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This paper proposes a way to integrate three different analytical approaches into a consistent framework of national systems of innovation that can benefit academia and policy makers. The approaches include the traditional structural method of national systems of innovation, the new development of functional view of national systems of innovation, and the effective approach.

As a theoretical research paper, the paper reviews and analyses intensive literature on national system of innovation from the perspectives of functional, structural, and effectiveness approaches.

The paper argues that these three approaches reflect different perspectives of national systems of innovation. Instead of contradicting each other, they could be integrated into a coherent framework.

The paper builds an integrative framework to bring different methods of national systems of innovation together. It provides an integrative framework for academy and policy makers to more comprehensively understand the concept of national systems of innovation and further policy design and implementation.

This paper aims to contribute to the debate of knowledge spillover by presenting a new application for the approach of the technological innovation system (TIS).

Based on the evolutionary economics of the TIS approach, a new framework for knowledge spillover is built and applied to a case. To collect data in studying the case, a mix of quantitative–qualitative methods are used.

TIS approach can help build a framework to analyze knowledge spillover from defense to the civil sector. This framework shows the direct relationship between the functional dynamics of the system and the spillover mechanism..

Sharing the same weakness as TIS, the suggested framework does not pay attention to the contextual factors.

This framework is an analytical tool. It could be used for educational and research purposes, but it has limited power to devise policy guidelines.

This framework is an analytical tool. It could be used for educational and research purposes. But it has limited power to devise policy guidelines.

The paper deviates from the conventional literature of knowledge spillover which uses national level of system analysis. Based on TIS, it adds a new perspective to the literature which had suffered from a limited value of generalizability.

The purpose of this chapter is to apply structural functional theory and the concept of “unbundling” to an analysis of the deinstitutionalization and community mental health efforts that have shaped the current mental health services environment.

We examine the original goals of the institutional movement, the arguments supporting it, and the functions of the institutions that were created. We then examine the criticisms of that approach and the success of the subsequent deinstitutionalization process, which attempted to undo this process by recreating the hospitals’ functions in community settings. Finally, we address the question of whether the critical functions of psychiatric institutions have indeed been adequately recreated.

Our overview of outcomes from this process suggests that the unbundling of state hospital functions did not yield an adequate system of care and support, and that the functions of state hospitals, including social control and incapacitation with respect to public displays of deviance were not sufficiently recreated in the community-based settings.

The arguments for the construction of state hospitals, the critiques of those settings, and the current criticism of efforts to replace their functions are eerily similar. Actors involved in the design of mental health services should take into account the functions of existing services and the gaps between them. Consideration of the history of efforts at functional change might also serve this process well.

Public administration as an aspect of governmental activity has existed as long as political systems have been functioning and trying to achieve program objectives set by the political decision-makers. Public administration as a field of systematic study is much more recent. Advisers to rulers and commentators on the workings of government have recorded their observations from time to time in sources as varied as Kautilya's Arthasastra in ancient India, the Bible, Aristotle's Politics, and Machiavelli's The Prince, but it was not until the eighteenth century that cameralism, concerned with the systematic management of governmental affairs, became a specialty of German scholars in Western Europe. In the United States, such a development did not take place until the latter part of the nineteenth century, with the publication in 1887 of Woodrow Wilson's famous essay, “The Study of Administration,” generally considered the starting point. Since that time, public administration has become a well-recognized area of specialized interest, either as a subfield of political science or as an academic discipline in its own right.

Use of digital media channels is growing in public communication. Given the importance of public trust in government figures and agencies, combined with the risk and fear of misrepresentation inherent in online interaction, it is important to develop theoretical frameworks for investigating the ways in which authenticity is constructed in online public affairs communication. The purpose of this paper is to produce a preliminary model of authenticity in online communication, with particular emphasis on public institutions.

The paper first develops a theoretical model of authenticity from existing literature in various disciplines. It then uses that model to explore a quantitative and qualitative content analysis of the comments on the US State Department blog, DipNote, from its inception to the end of the Bush Administration.

Despite limited interactions between DipNote authors and commenters, the types and quantity of responses to posts indicate a desire by some readers to discuss the topics raised in the blog space. These responses also suggest that at least some commenters find that the blog meets their criteria for authenticity to the extent necessary to engage in community‐type interaction within its virtual boundaries. A functional‐structural analysis of the blog responses supports the essential components of the theoretical model proposed, which suggests that DipNote presents a mixed form of authenticity.

Authenticity is particularly important in the public sphere, and public institutions are increasingly engaging with social media as a means of connecting with constituencies. This paper proposes a starting‐point for theory development regarding this significant emerging area of communication.

The purpose of this paper is to show how the viable system model (VSM) and de Sitter's design theory can complement each other in the context of the diagnosis and design of viable organizations.

Key concepts from Beer's model and de Sitter's design theory are introduced and analyzed in order to show how they relate.

The VSM provides insight into the related systems necessary and sufficient for viability. As such, it specifies criteria supporting the diagnosis and design of organizational infrastructures, i.e. of organizational structures, HR systems, and technology. However, it does not explicitly conceptualize and provide a detailed heuristic for the design of organizational structures. De Sitter's theory fills in this gap.

The paper illustrates how, based on a rudimentary model of organizational viability, de Sitter's design theory positively addresses the question of how to diagnose and design organizational structures that add to the viability of organizations.

This paper aims to show how a sociological description – a swarm analysis of the Nazi dictatorship – initially made with the means borrowed from George Spencer-Brown’s Calculus of Indications, can be transformed into a digital circuit and with which methods and tools of digital mathematics this digital circuit can be analyzed and described in its behavior. Thus, the paper also aims to contribute to a better understanding of Chapter 11 of “Laws of Form.”

The analysis uses methods of automata theory for finite, deterministic automata. Basic set operations of digital mathematics and special set operations of the Boolean Differential Calculus are used to calculate digital circuits. The software used is based on ternary logic, in which the binary Boolean logic of the elements {0, 1} is extended by the third element “Don’t care” to {0, 1, −}.

The paper confirms the method of transforming a form into a digital circuit derived from the comparative functional and structural analysis of the Modulator from Chapter 11 of “Laws of Form” and defines general rules for this transformation. It is shown how the indeterminacy of re-entrant forms can be resolved in the medium of time using the methods of automata theory. On this basis, a refined definition of the degree of a form is presented.

The paper shows the potential of interdisciplinary approaches between sociology and information technology and provides methods and tools of digital mathematics such as ternary logic, Boolean Differential Calculus and automata theory for application in sociology.