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This paper examines the construction of ethnic ties between immigrants from different counties in Ireland in New York City. Specifically, it explores an attempt to foster Irish unity and pride through the playing of Gaelic sports in New York City (1904–1916). Rather than treating Gaelic sport as a cultural resource that ethnic entrepreneurs harnessed, the paper treats both Gaelic sports and Irish ethnicity as delicate organizational accomplishment. This paper traces a delicate process of experimentation, spanning more than a decade, at the end of which the organizers of the sport managed to produce gripping, but friendly, rivalries between the different teams. This accomplishment created ethnic institutional scaffolding within which immigrants were more likely to see themselves as Irish Americans rather than merely immigrants from particular counties on the island.

Since 2007, the cloud computing term had been introduced to the information technology (IT) dictionary. The theme is attracting growing interest from both the IT world and the business players, who need to enhance information systems agility, reduced costs, or even less dependence on internal IT teams when they are judged too slow. However, the fact that cloud computing, as presented by providers, increases the agility, is unclear. Business Managers; IT professional, and academics are querying about relationship between cloud computing and IT agility. This chapter aims to answer two major concerns: Factors that influence cloud computing adoption in medium and large organizations, and the cloud computing role to improve the agility of information systems. This chapter argues that cloud computing impacts Information System (IS) performance by organizational capabilities (agility). One of the primary motivations of this chapter is the lack of fieldwork when considering how cloud computing improves the information systems’ agility.

As the size of the population is growing and the capacity of the planet Earth is limited, human beings are searching for sustainable and technology-enabled solutions to support society, ecology and economy. One of the solutions has been developing smart sustainable cities. Smart sustainable cities are cities as systems, where their infrastructure, different subsystems and different functional domains are virtually connected to the information and communication technologies (ICT) and internet via sensors and devices and the Internet of Things (IoT), to collect and process real-time Big Data and make efficient, effective and sustainable solutions for a democratic and liveable city for its various stakeholders. This chapter explores the concepts and practices of sustainable smart cities across the globe and explores the use of technologies such as IoT, Blockchain technology and Cloud computing, etc. their challenges and then presents a view on business models for sustainable smart cities.

At the nexus of mindfulness and parenting lies the fusion of two influential yet contradictory epistemologies, the Eastern contemplative practices with the Western parenting research. Mindful parenting is a parenting style, which has grown in popularity in recent times to support parents during pregnancy, birth and beyond. The current study is the third stage of a mixed methods study on mindful parenting. The first stage of the study design conducted a systematic review of mindful parenting. The second stage summarized the change processes identified in the systematic review. The aim of this pilot study is to clarify four clinicians’ perceptions of cognitive change processes associated with mindful parenting, particularly how theory is translated to practice. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was used to analyze semi-structured interviews. The six higher-order change processes were conceptualized as an anchor. Cognitive processes included intention, attention, attitude, and reflective functioning. Given its methodological limitations, the next future work needs is to survey a large sample of both clinicians and parents to verify the model. This paper makes an important contribution to the development of a more comprehensive theoretical model of mindful parenting.

This empirical study investigated the relationships among leisure behaviors and life satisfaction of Thai labors in Taiwan. Convenience sampling and several statistical techniques were adopted. The key findings were (1) Leisure preference, participation, constraint, satisfaction, and overall life satisfaction are influenced by one's socioeconomic background. (2) Because of living in a new country, Thai labors' past and current leisure participations although are strongly related, they are different. In addition, the relation between their leisure preference and participation was found significant when living in Thailand but not when living in Taiwan. (3) The constraints preventing Thai labors from participating in leisure activities in Taiwan were found. They significantly reduced one's leisure participation and satisfaction. (4) A positive relationship between Thai labors' leisure participation and leisure satisfaction in Taiwan was found along with the finding that their leisure satisfaction was also positively related to their life satisfaction.

The decline of trust in government has been a critical issue in many parts of the world. Various surveys have indicated that the public cast suspicious eyes on their government and become less trustful of performance of their public sector. The OECD labels trust in government as a fundamental element of the democratic “contract,” while its decline may have significant impacts on government activities. Likewise, the UN also refers to trust as the foundation for good governance; therefore, improving trust would help strengthen sound governance in any polity. As these examples demonstrate, trust in government has increasingly become a central concern for government reformers.

In Japan, for a long time, bureaucrats have been perceived to be trustful social agents and they have enjoyed more confidence than those of party members. However, a series of scandals involving high-ranking bureaucrats, in addition to several policy failures and severe financial difficulties, have deteriorated the trustful image of Japanese public officials. Confronted with the problem, both central and local governments in Japan have attempted to improve their public perceptions and tried to rebuild trust in government by resorting to various types of administrative reform. However, the identification of reasons for the decline of public trust in government appear an awesome task and hard to come. While some of the reforms have helped contributed rebuilding trust, others have further eroded the level of government confidence.

Against these backgrounds, the chapter aims to show the current level of trust in government, specifically in Japan. It tries to assess government efforts of rebuilding trust by discussing different government reforms at both the central and the local levels.

This is a case study on the opportunities provided by Open Source library systems and the experience of delivering these systems through a shared service.

This chapter derives from desk research, interviews, and direct involvement in the project. The format is a case study, setting out a detailed timeline of events with information that can be applied in other settings.

This chapter presents reflections on the value and limitations of collaboration amongst libraries and librarians on an innovative approach to library systems and technologies. It also presents reflections on lessons learned from the processes and detailed discussion of the success factors for shared services and the reasons why such initiatives may not result in the outcomes predicted at the start.

Libraries and IT services considering Open Source and shared service approaches to provision will find material in this study useful when planning their projects.

The nature of collaboration and collaborative working is studied and observations made about the way that outcomes cannot always be predicted or controlled. In a genuine collaboration, the outcome is determined by the interactions between the partners and is unique to the specifics of that collaboration.

The case study derives from interviews, written material and direct observation not generally in the public domain, providing a strong insider’s view of the activity.

To better understand states’ technologies of violence, colonisation, and military occupation, this chapter shares Jerusalemite children’s written and spoken opposition to the mundane yet intimate governance of Israel’s ‘combat proven’ politics over their lives. ‘Combat proven’ politics are forms of surveillance, strategies of control, imprisonment, torture, murder, and techniques of managing colonised populations that are mobilised in service of the state. Combat proven politics turn children’s everyday spaces into a ‘show room’ – a living laboratory – for states, arms companies, and security agencies (both private and public) to market their technologies as ‘tested positively’. As sites of violence proliferate in these contexts, children are folded into the testing ground of ‘combat proven’ politics, intensifying and incentivising infrastructural warfare. Occupied East Jerusalem, where the children in this study live, acutely illustrates how combat proven politics is driven by a concentration of biopolitics, geopolitics (including the topography of settlement and colonial architecture), and necropolitics. At the same time, children’s language of life subverts the logic of the death machines.