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1 – 10 of over 116000Andreas Zendler, O. William McClung and Dieter Klaudt
The development of a K-12 computer science curriculum based on constructivist principles needs to be informed by knowledge of content and process concepts that are central to the…
Abstract
Purpose
The development of a K-12 computer science curriculum based on constructivist principles needs to be informed by knowledge of content and process concepts that are central to the discipline of computer science. The paper aims to discuss this issue.
Design/methodology/approach
Taking a cross-cultural approach and using an experimental design (a SPF-2•15×16 split-plot design), this study compares the combinations of content and process concepts identified as important in Germany with those considered relevant in the US context.
Findings
First, the combinations of content and process concepts identified in the German context can be generalized to the US context. Second, it is possible to identify combinations of content and process concepts in the US context that are also important in the German context. Third, content and process concepts identified in the two contexts can be integrated to generate a broader perspective that is valid for both contexts.
Practical implications
The results can be used for consolidating available curricular drafts for computer science as a teaching subject at school of the type available in many. The present findings are of great relevance for research-based approaches to the pre- and in-service education of computer science teachers. The methodological approach taken is important in efforts to consolidate curricular models of computer science education, as have been initiated by the Bologna process in Europe and by the organizations Association for Computing Machinery, Association for Information Systems, and Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers-Computer Society in the USA.
Originality/value
Results show that competence areas of central concepts identified in the two contexts can be integrated to generate a broader perspective that is valid for both contexts.
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Larissa M. van der Lugt and Peter W. de Langen
Ports are often seen as engines behind regional economic development, because ports attract a variety of economic activities. This paper focuses on the role of ports in global…
Abstract
Ports are often seen as engines behind regional economic development, because ports attract a variety of economic activities. This paper focuses on the role of ports in global supply chains and the opportunities to attract new economic activities in logistics. The central argument of the paper is that the role of ports as a location for logistics activities evolves with the evolution of logistics concepts. Evidence from West Europe is discussed. With the evolution of logistics concepts towards central coordination and more decentralized physical distribution, ports will see its multinational function diminish, eventually replaced by logistics activities with a more regional function and stronger integrated with production activities. Ports then have to face the competition from inland locations for value added logistics activities. The case of logistics developments provides a basis for analysing the increasingly important questions “What logistics activities ports can attract?” and “What is the appropriate strategy to result in this?”
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Throughout its history, information retrieval has struggled to handle contradictory needs of system oriented and user‐oriented research. Information retrieval has gradually…
Abstract
Purpose
Throughout its history, information retrieval has struggled to handle contradictory needs of system oriented and user‐oriented research. Information retrieval has gradually, starting in the 1960s, moved toward handling the needs of the user. This paper aims to consider the way boundaries toward the user and user‐oriented perspectives are drawn, renegotiated and re‐drawn.
Design/methodology/approach
The central concept of relevance is seen as a boundary concept, complex and flexible, that is continuously redefined in order to manage boundaries. Five influential research papers from the 1960s and early 1970s are analysed in order to understand usage of the concept during a period when psychological and cognitive research tools began to be discussed as a possibility.
Findings
Relevance does not only carry an explanatory function, but also serves a purpose relating to the identity of the field. Key contributions on research on relevance seems to, as a by‐product, draw a boundary giving legitimacy to certain theoretical resources while demarcating against others. The strategies that are identified in the key texts are intent on finding, representing, justifying and strengthening a boundary that includes and excludes a reasonable amount of complexity associated with the user.
Originality/value
The paper explores a central concept within information retrieval and information science in a new way. It also supplies a fresh perspective on the development of information retrieval during the 1960s and 1970s.
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The purpose of this paper is to investigate undergraduate industrial design students’ perception of sustainable design concepts and how their conceptualization evolves as a…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate undergraduate industrial design students’ perception of sustainable design concepts and how their conceptualization evolves as a function of their attendance to a specific sustainable design studio (SDS) course.
Design/methodology/approach
Two groups of students participated in the study. Students who did not attend to SDS were in the control group, whereas students who attended SDS were in the experimental group. In total, 22 concepts, which have been highlighted in literature and the SDS course, were selected as keywords. Participants were asked to provide relatedness scores of these keywords before and after they attended the course. The data were analyzed using multidimensional scaling and pathfinder (PF) networks.
Findings
Results indicate that the SDS caused a change in the conceptualization of sustainable design concepts parallel to the course outcomes and the literature. Some concepts were highlighted as conveyors that guide students to conceptualize sustainable development and design.
Research limitations/implications
This study is considered a case study focusing on declarative knowledge, and owing to the low number of participants, the results should be carefully interpreted.
Practical implications
The findings may support design educators to enhance their courses and promote deeper debates on teaching sustainable design.
Originality/value
Two specific dimensions were found from the analysis of multidimensional scaling, and several conveyor concepts were identified from PF networks. Allocating proposed dimensions and concepts into a course may have the potentials to enhance students’ perception of sustainability concepts.
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Highlights the role corporate identity plays in corporate communication. Based on the work of Albert and Whetten derives three criteria to guide management decisions on corporate…
Abstract
Highlights the role corporate identity plays in corporate communication. Based on the work of Albert and Whetten derives three criteria to guide management decisions on corporate identity: centrality to the organization, specificity to the organization and continuity over time. These criteria can serve as guidelines when empirical measurement of an organization's existing identity is conducted. Illustrates the criteria with an example of empirical identity measurement using means‐end analysis. Suggests centrality in the means‐end structure of organization members' activities as an operationalization with the potential to encompass all three criteria.
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In recent years, the concept of “reification” has virtually disappeared from debates in social theory, including critical social theory. The concept was at the center of the…
Abstract
In recent years, the concept of “reification” has virtually disappeared from debates in social theory, including critical social theory. The concept was at the center of the revitalization of Marxist theory in the early twentieth century generally known as Western Marxism. Georg Lukács in particular introduced the concept to express how the process described in Marx's critique of alienation and commodification could be grasped more effectively by combining it with Max Weber's theory of rationalization (see Agger, 1979; Stedman Jones et al., 1977).1 In Lukács's use, the concept of reification captured the process by which advanced capitalist production, as opposed to earlier stages of capitalist development, assimilated processes of social, cultural, and political production and reproduction to the dynamic imperatives and logic of capitalist accumulation. It is not just interpersonal relations and forms of organization constituting the capitalist production process that are being refashioned along the lines of one specific definition of economic necessity. In addition, and more consequentially, the capitalist mode of production also assimilates to its specific requirements the ways in which human beings think the world. As a result, the continuous expansion and perfection of capitalist production and its control over the work environment impoverishes concrete social, political, and cultural forms of coexistence and cooperation, and it brings about an impoverishment of our ability to conceive of reality from a variety of social, political, and philosophical viewpoints.
Julien Pollack, Jane Helm and Daniel Adler
The Iron Triangle, also called the Triple Constraint, is a central concept to project management research and practice, representing the relationship between key performance…
Abstract
Purpose
The Iron Triangle, also called the Triple Constraint, is a central concept to project management research and practice, representing the relationship between key performance criteria. However, there is disagreement about which criteria should be represented on the vertices of this triangle. The purpose of this paper is to explore which concepts are part of the Iron Triangle, and how these concepts have changed over time.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper explores 45 years of project management research, drawing on a database of 109,804 records from 1970 to 2015. Three corpora were constructed, representing the project management and Time, Cost, and Quality Management literature. Time and Cost are consistently identified as part of the Iron Triangle. However, the status of quality is contested. Key concepts in the project management literature were explored using scientometric research techniques, to understand the relationship between these concepts.
Findings
Significant links were found between Time, Cost, and Quality, verifying these concepts as the vertices on the Iron Triangle. These links were significantly stronger than links to alternatives, such as Scope, Performance, or Requirements. Other concepts that are core to the Iron Triangle were also identified, and how these have changed over time.
Originality/value
This research develops the understanding of a key project management concept by clarifying which concepts are part of the Iron Triangle, based on evidence of how the concept is used in research. This paper also reveals the context in which this concept is used, and how this has changed over the last 45 years.
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Lee D. Parker and Bet H. Roffey
Restates the case for accounting and management research from a grounded theory perspective, and advocates its informed and more frequent application. Examines the intellectual…
Abstract
Restates the case for accounting and management research from a grounded theory perspective, and advocates its informed and more frequent application. Examines the intellectual foundations and key tenets of grounded theory in the context of researchers’ theoretical assumptions and methodological characteristics, discussed in relation to Laughlin’s (1995) classification schema. Pays particular attention to grounded theory assumptions and methods in relation to other interpretive paradigms such as symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology and hermeneutics. Describes the basic principles and methods of grounded theory research, and presents potential applications to the accounting and management research arenas. Argues that rigorous grounded theory research can offer the accounting and management literatures unique understandings that provide additional perspectives to those already being offered by major schools of thought, and discusses implications of grounded theory for informing contemporary professional practice.
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Mariam Ben Hassen, Mohamed Turki and Faiez Gargouri
This paper introduces the problematic of the SBP modeling. Our objective is to provide a conceptual analysis related to the concept of SBP. This facilitates, on the one hand…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper introduces the problematic of the SBP modeling. Our objective is to provide a conceptual analysis related to the concept of SBP. This facilitates, on the one hand, easier understanding by business analysts and end-users, and one the other hand, the integration of the new specific concepts relating to the SBP/BPM-KM domains into the BPMN meta-model (OMG, 2013).
Design/methodology/approach
We propose a rigorous characterization of SBP (Sensitive Business Processes) (which distinguishes it from classic, structured and conventional BPs). Secondly, we propose a multidimensional classification of SBP modeling aspects and requirements to develop expressive, comprehensive and rigorous models. Besides, we present an in-depth study of the different modeling approaches and languages, in order to analyze their expressiveness and their abil-ity to perfectly and explicitly represent the new specific requirements of SBP modeling. In this study, we choose the better one positioned nowadays, BPMN 2.0, as the best suited standard for SBP representation. Finally, we propose a semantically rich conceptualization of a SBP organized in core ontology.
Findings
We defined a rigorous conceptual specification for this type of BP, organized in a multi-perspective formal ontology, the Core Ontology of Sensitive Business Processes (COSBP). This reference ontology will be used to define a generic BP meta-model (BPM4KI) further specifying SBPs. The objective is to obtain an enriched consensus modeling covering all generic concepts, semantic relationships and properties needed for the exploitation of SBPs, known as core modeling.
Originality/value
This paper introduces the problem of conceptual analysis of SBPs for (crucial) knowledge identification and management. These processes are highly complex and knowledge-intensive. The originality of this contribution lies in the multi-dimensional approach we have adopted for SBP modeling as well as the definition of a Core Ontology of Sensitive Business Processes (COSBP) which is very useful to extend the BPMN notation for knowledge management.
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Alon Friedman and Richard P. Smiraglia
The purpose of the research reported here is to improve comprehension of the socially‐negotiated identity of concepts in the domain of knowledge organization. Because knowledge…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of the research reported here is to improve comprehension of the socially‐negotiated identity of concepts in the domain of knowledge organization. Because knowledge organization as a domain has as its focus the order of concepts, both from a theoretical perspective and from an applied perspective, it is important to understand how the domain itself understands the meaning of a concept.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper provides an empirical demonstration of how the domain itself understands the meaning of a concept. The paper employs content analysis to demonstrate the ways in which concepts are portrayed in KO concept maps as signs, and they are subjected to evaluative semiotic analysis as a way to understand their meaning. The frame was the entire population of formal proceedings in knowledge organization – all proceedings of the International Society for Knowledge Organization's international conferences (1990‐2010) and those of the annual classification workshops of the Special Interest Group for Classification Research of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (SIG/CR).
Findings
A total of 344 concept maps were analyzed. There was no discernible chronological pattern. Most concept maps were created by authors who were professors from the USA, Germany, France, or Canada. Roughly half were judged to contain semiotic content. Peirceian semiotics predominated, and tended to convey greater granularity and complexity in conceptual terminology. Nodes could be identified as anchors of conceptual clusters in the domain; the arcs were identifiable as verbal relationship indicators. Saussurian concept maps were more applied than theoretical; Peirceian concept maps had more theoretical content.
Originality/value
The paper demonstrates important empirical evidence about the coherence of the domain of knowledge organization. Core values are conveyed across time through the concept maps in this population of conference papers.
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