Path(ological) Dependency? Core Competencies from an Organizational Perspective

The development of the 'resource-based theory of the firm' has helped to reorient the field of strategic management towards a focus on the organizational processes and structures which produce 'core competencies'. By challenging previous assumptions of market determinism this approach seems to open up the prospect of a greater dialogue with the theories and concerns of organization studies. This paper aims to determine the scope of such a dialogue by developing an appreciation and critique of the core competencies framework from an organizational perspective. In this context, the key feature of resource-based theories is seen to be their focus on organizational knowledge rather than decision-making processes as the engine of competitive performance. This focus has a powerful resonance with studies of knowledge in organizations, particularly those forms of knowledge which are linked to product and process design.
However, despite the important shift towards a knowledge-based view of competition, the core competencies approach fails to follow the logic of its own argument as far as the organizational appropriation of knowledge is concerned. In their pursuit of an ontological model of competitive performance –defining the essential causes of firm competitiveness – resource-based approaches neglect the socially embedded qualities of organizational knowledge. As a result, the social construction of knowledge, encompassing the dilemmas posed by the employment relationship and the pitfalls of institutionalization, is neglected. Instead, a smoothly linear model is developed linking skills, competence and competitiveness. This mechanistic view is further reinforced by reliance on a command and control model of the management process. Organizational knowledge is not a biddable resource at the disposal of top management.     

高校计算机类课程教学中发挥学生主体性的实践教学研究

伴随着社会的进步和时代的发展,高等教育的质量问题已成为高等教育改革与发展的核心问题。计算机类课程的教学具有其特点,尤其在高等教育阶段,需要突出学生的主体地位、发挥他们的主体性。本文旨在研究如何在计算机类课程教学中突出学生的主体地位、发挥他们的主体性,以教学方法为重点,以教师主导促进学生主体,研究具有实际意义和可操作性的专门针对计算机类课程教学的教学模式,并且提供教学实践中必要的细节的方法和原则,具有一定的可操作性和推广价值,使“学生主体”的理念能够在教育实践中真正落到实处。     

Effects of critical incident tasks on the intercultural competence of English non-majors

ABSTRACT

In this internationalised world, graduate employability in terms of intercultural communication skills needs to be taken into account in higher education. The present study aims to explore the effects of critical incident task instruction on English non-majored undergraduates’ intercultural competence. One group of students received ten weeks of instruction with one critical incident task per week and another group received standard English classes. Data were collected from the students’ pre- and post-test. The results showed a significant and strong effect of the intervention with critical incident tasks. Implications for educational practice are presented for further teaching with critical incident tasks.     

Replication: Revisiting Tversky and Shafir’s (1992) Disjunction Effect with an extension comparing between and within subject designs

Does uncertainty about an outcome influence decisions? The sure-thing principle (Savage, 1954) posits that it should not, but Tversky and Shafir (1992) found that people regularly violate it in hypothetical gambling and vacation decisions, a phenomenon they termed “disjunction effect”. Very close replications and extensions of Tversky and Shafir (1992) were conducted in this paper (N = 890, MTurk). The target article demonstrated the effect using two paradigms in a between-subject design: here, an extension also testing a within-subject design, with design being randomly assigned was added. These results were consistent with the original findings for the “paying to know“ problem (original: Cramer’s V = 0.22, 95% (CI) [0.14, 0.32]; replication: Cramer’s V = 0.30, 95% CI [0.24, 0.37]), yet not for the “choice under risk” problem (original: Cramer’s V = 0.26, 95% CI [0.14, 0.39]; replication: Cramer’s V = 0.11, 95% CI [−0.07, 0.20]). The within-subject extension showed very similar results. Implications for the disjunction effect and judgment and decision-making theory are discussed, and a call for improvements on the statistical understanding of comparisons of between-subject and within-subject designs is introduced. All materials, data, and code are available on https://osf.io/gu58m/.     

Maternal Autonomy- and Connectedness-oriented Parenting Behaviors as Predictors of Children's Social Behaviors in China

The purpose of the study was to examine the contributions of maternal encouragement of autonomy and maternal encouragement of connectedness to the prediction of children's social behaviors. A sample of children (N  =  94), initially aged two years, and their mothers in China participated in the two-year longitudinal study. Child autonomy and connectedness and maternal goal-oriented behaviors were assessed at two years of age through the observation of mother–child interactions. Data on children's social participation, prosocial behavior, aggression, and organization/leadership in peer interactions were collected in a follow-up study when the children were four years of age. It was found that maternal encouragement of connectedness significantly predicted children's sociability and organization/leadership behavior, especially for children who were relatively high on autonomy. The results indicated the developmental significance of socialization goal-oriented behaviors in cultural context.     

“无用”之大用——英语专业文学教育功能浅识

文学之用存在于它的"无用"之中,即在于大用,而非世俗之所谓急功近利之用。本文从文学与语言、文化素养及交际能力等要素间相互关系入手,就英语专业文学教育的功能及功能实现的方法作了初步的探讨。     

Trustworthiness in evaluation practice: an emphasis on the relational

As canons for trustworthiness developed explicitly in the discourse of qualitative inquiry, the emphasis was on procedural matters rather than fundamentally relational ones. A nod was made to the relational in such strategies as “member checks” but the issues of how the evaluator actually relates to participants and to the larger communities of practice and discourse—matters subsumed under moral principles and ethical standards—were often marginalized. This chapter posits that the first consideration in designing and conducting rigorous evaluation inquiry, and in critiquing the results of any research, should be the study's trustworthiness. Judging a study's trustworthiness, however, should focus on much more than procedural matters; it should also rely on moral principles and ethical standards which specifically address how we relate to an evaluation's participants. Central to these considerations are cross-cultural sensibilities about the nuanced meanings associated with any principles and standards. The chapter provides a theoretical framework for this position and offers two illustrative examples in the form of dialogues.     

蔡元培翻译观的认识论诠释

本文从哲学认识论的角度对蔡元培在《国文学讲义.叙言》中隐含的“译即易”的译学观点进行了诠释。认为翻译过程就是译者主体对于文本客体的认识活动,在这一认识过程中,译者主体的认知结构、价值观念、情感等都对翻译起着重要的作用,从而产生不同的认识结果即不同的译本。但译者主体作用的发挥最终还是要受到文本这个客体和原文本作者这另一主体的制约。文本内容,即原作者的思想仍旧是无法改变的。