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1 – 10 of 687Julie Berg and Clifford Shearing
Policing in much of the developing world has always been, in many respects, both dominated by the nonstate and pluralised. Yet, plurality and the nonstate are predominantly…
Abstract
Policing in much of the developing world has always been, in many respects, both dominated by the nonstate and pluralised. Yet, plurality and the nonstate are predominantly conceptualised, by scholars and practitioners alike, as problematic, noninclusive and/or undemocratic. Yet the reality is far more complex than this. In this chapter, we turn the tables on conventional wisdom by looking to the positive features of plural or polycentric forms of security governance by asking how these features might be utilised to provide for more inclusive forms of security governance in the Global South. Drawing on empirical research in South Africa on plural policing arrangements, this chapter considers how Sustainable Development Goal 16 which seeks to ‘promote peaceful and inclusive societies’ might be realised within plural governance systems. This chapter seeks to demonstrate that certain conditions need to be in place for plural or polycentric systems of security governance to coprovide effective and inclusive security for the collective good and, furthermore, that the positive features of the nonstate can be harnessed to give effect to the SDGs.
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Circular Economy is a policy and practice-oriented concept drawing mainly on engineering and natural science. This paper aims to contribute a conceptual development based on…
Abstract
Purpose
Circular Economy is a policy and practice-oriented concept drawing mainly on engineering and natural science. This paper aims to contribute a conceptual development based on social systems theory. Does the Circular Economy have the prospect to become a sustainability-enhancing feedback mechanism potentializing an evolutionary systemic rearrangement of structural couplings, and will it encounter limitations as a general approach for a sustainable development?
Design/methodology/approach
By using the Luhmannian theory as method, core concepts are semantics, structure and rearrangement of structural couplings. In acknowledging the social system’s operational closure, social-metabolism with nature is discussed. The research is in three stages. First, structural couplings of matter and social systems. Second, structural couplings of organizational networks closing the loop–eventually using digitalization. Third, the Circular Economy encountering multicontextuality.
Findings
The paper provides: (1) A four-stage structural coupling enacting metabolism with nature allowing measurement of circularity potentially useable for feedback “irritating” relevant social systems’ reflexion. (2) Identification of obstacles encountered in the proliferation due to paradoxes of strategic decisions in organizations, difficulties of structural couplings of organizational networks and the paradox of digitalization. (3) Help by future digitalization but simultaneously new side-effects. (4) The multicontextuality as the limitation for a broad sustainability approach.
Originality/value
The paper answers a call for more social science theoretical research on the Circular Economy. It develops core conceptualizations based on social systems theory. Also, advices for future research and practical implementation are suggested.
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This paper aims to clarify the character of globalization, to identify the changes it brings to structures of governance, and to consider ways in which these arrangements could be…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to clarify the character of globalization, to identify the changes it brings to structures of governance, and to consider ways in which these arrangements could be made to serve a good (more global) society.
Design/methodology/approach
This essay takes a reflective approach.
Findings
The paper considers the rules and regulatory processes that govern today's more global world. The first step in the analysis identifies globalization as a trend whereby people's lives become more interconnected on a planetary scale. The second section describes the institutional apparatuses through which global issues are governed. Global governance is seen to take shape not as a “world government”, but as a complex array of regulatory networks that span local to global scales and also combine public and private sectors. The third section assesses the normative values that this “networked” and “polycentric” governance of global affairs might serve. Both an earlier “neoliberal” design of global governance and a currently prevailing “social market” paradigm are critiqued. An alternative vision of global social and ecological democracy is offered as a more promising road to a good society in the contemporary more global world.
Practical implications
The paper suggests alternative guiding principles for governance of today's more global society, including the role of corporations in it.
Social implications
The paper suggests ways in which global governance can deliver social justice, ecological sustainability and democracy along with material prosperity.
Originality/value
The paper consolidates a conception of post‐statist governance that can aid researchers and practitioners alike in mapping the processes of contemporary policymaking. The normative framework presented can, moreover, help to clarify the objectives that citizens of a more global world would wish regulation to provide.
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The purpose is to investigate a position for engaged scholarship bridging the gulf between theorizing and practice in a social system perspective using Design Thinking for…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose is to investigate a position for engaged scholarship bridging the gulf between theorizing and practice in a social system perspective using Design Thinking for assisting the emergence of a semantic reservoir in a polycentric network “in spe”.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper combines social systems theory with the concept of engaged scholarship based on Design Thinking, and illustrates how such a research position might be applied to problems of polycentric networks as a theoretical/methodological case.
Findings
The paper concludes on a possible role for an engaged scholarship as a midwife assisting the emergence of a shared semantic reservoir that is needed to make commitments and couplings possible to become a polycentric network. Design Thinking is explained as a structured way to irritate (disturb) other systems, and the role of a shared semantic reservoir for a polycentric network “in spe” is accounted for.
Originality/value
Bridging the gulf between theorizing and practice in management theory is under-explored, and social systems theory underlines the immanent rigor-relevance gap, which this paper suggests a way not to overcome, but to bridge. The discussion of the rigor-relevance gap is revisited. Also, the critical process for a shared semantic reservoir to emerge in the formation of poly-centric networks is underexplored and so are its role for coupling of networks. The conceptual understanding thereof is also contributed to.
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Margit Neisig and Uffe K. Hansen
The chapter is based on the Social Foundation project: ‘Digital Pathways to Growth: Competency’ conducted in the region of Zealand in Denmark. The process of creating a…
Abstract
The chapter is based on the Social Foundation project: ‘Digital Pathways to Growth: Competency’ conducted in the region of Zealand in Denmark. The process of creating a multifunctional semantic – a competency model – is unfolded. Informed by social system theory the semantic required to enable dialogue in a polycentric network is analysed. The participants are various small and medium-sized enterprises, across many occupations and tasks, different types of educational and training organisations as well as process consultants from various knowledge institutions, labour unions and industrial interest organisations. The model is designed through a participatory process to help this polycentric network of organisations to build competencies for the digitalisation ahead.
We argue that design thinking and engaged scholarship in the construction of a multifunctional semantics – such as the competency model – is useful both as a practical method and as a semantic research strategy informed by social system theory. The role played by design thinking when developing the competency model as a multifunctional semantic is concluded and the future research outlined.
The research generates knowledge of practical value for networked collaboration in educational ‘ecologies’ as the need increases for stronger links between education, business and research, as well as the involvement of social partners and civil society to increase Europe’s innovation capacity as advised by both the OECD and the EU.
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The last few decades have seen the rapid emergence of two transformative streams in large firms. The first is the development of project management, aimed at improving the…
Abstract
Purpose
The last few decades have seen the rapid emergence of two transformative streams in large firms. The first is the development of project management, aimed at improving the performance of innovation management, while the second, the internationalization of innovation organizations and processes in response to strategies of redeployment toward emerging countries. Both streams have been closely analyzed in the fields of project management and international management, respectively. However, the links between the two have been less studied. The purpose of this paper is to consider the hypothesis that a firm’s projectification might have an important impact on its pattern of internationalization in innovation.
Design/methodology/approach
First, we present the models of internationalization of innovation processes used in the multinational corporation literature. This field essentially focuses on the components of permanent organizations: global internationalization strategy and legacy, R&D footprint, characterization of local subsidiaries and the role of central head offices. Projects figure only as a context in which those elements operate, not as a structuring variable of the global innovation process pattern. The authors challenge this view by exploring whether the specificities of the firm’s projectification pattern can influence how it builds its global innovation process. The paper is based on a longitudinal case where the authors analyze the organizational transition within the Renault group, an emblematic case of a multinational that implemented a spectacular internationalization transition in the 2000s.
Findings
Our results demonstrate project organizing’s major impact on the internationalization patterns of innovation processes within the firm. They show how the deployment of a polycentric innovation footprint has been the consequence of a specific projectification transition, giving the project and program functions the autonomy to transgress centralized product development norms to adapt their project to the local environment; use the initial breakthrough project as the foundation for a new and specific global product development network through a lineage logic; and sustain this innovation global network as a permanent process of the firm.
Research limitations/implications
The paper demonstrates the importance of the organization’s projectification characteristics as an important vector for successfully implementing the most advanced internationalization strategies (i.e. reverse innovation) and innovation processes models (i.e. integrated networks).
Practical implications
The paper characterizes project management related conditions that can govern the success of innovation strategies in high-growth emerging countries: the autonomy and empowerment of project functions; colocation and integration of teams; existence of a program function; and HR policies capable of supporting lineage management and project-to-project learning processes.
Originality/value
Bridging project management literature with multinational management literature. Demonstrate the key impact of projectification on internationalization pattern of the firm. Longitudinal analysis of a firm internationalization transition on a ten-year period.
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The purpose of this paper is the evaluation of the degree of sustainable urban development in Poland in terms of spatial management and laws applying to the process.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is the evaluation of the degree of sustainable urban development in Poland in terms of spatial management and laws applying to the process.
Design/methodology/approach
The study provides an analysis of the key legal bases fundamental to sustainable development. Instruments that can be used to implement development guidelines (strategy, budget, “the study”, local zoning plan), revitalisation processes and to identify barriers to sustainable urban development.
Findings
The paper finds a recognition of the main spatial and legal barriers to urban development. The lack of zoning plans in many cities delays new investments. Revitalisation programmes are essential for maintaining a sustainable and stable polycentric structure of cities and towns within regions and across the country as a whole.
Practical implications
Results of analysis describe the main barriers to urban development, while the lack of zoning plans and practical strategies mainly contribute to unsustainable development of cities. Long‐term planning requires more rigorous and coordinated measures on different levels of administration.
Originality/value
The paper provides specialists and students with a new look at sustainable urban development; the latter is assumed to not only be connected with economic, social and environmental spheres, but also with spatial spheres.
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Shipeng Wang, Lizhen Cui, Lei Liu, Xudong Lu and Qingzhong Li
The purpose of this paper is to build cyber-physical-psychological ternary fusion crowd intelligence network and realize comprehensive, real, correct and synchronous projection in…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to build cyber-physical-psychological ternary fusion crowd intelligence network and realize comprehensive, real, correct and synchronous projection in cyber–physical–psychological ternary fusion system. Since the network of crowd intelligence is the future interconnected network system that takes on the features of large scale, openness and self-organization. The Digital-selfs in the network of crowd intelligence interact and cooperate with each other to finish transactions and achieve co-evolution eventually.
Design/methodology/approach
To realize comprehensive, real, correct and synchronous projection between cyber–physical–psychological ternary fusion system, the authors propose the rules and methods of projection from real world to the CrowdIntell Network. They build the mental model of the Digital-self including structure model and behavior model in four aspects: identity, provision, demand and connection, thus forming a theoretical mental model framework of Digital-self.
Findings
The mental model is excepted to lay a foundation for the theory of modeling and simulation in the research of crowd science and engineering.
Originality/value
This paper is the first one to propose the mental model framework and projection rules and methods of Digital-selfs in network of crowd intelligence, which lays a solid foundation for the theory of modeling, simulation, intelligent transactions, evolution and stability of CrowdIntell Network system, thus promoting the development of crowd science and engineering.
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