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Distributed data streams are an important topic of current research. In such a setting, data values will be missed, e.g. due to network errors. This paper aims to allow this incompleteness to be detected and overcome with either the user not being affected or the effects of the incompleteness being reported to the user.

A model for representing the incomplete information has been developed that captures the information that is known about the missing data. Techniques for query answering involving certain and possible answer sets have been extended so that queries over incomplete data stream histories can be answered.

It is possible to detect when a distributed data stream is missing one or more values. When such data values are missing there will be some information that is known about the data and this is stored in an appropriate format. Even when the available data are incomplete, it is possible in some circumstances to answer a query completely. When this is not possible, additional meta‐data can be returned to inform the user of the effects of the incompleteness.

The techniques and models proposed in this paper have only been partially implemented.

The proposed system is general and can be applied wherever there is a need to query the history of distributed data streams. The work in this paper enables the system to answer queries when there are missing values in the data.

This paper presents a general model of how to detect, represent, and answer historical queries over incomplete distributed data streams.

This chapter aims to examine the ways coaching and mentoring are currently leveraged to deliver leadership development in higher education institutions. By exploring the variety of coaching and mentoring approaches and their deployment at different levels and across different institutions we are able to indicate opportunities for further enhancing leadership development in the sector through coaching and mentoring. The chapter examines peer-reviewed articles, sector reports and insights from key informants crafted into mini case studies. Mentoring emerges as a default approach to leadership development, in particular at early career stages and where inclusivity and diversity feature as part of leadership development programmes. Coaching is evident at the senior levels and offers a wider range of individual leader, senior team and organisational leadership development opportunities. Our cases highlight the range of responses and sophistication of coaching approaches and practices, from the highly embedded to other more piecemeal examples. The findings emphasise the importance of empirical research in this area to better understand and inform the sector of the wider benefits and opportunities of coaching and mentoring in supporting leadership development. Opportunities to support greater inclusivity and diversity in leadership should consider coaching approaches and practices too. This exploration of coaching and mentoring identifies why shifts towards coaching may be evident. It challenges those in the sector – researchers, people management and organisational developers, as well as senior leaders – to adopt more integrated and embedded coaching and mentoring initiatives to support the sector in addressing its current challenges.

This chapter considers the reasons for appointing external leaders to higher education institutions, and how to support and retain them. Outsiders can bring a particular set of skills that can be valuable to modern higher education institutions and which are complementary to the skillsets of ‘expert’ academic leaders. The success of injecting ‘otherness’ into institutions is an active and ongoing process if the benefits sought after are to be realised. Three scenarios are given particular attention: being recruited from a different sector; being recruited to a higher education institution in another country and arriving in the sector having followed a very different career path. For each scenario, factors are identified that can enable a positive impact and contribution. Some of the unintentional and unforeseen barriers that can hamper such leaders having the desired impact are also identified.

This chapter is an exploratory study of business ethics as it relates to family firms; it primarily aims to explore virtue ethics as an alternative proposal for the ethical concerns that family firms face in their management, thus overcoming the limitations of relevant business ethics approaches and integrating them into an overarching paradigm. Ethics can be classified into three main streams: (1) deontology, (2) utilitarianism, and (3) virtue ethics. The former two approaches have been widely used in the realm of business and family firms for many years and they tend to instrumentalize ethics for business purposes. Yet, they are mostly powerless to explain and promote the ethical concerns surrounding the family firm’s culture. Virtue ethics regained philosophical interest in the second half of the twentieth century, shifting the focus of morality from “the right thing to do” to the “best way to live.” By bringing together two consolidated research fields, family firms and virtue ethics, this chapter contributes a rich perspective to current research in both fields and opens up new ways of answering many of the cultural questions that family firms bring to the table.

In this article, we use the case of religious research universities to explore the presence of multiple institutional logics with the potential for contradiction and conflict. In particular, building on existing research on conflicting institutional logics, we assess the most common forms of resolution (replacement, dominant logic, decoupling, compartmentalization, and coexistence) and identify the potential for a new form of resolution – a transformative outcome that resolves the conflicts through adoption of a superordinate logic. Drawing on the history of Baylor University, we illustrate different forms of resolution, proposing its most recent efforts may represent a transformative outcome. We close by presenting a model for resolving institutional contradictions which suggest some resolutions may trigger cycles of institutionalization and deinstitutionalization when they are inherently unstable because they mitigate rather than resolve the conflict between institutional logics.

This chapter explores the ideas of Alasdair MacIntyre and Vaclav Havel and what these two thinkers can contribute to green political theory.

This chapter includes examination of some of the key works of Havel and MacIntyre and analysis of these works from the point of view of green political theory.

The section ‘Havel and the Imperative to “Live in Truth”: Dissent and Green Politics’ explores Havel’s thought with a particular emphasis on his ethicised notion of political action and critique (‘living in truth’) and his focus on the centrality of dissent (both intellectually and in practice) as central to political critique and action. The section ‘MacIntyre as a Green Thinker: Vulnerability in Political and Moral Theory’ offers an overview of MacIntyre interpreted as a putative green thinker, with a particular emphasis on his ideas of dependence and vulnerability. The Conclusion attempts to draw some common themes together from both thinkers in terms of what they have to offer contemporary green political thought.

What is presented here is introductory, ground clearing and therefore necessarily suggestive (as well as under-developed). That is, it is the start of a new area of exploration rather than an analysis based on any exhaustive and comprehensive knowledge of both thinkers.

This chapter offers some initial lines of exploration for scholars interested in the overlap between green thinking and the work of Havel and MacIntyre.

This is the first exploration of the connections between the works of Havel and MacIntyre and green political theory.

We identify and further aggregate the most commonly engaged risk factors in dry port projects into dimensions. Noting the importance of developing a multi-perspective view of risk, we further assess the priority, interdependency and heterogeneity of the identified risk dimensions.

We identified 44 risk factors from the literature, which were aggregated via exploratory factor analysis (EFA) into 8 major risk dimensions. We employ a fuzzy-based decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) relationship map to articulate various relationships among the risk dimensions.

“Cost” emerged as the most important risk influencing the success of the dry port project, followed by “location,” “accessibility,” “infrastructural” and “operational,” which were also ranked prominently.

This study offers significant insight into the management of risk in dry port projects. By aggregating key risk factors into distinct dimensions, we develop a structured framework for effective risk assessment and management. The insights gleaned from the study extend globally, as it serves as a concrete knowledge base to understand potential barriers to successful dry port projects.

The relationship between ontology, realism, and normativity is complex and contentious. While naturalist and realist stances have tended to ground questions of normativity in ontology and accounts of human nature, critical theories have been critical of the relationship between ontological and normative projects. Queer theory in particular has been critical of ontological endeavors. Exploring the problem of normativity and ontology, this paper will make the case that the critical realist ontology of open systems and complex, contingent, conjunctural causation deeply resonates with queer theory, generating a queer ontology that both allows for and undermines ontological and normative projects.

The chapter furnishes empirical evidence about the extent and profiles of autonomy of EU agencies, the modalities whereby they are steered and controlled, and the interactions they have in EU policy networks. It thus provides the bases for a more complete picture of the EU multi-level administration.

The research is a survey-based design. A questionnaire was administered between July 2009 and April 2010 to 30 EU agencies included in the study population. The questionnaire was sent to the executive director of all the agencies included in the study. Questions were closed-ended, either in the form of multiple choices – with one answer or with check-all-that-apply and an option for ‘other’ to be filled – or in scale format. The resulting data set included ratio, interval, ordinal, and nominal scales. The reference model employed for the investigation relies on the analytical model developed within the framework of the research project COST Action IS0651 CRIPO (Comparative Research into Current Trends in Public Sector Organization – see also ‘Acknowledgements’) for the study of public agencies in Europe (Verhoest, Van Thiel, Bouckaert, & Lægreid, 2012).

EU agencies display a rather low level of managerial, especially financial, autonomy; conversely, they enjoy relatively high policy autonomy. As to the way in which multiple ‘parent’ administration steer EU agencies, it emerges a composite picture, in which the crossroads of steering and control by the parent administrations and accountability by the agency lies in the executive director. In terms of interactions within policy networks, EU agencies interact in a significant way with the European Commission, with national-level agencies in the pertinent policy field, and with specific technical bodies where they are part of the configuration of the policy sector, whilst interactions with national ministries as well as with other EU agencies are rare. No single model can capture in full the overall features of EU agencies, although the ‘community level institution’ model seems to capture a number of the profiles of these agencies.

Both the literature on EU multi-level administration and research agendas in public management can benefit from inclusion of – and in-depth empirical knowledge about – EU agencies. The chapter provides important empirical evidence to these purposes.

EU agencies are actors in European public policy-making, albeit to a varied extent depending on the sector. The extent of autonomy and the way in which they are held to account are crucial aspects for an enhanced understanding of their influence on European public policy-making, as is their location in European policy networks.

Research presented in this chapter is the first systematic empirical investigation of EU agencies encompassing networking, steering and control and autonomy of EU agencies, based on primary data.