scholarly journals THE CRITIQUES TO POSITIVISM DIRECTION OF INQUIRY IN COMPREHENDING THE COMPLEXITY OF GOVERNANCE IN MANAGING CITIES COMPETITIVENESS

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Faizul Abdullah ◽  
Fatimah Yusof
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Learning Organization ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
Urban Sustainability ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Reference Points ◽  
Global Cities ◽  
Local Authorities ◽  
Bureaucratic Efficiency ◽  
Realist Ontology

The complexities in managing cities are real in the ethos of global cities competition and indeed, the governance of urban complexities are further compounded by the discoveries of new tangible and intangible determinants, vehemently contributed by the increased structural changes on a global scale ceased to be the main axes and reference points in societal organization. Whilst deterministic about deploying competitive cities interventions, the initiatives have always exposed local authorities to other related issues in the governance of complexity, which usually infers to their organizing capacity in attaining organizations competitiveness. For most modernists’ scholars, they tend to agreed that learning is associated with efficiency and thus, it exposed organizations to learn new impositions of social artefacts. Exaggerated from realist ontology definitive foundation of structural functionalism, it clearly underlined Weberian positivism bureaucratic efficiency, which echoed local authorities in attaining the balancing act between ‘de jure’ and ‘de facto’ that constitutionally empowered in managing cities in the ethos of globalization. On the contrary, the realism in local authorities suggested otherwise, which perhaps lead to epistemological debates on the governmentality. Apparently, local authorities are facing dramatic challenges not only reframing to achieving global interventions on cities competitiveness and urban sustainability interventions -de jure; but also intensely faced-off with severe ignorance, resentment and dissonance from the entire workforce itself - de facto. As such, it warrants this paper to explore the validity on the dominant used of positivism direction of inquiry among social sciences researchers’ on organizational bureaucratic efficiency, when most positivism line of inquiry researchers suggested that local authorities are learning organization entities, or is it so?

scholarly journals THE CRITIQUES TO POSITIVISM DIRECTION OF INQUIRY IN COMPREHENDING THE COMPLEXITY OF GOVERNANCE IN MANAGING CITIES COMPETITIVENESS

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Faizul Abdullah ◽  
Fatimah Yusof
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Learning Organization ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
Urban Sustainability ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Reference Points ◽  
Global Cities ◽  
Local Authorities ◽  
Bureaucratic Efficiency ◽  
Realist Ontology

The complexities in managing cities are real in the ethos of global cities competition and indeed, the governance of urban complexities are further compounded by the discoveries of new tangible and intangible determinants, vehemently contributed by the increased structural changes on a global scale ceased to be the main axes and reference points in societal organization. Whilst deterministic about deploying competitive cities interventions, the initiatives have always exposed local authorities to other related issues in the governance of complexity, which usually infers to their organizing capacity in attaining organizations competitiveness. For most modernists’ scholars, they tend to agreed that learning is associated with efficiency and thus, it exposed organizations to learn new impositions of social artefacts. Exaggerated from realist ontology definitive foundation of structural functionalism, it clearly underlined Weberian positivism bureaucratic efficiency, which echoed local authorities in attaining the balancing act between ‘de jure’ and ‘de facto’ that constitutionally empowered in managing cities in the ethos of globalization. On the contrary, the realism in local authorities suggested otherwise, which perhaps lead to epistemological debates on the governmentality. Apparently, local authorities are facing dramatic challenges not only reframing to achieving global interventions on cities competitiveness and urban sustainability interventions -de jure; but also intensely faced-off with severe ignorance, resentment and dissonance from the entire workforce itself - de facto. As such, it warrants this paper to explore the validity on the dominant used of positivism direction of inquiry among social sciences researchers’ on organizational bureaucratic efficiency, when most positivism line of inquiry researchers suggested that local authorities are learning organization entities, or is it so?

scholarly journals A Survey of the Environmental Conservation Costs by Local Authorities in Kenya

2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 89-102
Author(s):  
Nicholas Muthuma Mutua ◽  
Samuel Kakui Kilika
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Preliminary Evidence ◽  
Environmental Conservation ◽  
Environmental Costs ◽  
Motivating Factors ◽  
Local Authorities ◽  
Conservation Costs

This study investigates the environmental conservation costs of the local authorities in Kenya by analyzing the data collected from 90 of these local authorities. The population of the study is the 175 local authorities in Kenya. A sample of 90 local authorities has been used. Both statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) version 17 and Excel have been used to determine the level of environmental conservation costs in the studied local authorities. The results indicated that there was a wide use of environmental conservation costs among the local authorities. The study provides preliminary evidence on environmental conservation costs used by local authorities in Kenya. Further research is suggested to explore the possible motivating factors among different local authorities’ degree of application and level of environmental costs in different activities.

scholarly journals The role of the state in creating green economy

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paulina Szyja
Keyword(s):  
Structural Changes ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
The State ◽  
Green Economy ◽  
Economic Downturn ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
Low Carbon Economy ◽  
Is Implementation ◽  
Role Of The State

Since the crisis of the real economy in 2008, an intense discussion about the need for changes in the economy, supported by a number of declarations on the global scale, has been developed. The analysis of the causes and effects of the economic downturn and the challenges of the future have had a huge impact on this state of affairs. As a result, some states have taken action to remedy the situation. Many of them were aimed at structural changes in production, consumption and environmentally friendly investment. At the same time, the concept of "low carbon economy" and "green economy" gained importance. The aim of this paper is to present the role of the state in the economy in terms of creating conditions for a green economy. The thesis of the publication is: implementation of structural changes related with creating a green economy requires involvement of the state.

scholarly journals Investigating uncertainties in global gridded datasets of climate extremes

2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 2171-2199 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. J. H. Dunn ◽  
M. G. Donat ◽  
L. V. Alexander
Keyword(s):  
Land Surface ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
Climate Extremes ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Spatially Correlated ◽  
Related Data ◽  
Methodological Choices ◽  
Surface Time ◽  
Station Density

Abstract. We assess the effects of different methodological choices made during the construction of gridded data sets of climate extremes, focusing primarily on HadEX2. Using global land-surface time series of the indices and their coverage, as well as uncertainty maps, we show that the choices which have the greatest effect are those relating to the station network used or that drastically change the values for individual grid boxes. The latter are most affected by the number of stations required in or around a grid box and the gridding method used. Most parametric changes have a small impact, on global and on grid box scales, whereas structural changes to the methods or input station networks may have large effects. On grid box scales, trends in temperature indices are very robust to most choices, especially in areas which have high station density (e.g. North America, Europe and Asia). The precipitation indices, being less spatially correlated, can be more susceptible to methodological choices, but coherent changes are still clear in regions of high station density. Regional trends from all indices derived from areas with few stations should be treated with care. On a global scale, the linear trends over 1951–2010 from almost all choices fall within the 5–95th percentile range of trends from HadEX2. This demonstrates the robust nature of HadEX2 and related data sets to choices in the creation method.

Is, ought and being careful what you wish for

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 267-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather Whiteside
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Economic Geography ◽  
Critical Realism ◽  
Uneven Development ◽  
Cautionary Tale ◽  
Rigor Mortis ◽  
Geographical Analysis ◽  
Causal Mechanisms ◽  
The Social ◽  
Realist Ontology

This brief commentary on Henry Wai-chung Yeung’s “Rethinking Mechanism and Process in the Geographical Analysis of Uneven Development” makes three points. First, the commentary supports the article’s assertions that ‘analytical rigor’ is compromised when process and mechanism are conflated, that causal mechanisms are under- theorized in much economic geography, and that a latent realist ontology often lurks beneath interpretive and process-based approaches. Second, it explores the inherent hurdles that a revival of critical realism presents for efforts of engaged pluralism given geography’s contending perspectives on ontology and epistemology and multiple social and substantive theories. Third, the commentary concludes with a hopeful yet cautionary tale of what multidisciplinary engagement on causal mechanisms might entail given the ‘rigor mortis’ mainstream orthodoxy elsewhere in the social sciences.

Achieving Health Equity on a Global Scale through a Community-Based, Public Health Framework for Action

2010 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 486-489 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Anderko
Keyword(s):  
Health Equity ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
International Health ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
World Health ◽  
Health Determinants ◽  
Maternal Child Health ◽  
Targeted Interventions ◽  
Target Date ◽  
Health Organization

As a worldwide economic crisis emerged at the end of 2008, international health agencies were quick to highlight its predictable impact on health in the poorest of communities. The World Health Organization (WHO) underscored the need for a multisectoral approach to the crisis, “seeking health gains through demonstrating the importance of health in all policies” and whether current investments in health addressed the broader social determinants of health. However, despite good intentions and decades of discussion addressing the need for transformative changes globally to reduce poverty and improve health equity, little progress has been made.A recent report on progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) indicates that many targeted goals have not been met, with some goals lagging many years behind schedule (“Four years after the target date, gender parity in education has yet to be achieved”). Although progress towards achieving the MDGs has been made for some specific conditions (e.g., malaria), where targeted interventions have had an immediate impact, limited progress is reported in more complex areas such as maternal child health. Such complex health issues require structural changes, strong political will, long-term funding, and consideration of other health determinants, such as education and exposure to environmental hazards.

Co-movements of financial volatilities in a changing environment

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susana Martins
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Fossil Fuels ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Factor Model ◽  
Primary Energy ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
High Carbon ◽  
Volatility Model

<p>Anthropogenic climate change has been attributed mainly to the excessive burning of fossil fuels and the release of carbon compounds. On average, 75% of the primary energy is still being produced by means of fossil fuels. In order to mitigate the global effects of climate change, a transition towards low-carbon economies is thus necessary. However, given current technology, this transition requires investments to shift away from high-carbon assets and so the effectiveness of changes in investment decisions depends highly on the expectations about policy change (e.g. regarding carbon pricing). The systemic implications of disruptive technological progress on the prices of carbon-intensive assets are thus compounded by the geopolitical nature of transition risk. If investors are pricing transition risk, this implies prices of high-carbon assets should all be responsive to climate-related policy news. For modelling the dynamics of volatility co-movements at the global scale, we propose an extension to the global volatility factor model of Engle and Martins (\textit{in preparation}). To allow for richer structures of the global volatility process, including dynamics, structural changes, outliers or time-varying parameters, we adapt the indicator saturation approach introduced by Hendry (1999) to the second moment and high-frequency data. In the model, climate change is interpreted as a source of structural change affecting the financial system. The new global volatility model is applied to the daily share prices of major Oil and Gas companies from different countries traded in the NYSE to avoid asynchronicity. As a proxy for climate change risk, we use the climate change news index of Engle et al. (2019). This index is a time series that captures news about long-run climate risk. In particular, we use the innovations in their negative (or bad) news index which is based on sentiment analysis.</p>

scholarly journals FOUCAULT AND BOURDIEU: TO EACH HIS OWN NEOLIBERALISM?

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Laval
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Pierre Bourdieu ◽  
Reference Points ◽  
Compare And Contrast

Abstract The article sets out to compare the approaches of Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu to neoliberalism. Rather than take their theorizations to be mutually antithetical, whether at a theoretical or a political level, here the aim is to compare and contrast the two authors through the following lines of analysis: moments of production, styles of theorization, critical strategies and fundamental intellectual reference points. The conclusion proposes a number of intersections and paths towards potential articulations between the two approaches, as well as a reflection on the place of the intellectual in the contemporary social sciences and philosophy.

Disability, Genetics and Global Justice

2005 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Shakespeare
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Screening ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
High Technology ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Social Injustice ◽  
Disability Rights ◽  
Disabled People ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Genetic Medicine

Genetic developments are viewed with distrust by the disability rights community. But the argument that genetic screening promotes social injustice is not straightforward. Disabled people are affected by both the problems of impairment and the problems of disability. Preventing impairment should be a priority as well as preventing disability. Questions of social justice arise if biomedical approaches are prioritized at the cost of structural changes in society. They also arise when disabled people do not have access to genetic medicine. On a global scale, the priorities for impairment prevention are basic healthcare, not high technology medicine.

scholarly journals Comment on Naturalizing Critical Realist Social Ontology

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 333-340 ◽  
Author(s):  
Petri Ylikoski
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Ontology ◽  
Causal Powers ◽  
Transcendental Arguments ◽  
Critical Realist ◽  
Argumentative Strategy ◽  
The Social ◽  
Realist Ontology

AbstractThis comment discusses Kaidesoja (2013) and raises the issue whether his analysis justifies stronger conclusions than he presents in the book. My comments focus on four issues. First, I argue that his naturalistic reconstruction of critical realist transcendental arguments shows that transcendental arguments should be treated as a rare curiosity rather than a general argumentative strategy. Second, I suggest that Kaidesoja’s analysis does not really justify his optimism about the usefulness of causal powers ontology in the social sciences. Third, I raise some doubts about the heuristic value of Mario Bunge’s social ontology that Kaidesoja presents as a replacement for critical realist ontology. Finally, I propose an alternative way to analyze failures of aggregativity that might better serve Kaidesoja’s purposes than the Wimsattian scheme he employs in the book.

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