Departmental Leadership in a Post-Pandemic World

This chapter explores some of the specific departmental leadership issues that have emerged as universities around the world have struggled to adapt to restrictions imposed by governments in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The chapter argues that for academic departments to succeed and flourish in a post-pandemic world, there needs to be a major reconceptualization of what we mean by academic leadership at the department level. Consequently, a new model of academic leadership is proposed, one which is based on social and relational models of leadership practice, focused on a more individualized approach to leadership development than is currently the case, and which recognizes the crucial role that all academics must play in ensuring the future success of their departments.

Speleonymia Slovenského rudohoria z pohľadu teórie modelovania

The article presents model analysis of non-standardized names of caves and chasms of the Slovenské rudohorie mountains which follows the model analysis of anoikonyms by Jana Pleskalová, as well as the work devoted to modelling of Slovak hydronymy. The model analysis pointed out the dominance of the relational model C which expresses “properties, symptoms (and circumstances)” and the relational model A which is associated with the expression of “position, the location of underground object in the field”. The most common structural model in the given relational models is the two-member ADd+S, consisting of a derivative adjective and a noun such as Jelšavská jaskyňa, Gajdova štôlňa. Relational models (VM) referring to possessivity (VM D), especially to the immediate expression of the type of object (VM B), only have a marginal position in the proposed model analysis.

At-Homeness: Rethinking Personhood-in-Community Through the Lens of Social Identity

Since Chaudhury’s seminal work (2008), spatial ethnographies of the everyday lives of people living with dementia(PLWD) have proliferated. From an experiential perspective, geographies of home (Blunt & Varley, 2004) and geographies of dementia may overlap significantly. We conducted a meta-ethnographic synthesis of n=28 articles to identify points of convergence and divergence in these literatures using comparative thematic analysis with NVivo 12. Whereas geographies of home highlight at-homeness (e.g., ontological safety and daily activities), geographies of dementia underscore communal and civic participation (e.g., social relationships). These themes converge around “social identity” which may be an important construct that helps PLWD feel at home. The quality of life of PLWD in the community may be influenced by prior (and present) experiences of at-homeness. These become more pertinent as older adults shelter in place. We discuss the implications of these findings in relation to relational models of personhood-in-community (Swinton, 2020) and community gerontology.

Model Unity and the Unity of Consciousness: Developments in Expected Float Entropy Minimisation

The unity of consciousness, or, more precisely, phenomenal unity, is an important property of consciousness and an important area of research in mathematical consciousness science and the scientific study of consciousness. Due to the numerous aspects and complexity of consciousness, the property tends to engender loose or inadequate characterizations. In this article, we introduce the concept and mathematical formulation of model unity. A system has model unity if a single relational model, stretched across the whole system, is optimal. Alternatively, model unity may only be present for subsystems, although there may still be unity at some higher level. As a development in the theory of expected float entropy minimisation, such relational models provide an interpretation of system states and the theory may help to provide insights into questions such as why experience of the visual field is unified and why different people do not have a unified consciousness, for example. This article constitutes a relatively small initial study of model unity. Four investigations were undertaken and are given as examples. A postulate is also given, distilling the foundations of EFE minimisation into a clear statement allowing others to consider whether or not the postulate identifies a self-evident fundamental property of consciousness.

Morphological analysis of mosaic shapes with directed relationships based on attribute and relational model representations

We introduce attribute and relational representations of mosaic image models with directed relationships between regions. Attribute representations of asymmetric relational models based on stacking, ranking and integral descriptions are considered. We propose some morphological shape similarity measures based on relational models. We show that using the same oriented relational model, various morphological operators can be constructed, in particular, of Serra- or Pyt’ev type. Some constructive methods for the design of such morphological operators in an attribute and relational domains are proposed. From this consideration we also extract a new morophlogical scheme for two-stage mutual adaptive image-and-shape joint filtering: at the first step, the shape is simplified (projected) with regard to the image to be projected, and at the second step, the image is simplified (projected) with regard to the simplified (projected) shape.

Decidability and Complexity of Some Finitely-valued Dynamic Logics

Propositional Dynamic Logic, PDL, is a well known modal logic formalizing reasoning about complex actions. We study many-valued generalizations of PDL based on relational models where satisfaction of formulas in states and accessibility between states via action execution are both seen as graded notions, evaluated in a finite Łukasiewicz chain. For each n>1, the logic PDŁn is obtained using the n-element Łukasiewicz chain, PDL being equivalent to PDŁ2. These finitely-valued dynamic logics can be applied in formalizing reasoning about actions specified by graded predicates, reasoning about costs of actions, and as a framework for certain graded description logics with transitive closure of roles. Generalizing techniques used in the case of PDL we obtain completeness and decidability results for all PDŁn. A generalization of Pratt's exponential-time algorithm for checking validity of formulas is given and EXPTIME-hardness of each PDŁn validity problem is established by embedding PDL into PDŁn.

Relational dimensions, motivation and knowledge-sharing in healthcare: a perspective from relational models theory

This study investigates the relational dimensions that shape clinicians' intentionality and motivation for knowledge-sharing. Qualitative data was collected from 40 clinicians in two hospitals, and relational models theory was used to investigate the impact of different relational models (communal-sharing, authority-ranking, equality-matching and market-pricing) on clinicians' intentionality and motivation to engage in knowledge and learning. While communal-sharing and expert-based authority–ranking relationships predominantly encourage intra-professional knowledge-sharing, equality-matching encourages inter-professional knowledge-sharing. This implies that while the idea is to work together to improve public service quality, each actor has their own interests and is motivated to share knowledge for different collective and/or personal reasons/agendas. In the public sector, formal authority-ranking and market-pricing are the main driving forces of coordination of actions and knowledge flow, through the medium of money and trade. Despite this, power games and a lack of support from those in positions of authority and ignorance of potential conflicts of interest, as well as extrinsic motivators, hamper knowledge-sharing, all of which threaten patient safety. Points for practitioners In pursuit of public service improvement, a focus on fostering an organizational culture that promotes collective behaviour, especially among those in authority, is crucial, given that their lack of support retards knowledge-sharing. For effective knowledge-sharing, both intrinsic and extrinsic motivators are equally important depending on the relational model.