The influence of organizational identification on organizational knowledge management (KM)

Information technology (IT) outsourcing vendor organizations contain isolated business units whose creation and sustenance greatly facilitate business operations. But they also introduce important challenges for organizational knowledge management (KM). In this paper, based on 7 months of intensive field-work at India Inc., a leading Indian IT firm, we looked at how members’ identification with two organizations, their own and their client organization, influences their compliance with an organizational KM initiative. The findings show that members have difficulties in complying with the expectations of the organizational KM initiative owing to a stronger identification with their client organizations. At the same time, they comply readily with KM initiatives at the business unit level. The findings show that KM managers at India Inc. use the help of middle level managers in the business units in their efforts to improve members’ compliance with organizational KM. Theoretical and managerial implications of the study are discussed.     

Indicators of a balanced long-term service and support system: examining the impact on individuals aging with a lifelong disability

This article explores how rebalancing efforts can support the needs of individuals aging with a lifelong disability. The National Balancing Indicator project examined the overall long-term supports and services system (LTSS) progress in five indicators within the Sustainability, Coordination and Transparency, and Prevention principles toward a balanced LTSS system for those aging with a lifelong disability. In assessing state efforts to create a balanced participant-directed LTSS system with the National Balancing Indicators, the findings suggest states are better equipping the system to handle a burgeoning population of individuals aging with a lifelong disability, but more progress is still needed. Overall, states need to continue to create a seamless system that allows individuals with lifelong disabilities to transition smoothly through the life course.     

‘Doing it right?’– accessing the narratives of identity of newly qualified social workers through the lens of resilience: ‘I am,I have,I can’

Using narrative enquiry, this paper accesses the construct of identity through exploring resilience in newly qualified social workers based in statutory children's services. In seeking to avoid deficit‐based models of this role, this paper aims to present inductively the ‘voice’ of three social workers in a semi‐rural authority, storying the positive ways in which resilience has developed during their first year. Using the Grotberg resilience framework (1995) –‘I am, I have, I can’– as an analytical tool at the interface of personal, professional and organizational identities, we conclude that ‘I am’ and ‘I have’ are more important than the skills dimension of ‘I can’. Positive role models, trust, ‘managed’ optimism, flexibility of support in and beyond induction, and, crucially, self‐efficacy and space for reflexivity, are more prominent as sources of resilience and strong identity. The reflexivity, inspired by the process of narrative enquiry, is an important contributor to self‐efficacy. We propose that a positive view of growth and identity is preferable to deficit models in the context of the transition between the two ‘communities of practice’ and of the challenges of the workplace. Organizational approaches based on this view will be more likely to promote a sustainable workforce.     

The more-than-human sensorium: sensory engagements with digital self-tracking technologies

In this article, we draw on findings from an empirical project involving talking to Australian women about their sensory and sensemaking engagements with digital health technologies. Adopting a new feminist materialist perspective, our analysis identified a series of relational connections, affective forces and agential capacities generated when our participants came together with digitized modes of self-tracking. The agential capacities engendered through and with these technologies included discovering and uncovering information, motivation, quantifying and automating data collection, distinguishing “false” bodily sensations from “real,” discerning patterns, and enhancing sensory capabilities. Working with these technologies, the women were able to access insights into their bodies, feel more in control of bodily activities by reflecting on this information and any patterns over time it revealed. The limitations of these sensory devices were also revealed in the women’s accounts. The devices sometimes closed off or challenged women’s sensory knowledge in ways they found less than useful or helpful, due to failings in the devices’ design or functionality. Our analysis, therefore, highlights the intra-action of enactments of human sensory responses as they engage with digital devices and digital data, including the ways in which these responses were extended, facilitated, or, in some cases, challenged.     

Exemplary sound and hearing in sensory treatises from the early modern Spanish-speaking world

This essay considers sound in sensory treatises from the seventeenth-century Hispanic world: Jerónimo Becerra’s Estvdioso discvrso philosophica anathomia, y theatro ingenioso de los organos y sentidos interiores, y exteriores del hombre (Mexico, 1657); Tratado de los bienes del silencio y males de la lengua, attributed to rector of the Colegio de Manila Diego de S. I. Bobadilla (Manila, 1645) and Diego Calleja’s Talentos logrados, en el buen uso de los cinco sentidos (Madrid, 1700). My purpose is to draw out the authors’ engagement with aural discourses that intersect with other areas of early modern thought. Above all, I underscore the reconciliation of existing ideas about sound’s spiritual significance with developments in medicine and anatomy. The study is the first in-depth examination of each of the three treatises it considers. It advances our understanding of seventeenth-century sound culture and underscores the need for re-reading cultural production from this time period through an aural lens.     

An introduction to copula-based bivariate reliability Concepts

Several attempts were made in the literature to generalize the notions based on univariate quantiles to higher dimensions. As quantile-based reliability concepts are receiving much attention, it is important to address these problems in the field of Reliability theory. In this paper, bivariate reliability concepts using the dependence structure are introduced. The properties and characterizations of the bivariate reliability concepts are presented; it includes the characterization based on the relationship between bivariate hazard rate and bivariate mean residual life. The bivariate reliability concepts in reversed time are also studied.     

On the mixtures of Weibull and Pareto (IV) distribution: An alternative to Pareto distribution

Finite mixture models have provided a reasonable tool to model various types of observed phenomena, specially those which are random in nature. In this article, a finite mixture of Weibull and Pareto (IV) distribution is considered and studied. Some structural properties of the resulting model are discussed including estimation of the model parameters via expectation maximization (EM) algorithm. A real-life data application exhibits the fact that in certain situations, this mixture model might be a better alternative than the rival popular models.     

Some estimation procedures of sensitive character using scrambled response techniques in successive sampling

This paper is an attempt to analyze the effect of scrambled response techniques to estimate the current population mean in two-occasion successive sampling when study and auxiliary variables are sensitive in nature. Using additive and multiplicative scrambled response models on both occasions, some generalized estimation strategies of current population mean have been proposed and their properties are examined. Empirical studies are performed on real data (abortion rate in the states of United States) and simulation studies are also carried out to evaluate the performances of the proposed estimators over other estimators. Results have proved the worthiness of the scrambled response techniques in real-life situations.     

Distributions of statistics describing concentration of runs in non homogeneous Markov-dependent trials

In the first n, n ? 3, trials of a non homogeneous zero-one Markov chain of first order, we consider runs of ones of length exceeding a threshold. The article deals with statistics denoting, the length and the position of the shortest segment of the chain in which all such runs of ones are concentrated. The study provides recursive schemes for conditional distributions of these statistics. Numerical examples illustrate the theoretical results.