Search results

Departing from an online interactive Gender Café on the topic of Knowledge Management (KM), jointly hosted by a UN agency and the Society of Gender Professionals, this chapter seeks to provide gender practitioners and others with practical examples of how to “gender” KM in international development. Through analyzing the travel of feminist ideas into the field of KM with inspiration from Barbara Czarniawska’s and Bernard Joerge’s (1996) theory of the travel of ideas, the chapter explores the spaces, limits, and future possibilities for the inclusion of feminist perspectives. The ideas and practical examples of how to do so provided in this chapter originated during the café, by the participants and panellists. The online Gender Café temporarily created a space for feminist perspectives. The data demonstrate how feminist perspectives were translated into issues of inclusion, the body, listening methodologies, practicing reflection, and the importance to one’s work of scrutinizing underlying values. However, for the feminist perspective to be given continuous space and material sustainability developing into an acknowledged part of KM, further actions are needed. The chapter also reflects on future assemblies of gender practitioners, gender scholars and activists, recognizing the struggles often faced by them. The chapter discusses strategies of how a collective organizing of “outside–inside” gender practitioners might push the internal work of implementing feminist perspectives forward.

In this essay, we argue that understanding of meaning in relation to organizational networks warrants a more prominent place in organizational theorizing, because it fulfils a distinct role in the emergence and evolution of networks. Whereas prior studies have tended to address network structures or narrative structures, we suggest that organizational processes might be better understood when addressing the role of meaning and network structures simultaneously. We explain the implications of our argument in an online context, given the growing significance of digitally enabled networks on organizational sociality, and draw on examples in the context of organizational knowledge sharing to support our argument. We conclude by introducing a communication flow model to support the further development of research on organizational meaning networks.

The conception of markets as interfaces connecting semi-autonomous systems of producers and customers has led to an extensive use of social network analysis. So far, the network focus has been on connections among people, paying less attention to the crucial role played by connections between cultural elements (e.g., concepts, representations, ideas) in the way markets are formed and sustained. Such connections constitute “semantic networks” and are the focus of the present article. We attend to them by developing a network view of the cultural dimension of markets and apply it in an empirical setting where culture plays a crucial role – luxury watchmaking – to illustrate the impact of market semantic networks on a major outcome: price.

This chapter traces the shift of many progressive educators from a general faith in special education to the more recent push for democratic and ethical inclusive education. This chapter examines the critical scholarship that propelled many educators away from systems of special education and into the inclusive education movement. Two phases in the development of inclusive education are described, an initial failed attempt often described by researchers as “integration,” and the current social movement building toward a more genuine social transformation of classrooms and schools.

Purpose: This study explores the perspectives of data experts (DXs) and refugees on the algorithms used by law enforcement officers and focuses on emerging insecurities. The authors take police risk-scoring algorithms (PRSA) as a proxy to examine perceptions on algorithms that make/assist sensitive decisions affecting people’s lives.

Methodology/approach: In-depth interviews were conducted with DXs (24) in Estonia and refugees (19) in Estonia and Turkey. Using projective techniques, the interviewees were provided a simple definition of PRSA and a photo to encourage them to share their perspectives. The authors applied thematic analysis to the data combining manual and computer-aided techniques using the Maxqda software.

Findings: The study revealed that the perspectives on PRSA may change depending on the individual’s position relative to the double security paradox surrounding refugees. The use of algorithms for a sensitive matter such as security raises concerns about potential social outcomes, intentions of authorities and fairness of the algorithms. The algorithms are perceived to construct further social borders in society and justify extant ideas about marginalized groups.

Research limitations: The study made use of a small population sample and aimed at exploring perspectives of refugees and DXs by taking PRSA as the case without targeting representativeness.

Originality/value: The study is based on a double security paradox where refugees who escape their homelands due to security concerns are also considered to be national security threats. DXs, on the other hand, represent a group that takes an active role in decisions about who is at risk and who is risky. The study provides insights on two groups of people who are engaged with algorithms in different ways.

Librarians have been urged to emphasize social justice and human rights issues in their library mission, but they may find themselves challenged to provide additional services, such as access to legal information for those who cannot afford an attorney. Social justice services in libraries are seldom adequately funded and providing services in this area is labor intensive. In addition, there is an emotional intensity in library services for social justice that is often not considered in the initial enthusiasm of providing services in this area. Yet there seems to be no limit to the need. An interesting and useful perspective on how a public agency such as a library responds in circumstances of limited resources and unlimited demand can be found in the book Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Service, by Michael Lipsky. In this perspective, lower level civil servants who interact directly with members of the general public exercise a level of discretion in the amount of services provided and how those services are administered. This chapter explores how this can generate tensions between more traditional library bureaucracy and social justice services, such as providing public access to justice resources in law libraries. However, the “street-level” response is evolving into a sustainability perspective as librarians embrace a more social justice–oriented outlook in library service planning.

Motion pictures can serve as an educational tool to shed light on ethical issues in the health insurance industry. To the chagrin of the health insurance industry, this light has oftentimes been unfavorable, as illustrated in such motion pictures as: Damaged Care (Winer, 2002), John Q (Cassavetes, 2002), and The Rainmaker (Coppola, 1997). In reaction to this unfavorable portrayal, health maintenance organizations have taken action to cast themselves in a more positive light. The objectives of this article are: to demonstrate how motion pictures that feature the health insurance industry can serve as a vehicle to illustrate management concepts such as planning, decision making, ethics, and conflict resolution; and to underscore the interrelationships and mutual dependencies of the ethical decisions, the decision-makers, and the context of the ethical dilemmas. Suggestions on how environmental response strategies can be used to improve public perceptions of the health insurance industry are also provided. The teaching method proposed in this article can be used in undergraduate level and graduate level principles of management, organizational behavior, and ethics courses.