Managing the resource allocation for the COVID-19 pandemic in healthcare institutions: a pluralistic perspective

PurposeAs COVID-19 outbreak has created a global crisis, treating patients with minimum resources and traditional methods has become a hectic task. In this technological era, the rapid growth of coronavirus has affected the countries in lightspeed manner. Therefore, the present study proposes a model to analyse the resource allocation for the COVID-19 pandemic from a pluralistic perspective.Design/methodology/approachThe present study has combined data analytics with the K-mean clustering and probability queueing theory (PQT) and analysed the evolution of COVID-19 all over the world from the data obtained from public repositories. By using K-mean clustering, partitioning of patients’ records along with their status of hospitalization can be mapped and clustered. After K-mean analysis, cluster functions are trained and modelled along with eigen vectors and eigen functions.FindingsAfter successful iterative training, the model is programmed using R functions and given as input to Bayesian filter for predictive model analysis. Through the proposed model, disposal rate; PPE (personal protective equipment) utilization and recycle rate for different countries were calculated.Research limitations/implicationsUsing probabilistic queueing theory and clustering, the study was able to predict the resource allocation for patients. Also, the study has tried to model the failure quotient ratio upon unsuccessful delivery rate in crisis condition.Practical implicationsThe study has gathered epidemiological and clinical data from various government websites and research laboratories. Using these data, the study has identified the COVID-19 impact in various countries. Further, effective decision-making for resource allocation in pluralistic setting has being evaluated for the practitioner's reference.Originality/valueFurther, the proposed model is a two-stage approach for vulnerability mapping in a pandemic situation in a healthcare setting for resource allocation and utilization.

A Pluralistic Perspective on Research in Psychotherapy: Harnessing Passion, Difference and Dialogue to Promote Justice and Relevance

The adoption of a pluralistic perspective on research design, processes of data collection and analysis and dissemination of findings, has the potential to enable psychotherapy research to make a more effective contribution to building a just society. A review of the key features of the concept of pluralism is followed by a historical analysis of the ways in which research in counselling, psychotherapy and related disciplines has moved in the direction of a pluralistic position around knowledge creation. Core principles of a pluralistic approach to research are identified and explored in the context of a critical case study of contemporary research into psychotherapy for depression, examples of pluralistically oriented research practices, and analysis of a pluralistic conceptualisation of the nature of evidence. Implications of a pluralistic perspective for research training and practice are discussed. Pluralistic inquiry that emphasises dialogue, collaboration, epistemic justice and the co-existence of multiple truths, creates opportunities for individuals, families and communities from a wide range of backgrounds to co-produce knowledge in ways that support their capacities for active citizenship and involvement in open democratic decision-making. To fulfil these possibilities, it is necessary for psychotherapy research to be oriented towards social goals that are sufficiently relevant to both researchers and co-participants to harness their passion and work together for a common good.

Security Issues in Shared Automated Mobility Systems: A Feminist HCI Perspective

The spread of automated vehicles (AVs) is expected to disrupt our mobility behavior. Currently, a male bias is prevalent in the technology industry in general, and in the automotive industry in particular, mainly focusing on white men. This leads to an under-representation of groups of people with other social, physiological, and psychological characteristics. The advent of automated driving (AD) should be taken as an opportunity to mitigate this bias and consider a diverse variety of people within the development process. We conducted a qualitative, exploratory study to investigate how shared automated vehicles (SAVs) should be designed from a pluralistic perspective considering a holistic viewpoint on the whole passenger journey by including booking, pick-up, and drop-off points. Both, men and women, emphasized the importance of SAVs being flexible and clean, whereas security issues were mentioned exclusively by our female participants. While proposing different potential solutions to mitigate security matters, we discuss them through the lens of the feminist HCI framework.

The value of including employees: a pluralist perspective on sustainable HRM

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to advance a conceptualization of sustainable HRM that builds on scholarship focusing on the pluralistic nature of human resource management. The paper seeks to advance the promise of sustainable HRM as an alternative to HRM scholarship that adopts a unitarist frame of reference.Design/methodology/approachThe paper draws on a variety of HRM-related literatures to offer new insights about what a pluralist perspective on sustainable HRM from the perspective of employees would look like and what it would accomplish, and in so doing allow sustainable HRM to become socially sustainable.FindingsTaking a pluralistic perspective is essential for making the concept of sustainable HRM more distinct and robust. Sustainable HRM can offer a challenge to the dominant unitarist perspective on the employment relationship, focusing the attention of researchers on the extent to which employment practices benefit both employers and employees while contributing to social sustainability outside of the employment context.Originality/valueThis paper adds analyses of pluralism and unitarism to the current literature on sustainable HRM while also focusing attention on how sustainable HRM might be more robustly conceptualized and also more normative in its orientation.

Moralizing Self-Control

In this chapter, the authors synthesize current research and thinking on the topic of self-control moralization. They focus on three parts: (1) similarities and differences between morality and self-control, (2) the process of moralizing self-control, and (3) the consequences of moralizing self-control. They use a moral pluralistic perspective—the idea that there are multiple, sometimes conflicting, moral concerns within and between cultures and individuals—to argue that research on self-control moralization could benefit greatly from exploring the roles of different types of moral concerns, emotions, and social contexts. The chapter discusses when self-control and morality overlap and when they don’t, what this means for moralizing self-control, and how one might be able to leverage moral concerns to achieve greater self-control success and prevent self-control failure.

Personal Identity and Science

The philosophical problem of personal identity –the issue of finding the necessary and sufficient conditions for a past or future being to be a certain present being– has been treated by analytical metaphysics mostly. In this framework, plenty of references to thought experiments can be found, but they exhibit no connection to practical problems and scientific outcomes. Our purpose is to involve philosophy of science in that debate, since a genetic approach regarding identity can be considered supported by contemporary scientific knowledge. In order to do that, we will focus on the Argentinian case of the approximately 500 children who were appropriated during the most recent dictatorship (1976-1983). The appropriations deprived them, precisely, of their identities, but some of them managed to be recovered thanks to Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo (apm) and genetics. Our final purpose is to argue that a pluralistic perspective in philosophy of science, according to which values contribute to the very constitution of ontology science aims to describe and explain, will allow us to defend apm strategy but reject, at the same time, a reductive conception of identity.