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Public networks studies have widely diffused in recent years, but scant attention has been devoted to network change. By endorsing the notion of critical crossroads to describe a crucial turning point for the network survival, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how and why a goal-directed network changes, considering both the benefits and the constraints of the change.

This study adopts a longitudinal case study based upon an interventionist research approach (Jönsson and Lukka, 2006), with the researchers being immersed in the network life of a group of Italian public universities over a period of 17 years.

This paper proposes an empirical derived framework about network evolution that identifies two different types of crossroads (i.e. resource-driven crossroads and management driven) as drivers for network evolution. The main determinant behind these crisis situation were found in the heterogeneity of the network actors and, while overcoming the crossroads, informal sub-networks were found emerging.

This study enlarges current public network literature by focusing specifically on how and why networks change, an aspect underinvestigated by current literature.

Providing workforce members with an understandable and workable platform to successfully withstand professional crossroads.

A reflective, experience-based deliberation on the emotional and action-based steps to be taken when unanticipated crossroads emerge.

Crossroads are inevitable and can be heart-wrenching, but if addressed mindfully, they can lead to greater fulfillment.

Providing workforce members a platform to consider when facing the next professional crossroads.

Crossroads happen to all of us, yet, few articles have been written about this all too common process. Given the frequently recurring nature of this predicament, a practical, compassionate notation could bring relief and encouragement to workforce members.

This paper discusses how educational policies have shaped the development of large-scale educational data and reviews current practices on the educational data use in selected states. Our purposes are to: (1) analyze the common practice and use of educational data in postsecondary education institutions and identify challenges as the educational crossroads; (2) propose the concept of Data Literacy (DL) for teaching (Mandinach & Gummer, 2013a) and its relevance to researchers and stakeholders in postsecondary education; and (3) provide future implications for practices and research to increase educational DL among administrators, practitioners, and faculty in postsecondary education.

We used two guiding conceptual frameworks to analyze the common practice and use of educational data in postsecondary education institutions and identify challenges as the educational crossroads. First, we used the 4Vs of Big Data by Rajan (2012) to examine the misalignment between the policy mandate and the practices. The elements of the 4Vs of Big Data – volume, velocity, variety, and veracity – help us to depict how Big Data enables educators to organize, store, manage, and manipulate vast amounts of educational data at the right moment and at the right time. Second, we used the conceptual framework for DL proposed by Gummer and Mandinach (in press). They interpret DL “as the collection, examination, analysis, and interpretation of data to inform some sort of decision in an educational setting” (p. 1, in press).

Using the guiding frameworks, we identified four educational data crossroads as follows:

Crossroad 1: Unintended Increase in Workload Volume;

Crossroad 2: Unrealistic Expectations of Data Velocity;

Crossroad 3: Data Variety in Silos; and

Crossroad 4: Data Veracity and Policy Agenda Mismatch.

In this paper, we explain each of these crossroads in more detail with some examples.

Much of the existing body of literature, exemplary practices, as well as federal and state funding has been focused on K-12 education contexts. In this paper, we identify current practices and challenges of educational data in the institutions of higher education. Additionally, this paper presents the application of the exemplary practices of data literacy development in postsecondary education and implications for future practices of data literacy development in postsecondary education.

This paper offers a case study in creating capacity for digital initiatives at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee through an exploration of the Crossroads to Freedom program, a decade-long digital public history initiative. At present, digital scholarship and preservation work falls under the purview of information services (IS), a merged information technology (IT) and library division and home to the digital preservation and scholarship (DPS) team. DPS is a multidisciplinary group of undergraduate students, IS staff and various internal and external partners.

By exploring the evolution of digital projects at a small, liberal arts college, this paper will introduce readers to one dynamic path to cultivating capacity and support for digital initiatives within the confines of limited staffing and monetary resources.

Topics and strategies include working effectively with community partners, leveraging existing strengths, building and sustaining a community of practice (CoP), integrating undergraduates as full staff members and navigating cultural change within the library and higher education more broadly.

This paper demonstrates a decade of successful innovation and adaptation to the changing landscape of digital initiatives and the library’s role in higher education that is rooted in community-centric commitment to social justice. Discussion of these strategies and theoretical frameworks should prove helpful to institutions looking to reimagine traditional approaches to digital archives and scholarship programs.

The purpose of this paper is to attempt to theorise difference as encountered by a team of six diverse researchers interested in addressing cultural and religious diversity in sexuality education. Drawing Todd's (2003, 2011a, b) concepts of “the crossroads”, “becoming present” and “relationality” in conversation with Barad's (2003, 2007, 2012) ideas around relationality and intra-activity, the paper explores how “difference” in team research might be re-conceptualised. The aim is to theorise difference, differently from Other methodological literature around collaborative research. Typically, this work highlights markers of difference based on researcher identity (such as gender and ethnicity) as the source of difference in research teams, and examines how these differences are worked through. The aim of this paper is not to resolve difference, but understand it as occurring in the relational process of researchers becoming present to each other. Difference that is not understood as the product of the individual (Barad, 2012), may engender an orientation to ethical relationality, whereby research teams might hold in tension a conversation between the individual and the collective.

This paper is philosophical and methodological. It draws on conceptual understandings from feminist educational philosophy and new materialisms. Findings are based on empirical experiences of a team of researchers exploring cultural and religious difference in sexuality education. Its aim is to re-think the ontology of “difference” as conventionally understood in qualitative methodological literature around team research.

The contribution to conceptualising difference in research teams is to apply Todd's (2011a) theoretical work around “becoming”, “relationality” and the “crossroads” and further delineate it with Barad's (2012) concept of intra-activity. Combining these theorist's ideas the paper offers a conceptualisation of difference that is not the product of individual researcher identities that manifests at the point of collision with (an)other identity. Rather, difference becomes intra-actively in meeting at the crossroads where the “who” is formed. The author argues it is a configuration that cannot be known in advance, and that blurs individuals (and contingent identities) in its uniqueness.

Although conceptual in nature, this paper can be seen as having implications for working with difference in research teams. Drawing on Todd (2003, 2011a) what becomes important in attending to difference in research teams is being openly receptive to the Other. For instance, that the differences of perspective in relation to a research project are not melted into consensus, but that the singularities are always held in relation to each-other.

This paper takes new and emerging ideas in educational philosophy and new materialisms around relationality and applies them to a re-thinking of “difference” in qualitative methodological literature. The result is to offer a new ontology of “difference” as experienced by members of a qualitative research team. It also brings the work of Barad and Todd into conversation for the first time, in order to think ethically about how researchers might work with difference.

To improve insufficient management by artificial management, especially for traffic accidents that occur at crossroads, the purpose of this paper is to develop a pro-active warning system for crossroads at construction sites. Although prior studies have made efforts to develop warning systems for construction sites, most of them paid attention to the construction process, while the accidents that occur at crossroads were probably overlooked.

By summarizing the main reasons resulting for those accidents occurring at crossroads, a pro-active warning system that could provide six functions for countermeasures was designed. Several approaches relating to computer vision and a prediction algorithm were applied and proposed to realize the setting functions.

One 12-hour video that films a crossroad at a construction site was selected as the original data. The test results show that all designed functions could operate normally, several predicted dangerous situations could be detected and corresponding proper warnings could be given. To validate the applicability of this system, another 36-hour video data were chosen for a performance test, and the findings indicate that all applied algorithms show a significant fitness of the data.

Computer vision algorithms have been widely used in previous studies to address video data or monitoring information; however, few of them have demonstrated the high applicability of identification and classification of the different participants at construction sites. In addition, none of these studies attempted to use a dynamic prediction algorithm to predict risky events, which could provide significant information for relevant active warnings.

Operations and supply chain management (OSCM) is a theoretically and philosophically fragmented field. Researchers must consider how they use theory and explain empirical phenomena. This paper aims to use critical realism to introduce more coherence into this fragmented field.

This paper draws on existing critical realism and abduction literature and this study uses a research process from two PhD projects to investigate critical realism’s role in OSCM research. This paper uses a narrative approach to collect data over a long timeframe, capturing data not commonly used in OSCM research.

Research that struggles to bridge the gap between theory and data benefits from critical realism, which provides a philosophy and associated methods to identify a suitable theory and guide researchers when they encounter obstacles. While clear steps often outline established methods, researchers are sometimes unable to identify when their research process has reached an obstacle. This paper argues that such obstacles can be treated as “crossroads” offering new research opportunities when correctly evaluated and addressed.

Importantly, researchers should be able to reflect upon their own research processes, enabling a better understanding of these processes and the discovery of new research directions. Researchers can use critical realism, abduction and systematic combining to bridge the divide between theory and data in OSCM.

This paper contributes to the field’s discussion regarding the roles of critical realism and abduction, synthesizing multiple academic sources, highlighting critical realism’s importance and providing a novel means of addressing difficulties in navigating an eclectic research area. This paper offers a philosophical alternate to the field, which is often instead considered from a positivistic standpoint. The paper is valuable to researchers in the OSCM field, who can use the research to improve their selection of data and theories, as well as their understanding of their own research processes.

‘Crossroads’ serves as a metaphor for networks and intersections, overlaps and trajectories, and is used throughout this book to denote how criminal transgressions and the representations of crime circulate in and out of rural spaces in the Australian countryside. This chapter provides an introduction and overview of key concepts and approaches to rural criminology informed by a ‘crossroads’ metaphor. It discusses the complexities of rurality and how these, in turn, point to significant turning points and strategic directions – not only for research and scholarship but also for understanding, communicating and responding to rural crime and deviance as it presently manifests in countries such as Australia. Along this journey, a number of issues are identified, and practical concerns signalled.

Management development needs to be aligned to the career stage reached by each individual, and to make the best use of individual talents regardless of promotion prospects. The concept of critical career crossroads, involving a major redefinition of the work to be performed, is used to identify career points, and five main types of manager found between the crossroads are described, together with their needs and expectations and those of their organisations. A mix of development strategies – mentoring, exposure to external influences, formal development programmes and skill training – is proposed for each career turn, forming the basis of a learning contract between each manager and immediate superior.