Search results

To date knowledge management within learning organizations has focussed upon maximizing possibilities to create knowledge while minimizing the chances of losing knowledge. However, knowledge management needs to consider a third option: dealing with orphan knowledge. There are situations where organizations forget things and repeat past mistakes. Do organizations really “unlearn” or just merely forget? In answering in the affirmative to this question, various scenarios are presented which may lead to creating orphan knowledge, knowledge forgotten, separated, or isolated within the organization. Orphan knowledge management needs to consider different knowledge types and their ease or otherwise of becoming orphaned. Orphan knowledge management should begin with a status assessment of the organization’s true “knowledge position”. Processes of orphan knowledge recovery or the development of strategies to minimize orphan knowledge should play a significant part in any organization’s strategic knowledge management plan. Within this context the role of the chief knowledge officer is seen as an important part of this strategic knowledge management plan.

Over the past decade, and coinciding with the rise in HIV/AIDS incidence, there has been a spectacular increase in the number of orphans in Malawi. Few orphans eat as many as two poor meals a day; most have few clothes, no shoes, bedding or soap. Hungry, poorly clothed children do not go to school or if they go, do not stay. Without completing at least primary school, job prospects are low. Without education or work orphans remain poor and become involve in casual sexual relationships. Orphans give birth to orphans. Those who are HIV positive give birth to those who are susceptible to HIV. Cycles of poverty, orphanhood and HIV/AIDS continue.

We examine the effect of orphan status on school enrollment in Zimbabwe, a country strongly impacted by the HIV/AIDS pandemic with a rapidly growing population of orphans. Using data from 2002, after controlling for other determinants of enrollment we find that orphans are less likely to attend school than non-orphans. Two additional results have implications for targeting: we find that the effect of being an orphan is especially large for older children and that, after controlling for previous education, the effect of being an orphan on school enrollment sharply declines.

This article aims to provide a description of principal aspects of policy and practice associated with orphan drugs and treatments of rare diseases, and give perspectives for 2011 on new and emerging approaches for addressing patient access.

Information has been synthesized from a wide variety of sources including the authors' experience and familiarity with this topic, having over the past ten years developed market access strategies for many orphan drugs. This is supplemented by pertinent information from conferences, meetings and articles published over the last 20 years and from policy documents released by relevant regulatory bodies.

While a small number of people suffer from any one rare disease, approximately 30 million in the EU and 25 million in the USA are affected by such diseases. Annual orphan drug treatment costs may approach $500,000. High costs coupled with relatively sparse supportive clinical data and difficulty in meeting standard cost‐effectiveness benchmarks raise significant issues for payers in allocating finite budgetary resources. Since the US (1983) and European (European Parliament, 2000) orphan drug regulations were approved, hundreds of agents have been granted orphan status although many fewer have achieved marketing authorization. Agencies have introduced a slew of incentives to help sponsors develop and market orphan medicinal products. The nature and focus of the programs are undergoing a metamorphosis as access to funding is becoming as important as supporting development.

The article represents a contemporary examination of orphan drug policy and practice, bringing together historic elements which influenced practice up to 2010 and the latest, emerging trends and approaches which stakeholders are now embracing and which will shape procedures from 2011.

The Orphan Drug Act has provided the pharmaceutical industry with incentives to research and develop drugs for orphan diseases: rare diseases with little profit potential. It is considered very successful legislation by legal scholars, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and orphan drug activists. The policy process of the Act provides an important model of the policy process for future incentive-based pharmaceutical legislation. The purpose of this paper is to summarize the important incentives of the Act and the historical events leading up to the Act. The paper applies three different theoretical models of the public policy process to understand the emergence of the Orphan Drug Act: Kingdon’s Multiple Streams Model, the Advocacy Coalition Framework, and Social Constructionism Theory. The paper then synthesizes the public policy process lessons from each perspective and provides four recommendations for other social activists seeking to propel incentive-based pharmaceutical legislation for under-researched diseases.

The author analyzes the history of the Orphan Drug Act based on publicly available scholarly research, government documents, and interest group publications. The author then applies three public policy theories to the history of the Orphan Drug Act to explain the emergence of the Act and to extract policy process lessons for future disease activists.

Regardless of which theoretical perspective the Orphan Drug Act is analyzed from, some common themes of the policy process emerge. First, focussing events are instrumental in capturing the public’s sympathy and Congress’s attention. Second, in its activities and proposed legislation, a coalition should provide a role for all relevant and important actors. Third, the target groups of the legislation were construed positively, increasing the pressure for Congressmen to pass some kind of bill. Finally, the proper construction of “the problem” is instrumental to passing effective legislation as a “solution.”

The Orphan Drug Act is widely considered successful incentive-based pharmaceutical legislation. However, because it was originally passed in 1983 and has not had public attention since the early 1990s (when it was amended), it has rarely been written about in recent years. However, its lessons are still highly relevant to policy activists, especially disease activists. Furthermore, existing articles focus on the impact of the legislation and ways to amend it, rather than on the passage of the Act.

The purpose of this paper is to inspect the potential mediation pathways among emotional empathy, personality traits and coping strategies in orphan and non-orphan students. Additionally, it designed to investigate the association of coping strategies with emotional empathy and personality traits.

Purposive sampling technique and cross-sectional design were employed in current study. The data of 130 adolescents (institutionalized orphans, n= 62; school students, n=68) were included from different high schools and orphanages of Rawalpindi and Islamabad, Pakistan, in 2017. Three instruments, emotional empathy scale (Mehrabian and Epstein, 1972; Shazia, 2004), coping of problem experience (Carver, 1989; Akhtar, 2005), and Eysenck personality questionnaire (Naqvi and Kamal, 2010; Eysenck, 1964; Eysenck and Eysenck, 1994), were employed to measure personality traits, emotional empathy and coping strategies in orphan and non-orphan students.

Mediation analyses illustrated that personality traits relegated active avoidance coping strategy through emotional empathy in orphan students. On contrary, the study findings demonstrated that neurotic personality promoted positive coping strategy through emotional empathy in non-orphan students.

The methodological limitations of this study are that the sample is of 130 participants that limits the generalizability of its results; furthermore, it was done on only the male orphans students of only one institute. Further research can be done on different orphanages to enhance the generalizability of results. This study included orphan and non-orphan students from the two cities of Pakistan; consequently, its findings may not be generalizable to the whole population. In the future, cross-sectional and experimental researches working with more assorted data could help elucidate the mechanisms by which interpersonal factors affect and stimulate coping strategies in orphans and high school students.

This paper exposes a number of ways for upcoming future studies. This study findings can be employed to enhance knowledge and offer assistance for orphans, on how to identify and get help from coping resources to tackle various problems and how to build new psychological preventions and interventions strategies in the Pakistani society. There still exists a need to find out the effect of emotion, empathy on personality types in relation to different environmental conditions. The findings have implications for pedagogical intervention as such improvements can be initiated in the pedagogical context.

This study comprised only orphan and non-orphan students from two twin cities of Pakistan; consequently, its findings may not be applicable to the whole population. In future, cross-sectional and experimental researches with more assorted data will assist clarify the mechanism that interpersonal factors affect and stimulate coping strategies in high school students.

Study findings proposed that coping strategies can be promoted by interpersonal factors such as personality traits and empathy to tackle different orphan’s psychological problem in various negative situation.

The inability of cultural institutions to make available digital reproductions of collected material highlights a shortcoming with the existing copyright framework in a number of national jurisdictions. Overlapping efforts to remedy the situation were recently undertaken in the form of EU Directive 2012/28/EU, the “Orphan Works” directive, and a new licensing scheme introduced by the UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO). The purpose of this paper is to empirically evaluate both the EU and UK policy approaches, drawing on data collected during a live rights clearance simulation.

The authors attempted to clear rights in a sample of 432 items contained in the mixed-media Edwin Morgan Scrapbooks collection held by the University of Glasgow Library. Data were collected on the resource costs incurred at each stage of the rights clearance process, from initial audit of the collection, through to compliance with diligent search requirements under EU Directive 2012/28/EU and the UKIPO licensing procedures.

Comparing results against the two current policy options for the use of orphan works, the authors find that the UKIPO licensing scheme offers a moderate degree of legal certainty but also the highest cost to institutions (the cost of diligent search in addition to licence fees). The EU exception to copyright provides less legal certainty in the case of rightsholder re-emergence, but also retains high diligent search costs. Both policy options may be suitable for institutions wishing to make use of a small number of high-risk works, but neither approach is currently suitable for mass digitisation.

This rights clearance exercise is focussed on a single case study with unique properties (with a high proportion of partial works embedded in a work of bricolage). Consequently, the results obtained in this study reflect differences from simulation studies on other types of orphan works. However, by adopting similar methodological and reporting standards to previous empirical studies, the authors can compare rights clearance costs between collections of different works.

This study is the first to empirically assess the 2014 UK orphan works licensing scheme from an institutional perspective. The authors hope that it will contribute to an understanding of how policy could more effectively assist libraries and archives in their digitisation efforts.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the socio-economic impacts of AIDS on families caring for AIDS-orphaned children in Mbeya rural district, Tanzania.

A qualitative inquiry employing one-on-one in-depth interviews was conducted in 2015. Purposive sampling technique was used to recruit participants (n=24) comprising 20 heads of families caring for AIDS-orphaned children, two local government staff and two staff from Isangati Agricultural Development Organisation – a non-government organisation. Qualitative data were analysed using thematic and framework approach.

Results demonstrated that families caring for AIDS-orphaned children experienced severe socio-economic impacts of the epidemic. Reduction in household savings, increase in living expenses on health care and increased education fees were the identified economic impacts on these families. Social impacts included labour shortage, withdrawal of children from school and increased demand for food.

There is a need for urgent responses and for scaling up programmes delivered by organisations, institutions and the government of Tanzania to help families cope with these impacts.

This study provides evidence on socio-economic impacts of AIDS on families caring for AIDS-orphaned children in Tanzania. An understanding of these impacts can help governmental and non-governmental institutions and programme planners to address the problem in their policies and develop evidence-based strategies and interventions in responding to the problem in Mbeya and Tanzania. Moreover, responses to reducing the impacts of AIDS on families require a holistic approach that encourages the involvement of all sectors and agents outside of the health sector.

The purpose of this study was to gather data from orphaned learners on their lived experiences in order to gain more understanding of their educational needs. Twelve orphaned learners (aged 14‐17) from two schools in Mpumalanga Province in South Africa participated in the study. The draw‐write and narrative approach was used to elicit information from the children. The methodological, ethical and practical issues emerging from researching orphans using this approach are discussed and illustrated using examples from the study. The article demonstrates that integrating visual, written and interview data collection methods may enable vulnerable children to open up and talk about their experiences. However, it requires the researcher to be patient, sensitive and empathetic to the circumstances of such children.

To date, managing intellectual capital has focussed on maximising possibilities to create knowledge, while minimising chances of losing knowledge. However, effective intellectual capital management should consider another dimension: orphan knowledge. Orphan knowledge relates to questions such as: Do organisations “unlearn” things or forget things and repeat past mistakes? Do some organisations unnecessarily duplicate equivalent activities within different areas of the organisation? If orphan knowledge exists, then organisations need to understand their potential for creating orphan knowledge. This paper defines orphan knowledge, and provides evidence of its potential by developing various scenarios and relating case‐study analysis from a sample of Australasian organisations. Indications are that even in organisations considered current “best practice” in managing intellectual capital, there is a medium to high potential for orphan knowledge to be created. Future research will determine whether different knowledge types, namely explicit versus tacit knowledge, have differing potentials for knowledge orphaning. Further research will consider the chief knowledge officer’s role in preventing and recovering organisation orphan knowledge.