Spaces enabling game-changing and sustaining innovations: why space matters for knowledge creation and innovation

Abstract

Innovation has become one of the key drivers for growth. However, how do we bring about innovation which is both radical and respects the limits of the world? One of our key assumptions is that we have to take into consideration the epistemological and cognitive processes leading to (radically) new knowledge first. We propose an approach that establishes spaces enabling such processes of knowledge creation we refer to them as Enabling Spaces.

This article is concerned with the question of how innovation, and more specifically, profound, radical and sustainable innovation can be brought about in a more qualitative manner. What are the necessary concepts and attitudes which facilitate the processes of innovation? The notion of enabling as opposed to 'managing' or controlling innovation is to be developed. Furthermore the concept of situated/extended cognition is discussed as a key ingredient for Enabling Spaces.

The second part gives an overview of the concept of Enabling Spaces and of the design process leading to such spaces. Finally the concrete case of a knowledge-creating university is discussed.     

The Incidence and Impact of Policy-Oriented Collective Action: Competing Views

This article asks four questions: (1) What are our theoretical expectations about the incidence of policy-oriented collective action and its impact? (2) What do the data show about the incidence of collective action and its impact? (3) How might the impact of collective action be related to its incidence? (4) What do our findings imply for our understanding of democratic politics? We suggest that predictions that little collective action will occur are more accurate than conventionally believed; that such action is often ineffective; that it may be ineffective partly because it is so infrequent; and that the analysis of the determinants of policy change should be rethought as a result.     

Girls,boys, money. Economic socialisation,gender, and generations in Italy

The aim of this article is to discuss the issue of economic socialisation in Italy from a gender perspective. What do boys and girls know about money and economy? How do they acquire this knowledge? What roles do the family, school, and the media play?

The empirical material making up the base of our observations is composed of in-depth interviews with a group of Milanese families on the questions of economic socialisation and practices of money management. Gender differences emerge in the construction of the relationship with money by children and young adults: girls, in particular, undergo the strongest pressure, i.e. they are still more driven towards discipline and self-control.

Our results also suggest the need to activate targeted, gender-sensitive training programmes in economic education.     

Social workers and intercultural mediators: challenges for collaboration and intercultural awareness

ABSTRACT

Social work in Europe is facing numerous challenges in terms of promoting the participation of migrants and their descendants in super-diverse societies. This study investigates collaboration between social workers and intercultural mediators based on international debate and fieldwork in Italy. Does social work require collaboration with other professions specialised in intercultural relations? What are the characteristics of intercultural professionals? What are the pros and cons of collaboration between social workers and intercultural mediators? This study shows that local social services need to work with intercultural mediators, allowing local social services to implement various strategies for tackling cultural and linguistic barriers with their clients and rely on professionals inside or outside their own. Furthermore, intercultural mediators tend to have weak and heterogeneous training backgrounds and working conditions. This article aims to contribute to the debate on the welfare reform process to support migrants and their descendants’ equal rights and participation in society, highlighting the need for collaboration between interculturally aware social workers and intercultural mediators to tackle institutional structural weaknesses in such professions as part of an organisational innovation process in social-welfare institutions.     

The Ambiguity of Return Migration: Prolonged Crisis and Uncertainty in the Life Strategies of Young Romanian and Latvian Returnees

Drawing on qualitative research, this study endeavours to identify the determinants of return migration of young Romanians and Latvians in light of the most recent global economic crisis (GEC). The decision-making patterns of young returnees are examined by three main research questions. How do macro-events, such as the GEC, interfere with individual biographies creating specific return experiences? What can we say about the “crisis returnees”, their migration motivations and re-adaptation in the origin country? What are the main challenges of young adults facing life strategies in such uncertain periods? Data are drawn from 51 in-depth interviews with Romanian and Latvian young adults, carried out in late 2015 and early 2016. Findings show that return migration is associated with economic conditions, family life, feelings of homesickness, and re-adaptation experiences. Our results also confirm that youth transitions and migration have become more diversified and complex in the context of the economic crisis.     

What Novice Family Therapists Experience During a Session… A Qualitative Study of Novice Therapists' Inner Conversations During the Session

“What do novice family therapists experience during a session with a couple or family?” This is the central question in this article. A videotape‐assisted recall procedure was used to study novice family therapists’ inner conversations. The therapists' reflections were analyzed using thematic analysis. This resulted in a coding system that distinguishes four main domains: (a) reflections concerning the self; (b) reflections about the therapy process; (c) reflections on emotions about the family members; and (d) managing the session as well as own emotions. The study furthermore revealed that during a session, novice family therapists experience strong emotions, such as self‐criticism and irritation. Both emotions may encompass dangers, as well as opportunities for the therapeutic alliance and the process.     

Political correctness and multiculturalism: Who supports PC?

What is the nature and content of political correctness and multiculturalism? Are both these movements solely products of left-wing politics masquerading as an effort to create more racial, sexual, ethnic, and religious diversity throughout social institutions in the name of fairness and equity or are these movements addressing legitimate concerns about tolerance and equality? What of right-wing allegations that information used by proponents of these two movements is biased? What are the social and political implications of these movements and the relationship between economics and multiculturalism? Finally, why is there such controversy surrounding these movements, and who is in fact the opposition? These are some of the questions addressed in this essay.     

Inheritances and wealth inequality: a machine learning approach

This paper explores the relationship between received inheritances and the distribution of wealth (financial, non-financial and total) in four developed countries: the United States, Canada, Italy and Spain. We follow the inequality of opportunity (IOp) literature and???considering inheritances as the only circumstance? we show that traditional IOp approaches can lead to non-robust and arbitrary measures of IOp depending on discretionary cut-off choices of a continuous circumstance such as inheritances. To overcome this limitation, we apply Machine Learning methods (‘random forest’ algorithm) to optimize the choice of cut-offs and we find that IOp explains over 60% of wealth inequality in the US and Spain (using the Gini coefficient), and more than 40% in Italy and Canada. Including parental education as an additional circumstance ?available for the US and Italy? we find that inheritances are still the main contributor. Finally, using the S-Gini index with different parameters to weight different parts of the distribution, we find that the effect of inheritances is more prominent at the middle of the wealth distribution, while parental education is more important for the asset-poor.

     

Dual Citizenship as a Path‐Dependent Process1

Over the last few decades, dual nationalities worldwide have increased rapidly. This is astonishing when one considers that a few decades ago citizenship and political loyalty to a national political community were considered inseparable. Overall, there has been a bumpy‐line trend towards increasing tolerance. Yet, the degree to which dual nationality is tolerated by states differs. Based on the findings of postnational and national perspectives, this analysis proposes to view tolerance and resistance towards dual nationality as a path‐dependent process. The questions dealt with are: What are the factors encouraging the generally increasing tolerance towards multiple nationalities? How can cross‐national differences regarding de jure and de facto tolerance towards dual nationality be explained? The main tendency over the past decades has been the growing emphasis on individual rights vis‐à‐vis state prerogatives in liberal democracies. The expansion of de jure tolerance towards dual nationality is due partly to inter‐, supra‐ and national‐level developments, which are connected to diverse factors such as gender equity, understandings of nationhood, immigrant incorporation and general characteristics of the political systems.     

Accountability in action?: the case of a database purchasing decision 1

The increasing prevalence of audit in university settings has raised concerns about the potentially adverse effects of invasive measures of performance upon the conduct of research and generation of knowledge. What sustains the current commitment to audit? It is argued that in order to address this question we need to understand how and to what extent notions of accountability are played out in practice. This is illustrated through the analysis of materials from an ethnographic study of ‘good management practice’ in the deployment of technologies in university settings. The paper examines the ways in which ideas of accountability — involving considerations such as ‘value for money’— inform the practical processes of deciding about the purchase of a new database technology.     

Distributive interdependencies in liberal egalitarianism

Liberal egalitarian theories of justice share the egalitarian ideal that inequalities due to factors beyond individual control should be eliminated. This justifies that individuals sometimes receive more (or less) than their marginal productivity, which in turn implies that a change in one individual’s effort sometimes will affect the post-tax income of others. What restrictions should we place on such distributive interdependencies? The article provides characterizations of three main classes of redistribution mechanisms on the basis of how this question is answered.     

Why They Don't Come Back: A Clinical Perspective on the No-Show Client

Clinical writers love to publish their success stories. Treatment failures get shuffled to the bottom drawer. Perhaps this is why there is so little in the clinical literature about a problem so frequently encountered by the clinical social worker: the patient or client who never shows up or doesn't return. Why don't they keep their appointments? What are the most common dynamics? How much of the problem rests with the client and how much with the clinician or agency? What should be done when your client “no-shows”? When should you do it? This paper will explore these questions in an attempt to deepen the practitioner's understanding and management of this common clinical challenge.     

Marital Status and Well-Being:

This paper addresses itself to three main questions: (a) To what extent does single-parenthood enable a quality of life characterized by a sense of personal well-being? (b) What are the main components of well-beinifor single mothers? (c) Which back- ground factors facilitate well- emg In smgle mothers? In order to answer these questions a Depression Adjective Check-List (Lubin, 1965) was administered to a representatwe sample of 142 widows and 120 divorcies who had been single for a minimum of four ears and who each had at least one minor child. The main fin '7 ings: (a) measures of well-being were lower for single mothers than for married mothers; (b) there were negative, but also some positive com onents of well-being: a growing sense of loneliness, of mate- rial ardship, of anxiety about parental responsibilities, on the one hand, and a sense of occupational growth, on the other hand; (c) the background factors which affect well-being were properties such as schooling, earnings, and health as well as participation in familial decisions while still married. These results were mterpreted in the context of the familistic orientations prevailing in Israeli society.     

Hui Muslim‐Han Chinese Differences in Perceptions on Endogamy in Urban China

Using a survey data set (n?=?1,992) collected in Lanzhou, China, I examine the Hui?–?Han differences in perceptions on intermarriage. The questions I ask in this paper include: What is the extent of interethnic marriages in Lanzhou? Do the Hui and Han feel differently about interethnic marriage? Which ethnic group is more negative about Hui?–?Han marriages and why? Are perceptions about endogamy patterned by ethnicity or socio-economic status or both? I seek plausible answers to these questions in this paper. A preliminary analysis of the 2001 survey data shows a high degree of endogamy in Lanzhou. It also shows that the Hui are more negative about intermarriage than the Han. However, the ethnic differences in perceptions on intermarriage fade away with socio-economic variables controlled.     

Racist in the woodpile? Prejudice and education

Even in totalitarian regimes, freedom of thought presumably cannot be outlawed, provided that such thought remains unspoken and unwritten. In Australia, freedom of expression is taken-for-granted. This paper sets out to theorise my teaching practice/s, as I enact some of my theories. It emerges from my recent attempts to encourage in my students a greater sense of empathy towards others, and adoption of a multiplicity of perspectives. The contexts in which the study is embedded include immigration (to Australia) and attitudes to Indigenous Australians, but the teaching approaches described here can be applied to other similar contexts internationally. The paper outlines and evaluates related teaching strategies. Questions posed by the paper include: what are the internal mechanisms that limit our thought with regard to social issues such as equality? What are the teaching/learning approaches that we might employ to help our students transcend these limitations? Can freedom of thought only function in the context of self-regulation? In other words, where, if anywhere, are the ‘natural limits’ of freedom of thought, and are there times when freedom of thought is not desirable or acceptable? If so, who decides and how? What are the implications for the power differential between teacher and student?     

Land of the Free,Home of the Brave: Voting Accommodations for Older Adults

Voting is a fundamental right for all United States citizens, one that usually continues for elderly people as long as they are alive. As adults age, certain issues regarding voting warrant deeper consideration than in previous years, especially those presenting as a result of impaired sight, hearing difficulty, dementia, or other special needs. What will happen to millions of men and women who have taken the right to vote for granted, but who gradually become immobile or physically impaired? What are states doing to help secure the enfranchisement of an increasing number of older adult voters? The purpose of this article is to address these issues by focusing on the following questions: What has been the historical nature of polling place accommodations for elderly people? What are states doing in terms of accommodating older voters at the polls while ensuring the integrity of the voting process? What effect has recent Help America Vote Act legislation had with regard to polling place accommodations? Our results indicate that accommodations for older voters are being made but are not yet at a level required to serve a rapidly aging population.     

The problem of justification in social work

Abstract

In this paper we argue that the real test of professional social work practice is whether it can be plausibly, effectively and defensibly justified. Since the early 1950s social work in Australia has engaged in a strategy of professionalisation. This strategy and its implications were described by McDonald and Jones in 2000. This paper supports the concerns expressed. We argue that the way out of our profession's dilemma is by focusing on the problem of justification. The main questions addressed by McDonald and Jones appear to be: What is professional social work practice? Does the concept of professionalism serve us and our clients well now? What form should social work take in the future? Their answer is ‘that the “strategy of professionalisation”, as conventionally conceived by Australian social work, is no longer viable in the emerging milieu.’ We build on that answer by exploring the notion of justification in terms of the concepts Foundationalism, Coherentism and Reliabilism. We conclude by suggesting that the immediate task for social work in this new century is to solve the problem of justification.     

The role of families in the population crisis

The population crisis in European countries can be synthesized into two phenomena: the loss of vitality and the aging society. What are the main consequences of this crisis? Can the family play a determining role in helping to face and overcoming these consequences? In this paper we suggest promoting the family as a possible means to help sustain or bring about a recovery in the demographic health of society. The first section is devoted to an analysis of the demographic decline across European countries by examining converging patterns in culturally, politically, and historically different contexts. The second section explores more deeply the interrelations between the determinants of the population crisis and living arrangements. A picture of the new shape of families across Europe precedes an analysis of the changing patterns in living arrangements and their link to reproductive functions. A final section studies the extent to which the family influences the role of women in the labor market.     

Rural Development Policy: Study Case Green Wine Networks

In the international arena, regions are facing several challenges, such as economic disparities compared to other regions, lack of employment opportunities, economic gaps and standards of development. Even if we live in a globalized system, many less-developed regions lack a clear image of the possibility to create a planning draft for a reliable regional development. In this context, it is necessary to address few basic hypotheses that would help us to understand the methodological approach of the given project. The first basic hypothesis deals with: What is the feasibility of the implementation of a strategic planning of development which will be able to promote regional policy agenda in a reliable manner? What would be the validation of theoretical approaches dealing with the creation of a model of cooperation at regional and inter-regional levels? Is it possible to apply this model at different stages of economic development? How can we make the development strategies sustainable and eco-friendly? The project tries to answer in a theoretical but also in a practical manner, the existing challenges at regional levels. Some solutions could even consist in the creation of a model of territorial cooperation that put in accordance, in a cohesive manner, the common interests of such areas. The core study of the present research is a context analysis that helps the targeted less-developed regions to understand, through systematic steps, the geopolitical features and the effective methodology necessary to enhance all their local excellences and to transform them into real opportunities for rural development, not only at local levels but also at the global level. The study deals with the concern increasing competition between regions and the global challenges makes cooperation inevitable in homogeneous areas in territorial and cultural terms. In such a context, coherently with the increasing globalization and its challenges (economic and environmental), the study aims to strengthen the image of the territories of the Adriatic (our specific case study), such as enhancing their specificity in the international markets and driving them towards sustainable development which is considered as the main factor of socio-economic growth.     

White Professors Taking Responsibility for Teaching White Students about Race,Racism, and Privilege

How does a white professor teach a course composed of predominantly white human-services students about race, racism, and privilege? What are some of the pitfalls? What works? What is challenging? Why should such a course be part of the undergraduate human services curriculum? This article investigates these questions by exploring a course taught by the author, “Exploring Race and Challenging Racism in the United States.” A variety of pedagogical tools and approaches are discussed.