Search results

Given the pace of industry change and the rapid diffusion of high reliability organization (HRO) approaches, lags and divergences have arisen between research and practice in healthcare. The purpose of this paper is to explore several of these theory-practice gaps and propose implications for research and practice.

Classic and cutting-edge HRO literature is applied to analyze two industry trends: delivery system integration, and the confluence of patient-as-consumer and patient-centered care.

Highly reliable integrated delivery systems will likely function very differently from classic HRO organizations. Both practitioners and researchers should address conditions such as how a system is bounded, how reliable the system should be and how interdependencies are handled. Additionally, systems should evaluate the added uncertainty and variability introduced by enhanced agency on the part of patients/families in decision making and in processes of care.

Dramatic changes in the sociotechnical environment are influencing the coupling and interactivity of system elements in healthcare. Researchers must address the maintenance of reliability across organizations and the migration of decision-making power toward patients and families.

As healthcare systems integrate, managers attempting to apply HRO principles must recognize how these systems present new and different reliability-related challenges and opportunities.

This paper provides a starting point for the advancement of research and practice in high-reliability healthcare by providing an in-depth exploration of the implications of two major industry trends.

Allyn Young′s lectures, as recorded by the young Nicholas Kaldor, survey the historical roots of the subject from Aristotle through to the modern neo‐classical writers. The focus throughout is on the conditions making for economic progress, with stress on the institutional developments that extend and are extended by the size of the market. Organisational changes that promote the division of labour and specialisation within and between firms and industries, and which promote competition and mobility, are seen as the vital factors in growth. In the absence of new markets, inventions as such play only a minor role. The economic system is an inter‐related whole, or a living “organon”. It is from this perspective that micro‐economic relations are analysed, and this helps expose certain fallacies of composition associated with the marginal productivity theory of production and distribution. Factors are paid not because they are productive but because they are scarce. Likewise he shows why Marshallian supply and demand schedules, based on the “one thing at a time” approach, cannot adequately describe the dynamic growth properties of the system. Supply and demand cannot be simply integrated to arrive at a picture of the whole economy. These notes are complemented by eleven articles in the Encyclopaedia Britannica which were published shortly after Young′s sudden death in 1929.

Protection motivation theory (PMT) explains that the intention to cope with information security risks is based on informed threat and coping appraisals. However, people cannot always make appropriate assessments due to possible ignorance and cognitive biases. This study proposes a research model that introduces four antecedent factors from ignorance and bias perspectives into the PMT model and empirically tests this model with data from a survey of electronic waste (e-waste) handling.

The data collected from 356 Chinese samples are analyzed via structural equation modeling (SEM).

The results revealed that for threat appraisal, optimistic bias leads to a lower perception of risks. However, factual ignorance (lack of knowledge of risks) does not significantly affect the perceived threat. For coping appraisal, practical ignorance (lack of knowledge of coping with risks) leads to low response efficacy and self-efficacy and high perceptions of coping cost, but the illusion of control overestimates response efficacy and self-efficacy.

First, this study addresses a new type of information security problem in e-waste handling. Second, this study extends the PMT model by exploring the roles of ignorance and bias as antecedents. Finally, the authors reinvestigate the basic constructs of PMT to identify how rational threat and coping assessments affect user intentions to cope with data security risks.

This paper seeks to argue that there are two distinct problems of ignorance: a problem of size and a problem of type. Both are more pressing today than ever before, given the extraordinary expansion of collective human knowledge, and both pertain to epistemic limitations intrinsic to evolved cognitive systems. After delineating these problems in detail, one possible way of overcoming “relative” and “absolute” ignorance about the universe – enhancement technologies – is to be examined. The paper then aims to argue that, given one's epistemic situation, resources currently being spent on normal research would be far better spent on developing cognition‐enhancing technologies – technologies that promise to help solve the size and type problems previously sketched.

The paper identifies two important limitations on human knowledge, one deriving from the size or complexity of certain problems and the other from one's inability to access specific concepts necessary to understand them. It suggests that cognitive enhancements offer the best chance at overcoming these two limitations.

There are both strong practical and moral reasons for diverting more resources into the development of cognitive enhancement technologies.

No author has yet elaborated on the distinction, which is taken to be important, between the problems of “size” and “type.” Furthermore, no author has yet explored how cognitive enhancements may address the problem that Colin McGinn calls “cognitive closure” (the problem of type). Thus, cognitive enhancements may offer the only possibility of solving conundrums like conscious experience and free will.

This paper attempts to trace and describe the role played by the government sector – the state – in promoting economic growth in Western societies since the Renaissance. One important conclusion is that the antagonism between state and market, which has characterised the twentieth century, is a relatively new phenomenon. Since the Renaissance one very important task of the state has been to create well‐functioning markets by providing a legal framework, standards, credit, physical infrastructure and – if necessary – to function temporarily as an entrepreneur of last resort. Early economists were acutely aware that national markets did not occur spontaneously, and they used “modern” ideas like synergies, increasing returns, and innovation theory when arguing for the right kind of government policy. In fact, mercantilist economics saw it as a main task to extend the synergetic economic effects observed within cities to the territory of a nation‐state. The paper argues that the classical Anglo‐Saxon tradition in economics – fundamentally focused on barter and distribution, rather than on production and knowledge – systematically fails to grasp these wider issues in economic development, and it brings in and discusses the role played by the state in alternative traditions of non‐equilibrium economics.

Attempts to document how different forms of ignorance may evolve in different organizational dialogues and become embedded in organizational context. Develops the four primary forms of ignorance based on the research from social psychology, public opinion studies, legal studies, behavioral economics, and clinical psychology. The recognition of the historic interdisciplinary evolution of the concept of ignorance plays an important role in the knowledge economy and learning organizations. If management is not aware of the various latent forms of organizational ignorance, it is difficult to develop meaningful innovation programs for organizations in the twenty‐first century. Develops a framework to address the issue of “not knowing what one does not know” (i.e. ignorance of ignorance) that may be the biggest barrier for organizations to becoming an active participant in the knowledge economy.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

Attempts to discover an internal logic in the high‐speed events taking place in the former Soviet Union. In addressing the problems of the country′s disintegration, examines the issue in its socioeconomic, political and territorial‐administrative aspects. Analyses, for this purpose, the nature of Soviet society prior to Gorbachev′s reforms, its present transitional stage and its probable direction in the near future.

This paper aims to explore how fund managers (FMs) deal with major problems of ignorance and uncertainty in stock selection and in asset allocation decisions.

Interviews were conducted with 40 fund managers in the period October 1997 to January 2000. A seven stage approach was adopted to sift through and process the large volumes of case data. The interview case data formed the basis for identifying common patterns and themes across the cases.

The case data revealed the nature of this private information agenda concerning intellectual capital or intangibles and the dynamic connections between these variables in the value creation process. The case data provided insight into how the book value and market value gap arose and the special role of information on intangibles and intellectual capital in valuing the company.

The fund management behaviour has important implications for regulatory policy issues on insider information, on corporate disclosure, the corporate governance role of financial institutions, and for the governance of financial institutions.

The paper focuses on issues of importance in an increasingly concentrated and global FM industry.

The concept of geoeconomic time, introduced here, is based on the interface among economic activity, technology, and geophysical processes. Geoeconomic time is what should frame economic analysis of global warming policy. Otherwise, the analysis will be flawed. Application of geoeconomic time to global warming has two parts. The first is the future time frame for projecting impacts on the earth. The second is the historic time frame for delineating our bounds of ignorance regarding the possible consequences of global warming. Many economic analyses conclude against policies to reduce emissions of warming gases, and instead conclude in favour of the “optimal” policy of adapting to global warming. The concept of geoeconomic time reveals that the magnitude of our ignorance is of such a scale that we can never reduce uncertainty sufficiently to design “optimal” policies. Concludes in favour of risk‐reducing policies for research, development and commercialization of energy efficiency technologies and renewable energy. Successful examples can be found at the state and local levels of government action.