哈贝马斯和利奥塔现代性理论之比较

在哈贝马斯和利奥塔之间进行的关于现代性的争论颇具代表性,一个声称现代性是"一项未竟的事业",另一个则对元叙事表示质疑。哈贝马斯的"共识"理论和利奥塔的"差异"理论,表面上思维迥异,但实际上却包藏了雷同与巧合,具有差异性的同时也具有共通性。在深层次进行整合,寻找两者理论及政治倾向中蕴藏的共同点,利于剖析两者理论的合理与局限,使超越两者形成新的理论成为可能。     

语境论的修正及其对怀疑论难题的解决

认识的语境论在回应怀疑论难题的过程中,出现了多种修正的形式,包括以相对标准修正的语境论,以事实作为原因修正的语境论,以妥协方式修正的语境论,以证据修正的语境论,以预设修正的语境论。这些不同形式的语境论遇到了"斑马悖论"和摩尔主义的反驳,但语境论者认为这两个反驳不一定有效,正是它们忽视了语境的作用,才导致悖论的出现,要解决怀疑论难题,还得回到特定语境中去。     

中原经济区工业与信息化自主创新对策初探

河南省工业与信息化领域如何从本省实际出发,吸取国内外成功经验,增强区域自主创新能力,是河南省科技工作和经济工作的第一要务,是全面推进中原经济区建设、加快中原崛起河南振兴的关键。通过对"十一五"时期河南省工业与信息化领域自主创新能力现状进行分析,结合国家自主创新战略,提出了"十二五"河南省工业与信息化领域提升自主创新能力应遵循的原则,并结合行业特点提出了相应行业自主创新工作对策,以期能对中原经济区建设发挥更大作用。     

民主、信息公开与国家治理模式的变迁

在很长一段历史时间内,信息公开与民主制度并无关联,因为"精英民主"模式通常与保密文化密切相关,它既不鼓励公民参与,也不希望公民知悉政府的信息。直到参与式民主在近几十年取得主流话语权,信息公开才与公共参与一道成为民主制度不可或缺的组成部分。中国《政府信息公开条例》的实施,不仅有利于国家治理模式的转变,而且未来必将有助于民主的发展。     

Applications and Implementation DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS: AN EMPIRICAL ASSESSMENT FOR DECISION MAKING

A laboratory experiment examined the effects of applying decision support system (DSS) technology to decision making in ill-structured problem environments under varying information conditions. Marketing executives participated in the experiment which investigated the effects of DSS availability, DSS training, and data availability on dependent variables that included: (1) the number of alternatives considered by a subject during decision making, (2) the period of time spent by a subject to complete the decision-making process, (3) the subject's perceived confidence in the decisions he or she had made, (4) the amount of data considered by a subject's during decision making, (5) the individual subject's decision processing, and (6) the subject's performance overall. Our results indicate that all three factors significantly affect the number of alternatives considered by subjects during the decision-making process. We therefore suggest that DSS training be coordinated with decision training in order to realize the potential of DSSs as described in the DSS literature.     

CATEGORY WIDTH COGNITIVE STYLE AS A FACTOR IN ACCOUNTANTS' PERCEPTIONS OF ACCOUNTING INFORMATION

This paper reports the findings of a laboratory experiment designed to investigate the relationship of category width (CW) cognitive style with accountants' perceptions of accounting information. Subjects drawn from large accounting firms in Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne, Australia, were classified into broad, medium, and narrow categories following the test devised by Pettigrew [19]. Subjects were requested to state their level of confidence in decisions they had made after receiving (1) conventional accounting information or (2) conventional accounting information and human resources accounting (HRA) information using a one-group pretest-posttest design. The results indicated a significant relationship between CW cognitive style and the accountants' confidence in their decisions. Furthermore, CW cognitive style moderated the accounting-information/decision-making relationship.     

The Pacific Rim Library: A Surprising Pearl

The Pacific Rim Library (PRL) is an initiative of the Pacific Rim Digital Library Association (PRDLA). The project began in 2006 using the OAI-PMH paradigm and now holds over 300,000 records harvested from OAI data provider libraries around the Pacific. PRL's goal is to enable the sharing of digital collections amongst PRDLA members and the world, but greater unexpected benefits have been discovered. Through mirroring their metadata, PRL increases the chance that their data will be discovered in Google and other general search engines. With its many disparate collections, PRL is not a repository for traditional information discovery and retrieval. Initially users will bounce from a Google hit to the PRL metadata record in Hong Kong and then begin an intensive search on the original site which hosts the full digital object, in Vancouver, Honolulu, Wuhan, Singapore, or other PRDLA member location.     

Visualizing the factory through meta- manufacturing processes

Milestone or deadline driven production management is predominant in most manufacturing companies. Problems and other disturbing occurrences tend to see their first daylight during phases where plans are implemented into reality, for example, when production commences, prototypes enter manufacturing and deliveries are expected. Conventional control routines fail to depict the true progress and procedures of the company on an on-line basis, which means that instead of being proactive they serve as means to react to already existing problems. This paper studies the application of advanced visualization techniques to the already existing information embedded in a comany's information infrastructure, and how it can help management to anticipate probable near future pitfalls. By studying those daily operations of a company which share a document relationship with the true manufacturing process, that is, the meta-manufacturing processes, a completely new perspective on the company's value-adding activities is drawn. By mining the existing data reservoirs of a company traditionally difficult management processes, such as product development, vendor integration, production planning, can be analysed and the problems identified in a novel way to react in advance. The paper displays several empirical examples from bulk to one-of-a-kind production where the method has been successfully implemented.     

Lag Length Selection for Unit Root Tests in the Presence of Nonstationary Volatility

A number of recent papers have focused on the problem of testing for a unit root in the case where the driving shocks may be unconditionally heteroskedastic. These papers have, however, taken the lag length in the unit root test regression to be a deterministic function of the sample size, rather than data-determined, the latter being standard empirical practice. We investigate the finite sample impact of unconditional heteroskedasticity on conventional data-dependent lag selection methods in augmented Dickey–Fuller type regressions and propose new lag selection criteria which allow for unconditional heteroskedasticity. Standard lag selection methods are shown to have a tendency to over-fit the lag order under heteroskedasticity, resulting in significant power losses in the (wild bootstrap implementation of the) augmented Dickey–Fuller tests under the alternative. The proposed new lag selection criteria are shown to avoid this problem yet deliver unit root tests with almost identical finite sample properties as the corresponding tests based on conventional lag selection when the shocks are homoskedastic.     

Information

Information technology is increasingly being used in the human services, but reports suggest that some professionals are resisting its introduction. Some accounts for this resistance emphasise the role of the technology's physical attributes. It may, however, be due more to mistaken assumptions by some professionals about the role of the technology in generating information in human service contexts. Information as a concept has different interpretations according to its usage. It is the author's contention that there has been a failure to differentiate between the use of the concept in different settings and this is a possible causal factor in producing resistance. This paper examines information as used in communication theory and the human services and emphasises the need for a thorough examination of the role of information in professional social work education and practice.