Search results

This paper revisits old questions of the proper subject and bounds of economics: does economics study “provisioning”? or markets? or a method of reasoning, self‐interested rational optimization?

A variety of scholars and others in many fields make use of a taxonomy of society consisting of three “spheres”: markets, governments, and communities. It is argued here that this tripartite taxonomy of society is fundamental and exhaustive. A variety of ways of understanding this taxonomy are explored, especially Fiske's (1991, 2004) “Relational models theory.” Then – after communities and their products, social goods, are defined more thoroughly – a visual model of interactions among the three spheres is presented.

The model is first used briefly to understand the historical development of markets. The model is then applied to understanding how economic thinking and market ideology, including the notion of social capital, can be destructive of communities and their production of social goods (and their production of social capital as well).

It is not possible to measure these effects monetarily, so calculating precisely “how this affects results” in a standard economic model is impossible.

Nevertheless we could better prepare students for real‐world analysis, and better serve our clients, including the public, if – whenever relevant, such as in textbook introductions and in benefit/cost analyses – we made them aware of the limitations of economic analysis with respect to communities and social goods.

The three‐spheres model offered here, based on Fiske's “Relational models theory,” facilitates this awareness.

The purpose of this paper is to present a conference report on the unique organizational features and the common themes found among the three keynote speeches of the Library 2.011 World Wide Virtual Conference held on the internet on November 2‐4, 2011.

This report was generated based on the author’s personal participation and observation of a virtual conference and a descriptive method was used to report on and summarize the major subjects of three keynote presentations.

The paper finds that Library 2.0 is still a live practice among libraries, and the concept itself has become an inspiring theoretical starting point for re‐examining information profession, information literacy, and information management behaviours.

This article sorts out the theoretical directions of Library 2.0’s research, which will provide a reflective and guiding tool for evaluating current library practice and designing future innovative library services.

The purpose of this paper is to report on a study which has been carried out on a timber floor construction above a ground‐supported concrete slab, which was used in small detached houses built in Sweden during the period 1960‐1990. This method of building has turned out to be a risky construction nowadays, but there are 800,000 houses built this way in Sweden.

By using the patented Air Gap Method inside building constructions, harmful water can be dried out. The method ventilates air gaps inside walls and floors with an air flow driven by thermal buoyancy caused by a heating cable in the vertical air gaps. The drying out process has been studied both by measuring the moisture level in the slab and also by measuring the humidity transport and comparing this with air flow measurements.

The paper shows that the Air Gap Method manages to dry out water from both the slab and the overlaying wooden construction. The study shows also that the relative humidity (RH) levels in the air space below the floor are reduced in a significant way, thus minimizing mould growth. It is also shown that a thin layer of concrete upon floor beams prevents mould to grow even in a humid situation.

The research reported in this paper is only concerned with timber‐framed small detached houses. Similar studies of apartment buildings are ongoing.

The Air Gap Method can thus be useful in the context of renovating a water damaged house of this type built during this 30‐year period. The method provides a possibility of drying out such damage without a separate drying period. The inhabitants could therefore be able to use a renovated water‐damaged kitchen six/eight weeks earlier compared to ordinary building methods.

The paper is useful because it provides better understanding of the mechanism of RH inside a building construction and how this parameter could be lowered. The paper is also useful in the context of renovating water‐damaged small detached houses built by the risky method of construction used in the last decades of the twentieth century.

ATTENDANCE at only two or three days of IFLA's five‐day conference held at Toronto in August is enough to convince one of the great—and potentially much greater—value of this organization to the improvement of libraries throughout the world.

The purpose of the article is to present MARC, a model for assessing – and improving – the health of organisations from a humanistic point of view.

The model has been developed in an organisational development clinical research tradition. The validity of the model rests on logical reasoning grounded in organisational and salutogenic research, and on it appearing useful to clients and members in organisations where it has been employed.

When using the MARC model to structure analyses and facilitate discussions in organisations that have sought aid, the model has helped reveal major sources of imbalance between its four aspects: meaning, authority, rationality and care. A major survey revealed no statistically significant differences between men and women. This indicates that the MARC concepts are general rather than gender‐specific. The results also contradicted the often stated notion that men emphasise “hard” aspects (A and R) while women emphasise “soft” ones (M and C).

The paper demonstrates that support for the importance of each of the four aspects – meaning, authority, rationality and care – as perspectives in analysing and understanding organisations can be found in the organisational research literature. The authors' contribution is to argue the case that they represent four important human needs that need to be attended to in balance in an organisation if cooperation between the individuals in the organisation is to be sustainable from a human‐centred perspective. MARC is designed to help visualise and focus this balance.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the manner in which advocates of crowdsourcing reconfigure the classical sociological treatment of the crowd.

The approach taken conceives of the semantics of crowd theorizing in three phases, each of which makes sense of the power dynamics between the elite and the crowd. In phases one and two, the crowd is conceptualized as a problem generator; in phase three, the crowd is depicted as a problem solver and innovator.

This paper provides a critical look at phase three crowd theorizing. It explores how, by ignoring the disruptive power dynamic, crowdsourcing generates a credible image of the crowd as an innovator and problem solver. The work concludes with a discussion of the implications of phase three crowd theorizing for researchers in sociology.

Advocates of the wisdom of crowds, if interested in the sociological implications of their position, must attend to both the disruptive and costly implications of third phase crowd theorizing.

This paper maps the crowdsourcing process and places it in context. It argues that the distance between the classical social scientific treatment of the crowd is not nearly as great as crowdsourcing advocates would have one believe. Nevertheless, phase three crowd theorizing opens up sociologically relevant questions regarding the future portrayal of collective intelligence as a form of virtual property.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

THE above question was included in the speech by Mr. Folke Lindskog, SKF Group President and Chairman of the Board, when welcoming the press to their new European Research Centre at Jutphaas, near Utrecht, Holland, prior to the official opening on Wednesday, 19th April, by HRH Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, in the presence of HRH Prince Bertil of Sweden.

The purpose of this paper is to address the gap between management research and management practice by suggesting that, in addition to rigor and relevance, management knowledge should be actionable to be of practical value. To this end, an index for evaluating actionability is proposed and empirically tested.

Based on reflective and formative conceptualizations of actionability and a critical review of both evidence-based management (EBMgt) and evidence-based medicine literature, the authors developed 40 items that would best represent attributes of actionable research. The authors asked 187 management scholars, members of the editorial boards of influential management journals, and practicing managers to rank the extent to which each item was important to their perceptions of research to be actionable in practice. The authors treated actionability as a two-level construct consisting of first-order reflective factors and second-order formative ones.

Using principal component analysis with varimax rotation six factors were extracted, explaining 68 percent of variance in actionability: operationality, which also included items from causality; contextuality; comprehensiveness; persuasiveness, which split into two dimensions of rigor and unbiasedness; and lastly comprehensibility. Using partial least squares analysis, the authors demonstrated that these six factors formatively contribute to an overall index of actionability of management research.

The index offers an empirical measure to advance research on EBMgt by facilitating theory testing in different management contexts.

The developed index promotes EBMgt by providing producers, disseminators, and users of management knowledge with a metric to appraise actionability of management knowledge.

This index is the first theory-based and empirically tested tool for effectively evaluating the practical value of management research.

This paper introduces the second part of a AAAJ special issue on accounting, accountability and management during the COVID-19 emergency. The authors analyse the themes that emerge from the second part of the special issue, which allows us to identify the diverse accounting and accountability practices across different geographical and organisational contexts. The authors also provide an overall picture of the contributions of the special issue, with insights into avenues of future research.

Building on the first part of the AAAJ special issue, the paper draws together and identifies additional emerging themes related to research into the COVID-19 pandemic and how it impacts accounting, accountability and management practices. The authors reflect on the contributions of the special issue to the interdisciplinary accounting research project.

The authors identify two macro-themes and outline their contributions to the accounting literature. The first deals with the changes and dangers of accounting and accountability practices during the pandemic. The second considers accountability practices in a broader sense, including reporting, disclosure and rhetorical practices in the management of COVID-19.

The paper shows the pervasive role of accounting and accountability in the unprecedented and indiscriminate health crisis of COVID-19. It highlights the important role of special issues in producing timely research that responds to unfolding events.

This paper contributes to current debates on the roles of accounting and accountability during COVID-19 by drawing together the themes of the special issue and identifying future interdisciplinary accounting research on the pandemic's aftermath.