scholarly journals Exploring the paradoxes of addressing sustainability in commercial research: A study of scientist views

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Mary Ashby
Keyword(s):  
Role Identity ◽  
Economic Consequences ◽  
Research Management ◽  
Economies Of Scope ◽  
Work Organisation ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Professional Integrity ◽  
Research Institutes ◽  
Research Scientists ◽  
Commercial Research

<p>Research scientists increasingly engage in commercial research as well as face the need to address sustainability by taking into account the social, environmental and economic consequences of development activities. This role often entails addressing contradictory imperatives. Though paradox has pervasive effects on science work and managing for sustainability, it remains underexplored in these contexts. This research is positioned at the novel intersection of three bodies of work: sustainability in the context of science work, commercial research, and paradox in management and organisation. It engages a sensemaking perspective to examine the experiences of research scientists with managing sustainability in commercial research and explicates the tensions they perceive, as well as the ways in which they respond to them.  The study is primarily based on a set of 44 semi-structured interviews conducted with research scientists across four Crown Research Institutes in New Zealand. It offers two sets of findings. First, it identifies three main paradoxes research scientists perceive and elucidates their dynamics. These include the paradoxes of service ethos, role identity, and professional integrity. Second, it explicates perceived responses to these paradoxes, both constraining and productive. The former comprise the practices of opposing, isolating, over-committing, and suppressing. The latter, productive responses, consist of a range of management tactics premised on differentiation or integration. Differentiation tactics include diversification in scope of services, variation in work organisation and responsibilities, and incrementalism. Integration tactics used with external parties comprise identifying financial synergies between public and commercial projects, (re)framing problems and solutions for clients, (re)positioning across roles and identities, as well as harnessing economies of scope by co-authoring with clients.  This research contributes to the literature on research management by casting the emphasis on perceived paradoxes to be navigated when addressing sustainability in commercial research. It also offers a secondary contribution to the literature on paradox in management by contextualising organisational paradoxes and their management in science work. Specifically, it provides new insight into the ways by which scientists’ engagement with sustainability cuts across ethos and shapes their views on professional integrity. It also contributes to a nuanced understanding of role identity by focusing on the tensions research scientists at Crown Research Institutes experience in the dual role of advocates of change towards sustainability and allies of business. Altogether, this work extends existing organisational research by offering insights into scientists’ experience of paradox and its management when engaging with sustainability in commercial research.</p>

scholarly journals Exploring the paradoxes of addressing sustainability in commercial research: A study of scientist views

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Mary Ashby
Keyword(s):  
Role Identity ◽  
Economic Consequences ◽  
Research Management ◽  
Economies Of Scope ◽  
Work Organisation ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Professional Integrity ◽  
Research Institutes ◽  
Research Scientists ◽  
Commercial Research

<p>Research scientists increasingly engage in commercial research as well as face the need to address sustainability by taking into account the social, environmental and economic consequences of development activities. This role often entails addressing contradictory imperatives. Though paradox has pervasive effects on science work and managing for sustainability, it remains underexplored in these contexts. This research is positioned at the novel intersection of three bodies of work: sustainability in the context of science work, commercial research, and paradox in management and organisation. It engages a sensemaking perspective to examine the experiences of research scientists with managing sustainability in commercial research and explicates the tensions they perceive, as well as the ways in which they respond to them.  The study is primarily based on a set of 44 semi-structured interviews conducted with research scientists across four Crown Research Institutes in New Zealand. It offers two sets of findings. First, it identifies three main paradoxes research scientists perceive and elucidates their dynamics. These include the paradoxes of service ethos, role identity, and professional integrity. Second, it explicates perceived responses to these paradoxes, both constraining and productive. The former comprise the practices of opposing, isolating, over-committing, and suppressing. The latter, productive responses, consist of a range of management tactics premised on differentiation or integration. Differentiation tactics include diversification in scope of services, variation in work organisation and responsibilities, and incrementalism. Integration tactics used with external parties comprise identifying financial synergies between public and commercial projects, (re)framing problems and solutions for clients, (re)positioning across roles and identities, as well as harnessing economies of scope by co-authoring with clients.  This research contributes to the literature on research management by casting the emphasis on perceived paradoxes to be navigated when addressing sustainability in commercial research. It also offers a secondary contribution to the literature on paradox in management by contextualising organisational paradoxes and their management in science work. Specifically, it provides new insight into the ways by which scientists’ engagement with sustainability cuts across ethos and shapes their views on professional integrity. It also contributes to a nuanced understanding of role identity by focusing on the tensions research scientists at Crown Research Institutes experience in the dual role of advocates of change towards sustainability and allies of business. Altogether, this work extends existing organisational research by offering insights into scientists’ experience of paradox and its management when engaging with sustainability in commercial research.</p>

Engaging With Paradox, Striving for Sustainability: Relating to Public Science and Commercial Research

2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 255-280
Author(s):  
Mary Ashby ◽  
Sally Riad ◽  
Sally Davenport
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Role Identity ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
Professional Integrity ◽  
Theoretical Contribution ◽  
Public Science ◽  
Relational Perspective ◽  
Research Scientists ◽  
Commercial Research

Though paradox has pervasive effects on science work and sustainability in scientific research, it remains underexplored at the intersection of these contexts. The article addresses this nexus and contributes to the relational perspective on paradox by supplementing the emphasis on systemic relations with human relationships. The study examines experiences of research scientists with striving for sustainability and explicates the tensions they confront between public science and commercial research. It identifies three relational paradoxes: service ethos, role identity, and professional integrity; and it outlines how scientists manage them through approaches premised on differentiation and integration. Through its grounds in relationality, the work affirms the salience of extant themes on paradox for sustainability in science work and poses new theoretical contribution by showing how both paradoxes and responses are embedded in social relations. In effect, scientists address sustainability while engaging with paradox whereby they relate to both public science and commercial research.

scholarly journals Abandoned Places and Urban Marginalized Sites in Lugoj Municipality, Three Decades after Romania’s State-Socialist Collapse

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (18) ◽  
pp. 7627
Author(s):  
Ioan Sebastian Jucu ◽  
Sorina Voiculescu
Keyword(s):  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Personal Communication ◽  
Economic Consequences ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Local Sustainability ◽  
Internal Structures ◽  
Urban Settlements ◽  
Urban Transformations ◽  
State Socialist

The postsocialist process of urban restructuring came with important spatial, social, and economic consequences. This triggered important transformations that remain palpable in the everyday texture of urban life, spatial patterns, and even the internal structures of the city. Every urban settlement was bound to contribute to the state socialist industry so that postsocialist urban transformations also included multiple aspects of dereliction and ruination of the socialist industrial assets. Threatening postsocialist urban formations and sustainability, the most common feature is collective neglect at national, regional, and local scales. The transition from state-socialist forms of production to the current market-based system poses many difficulties. This article specifically investigates the problems of urban industrial ruins in Lugoj—which are typical for medium-sized postsocialist municipalities in Romania. The research draws on qualitative data gathered by the authors through semi-structured interviews, personal communication, and oral histories and continuous infield observation (2012–2019). The findings unveil the production and the reproduction of abandoned spaces in Romanian urban settlements in the absence of specific regeneration programs and policies on urban redevelopment and marginalized areas. The analysis reveals that urban ruins harm the quality of life in local communities, damaging both the urban landscape and local sustainability. Further actions for local urban regeneration are urgently needed.

scholarly journals “This Isn’t Just about Things, It’s about People and Their Future”: A Qualitative Analysis of the Working Conditions and Strains of Social Workers in Refugee and Homeless Aid

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (20) ◽  
pp. 3858 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tanja Wirth ◽  
Janika Mette ◽  
Albert Nienhaus ◽  
Zita Schillmöller ◽  
Volker Harth ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Support ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Qualitative Content Analysis ◽  
Job Demands ◽  
Work Organisation ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Psychological Strain ◽  
Job Content

Large parts of Europe have been affected by an influx of refugees and increasing homelessness in recent years. Social workers provide care services for refugees and homeless people, but little is known about their working conditions. The aim of this study was to examine their job demands, resources and health strains. 26 semi-structured interviews were conducted with social workers in refugee and homeless aid in Hamburg and Berlin between October and December 2017. The interviews were analysed following Mayring’s qualitative content analysis. Additionally, the job demands and resources of social workers with and without long-term psychological strain were compared. Respondents particularly experienced demands concerning their job content and work organisation, including emotional and quantitative demands. Appreciation expressed by clients and social support from the team served as key resources. Respondents had problems switching off from work, were exhausted and exhibited signs of long-term psychological strain, such as symptoms of burnout or depressive states. Workers reporting long-term psychological strain were more likely to consider themselves as being adversely constrained by legal requirements and to describe inadequate supervision offers and team conflicts. In conclusion, the results indicate the need for job-specific health promotion measures reducing particularly demands concerning social workers’ job content and work organisation and further strengthening their social support.

scholarly journals The role of prior experience, intellectual property protection and communication on trust and performance in innovation alliances

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
R.J. Ruitenburg ◽  
F.T.J.M. Fortuin ◽  
S.W.F. Omta
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Open Innovation ◽  
Research Organization ◽  
High Tech ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Ip Protection ◽  
Alliance Partner ◽  
Innovation Potential ◽  
Commercial Research

An important concept in innovation literature is open innovation, where firms may use knowledge of other companies to develop new products or processes. However, there is a tension between the desire to be open, to profit from the knowledge of others, and the desire to be closed to prevent others from making use of the firms own profitable knowledge. Formal and non-formal intellectual property (IP) protection mechanisms may protect the company in an innovation alliance, but are often costly and may hinder flexibility and creativity. In the present paper the role of formal and non-formal IP protection arrangements and communication on the building and maintenance of trust and ultimately on performance has been investigated. A survey questionnaire was combined with semi-structured interviews of CEOs and R&D managers of seven companies and two commercial research organizations in the seed sector, one agrifood company, one commercial research organization in the agrifood and one commercial research organization in the high-tech sector. Thirty-three innovation alliances were investigated in total. It was found that for companies active in an innovation alliance it is important to understand how prior experiences, IP protection and communication influence the level of trust in an alliance, and that the level of trust is positively related to innovation performance. Recommendations are given for open innovation managers how to make optimal use of the innovation potential of the alliance partner(s), by fostering communication within the alliance and by using formal IP protection arrangements as a platform to create trust within the alliance.

scholarly journals Current State of Terminology in Lithuania: Scientific Research, Management and Education

2016 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 325-339
Author(s):  
Albina Auksoriūtė
Keyword(s):  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Research Management ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Common Information ◽  
Language For Specific Purposes ◽  
Current State ◽  
Research Institutes ◽  
State Commission ◽  
The Republic

Current State of Terminology in Lithuania: Scientific Research, Management and Education The article discusses the current state of terminology in Lithuania, presents terminological research carried out in the last five years, analyses ways of Lithuanian terminology management, and briefly overviews terminological education and teaching in Lithuania.Lithuanian terminological research is mostly carried out at the Institute of the Lithuanian Language and at universities and other research institutes. The largest part of terminological research is carried out at the Centre of Terminology of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language, which researches Lithuanian terminology and terminography, analyses the use of Lithuanian terminology in different fields.Three ways of terminology management are discussed: terminography, creation of term banks and databases and standardisation of terms.The number of term dictionaries published in Lithuania is rather considerable – over 600. The most productive period for publishing term dictionaries is from 1990 up to date. Between 1990–2013 more than 420 term dictionaries and special encyclopaedias were published.The main and most important terminology database in Lithuania is the Term Bank of the Republic of Lithuania (lt Lietuvos Respublikos terminų bankas, further – LTB), initiated in 2004. This bank is created as a common information system of state institutions administered by the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language (further – Language Commission). There are more than 237,000 term entries in LTB. The article discusses two more terminology databases containing Lithuanian terminology sources – IATE and EUROTERMBANK. The Lithuanian Standards Board, in addition to other work, prepares Lithuanian standards of terms and offers these terms to the Language Commission for evaluation. Since 2000, the Lithuanian Standards Board has been creating a database of standardised terms which currently contains about 64,000 terms.In Lithuania, terminology also exists as an academic discipline; at many universities, philologists are offered a course in terminology. At many universities, students of other non-philological disciplines are taught a course in language for specific purposes, which covers matters of terminology and terms. Aktualny stan terminologii na Litwie: badania naukowe, zarządzanie informacją i edukacja Artykuł omawia aktualny stan terminologii na Litwie, przedstawia badania naukowe nad zasobami terminologicznymi prowadzone w okresie minionych pięciu lat, analizuje sposoby zarządzania terminami w języku litewskim, a także zawiera zwięzły przegląd tematyki dotyczącej kształcenia i nauczania w zakresie terminologii na Litwie.Główną placówką zajmującą się badaniami nad terminologią w języku litewskim jest Instytut Języka Litewskiego. Ponadto badania takie prowadzone są także na uniwersytetach i w innych ośrodkach badawczych. Największy udział w badaniach terminologicznych ma Zakład Terminologii w Instytucie Języka Litewskiego, który prowadzi prace nad terminologią litewską i terminografią, a także analizuje użycie litewskiego słownictwa specjalistycznego w poszczególnych dziedzinach.W artykule omówiono trzy metody zarządzania zasobami terminologicznymi: terminografia, powoływanie banków terminów i baz danych oraz standaryzacja terminów i pojęć.Liczba słowników terminologicznych opublikowanych na Litwie jest dość znaczna, jest ich obecnie ponad 600. Najwięcej publikacji pochodzi z okresu po roku 1990. Począwszy od 1990 do 2013 r. ukazało się drukiem ponad 420 słowników i specjalistycznych encyklopedii terminologicznych.Główną i najważniejszą bazą terminów na Litwie jest Terminologiczna Baza Republiki Litewskiej (lt Lietuvos Respublikos terminų bankas, dalej: LTB), powstała w 2004 r. Została ona utworzona jako wspólny informatyczny system instytucji pań­stwowych pod patronatem Państwowej Komisji Języka Litewskiego (dalej: Komisja Języka). W LTB znajduje się ponad 237 000 haseł terminologicznych.Artykuł omawia dalej kolejne dwie bazy danych, które zawierają litewskie źródła terminologii, a mianowicie IATE i EUROTERMBANK. Litewska Rada Standaryzacji oprócz innych prac przygotowuje litewskie standardy terminów i przedstawia je Komisji Języka do oceny. Od roku 2000 Litewska Rada Standaryzacji tworzy bazę standaryzowanych terminów, która aktualnie obejmuje 64 000 haseł.Na Litwie terminologia istnieje także jako odrębna dyscyplina akademicka. Na wielu uniwersytetach w programie studiów prowadzone są przez filologów zajęcia z tego zakresu. Na licznych uczelniach studenci kierunków niefilologicznych mają wykłady w zakresie stosowania terminów specjalistycznych, obejmujące kwestie terminologiczne i dotyczące zasobu pojęć.

scholarly journals Forging a collective entrepreneurial identity within existing organizations through corporate venturing

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ying Zhang ◽  
Marina G. Biniari
Keyword(s):  
Secondary Data ◽  
Corporate Entrepreneurship ◽  
Role Identity ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Corporate Context ◽  
Management Literature ◽  
Parent Companies

PurposeThis study unpacks how organizational members construct a collective entrepreneurial identity within an organization and attempt to instill entrepreneurial features in the organization's existing identity.Design/methodology/approachThe study draws on the cases of two venturing units, perceived as entrepreneurial groups within their respective parent companies. Semi-structured interviews and secondary data were collected and analyzed inductively and abductively.FindingsThe data revealed that organizational members co-constructed a “corporate entrepreneur” role identity to form a collective shared belief and communities of practice around what it meant to act as an entrepreneurial group within their local corporate context and how it differentiated them from others. Members also clustered around the emergent collective entrepreneurial identity through sensegiving efforts to instill entrepreneurial features in the organization's identity, despite the tensions this caused.Originality/valuePrevious studies in corporate entrepreneurship have theorized on the top-down dynamics instilling entrepreneurial features in an organization's identity, but have neglected the role of bottom-up dynamics. This study reveals two bottom-up dynamics that involve organizational members' agentic role in co-constructing and clustering around a collective entrepreneurial identity. This study contributes to the middle-management literature, uncovering champions' identity work in constructing a “corporate entrepreneur” role identity, with implications for followers' engagement in constructing a collective entrepreneurial identity. This study also contributes to the organizational identity literature, showing how tensions around the entrepreneurial group's distinctiveness may hinder the process of instilling entrepreneurial features in an organization's identity.

scholarly journals Potential socio-economic consequences of mine closure

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marietjie Ackermann ◽  
Doret Botha ◽  
Gerrit Van der Waldt
Keyword(s):  
Labour Force ◽  
Group Discussion ◽  
Mining Industry ◽  
Economic Consequences ◽  
Mine Closure ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Mining Communities ◽  
Mining Community ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Peripheral Areas

Background: Mine closures generally reveal negligence on the part of mining houses, not only in terms of the environment, but also the surrounding mining communities.Aim: This article reflects on the findings of research into the socio-economic consequences of mine closure. The research specifically explored how mineworkers’ dependency on their employment at a mine affects their ability to sustain their livelihood.Setting: The research was conducted at the Orkney Mine and the Grootvlei Mine (Springs).Methods: The research was conducted within a naturalistic domain, guided by a relativist orientation, a constructivist ontology and an interpretivist epistemology. Data were collected by means of document analysis, semi-structured interviews, focus group discussion and unstructured observation.Results: From the research findings, it is evident that mine closures, in general, have a devastating effect on the surrounding mining communities as well as on the employees. Mine closures in the case studies gradually depleted the mining communities’ livelihood assets and resulted in the collapse of their coping strategies and livelihood outcomes. It generally affected the communities’ nutrition, health, education, food security, water, shelter, levels of community participation and personal safety.Conclusion: If not managed efficiently and effectively, mine closures may pose significant challenges to the mining industry, government, the environment, national and local economic prosperity and communities in the peripheral areas of mines. This truly amplifies that mine closure, whether temporary or permanent, is an issue that needs to be addressed with responsibility towards all stakeholders, including the mining community and the labour force.

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