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How do radical technological fields become naturalized and taken for granted? This is a fundamental question given both the positive and negative hype surrounding the emergence of many new technologies. In this chapter, we study the emergence of the US nanotechnology field, focusing on uncovering the mechanisms by which leaders of the National Nanotechnology Initiative managed hype and its concomitant legitimacy challenges which threatened the commercial viability of nanotechnology. Drawing on the cultural entrepreneurship literature at the interface of strategy and organization theory, we argue that the construction of a naturalizing frame – a frame that focuses attention and practice on mundane, “rationalized” activity – is key to legitimating a novel and uncertain technological field. Leveraging the insights from our case study, we further develop a staged process model of how a naturalizing frame may be constructed, thereby paving the way for a decrease in hype and the institutionalization of new technologies.

The purpose of this paper is to test if activism by civil society organisations (CSOs hereafter) in successfully mobilising resistance to the Government of Ghana “collateralization” of gold resources and other mineral royalties in 2020 (dubbed the “Agyapa deal”) espouse tenets of Foucault’s (2009) “governmentality” and “counter conduct” dispositions.

This paper draws on Dean’s (1999) discussion of government analytics to highlight how CSO activism can simultaneously challenge government practice and share in it. This paper uses an evidence-based and interpretive qualitative content analysis approach. This paper relied on secondary data sources from 1 January 2020 to 21 August 2021. Data collection involved an extensive review of secondary materials concerning the Agyapa deal, relying on the author's local knowledge to identify the likely sources of information.

This paper exposes how the counteractions of CSOs, underpinned by the desire for so-called “good governance”, invariably extend governmentality and other neo-liberal ideals. In this case, CSOs' actions espoused the ideals of marketisation, extended governable spaces, engrained subjectivation and treated citizens as incapable of formulating and advancing their desires without overt help. Secondly, it provides evidence that massive deployment of accountability and other calculable practices, however wilful, complement efforts at shaping public opinion.

CSO counter-conduct is merely symbolic rather than substantive. Substantive counter-conduct requires the citizenry to actively lead the problematisation process, holding CSOs accountable for acting on their behalf. The current trajectory where CSO accountability is primarily to their international financiers, predominantly neo-liberal advocates, raises questions about “in whose interest they seek another form of governance?” Practically, the splinter of interests that may emanate from citizenry directly led counter-conduct can affect garnering the critical mass needed to force a policy change. That said, however, there is a case for citizenry “making themselves” rather than “being made” within the governmentality process.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first application of the Foucauldian and Dean framework to a data set from Ghana.

The current era of the fourth industrial revolution has attracted significant research on the use of digital technologies in improving construction project delivery. However, less emphasis has been placed on how these digital tools will influence the management of the construction workforce. To this end, using a review of existing works, this chapter explores the fourth industrial revolution and its associated technologies that can positively impact the management of the construction workforce when implemented. Also, the possible challenges that might truncate the successful deployment of digital technologies for effective workforce management were explored. The chapter submitted that implementing workforce management-specific digital platforms and other digital technologies designed for project delivery can aid effective workforce management within construction organisations. Technologies such as cloud computing, the Internet of Things, big data analytics, robotics and automation, and artificial intelligence, among others, offer significant benefits to the effective workforce management of construction organisations. However, several challenges, such as resistance to change due to fear of job loss, cost of investment in digital tools, organisational structure and culture, must be carefully considered as they might affect the successful use of digital tools and by extension, impact the success of workforce management in the organisations.

Behavioral economics poses a challenge for the welfare evaluation of choices, particularly those that involve risk. It demands that we recognize that the descriptive account of behavior toward those choices might not be the ones we were all taught, and still teach, and that subjective risk perceptions might not accord with expert assessments of probabilities. In addition to these challenges, we are faced with the need to jettison naive notions of revealed preferences, according to which every choice by a subject expresses her objective function, as behavioral evidence forces us to confront pervasive inconsistencies and noise in a typical individual’s choice data. A principled account of errant choice must be built into models used for identification and estimation. These challenges demand close attention to the methodological claims often used to justify policy interventions. They also require, we argue, closer attention by economists to relevant contributions from cognitive science. We propose that a quantitative application of the “intentional stance” of Dennett provides a coherent, attractive and general approach to behavioral welfare economics.

High-density development requires large land parcels, but fragmented land ownership can impede redevelopment. While earlier compact city development in Sydney occurred on large-scale brownfield sites, redeveloping and re-amalgamating older strata-titled properties is now integral to further densification. The purpose of this study is to examine collective sales activity in one Sydney suburb where multiple strata-titled redevelopments and re-amalgamations have been attempted. The authors explore how owners navigate the process of selling collectively, focusing on their experience of legislation introduced to facilitate this process, the Strata Schemes Development Act 2015 [New South Wales (NSW)].

By reviewing sales listings, development applications and media coverage, and interviewing owners, lawyers and estate agents, the authors map out collective sale activity in a case study area in Sydney’s northwest.

Strata collective sales are slow and difficult to complete, even when planning and market drivers align. Owners find the Strata Scheme Development Act 2015 (NSW) difficult to navigate and it has not prevented strategic blocking attempts by competing developers. The long timelines required to organise collective sales can result in failure if the market shifts in the interim. Nonetheless, owners remain interested in selling collectively.

This case study is important for understanding the barriers to redevelopment to achieve a more compact city. It highlights lessons for other jurisdictions considering similar legislative changes. It also suggests that legislative change alone is insufficient to resolve the planning challenges created by hyper-fragmentation of land through strata-title development.

Northwest Nigeria is mostly populated by the Hausa and Fulani ethnic groups. Social inclusions and gender equality are listed among the fundamental rights. They are essential for human being to put up their best efforts in resolving all difficulties without restraint. Nonetheless, these rights are frequently withheld in many nations within the African continent, owing to ignorance, religion and custom fanaticism. In spite of these constraints, the northern Nigeria is faced with security issues such as persistent cattle rustling which ultimately evolved into armed banditry, which have exacerbated some lingering issues that revolves around children and women. This study attempts to examine the nature of the crisis that may relates to gender-based issues in Zamfara state. The article relied mostly on secondary literature. Evidences proved that security difficulties have worsened the living circumstances of women and girls in the understudied state, thereby espousing women and girls to dangerous attacks and hard living.

Shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) across the United States at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic created entrepreneurial opportunities for sewists and makers. In the United States in March and April 2020, masks were not readily available to the general public from existing retailers and PPE for medical use was being rationed for healthcare workers. Sewists and crafters, professionals and amateurs alike, began making and selling and/or donating masks. For individuals with sewing skills and time, sewing and selling masks became a lifeline financially, personally, and socially. To understand the experiences of people who made and distributed handmade masks during the early months of the pandemic in the United States, an interdisciplinary team developed an online cross-sectional survey instrument using a qualitative-dominated approach with both open and closed questions. This chapter explores themes identified from a sample of 94 participants, predominantly female-identifying, who created an enterprise or added a product line to an existing business. The sample includes individuals who did not identify as a ‘creative entrepreneur’ prior to the pandemic but did identify as an entrepreneur after starting a mask-making venture. Informed by entrepreneurship literature, the authors observed that these nascent entrepreneurs articulated recognisable motivations for social entrepreneurship, showed signs of pre-existing entrepreneurial mindsets, and employed business models and marketing tactics of entrepreneurs, largely without any business training. Implications for the study include increased recognition of latent entrepreneurial readiness, interest of women in social entrepreneurship, and higher levels of business knowledge among women than previously recognised.

The purpose of this study is to investigate if a firm's exchange complexity profile (that is, the linkages between the firm and its environment) influences investor behavior at the negotiation table where a firm valuation is derived.

The authors utilize Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). Specifically, the authors utilize fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), a QCA variant that allows the researcher to assign graduated membership in sets.

When the authors dichotomize their positions as either higher stakes that favor the seller (high capital, low equity, high valuation) or lower stakes that favor the buyer (low capital, high equity, low valuation), and when the authors focus primarily on the equity outcome, the authors find that investors adopt a reductionist stance that adheres to a transaction cost economics logic under conditions of lower stakes and higher complexity as well as higher stakes and lower complexity conditions. The authors interpret this to mean that equity serves as a counter-balancing lever for a firm's exchange complexity configuration.

On a theoretical level, the authors showcase the exchange complexity framework and differentiate its position within the extant frameworks that address a firm's competitive advantage. More generally, the authors note that this framework brings the discipline of micro-economics and the field of strategic management closer together, providing scholars with a new tool enabling research across industries for the portfolio level of analysis.