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There are many cases where top management either missed or almost missed detecting or interpreting a major change in the environment that might have led them to a major setback. We propose a model of sensing in hierarchical organizations that describes a sequence of sensing and detecting changes in the environment, followed by successive stages of perception, interpretation, and finally action. We model an organization as a complex signal detection system, where the flow of information among members of the organization is constrained by two elements: the structure of the organization, which is defined by who reports to whom, and the attentional and cognitive limitations of the individuals. We infer the probability of sensing over time for different levels of environmental shocks and different organizational structures. By focusing on the (un)reliability of sensing and the information flow in different organizational structures, we are able to provide preliminary analysis of the trade-offs among cognitive limitations, speed of detection, modes of information flow, and the resulting performance measure of delay, false-alarms, and true detections.

This study examined sexual minority status on perceived sense of belonging and compared sexual minority students and exclusively heterosexual students as a function of participating in work-integrated learning (WIL).

A cross-sectional, quantitative design was used with participants grouped by sexual minority status and participation in WIL.

Sexual minority students (WIL and non-WIL) reported lower sense of belonging than exclusively heterosexual students (in WIL and non-WIL). Sexual minority students in WIL also reported significantly weaker sense of belonging compared to non-WIL sexual minority students suggesting that WIL presents some barriers to establishing a strong sense of belonging for sexual minority students.

The findings provide evidence for developing programs to ensure all students are in a safe environment where they can develop and strengthen their sense of belonging regardless of minority status. This is important given that a sense of belonging impacts mental health and overall well-being.

Crack sensor based on RFID tag has become a research hotspot in the field of metal structural health monitoring for its significant benefit of passive wireless transmission. While in practice, crack location will impact the performance of crack depth-sensing tag. The purpose of this paper is to provide a method for reducing disturbance of crack location on crack depth-sensing tag.

The effect analysis of crack location on crack depth-sensing tag is presented first to find disturbance reason and disturbance law. On the basis of that, a miniaturized tag is proposed to improve the current distribution and reduce the disturbance introduced by crack location.

The degree of crack location disturbance is closely related to the current distribution in the coverage area of tag. Because sensing tag performs better when crack locates in the high current density area, miniaturization of sensing tag is exploited to expand the high current density area and make the area more symmetrical. The simulated and experimental results demonstrate that tag miniaturization can enhance the performance of crack depth-sensing tag.

This paper provides a method to enhance the performance of crack depth-sensing tag.

This paper considers the role of culture in crisis management narratives. The importance of sensemaking and sense-giving to crisis management is expanded by exploring how understanding organization culture may affect the plausibility of sense-giving narratives in crises.

The crisis management, sensemaking, sense-giving and organizational culture literature studies are briefly reviewed. The paper then explores how plausibility may be dependent on organizational culture and how different cultures may create different dependencies. Propositions are developed and the potential organizational interventions based on these propositions in the action research tradition are offered, as they are potential practical and research implications.

Organizational cultures as shared sensemaking mechanisms provide leaders with the framework for constructing crisis management messages. A plausible message must resonate within the shared cultural experiences of members to shape and direct behaviors during a crisis while maintaining necessary flexibility to evolve as the crisis progresses.

Potential avenues of future research include empirically testing the effects of cultural alignment on crisis management messaging employing action research or other methods, how strength of culture affects the process and the malleability of plausibility.

Practical implications include an organization's understanding of how culture affects not only the messages sent but also how employees might receive the sense-giving narratives. The paper also highlights the importance of flexibility in sense-giving narratives to allow evolution of the message as the crisis changes. Additional practical implications are provided.

This manuscript considers the role of culture in crisis management sense-giving narratives, a topic that has received little research attention. The manuscript argues that aligning the narrative within the organization's shared cultural understanding will increase employee acceptance and adherence to the message. The paper further discusses the importance of flexibility in the sense-giving narratives as the crisis changes.

Service research has previously documented service providers’ role in addressing the barriers of technology mediation, mostly at the service delivery level. The purpose of this study is to enhance our understanding about the role of service providers who hold strategic and operational roles, as well as investigate the impact of coordinated, organization-wide initiatives in dealing with the demands and associated emotional ambivalence of technology-mediated services.

This qualitative study draws from a series of in-depth interviews with health-care service providers who hold strategic and operational roles in health-care organizations along with participant observation to develop an understanding of the broader organizational context of telehealth services.

This paper outlines the strategic sense-giving process and highlights how health-care service providers who hold strategic and operational roles enact the sense-giver role. This study illustrates that strategic sense-giving involves the recognition of sense-making gaps; identification of sense-giving opportunities; and provision of templates of action.

This study illustrates that sense-giving can be performed by a number of organizational members in a more formalized way which extends informal sense-giving efforts at the peer-to-peer level. The importance of strategic sense-giving in providing templates of action for service providers and consumers is highlighted. This study also shows how strategic sense-giving safeguards against confusion and errors by communicating appropriate ways of using technology. Finally, the role of strategic sense-giving in helping service providers and consumers cope with the emotional ambivalence of technology-mediated service interactions are demonstarted.

The flexibly thin film grid pressure sensor is mainly used to detect the interface pressure distribution between touching objects. Aim at larger measurement error, the strip double sensing layer pressure sensor are designed and fabricated and tested.

Defects and characteristic of the flexibly thin film grid pressure sensor based on piezoresistive effect are analyzed and pointed out in this paper. After comparison of four sensors, the strip double sensing layer pressure sensor was thought to be best.

Experiment shows that the strip double sensing layer pressure sensor could eliminate the measurement error basically and illustrates the validity of measuring the interface pressure distribution between area touching objects.

In this paper, only the strip double sensing layer pressure sensor was used to verify the validity of measuring the static interface pressure distribution between peach and platform. But there also exists some problems such as the adhering reliability of electrode and the unevenness of sensing layer. These problems could be overcome in the future research if the fabricating procedure and ingredient of material could be adjusted correctly.

The strip double sensing layer pressure sensor could be applied to detect the static interface pressure distribution such as peach pressure distribution. For dynamic measurement, this research needs to be done further.

Strip double sensing layer pressure sensor with simple “interlayer” structure and with low manufacture cost is presented to basically eliminate the measurement error of interface pressure distribution of original sensor.

The concept of community where people can meet their needs, interact, and feel a sense of belonging and togetherness has been an interesting topic for a majority of professionals in different academic fields such as urban planning and urban design. Different theories in these disciplines assert the correlation between the built environment and sense of community. Among these theories, New Urbanism is one of the most important schools of thought which have thrown light on this correlation. New Urbanism claims that the built environment can create a sense of community among its users. As the theory of New Urbanism develops more and more among professionals across the world, it is critical that we give the topic more research attention. This study intends to begin moving us in this direction by reviewing some studies which tried to achieve the social goal of new urbanism in recent years. Therefore the results of the empirical assessment of Sense of community in different neighbourhoods are reviewed and the influence of physical design on different domains of sense of community are discussed to find out whether the claims of new urbanism in creating sense of community could be trusted in the future development. While new urbanism movement continues to become more popular, finding enough evidence for its social claims might encourage more planners to use its principles as a way to improve the residents' social life

Theorists within and outside LIS observe that neither information nor experience is usefully conceived as stable entities. This chapter focuses instead on experiencing and considers how people respond interactively within situations in flux, using that perspective to explore sense making. Methodologically guided by Dervin, ethnomethodology and practice theory, I spent two years participating in online discussion groups where people discussed experiences of kidney failure. I use content analysis of textual interactions to demonstrate the centrality of experiences in the discussions, followed by thematic analysis to explore why experiencing appeared to be central to sense making. I found that contributors described active and reactive responses to environments, in which emotions, understanding and other forms of experiencing forged and ‘mangled’ each other, processes which I interpret using metaphors from practice theory. These iterative processes, though painful at times, apparently kept contributors’ understandings connected to their experiences of reality. Therefore this chapter extends understandings of the centrality of experiential and embodied aspects of sense making, while also addressing problems with using static metaphors and methods to explore dynamic processes.

The proliferation of mobile phones with integrated sensors makes large scale sensing possible at low cost. During mobile sensing, data mostly contain sensitive information of users such as their real-time location. When such information are not effectively secured, users’ privacy can be violated due to eavesdropping and information disclosure. In this paper, we demonstrated the possibility of unauthorized access to location information of a user during sensing due to the ineffective security mechanisms in most sensing applications. We analyzed 40 apps downloaded from Google Play Store and results showed a 100% success rate in traffic interception and disclosure of sensitive information of users. As a countermeasure, a security scheme which ensures encryption and authentication of sensed data using Advanced Encryption Standard 256-Galois Counter Mode was proposed. End-to-end security of location and motion data from smartphone sensors are ensured using the proposed security scheme. Security analysis of the proposed scheme showed it to be effective in protecting Android based sensor data against eavesdropping, information disclosure and data modification.

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to differentiate between a sociology of the body and an embodied sociology, prior to considering what this might mean in methodological terms for those wishing to conduct research into the senses and the sensorium in sport and physical culture.

Design/methodology/approach – The approach taken involves reviewing the work of those who have already engaged with the senses in sport and physical culture in order to highlight an important methodological challenge. This revolves around how researchers might seek to gain access to the senses of others and explore the sensorium in action. To illustrate how this challenge can be addressed, a number of studies that have utilised visual technologies in combination with interviews are examined and the potential this approach has in seeking the senses is considered.

Findings – The findings confirm the interview as a multi-sensory event and the potential of visual technologies to provide access to the range of senses involved in sport and physical culture activities.

Research limitations/implications – The limitations of traditional forms of inquiry and representational genres for both seeking the senses and communicating these to a range of different audiences are highlighted and alternatives are suggested.

Originality/value – The chapter's originality lies in its portrayal of unacknowledged potentialities for seeking the senses using standard methodologies, and how these might be developed further, in creative combination with more novel approaches, as part of a future shift towards more sensuous forms of scholarship in sport and physical culture.