.


2021 ◽  
pp. 030802262098847
Author(s):  
Tawanda Machingura ◽  
Chris Lloyd ◽  
Karen Murphy ◽  
Sarah Goulder ◽  
David Shum ◽  
...  

Introduction Current non-pharmacological treatment options for people with schizophrenia are limited. There is, however, emerging evidence that sensory modulation can be beneficial for this population. This study aimed to gain insight into sensory modulation from the user’s and the treating staff’s perspectives. Method A qualitative content analysis design was used. Transcripts from occupational therapists ( n=11) and patients with schizophrenia ( n=13) derived from in-depth semi-structured interviews were analysed for themes using content analysis. Results Five themes emerged from this study: Service user education on the sensory approach is the key; A variety of tools should be tried; Sensory modulation provides a valued treatment option; There are challenges of managing perceived risk at an organisational level; and There is a shortage of accessible and effective training. Conclusion People with schizophrenia and treating staff had congruent perceptions regarding the use of sensory modulation as a treatment option. The findings suggest that sensory modulation can be a valued addition to treatment options for people with schizophrenia. We suggest further research on sensory modulation intervention effectiveness using quantitative methods so these results can be further explored.


Biology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 499
Author(s):  
Ali Andalibi ◽  
Naoru Koizumi ◽  
Meng-Hao Li ◽  
Abu Bakkar Siddique

Kanagawa and Hokkaido were affected by COVID-19 in the early stage of the pandemic. Japan’s initial response included contact tracing and PCR analysis on anyone who was suspected of having been exposed to SARS-CoV-2. In this retrospective study, we analyzed publicly available COVID-19 registry data from Kanagawa and Hokkaido (n = 4392). Exponential random graph model (ERGM) network analysis was performed to examine demographic and symptomological homophilies. Age, symptomatic, and asymptomatic status homophilies were seen in both prefectures. Symptom homophilies suggest that nuanced genetic differences in the virus may affect its epithelial cell type range and can result in the diversity of symptoms seen in individuals infected by SARS-CoV-2. Environmental variables such as temperature and humidity may also play a role in the overall pathogenesis of the virus. A higher level of asymptomatic transmission was observed in Kanagawa. Moreover, patients who contracted the virus through secondary or tertiary contacts were shown to be asymptomatic more frequently than those who contracted it from primary cases. Additionally, most of the transmissions stopped at the primary and secondary levels. As expected, significant viral transmission was seen in healthcare settings.


Electronics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 1372
Author(s):  
Sanjanasri JP ◽  
Vijay Krishna Menon ◽  
Soman KP ◽  
Rajendran S ◽  
Agnieszka Wolk

Linguists have been focused on a qualitative comparison of the semantics from different languages. Evaluation of the semantic interpretation among disparate language pairs like English and Tamil is an even more formidable task than for Slavic languages. The concept of word embedding in Natural Language Processing (NLP) has enabled a felicitous opportunity to quantify linguistic semantics. Multi-lingual tasks can be performed by projecting the word embeddings of one language onto the semantic space of the other. This research presents a suite of data-efficient deep learning approaches to deduce the transfer function from the embedding space of English to that of Tamil, deploying three popular embedding algorithms: Word2Vec, GloVe and FastText. A novel evaluation paradigm was devised for the generation of embeddings to assess their effectiveness, using the original embeddings as ground truths. Transferability across other target languages of the proposed model was assessed via pre-trained Word2Vec embeddings from Hindi and Chinese languages. We empirically prove that with a bilingual dictionary of a thousand words and a corresponding small monolingual target (Tamil) corpus, useful embeddings can be generated by transfer learning from a well-trained source (English) embedding. Furthermore, we demonstrate the usability of generated target embeddings in a few NLP use-case tasks, such as text summarization, part-of-speech (POS) tagging, and bilingual dictionary induction (BDI), bearing in mind that those are not the only possible applications.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 204512532198913
Author(s):  
Miriam Larsen-Barr ◽  
Fred Seymour

Background: It is well-known that attempting antipsychotic withdrawal can be a fraught process, with a high risk of relapse that often leads people to resume the medication. Nonetheless, there is a group of people who appear to be able to discontinue successfully. Relatively little is known about how people do this. Methods: A convenience sample of adults who had stopped taking antipsychotic medication for more than a year were recruited to participate in semi-structured interviews through an anonymous online survey that investigated antipsychotic medication experiences in New Zealand. Thematic analysis explored participant descriptions of their efforts to maintain their wellbeing during and after the withdrawal process. Results: Of the seven women who volunteered to participate, six reported bipolar disorder diagnoses and one reported diagnoses of obsessive compulsive disorder and depression. The women reported successfully discontinuing antipsychotics for 1.25–25 years; six followed a gradual withdrawal method and had support to prepare for and manage this. Participants defined wellbeing in terms of their ability to manage the impact of any difficulties faced rather than their ability to prevent them entirely, and saw this as something that evolved over time. They described managing the process and maintaining their wellbeing afterwards by ‘understanding myself and my needs’, ‘finding what works for me’ and ‘connecting with support’. Sub-themes expand on the way in which they did this. For example, ‘finding what works for me’ included using a tool-box of strategies to flexibly meet their needs, practicing acceptance, drawing on persistence and curiosity and creating positive life experiences. Conclusion: This is a small, qualitative study and results should be interpreted with caution. This sample shows it is possible for people who experience mania and psychosis to successfully discontinue antipsychotics and safely manage the impact of any symptoms that emerge as a result of the withdrawal process or other life stressors that arise afterwards. Findings suggest internal resources and systemic factors play a role in the outcomes observed among people who attempt to stop taking antipsychotics and a preoccupation with avoiding relapse may be counterproductive to these efforts. Professionals can play a valuable role in facilitating change.


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