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Deliberative public engagement with science : An empirical investigation
This compact open access reference delves beyond popular concepts of educated consumers and an informed public by examining the science behind deliberative engagement. Using data from four longitudinal studies, the authors assess public engagement methods in deliberative discussions of ethical, legal, and social issues concerning innovations in nanotechnology. Coverage includes the theoretical origins of the studies, forms of engagement and variations used, and in-depth details on cognitive, affective, and social components that go into the critical thinking process and forming of opinions. Not only are the findings intriguing in and of themselves, but researchers from varied fields will also find them useful in pursuing their own projects.
Decision Making for Complex Socio-Technical Systems : Robustness from Lessons Learned in Long-Term Radioactive Waste Governance
The long-term governance of radioactive waste continues to be a major complex and contentious socio-technical issue worldwide. Traditionally, it has been considered as mainly a challenge to scientists and engineers to develop technical "solutions" to specific problems. But increasingly these narrow solutions have been enlarged by wider societal considerations such as ethics, public involvement, control and retrievability – needs that have in the meanwhile been recognised by the nuclear community, at least in a general way. In this book, we analyse motives for a broad discourse as well as suggest prerequisites to launch it. The author attempts to give a novel, empirically based and technically sound treatment of fundamental issues in long-term management and governance. Written to be accessible to a wide selection of the interested public, the study proposes a combination of technical design issues, analysis methods and institutional backup in a dynamic procedure, and with involvement at all levels of political, commercial and social life.
Decentralised Government in an Integrating World: Quantitative Studies for OECD Countries
The book offers a comprehensive empirical analysis of the determinants of changes in the distribution of expenditure and revenue-raising powers among fiscal tiers in OECD countries. Using a new indicator of fiscal decentralisation which accounts for subnational decision-making autonomy, common decentralisation trends are investigated.
Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery Approaches Based on Rule Induction Techniques
This book will give the reader a perspective into the core theory and practice of data mining and knowledge discovery (DM&KD). Its chapters combine many theoretical foundations for various DM&KD methods, and they present a rich array of examples—many of which are drawn from real-life applications. Most of the theoretical developments discussed are accompanied by an extensive empirical analysis, which should give the reader both a deep theoretical and practical insight into the subjects covered.
CyberParks – The Interface Between People, Places and Technology: New Approaches and Perspectives
This book is about public open spaces, about people, and about the relationship between them and the role of technology in this relationship. It is about different approaches, methods, empirical studies, and concerns about a phenomenon that is increasingly being in the centre of sciences and strategies – the penetration of digital technologies in the urban space. As the main outcome of the CyberParks Project, this book aims at fostering the understanding about the current and future interactions of the nexus people, public spaces and technology. It addresses a wide range of challenges and multidisciplinary perspectives on emerging phenomena related to the penetration of technology in people’s lifestyles - affecting therefore the whole society, and with this, the production and use of public spaces. Cyberparks coined the term cyberpark to describe the mediated public space, that emerging type of urban spaces where nature and cybertechnologies blend together to generate hybrid experiences and enhance quality of life.
Customer Processes in Business-to-Business Service Transactions
Janine Frauendorf analyzes how customer processes can be used to optimize the overall service process. In this context, the service blueprint represents the key tool of the thesis – originally a tool for designing and optimizing the internal process of the service operator, it is now extended by the customer process side. Transaction cost theory, as the link between supplier process and customer process, on the one hand and the script construct from cognitive psychology on the other, provide the theoretical basis for the thesis. On the basis of empirical results, the author presents significant implications for services research and helpful suggestions for business practice.
Customer Loyalty in Third Party Logistics Relationships : Findings from Studies in Germany and the USA
These issues are addressed in the present book: First, a model of customer loyalty and its determinants is developed, which is then validated using empirical data from nearly 800 logistics managers in Germany and the USA. Effects of different relational factors on the customer loyalty model are identified and cultural differences between Germany and the USA are revealed.
Curriculum Reform in the European Schools : Towards a 21st Century Vision
Examines the modern role of the European School system within the European Union, at a time when the global economy demands a new vision for contemporary education. The European schools are currently in a state of crisis: their 60-year-old tradition of bilingual and multilingual education is being strained by rapid EU expansion and the removal of English speaking teachers as a result of Brexit. Their tried and tested model of mathematics and science education has rapidly been overtaken by new developments in pedagogy and assessment research, while recruitment and retention of students and teachers has become increasingly fraught as European member states review what they are, and what they are not, prepared to fund. The authors draw on original and empirical research to assess the European Schools’ place in a new Europe where the entire post-war European Project is potentially at risk. This well-researched volume will be of interest to practitioners working in European schools as well as students and scholars of EU politics and international education.
Crossroads of Entrepreneurship
Crossroads of Entrepreneurship presents works from scholars belonging to a number of different disciplines - business history, economics, sociology and management - and addresses a cross section of issues in the entrepreneurship field. Contributions are arranged in different sections, emphasizing dialogue across disciplines and paradigms, rather than boundaries between them. The first section of the work is a compilation of papers that trace the historical roots of study in entrepreneurship in different disciplinary domains, and highlight the fundamental issues addressed by past research. A second section gathers empirical studies adopting various methods and investigating different aspects of entrepreneurial action. The third section collects contributions investigating the development of entrepreneurship in different national settings. The work reveals a convergence of issues and interests, despite paradigmatic differences, and the potential benefits of more intense conversation across disciplines.
Cross-linguistic Variation in Sentence Processing : Evidence From R C Attachment Preferences in Greek
This book argues in favour of cross-linguistic variation in sentence processing by providing empirical data from ambiguity resolution in Greek as L1 and L2. It is maintained that in highly inflected languages, like Greek, initial parsing decisions are determined by the interaction of morphological and lexical cues rather than by universal parsing principles. During the initial parse, discourse-level information is constrained by lexical considerations, which indicates that the human sentence processor is a multi-stage mechanism.
Crisis Reporters, Emotions, and Technology : An Ethnography
This book explores the emotional labour of crisis reporters in an original style that combines fictional and factual narrative. Exploring how journalists make sense of their emotional experience and development in relation to their professional ideology, it illustrates how media professionals learn to think and act within crisis situations. Drawing on in-depth interviews with journalists reporting on wars, terror attacks and natural disasters, the book rethinks traditional concepts in journalistic thought. Finally, it reflects on the specific, contemporary vulnerabilities of industry professionals, including the impact of new technologies, specific forms of precarity, and a particular strain of cynicism central to the industry. Combining comprehensive, empirical research with the fictional narrative of a journalist protagonist, Crisis Reporters, Emotions and Technology establishes an innovative approach to academic storytelling.
Craftspeople and Designer Makers in the Contemporary Creative Economy
Thisbook explores the experience of working as a craftsperson or designer maker in the contemporary creative economy. The authors utilise evidence from the only major empirical study to explore the skills required and the challenges facing contemporary makers in an increasingly crowded marketplace. Drawing upon 180 interviews with peak organisations, established and emerging makers, and four years of fieldwork across Australia, this book offers a unique insight into the motivations informing those who seek to make an income from their craft or designer maker practice, as well as the challenges and opportunities facing them as they do so at this time of renewed interest internationally in the artisanal and handmade. Offering a rich and deep collection of real-life experiences, this book is aimed both at an academic and practitioner audience.
Court Delay and Law Enforcement in China : Civil process and economic perspective
On the basis of an empirical study and taking a comparative as well as an economic perspective Qing-Yun Jiang analyses the problem of court delay and law enforcement in China. He shows that delay is not a serious problem in the lower courts in respect to trial cases, but mainly in appeal cases and retrial cases, which require more time. Moreover, the study confirms that law enforcement has been an obstacle for the development of market economy and a bottleneck of the judiciary. The author concludes that judicial reform should not only deal with symptoms, but with the roots of the political and economic structure.
County lines : Criminal networks and evolving drug markets in Britain
This brief sheds light on evolving drug markets and the county lines phenomenon in the British context. Drawing upon empirical research gathered in the field between 2012-2019 across two sites, Scotland’s West Coast and Merseyside in England, adopts a grounded approach to the drug supply model, detailing how drugs are purchased, sold and distributed at every level of the supply chain at both sites.
Country-Compatible Incentive Design : A Comparision of Employees' Performance Reward Preferences in Germany and the USA
Based on an empirical study among employees of a multinational corporation (MNC) in Germany and the USA, Marjaana Gunkel shows that the employees in these countries have different preferences regarding incentives and that incentive plans designed for one country are not always effective in others. Money is an important motivator in both countries, but the motivational effects of non-monetary rewards differ greatly. In addition, the author presents an explorative study of employee groups in China and Japan and gives advice for designing appropriate compensation schemes for employees of MNC in different countries.
Corporate Sustainability Management in the Energy Sector : An Empirical Contigency Approach
Corporate social responsibility, sustainability, and citizenship are terms that often evoke considerable scepticism and cynicism, particularly in civil society. Much needed sector-specific and comparative research, which could facilitate a more fact-oriented debate, is still missing from the literature. The present study aims to fill this gap by presenting data collected from two groups of managers, namely sustainability experts and non-sustainability experts, from two different industry sectors (integrated oil and gas vs. electric utilities) and several geographical regions. Oliver Salzmann provides a comprehensive view on corporate sustainability management in companies such as Shell and RWE and investigates the key social and environmental issues driving the energy sector. The author analyses the influence which stakeholder pressure exercises on energy companies and their efforts to become more responsive. Moreover, he develops a model for strategic, thus profit-oriented, corporate sustainability management.
Corporate narrative reporting : Beyond the numbers
The book is logically structured into four parts: -Narrative Reporting: The State of The Art -Empirical Research on Narrative Reporting -Narrative Sustainability Reporting -Narrative Reporting in Times of Crisis
Coping with Chronic Illness and Disability : Theoretical, Empirical, and Clinical Aspects
Individuals’ responses to their chronic illness or disability (CID) vary widely. Some are positive and productive, some negative and self-defeating, and some have elements of both. Coping with Chronic Illness and Disability synthesizes the growing literature on these coping styles and strategies by analyzing how individuals with CID face challenges, find and use their strengths, and alter their environment to fit their life-changing realities. The book’s first section provides readers with the major theories and conceptual perspectives on coping, with special emphasis on social aspects and models of coping with different types of CID. In Part Two, an array of specific medical conditions is covered. Each chapter supplies a clinical description, current empirical findings on coping, effective medical, physical, and psychological interventions, employment issues, and social concerns.
Cooperative Sourcing : Simulation Studies and Empirical Data on Outsourcing Coalitions in the Banking Industry
Based on the integration of relevant economic and organizational theories, Daniel Beimborn develops a formal model of cooperative sourcing. The model captures the different drivers and inhibitors like economies of scale, scope and skill, transaction costs, strategic constraints etc. and forms the basis for both game-theoretical analyses and agent-based simulations. Simulations help to handle the numerical complexity and allow for compound analyses of the causes and effects of cooperative sourcing. Empirical data from two large-scale surveys and case studies in the German credit business are used in order to feed the simulation model and to validate the results.
Cooperation in Primates and Humans : Mechanisms and Evolution
Cooperative behavior has been one of the enigmas of evolutionary theory since the days of Darwin. The contributions to this book examine the many facets of cooperative behavior in primates and humans. Some of the world’s leading experts summarize and review the state of the art of theoretical and empirical studies of cooperation. This is the first attempt to bridge the gap between parallel research activities in primatology and studies of humans. This comparative approach highlights both common principles as well as aspects of human uniqueness with respect to cooperative behavior.
