How Trump Could Shock a Divided Nation Back to Life as Collaborator-in-Chief
By Frank V. Zerunyan
The Conversation
2018
Research Papers
Collaboration as an Organization Design for Shared Purpose
By Paul S. Adler, Charles Heckscher
Toward Permeable Boundaries of Organizations? Research in the Sociology of Organizations
2018
“Shared purpose,” understood as a widely shared commitment to the organization’s fundamental raison d’eˆtre, can be a powerful driver of organizational performance by providing both motivation and direction for members’ joint problem-solving efforts. So far, however, we understand little about the organization design that can support shared purpose in the context of large, complex business enterprises. Building on the work of Selznick and Weber, we argue that such contexts require a new organizational form, one that we call collaborative. The collaborative organizational form is grounded in Weber’s value-rational type of social action, but overcomes the scale limitations of the collegial form of organization that is conventionally associated with value-rational action. We identify four organizational principles that characterize this collaborative form and a range of managerial policies that can implement those principles.
A Meta-Narrative Literature Synthesis and Framework to Guide Future Evaluation of Legal Empowerment Interventions
By Katherine Footer, Michael Windle, Laura Ferguson, Jordan Hatcher, Carrie Lyons, Emma Gorin, Anne L. Stangl, Steven Golub, Sofia Gruskin, Stefan Baral
Health and Human Rights, 20
2018
Legal empowerment is increasingly recognized as a key approach for addressing socio-structural determinants of health and promoting the well-being and human rights of vulnerable populations. Legal empowerment seeks to increase people’s capacity to understand and use the law. However, limited consensus remains on the effectiveness of legal empowerment interventions in optimizing health outcomes. Leveraging a meta-narrative approach, we synthesized literature describing how legal empowerment interventions have been operationalized and empirically studied with respect to health determinants. The studies included here document diverse legal empowerment approaches and highlight how interventions changed the context surrounding the health of vulnerable populations. The absence of robust conceptualization, operationalization, and measurement of the risk contexts in which legal empowerment approaches operate limits the clarity with which interventions’ impact on health can be ascertained. Despite this, legal empowerment is a promising approach to address the health of marginalized populations. To foster support between the fields of legal empowerment and health, we explore the limitations in study design and measurement of the existing evidence base; such scrutiny could strengthen the rigor of future research. This paper provides a guide to the socio-structural levels across which legal empowerment interventions impact health outcomes in order to inform future interventions.
GIS&T and Geodesign
By Darren Ruddell, Kelleann Foster
The Geographic Information Science & Technology Body of Knowledge (3rd Quarter 2018 Edition)
2018
Geodesign leverages GIS&T to allow collaborations that result in geographically specific, adaptive and resilient solutions to complex problems across scales of the built and natural environment. Geodesign is rooted in decades of research and practice. Building on that history, is a contemporary approach that embraces the latest in GIS&T, visualization, and social science, all of which is organized around a unique framework process involving six models. More than just technology or GIS, Geodesign is a way of thinking when faced with complicated spatial issues that need systematic, creative, and integrative solutions. Geodesign holds great promise for addressing the complexity of interrelated issues associated with growth and landscape change. Geodesign empowers through design combined with data and analytics to shape our environments and create desired futures.
From Farms to Fuel Tanks: Stakeholder Framing Contests and Entrepreneurship in the Emergent U.S. Biodiesel Market
By Shon R. Hiatt, W. Chad Carlos
Wiley Strategic Management Journal
2018
Although scholarship has demonstrated that market categories offer important signals to entrepreneurs about which goods and services are valued, little research has considered how entrepreneurs make sense of and exploit opportunities when contestation over category meaning persists. Using the emergent U.S. biodiesel market as a context, we present a framework to explain how the salience of different stakeholder frames shapes entrepreneurs’ perceptions of market opportunities and influences their market-entry strategies. By showing how framing contests affect entrepreneurial outcomes, this study illuminates the underlying cognitive mechanisms that impact market meaning and offers important implications for the literatures on entrepreneurship, market-category evolution, framing contests, and grand challenges.
Water Use in the United States Energy System: A National Assessment and Unit Process Inventory of Water Consumption and Withdrawals
By Kelly T. Sanders, Emily Grubert
Environmental Science & Technology
2018
The United States (US) energy system is a large water user, but the nature of that use is poorly understood. To support resource comanagement and fill this noted gap in the literature, this work presents detailed estimates for US-based water consumption and withdrawals for the US energy system as of 2014, including both intensity values and the first known estimate of total water consumption and withdrawal by the US energy system. We address 126 unit processes, many of which are new additions to the literature, differentiated among 17 fuel cycles, five life cycle stages, three water source categories, and four levels of water quality. Overall coverage is about 99% of commercially traded US primary energy consumption with detailed energy flows by unit process. Energy-related water consumption, or water removed from its source and not directly returned, accounts for about 10% of both total and freshwater US water consumption. Major consumers include biofuels (via irrigation), oil (via deep well injection, usually of nonfreshwater), and hydropower (via evaporation and seepage). The US energy system also accounts for about 40% of both total and freshwater US water withdrawals, i.e., water removed from its source regardless of fate. About 70% of withdrawals are associated with the once-through cooling systems of approximately 300 steam cycle power plants that produce about 25% of electricity.
Analysis of energy impacts of facade-inclusive retrofit strategies, compared to system-only retrofits using regression models
By Andrea Martinez, Joon-Ho Choi
Energy and Buildings
2018
Reducing the energy consumption in existing buildings became one of the critical challenges at the beginning of the 21st century. Several types and levels of retrofits are now being implemented in the building stock. To obtain a better understanding of the actual impact of these actions, evidence-based research has been playing an increasingly important role. This paper describes the collection of data on measured pre- and post-retrofit energy consumption of a group of buildings in the U.S., in order to distinguish the impacts of different levels of retrofits. In particular, the goal has been to distinguish how retrofits including facade improvements compare to those centered exclusively on internal systems. Additionally, energy data was collected for a subset of non-retrofitted buildings and used as the control group. The regression model revealed greater energy savings from retrofits including the facade as compared to those that excluded it. However, those savings are modest considering the energy reductions that are anticipated from deep-energy retrofits. Other relevant factors, such as occupants and their behavior, are vital for determining the value of retrofits and need to be incorporated in the next phases of this study.
Monterey Reservoirs of Offshore California
By Iraj Ershaghi, Donald L. Paul, Saran Kaba
Society of Petroleum Engineers
2018
In this paper we discuss our studies conducted on two California offshore fields that may be abandoned in near future. The purpose of the study was to examine the feasibility of re-purposing these fields to suitable offshore gas storage by utilizing the reservoir voidage and by using the existing pipeline facilities. These storage sites could offer a significant alternative to the current onshore sites located in highly populated urban areas of California.