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Theoretical Positions (theoretical + position)
Selected AbstractsA Model for Evaluating Organizational Competencies: An Application in the Context of a Quality Management Initiative,DECISION SCIENCES, Issue 2 2005Ana Belén Escrig-Tena ABSTRACT Despite the important contributions made by the Competency-Based Perspective (CBP) to strategic thought, certain issues on the operational definition of the theoretical concepts that characterize this approach remain unresolved, thus limiting its empirical application. In addressing this issue, the present study puts forward a procedure for measuring the competencies that can be developed in association with a Quality Management (QM) initiative and analyzes the reliability and validity of the resulting scale. This procedure could be transferred to studies that aim to carry out an empirical analysis based on the theoretical position of the CBP. [source] Constrained tomography of realistic velocity models in microseismic monitoring using calibration shotsGEOPHYSICAL PROSPECTING, Issue 5 2010T. Bardainne ABSTRACT The knowledge of the velocity model in microseismic jobs is critical to achieving statistically reliable microseismic event locations. The design of microseismic networks and the limited sources for calibration do not allow for a full tomographic inversion. We propose optimizing a priori velocity models using a few active shots and a non-linear inversion, suitable to poorly constrained systems. The considered models can be described by several layers with different P- and S-wave velocities. The velocities may be constant or have 3D gradients; the layer interfaces may be simple dipping planes or more complex 3D surfaces. In this process the P- and S- wave arrival times and polarizations measured on the seismograms constitute the observed data set. They are used to estimate two misfit functions: i) one based on the measurement residuals and ii) one based on the inaccuracy of the source relocation. These two functions are minimized thanks to a simulated annealing scheme, which decreases the risk of converging to a local solution within the velocity model. The case study used to illustrate this methodology highlights the ability of this technique to constrain a velocity model with dipping layers. This was performed by jointly using sixteen perforation shots recorded during a multi-stage fracturing operation from a single string of 3C-receivers. This decreased the location inaccuracies and the residuals by a factor of six. In addition, the retrieved layer dip was consistent with the pseudo-horizontal trajectories of the wells and the background information provided by the customer. Finally, the theoretical position of each calibration shot was contained in the uncertainty domain of the relocation of each shot. In contrast, single-stage inversions provided different velocity models that were neither consistent between each other nor with the well trajectories. This example showed that it is essential to perform a multi-stage inversion to derive a better updated velocity model. [source] Trajectories of Multiculturalism in Germany, the Netherlands and Canada: In Search of Common PatternsGOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION, Issue 2 2010Elke Winter In the mid-1990s, Canadian scholarship introduced an important distinction between historically incorporated national minorities and ethnic groups emerging from recent immigration. While the former may be accommodated through federal or multinational arrangements, multiculturalism has come to describe a normative framework of immigrant integration. The distinction between these analytically different types of movements is crucial for Taylor's and Kymlicka's influential theories, but the relations between different types of national and ethnic struggles for rights and recognition have remained unexplored in much of the subsequent scholarly literature. This article starts from a theoretical position where different types of diversity are viewed as highly interdependent in practice. Tracing the trajectories of multiculturalism in three different countries, the article aims to identify common patterns of how changing relations between traditionally incorporated groups affect public perceptions of and state responses to more recent immigration-induced diversity. More specifically, it asks the following question: to what extent does the absence (in Germany), discontinuation (in the Netherlands) and exacerbation (in Canada) of claims on ethnocultural grounds by traditionally incorporated groups influence the willingness of the national majority/ies to grant multicultural rights to immigrants? [source] Assessing the long-run economic impact of labour law systems: a theoretical reappraisal and analysis of new time series dataINDUSTRIAL RELATIONS JOURNAL, Issue 6 2008Simon Deakin ABSTRACT Standard economic theory sees labour law as an exogenous interference with market relations and predicts mostly negative impacts on employment and productivity. We argue for a more nuanced theoretical position: labour law is, at least in part, endogenous, with both the production and the application of labour law norms influenced by national and sectoral contexts, and by complementarities between the institutions of the labour market and those of corporate governance and financial markets. Legal origin may also operate as a force shaping the content of the law and its economic impact. Time-series analysis using a new data set on legal change from the 1970s to the mid-2000s shows evidence of positive correlations between regulation and growth in employment and productivity, at least for France and Germany. No relationship, either positive or negative, is found for the UK and, although the United States shows a weak negative relationship between regulation and employment growth, this is offset by productivity gains. [source] Popper and nursing theoryNURSING PHILOSOPHY, Issue 1 2003Peter Allmark P h D Abstract Science seems to develop by inducing new knowledge from observation. However, it is hard to find a rational justification for induction. Popper offers one attempt to resolve this problem. Nursing theorists have tended to ignore or reject Popper, often on the false belief that he is a logical positivist (and hence hostile to qualitative research). Logical positivism claims that meaningful sentences containing any empirical content should ultimately be reducible to simple, observation statements. Popper refutes positivism by showing that there are no such simple statements. He is not a positivist. For Popper, the scientist begins with problems and puts forward trial solutions. These are subjected to rigorous testing aimed at falsifying them. A new theoretical position is then reached in which the scientist knows either that the trial solutions are false or that they have not yet been falsified. Science is characterized by the fact that it tests its ideas through attempted falsification. Non-science tests its ideas through attempted refutation. Nursing theory is a mixture of science and non-science. Popper's method requires rigorous testing of theory in both realms. As such, some nursing theory should be discarded. Popper's view faces at least two important criticisms. One is that a scientist can always reject an apparent falsification by instead altering some auxiliary hypothesis (e.g. denying the accuracy of the falsifying observation). Popper can deal with this argument by saying that defence of a theory in this way will eventually break down if the theory is false. The second criticism is that Popper's method does ultimately draw upon induction. This criticism is true, but his method can be usefully adapted. An adapted from of Popper's philosophy of science provides a good basis for nursing theory. [source] THE NEW INSTITUTIONAL ECONOMICS , A DIFFERENT APPROACH TO ECONOMIC ANALYSISECONOMIC AFFAIRS, Issue 3 2008Eirik G. Furubotn The initial objective of the paper is to describe the way in which the term ,New Institutional Economics' (NIE) emerged in the literature and became the designation for a new field concerned with the study of various analytical techniques designed for the exploration of institutional phenomena. It is then shown how some of the more important of these techniques, transaction-cost economics, property-rights analysis and contract theory, have been applied in two central lines of neoinstitutional thought , the Williamsonian and the Northian. Criticisms of these two disparate theoretical positions on the NIE are considered and assessed. Next, a brief review of some of the empirical literature is undertaken so that the explanatory powers of NIE themes can be gauged. Finally, the paper offers a few general remarks on the present state of the NIE and its possible influence on the further development of economics. [source] A contingency approach to resource-creation processesINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT REVIEWS, Issue 4 2006Cliff Bowman The resource-based view has provided valuable insights into sources of competitive advantage, but little attention has been paid to the processes of resource creation. To address this shortcoming, this paper reviews the strategy process literature, explaining the theoretical positions and assumptions that underpin different types of process. It then examines the mechanisms by which resources have been found to be created; luck, resource picking, internal development and alliances. Next, a series of resource-creation pathways that illustrate the different routes firm inputs might take on the way to becoming unique and valuable resources is developed. These pathways are also discussed in terms of the strategy processes through which they are developed, and the appropriate resource-creation processes. The review is then extended with the introduction of two contingent variables , task complexity and environmental stability , and the resource-creation processes that are congruent with different combinations of these variables are explored. From this review, one is able to identify the combination of complex task and stable environment likely to be the most conducive to resource creation. Finally, the paper explores opportunities that firms might have to engineer stability and complexity in some parts of their operations with the aim of developing a resource-based advantage. [source] Consumption and community: choices for women over fortyJOURNAL OF CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR, Issue 4 2006Isabelle Szmigin Women in their 40s face a range of issues regarding how they choose to present themselves to the world; often these choices involve forms of consumption. We talked to two groups of British women and discussed how they felt about themselves and the pressures upon them. We present a discussion which aims to synthesize some of the key features of how these women face their futures and suggest potential theoretical positions to help encapsulate women's present and future selves. We suggest that there are a number of pressures that may engender alternative consumption choices and these are often set within a wider sense of female community. The concept of community should prove useful for further theorising on women's future consumption choices. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Analysing Student Teachers' Codeswitching in Foreign Language Classrooms: Theories and Decision MakingMODERN LANGUAGE JOURNAL, Issue 4 2001Ernesto Macaro This article draws on a case study of 6 student teachers in secondary schools and their codeswitching between the first language (L1) and the second language (L2) over the course of 14 foreign language (FL) lessons, where French was the L2 and English was the L1 of the learners. It describes how the student teachers had been exposed to theoretical positions and empirical studies on this issue during their 36-week training programme. It analyses the quantity of L1 used by these student teachers as well as the reflections and beliefs of 2 of the student teachers on the codeswitching process. The findings reveal comparatively low levels of L1 use by the student teachers and little effect of the quantity of student teacher L1 use on the quantity of L1 or L2 use by the learners. They also reveal very little explicit reference by the student teachers to the research and professional literature they had read, yet their decision making did not necessarily stem from their personal beliefs. Some aspects of codeswitching appear to be a source of conflict for the student teachers while others do not. Implications for teaching are drawn. [source] Insight from multiple disciplinary angles: A case study of an interdisciplinary research teamNEW DIRECTIONS FOR TEACHING & LEARNING, Issue 102 2005Elizabeth G. Creamer A commitment to pursue problems from multiple angles, methods, and theoretical positions means that research teams require strategies to navigate the tensions and conflict that inevitably emerge, particularly when the intent is to find ways to integrate different disciplinary perspectives. [source] Prophecy and the near future: Thoughts on macroeconomic, evangelical, and punctuated timeAMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Issue 3 2007JANE I. GUYER A view from 1950s and 1960s Britain suggests that the public culture of temporality in the United States has shifted from a consequential focus on reasoning toward the near future to a combination of response to immediate situations and orientation to a very long-term horizon. This temporal perspective is most marked in the public rhetoric of macroeconomics, but it also corresponds in remarkable ways to evangelicals' views of time. In this article, I trace the optionality and consonance of this shift toward the relative evacuation of the near future in religion and economics by examining different theoretical positions within each domain. In conclusion, I suggest that the near future is being reinhabited by forms of punctuated time, such as the dated schedules of debt and other specific event-driven temporal frames. [source] Der Natur-Begriff des 17.BERICHTE ZUR WISSENSCHAFTSGESCHICHTE, Issue 4 2000Jahrhunderts und zwei seiner Inter-pretamente:, intima rerum", res extensa" und Abstract This article aims to show the general and broad use of the concept of nature in the philosophical discourse of the 17th century - and in this context it is obvious that this discourse includes both philosophy and theology. I will discuss two opposite views concerning its fundamental understanding of nature, yet will not go into elaborating differences concerning such particular concepts as, for example, space, void or motion. These views and the theoretical positions from which they emerged will here be called res extensa and intima rerum - this is done in order to clarify the basic opposition: there is no interior in pure extension and there is no extension at all in that what is called the interior. My aim is to show that these two views are, in fact, not quite as incompatible and contradictory as it easily may seem at first glance. Although I will for heuristic purposes introduce the two concepts res extensa and intima rerum as complete opposites and in a wholly contrary manner, ist should become clear that there exist both influences and interactions between these two notions. Theorists introduced here as advocates of the intima rerum -position, can, for example, be seen as having been influenced by the mechanistic, or res extensa -position, mainly through the formally and methodologically attractive geometric and mathematical argumentation. Likewise theorists advocating a mechanistic position can be said at some points to have been led by a substantial necessity concerning the contect of their argumentation to take recourse to the concept of intima rerum, at least partly or in a modified manner. [source] Semantic learning designs: recording assumptions and guidelinesBRITISH JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY, Issue 3 2006Miguel-Angel Sicilia Recent developments in the standardisation of learning technology have resulted in models of learning activities and resources including descriptive metadata and definitions of conditional flows for multirole activities. Nonetheless, such learning designs are actually representations of the results of the design process and do not provide information about the rationale of the design, ie, about the theoretical standpoints, assumptions or guidelines applied to come up with the concrete arrangement of activities. These latter elements are critical not only for informative reasons, but as a medium towards the end of connecting theories and hypotheses to actual practice and analysing the resulting empirical data as a form of inquiry on the validity of theoretical assumptions. This paper delineates the main aspects of a schema for the recording of such design rationales using an ontological approach. The method for the engineering of the schema was based on connecting the definitions provided with an existing large ontological base, thus reusing a large amount of common sense knowledge. Two paradigmatic example positions of the range of aspects that could be covered by the representation language are described as an illustration. The resulting ontological definitions can be used as a foundation for the refinement of theoretical positions and for their comparative assessment. [source] Commentary on Intrapersonal, Interpersonal, and Contextual Factors in Extramarital InvolvementCLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY: SCIENCE AND PRACTICE, Issue 2 2005K. Daniel O'Leary Extramarital Involvements (EMIs) attract significant societal attention, as exemplified by the revelation of former President Clinton's EMI. Depression, anxiety, and divorce are important sequelae of EMIs, though it will be important to learn which couples successfully cope with EMIs. Allen et al. (this issue) provide an excellent overview of the prevalence of EMIs and the problems in trying to ascertain accurate estimates thereof. The impact of a very close relationship even without explicit sexual contact was noted, and Allen et al. present a useful framework for organizing theoretical positions and data on EMIs. It is an excellent review for a clinician or researcher addressing EMIs. [source] | ||||||||||||||||