Analysing facilitating and hindering factors for implementing gender equality interventions in R&I: Structures and processes

This article analyses the facilitating and hindering factors that have affected the implementation of gender equality interventions in research and innovation in Europe. It applies the evaluation framework developed in the EFFORTI project that recognizes the complexity of evaluating gender equality interventions in R&I, the importance of factoring in context to any sound evaluation as well as the need to distinguish between the design and implementation of interventions in evaluations. It is based on the analysis of 19 empirical case studies carried out throughout Europe and focuses on those structural and procedural factors that have either facilitated or hindered the implementation process of these interventions. Findings include how the governance framework; top-management commitment; bottom-up participation; framing synergies with other initiatives, strategies for tackling resistance; resources; sustainability of actions; gender competence, experience and knowledge and transparency, targets, standards and monitoring; and accessible data and information all contributed to the successful implementation of the interventions.     

Farmers’ Risk‐Based Decision Making Under Pervasive Uncertainty: Cognitive Thresholds and Hazy Hedging

Researchers in judgment and decision making have long debunked the idea that we are economically rational optimizers. However, problematic assumptions of rationality remain common in studies of agricultural economics and climate change adaptation, especially those that involve quantitative models. Recent movement toward more complex agent‐based modeling provides an opportunity to reconsider the empirical basis for farmer decision making. Here, we reconceptualize farmer decision making from the ground up, using an in situ mental models approach to analyze weather and climate risk management. We assess how large‐scale commercial grain farmers in South Africa (n = 90) coordinate decisions about weather, climate variability, and climate change with those around other environmental, agronomic, economic, political, and personal risks that they manage every day. Contrary to common simplifying assumptions, we show that these farmers tend to satisfice rather than optimize as they face intractable and multifaceted uncertainty; they make imperfect use of limited information; they are differently averse to different risks; they make decisions on multiple time horizons; they are cautious in responding to changing conditions; and their diverse risk perceptions contribute to important differences in individual behaviors. We find that they use two important nonoptimizing strategies, which we call cognitive thresholds and hazy hedging, to make practical decisions under pervasive uncertainty. These strategies, evident in farmers' simultaneous use of conservation agriculture and livestock to manage weather risks, are the messy in situ performance of naturalistic decision‐making techniques. These results may inform continued research on such behavioral tendencies in narrower lab‐ and modeling‐based studies.     

The need for knowledge modification in technology change: a framework to consider changes in domain complexity,knowledge and productivity

This paper researches productivity in relation to domain complexity and the present knowledge capacity in an organisational context. The study is based on five very different case studies. Three studies are conducted in Denmark, Germany, Mexico and China and are related to knowledge transfer in the relocation of manufacturing facilities. Two studies investigate operation and automation of oil and gas production in the North Sea. The case study method involves semi-structured interviews, surveys, an analysis of historical production data and observations. Based on the findings from the field studies, the paper develops a conceptual framework that management can use for discussions of productivity, development of knowledge and design of learning programmes when considering changes in the complexity of a domain or a change in knowledge.     

LGBT Family Lawyers and Same-Sex Marriage Recognition: How Legal Change Shapes Professional Identity and Practice

ABSTRACT

Lawyers who practice family law for LGBT clients are key players in the tenuous and evolving legal environment surrounding same-sex marriage recognition. Building on prior research on factors shaping the professional identities of lawyers generally, and activist lawyers specifically, I examine how practice within a rapidly changing, patchwork legal environment shapes professional identity for this group of lawyers. I draw on interviews with 21 LGBT family lawyers to analyze how the unique features of LGBT family law shape their professional identities and practice, as well as their predictions about the development of the practice in a post-Obergefell world. Findings reveal that the professional identities and practice of LGBT family lawyers are shaped by uncertainty, characteristics of activist lawyering, community membership, and community service. Individual motivations and institutional forces work to generate a professional identity that is resilient and dynamic, characterized by skepticism and distrust coupled with flexibility and creativity. These features are likely to play a role in the evolution of the LGBT family lawyer professional identity post-marriage equality.     

提升英语口语思辨能力的教学改革策略

针对21世纪对英语口语思辨表达能力的要求，分析了英语口语和思辨性表达的关系，回顾了提升英语口语思辨能力的理论文献，总结了在英语听说课程中实践话题性内容听力导入、小组活动、演讲范例分析和呈现、文学经典作品导入和呈现有效提升英语口语思辨表达能力的作用。     

The effects of leadership change on team escalation of commitment

Although teams benefit from developing plans and processes that boost efficiency and reduce uncertainty, they may become too attached to these plans and escalate commitment when an alternative response is needed. Drawing on theories of team leadership, team processes and escalation of commitment, we propose that a change in leadership can help the team reduce commitment to outdated plans and avoid further escalation over time. Across two studies, we tested and found support for our hypotheses and provide evidence that leadership change can break the cycle of escalation by enhancing leader-driven team reflection and refocusing the team on error correction instead of additional investment. We discuss how the results of these studies extend existing theory and add to our understanding of the important role leaders play in enhancing team adaptation and preventing team escalation.     

Incumbent capability enhancement in response to radical innovations

Schumpeterian market disequilibrium marked by entrepreneurial entry and incumbent exit has long held an important place in management literature. The extant literature has overwhelmingly championed the newcomer, despite incumbents' obvious advantages in resources, experience and market knowledge. The current research provides evidence for the effectiveness of the incumbent's strategy of capability enhancement (along an established technological trajectory) while responding to radical technological innovations. We develop a cognitive process model that integrates managerial cognition with capability development and deployment views, depicting the dynamics of the incumbent's capability enhancement process. We analyze the cognitive drivers of organizational actions in all stages (rigidity, triggering event, and capability renewal) and elucidate the role of top management cognition in the processes of detecting and correcting errors in a strategic course of action. We ground our model in the case of a cork-stopper industry veteran's decline as corks ceded ground to screw tops and other stoppers in the wine industry. How a major company fought back in response to the emergence of these, in the industry context, radical technological innovations, provides the basis for our narrative. The proposed theoretical model contributes to literature on technology management (with regard to incumbent strategies in response to radical innovation threats) as well as the role of cognition in strategy (providing an explanation of the cognitive underpinnings of capability development).     

Heating up the debate? Measuring fragmentation and polarisation in a German climate change hyperlink network

Research into polarisation on the internet has so far primarily focused on contentious issues and yielded contradictory results. Shifting the focus to a non-contentious setting, this article combines community detection with brokerage analysis and exponential random graph models to assess the degree of polarisation at different levels of a German hyperlink network on climate change. Although homophily accounts for a moderate degree of polarisation at the top level of the network, the communities reveal that other factors prove more decisive in shaping its structure and the article thus contributes to a more refined understanding of the nature of online polarisation.     

Family Therapy and the Pedagogy of the Oppressed: Therapeutic Use of Songs in Apartheid South Africa

A central issue for family therapy is the critical question of how to define its role in influencing social change. Family therapy has tended to focus on how to liberate and empower individual clients, not communities, from the travails of tradition. This article highlights social change mechanisms implemented by the oppressed majority in South Africa during the apartheid period. It draws inspiration from the pedagogy of the oppressed articulated by Steve Biko and other members of his generation. This enabled the Black majority in South Africa ‘to name their world by reflecting on their conditions, imagining a better world, and then taking action to create it’ (Freire, 1968, p. 253) through the use of revolutionary songs that resulted in the collapse of the cruel apartheid system. The implications for family therapy are discussed.     

人民币汇率失衡及贸易壁垒对我国出口行业影响异质性研究

贸易摩擦、新冠疫情使我国经济贸易面临严峻挑战,人民币汇率波动及贸易壁垒将常态化地影响我国出口贸易.在加快形成以国内大循环为主体、国内国际双循环相互促进的新发展格局背景下,文章基于HS分类原则,选取WTO等机构的贸易数据,通过构建BEER模型测算了人民币汇率失衡程度;通过建立固定效应面板模型研究了人民币汇率失衡及贸易壁垒双因素对我国出口行业影响的异质性.研究表明:人民币汇率失衡对我国出口贸易整体上具有显著负向影响,非关税壁垒对我国出口贸易整体上具有显著正向影响;关税和非关税构成的贸易壁垒与人民币汇率失衡双因素对我国出口贸易具有显著抑制作用,并对不同出口行业的影响存在异质性;人民币汇率失衡与非关税壁垒双因素对大多行业均具有显著负向影响,人民币汇率失衡与关税壁垒双因素对不同行业影响的正负效应及程度大小有异质性.因此,建议通过运行逆周期因子等完善人民币汇率自我修正机制;通过引导出口企业了解使用外汇衍生品等促进外汇衍生品市场运行机制的健全;通过加强"海外仓"建设及深耕RCEP框架下的东盟十国市场等实施出口行业差异化贸易策略;通过提升自主科技创新能力等加快出口行业产业转型升级,推动双循环,实现我国出口贸易高质量发展.