Collaborative Process (collaborative + process)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Collaborative Processes and Knowledge Creation in Communities-of-Practice

CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION MANAGEMENT, Issue 3 2002
Karin Breu
This paper challenges the view of employees' reluctance to share what they know, thus, attributing the ,stickiness' of knowledge to motivational factors. The study investigated informal mechanisms for knowledge sharing, taking a community-of-practice (CoP) perspective as a point of departure. A large-sized organisation in the utilities sector provided the context of the research. Existing CoP theory is advanced by surfacing the motivations for participation in CoPs, by eliciting the contributions informal, self-organising communities achieve in a commercial context and by documenting the process by which informal community activities become absorbed into the formal organisation. [source]


The 5/95 gap in the indexation of psychiatric journals of low- and middle-income countries

ACTA PSYCHIATRICA SCANDINAVICA, Issue 2 2010
J. J. Mari
Mari JJ, Patel V, Kieling C, Razzouk D, Tyrer P, Herrman H. The 5/95 gap in the indexation of psychiatric journals of low- and middle-income countries. Objective:, To investigate the relationship between science production and the indexation level of low- and middle-income countries (LAMIC) journals in international databases. Method:, Indicators of productivity in research were based on the number of articles produced over the 1994,2004 period. A survey in both Medline and ISI/Thomson was conducted to identify journals according to their country of origin. A WPA Task Force designed a collaborative process to assess distribution and quality of non-indexed LAMIC journals. Results:, Twenty LAMIC were found to present more than 100 publications and a total of 222 indexed psychiatric journals were found, but only nine were from LAMIC. The Task Force received 26 questionnaires from editors of non-indexed journals, and concluded that five journals would meet criteria for indexation. Conclusion:, Barriers to indexation of journals contribute to the difficulties in achieving fair representation in the main literature databases for the scientific production in these countries. [source]


User profiling on the Web based on deep knowledge and sequential questioning

EXPERT SYSTEMS, Issue 1 2006
Silvano Mussi
Abstract: User profiling on the Web is a topic that has attracted a great number of technological approaches and applications. In most user profiling approaches the website learns profiles from data implicitly acquired from user behaviours, i.e. observing the behaviours of users with a statistically significant number of accesses. This paper presents an alternative approach. In this approach the website explicitly acquires data from users, user interests are represented in a Bayesian network, and user profiles are enriched and refined over time. The profile enrichment is achieved through a sequential asking algorithm based on the value-of-information theory using the Shannon entropy concept. However, what mostly characterizes the approach is the fact that the user is involved in a collaborative process of profile building. The approach has been tried out for over a year in a real application. On the basis of the experimental results the approach turns out to be particularly suitable for applications where the website is strongly based on deep domain knowledge (as for example is the case for scientific websites) and has a community of users that share the same domain knowledge of the website and produce a ,low' number of accesses (,low' compared to the high number of accesses of a typical commercial website). After presenting the technical aspects of the approach, we discuss the underlying ideas in the light of the experimental results and the literature on human,computer interaction and user profiling. [source]


Involving mental health service users in quality assurance

HEALTH EXPECTATIONS, Issue 2 2006
Jenny Weinstein BPhil BA(Hons) Msc
Abstract Objective, This study compares the process and outcomes of two approaches to engaging mental health (MH) service users in the quality assurance (QA) process. Background, QA plays a significant role in health and care services, including those delivered in the voluntary sector. The importance of actively, rather than passively, involving service users in evaluation and service development has been increasingly recognized during the last decade. Design, This retrospective small-scale study uses document analysis to compare two QA reviews of a MH Day Centre, one that took place in 1998 as a traditional inspection-type event and one that took place in 2000 as a collaborative process with a user-led QA agenda. Setting and participants, The project was undertaken with staff, volunteers and service users in a voluntary sector MH Day Centre. Intervention, The study compares the management, style, evaluation tools and service user responses for the two reviews; it considers staff perspectives and discusses the implications of a collaborative, user-led QA process for service development. Results, The first traditional top,down inspection-type QA event had less ownership from service users and staff and served the main purpose of demonstrating that services met organizational standards. The second review, undertaken collaboratively with a user-led agenda focused on different priorities, evolving a new approach to seeking users' views and achieving a higher response rate. Conclusions, Because both users and staff had participated in most aspects of the second review they were more willing to work together and action plan to improve the service. It is suggested that the process contributed to an evolving ethos of more effective quality improvement and user involvement within the organization. [source]


The Success of Sharing Societies: Lessons from History

HISTORY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 3 2007
Trevor Getz
Global history is often viewed as a competitive battleground in which civilizations, nations, or peoples repeatedly clash over resources or ideology. Correspondingly, victory in the global arena is often seen as belonging to the most inventive or innovative societies. Yet a more complex look at innovation reveals that it is often the result of a gradual and widely collaborative process, often involving the efforts or contributions of citizens of several states or societies. This article suggests that the myths surrounding invention and the reification of innovation as a cultural trait have distracted social scientists and policy makers from recognizing the significance of imported technologies, ideas, strategies, and products in helping societies overcome a wide range of challenges. It illustrates this contention with evidence from several historical episodes that suggest that successful societies are not only open to innovation from among their own populace, but also to contributions from abroad. [source]


Factors associated with constructive staff,family relationships in the care of older adults in the institutional setting

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF EVIDENCE BASED HEALTHCARE, Issue 4 2006
Emily Haesler BN PGradDipAdvNsg
Abstract Background, Modern healthcare philosophy espouses the virtues of holistic care and acknowledges that family involvement is appropriate and something to be encouraged due to the role it plays in physical and emotional healing. In the aged care sector, the involvement of families is a strong guarantee of a resident's well-being. The important role family plays in the support and care of the older adult in the residential aged care environment has been enshrined in the Australian Commonwealth Charter of Residents' Rights and Responsibilities and the Aged Care Standards of Practice. Despite wide acknowledgement of the importance of family involvement in the healthcare of the older adult, many barriers to the implementation of participatory family care have been identified in past research. For older adults in the healthcare environment to benefit from the involvement of their family members, healthcare professionals need an understanding of the issues surrounding family presence in the healthcare environment and the strategies to best support it. Objectives, The objectives of the systematic review were to present the best available evidence on the strategies, practices and organisational characteristics that promote constructive staff,family relationships in the care of older adults in the healthcare setting. Specifically this review sought to investigate how staff and family members perceive their relationships with each other; staff characteristics that promote constructive relationships with the family; and interventions that support staff,family relationships. Search strategy, A literature search was performed using the following databases for the years 1990,2005: Ageline, APAIS Health, Australian Family and Society Abstracts (FAMILY), CINAHL, Cochrane Library, Dare, Dissertation Abstracts, Embase, MEDLINE, PsycINFO and Social Science Index. Personal communication from expert panel members was also used to identify studies for inclusion. A second search stage was conducted through review of reference lists of studies retrieved during the first search stage. The search was limited to published and unpublished material in English language. Selection criteria, The review was limited to studies involving residents and patients within acute, subacute, rehabilitation and residential settings, aged over 65 years, their family and healthcare staff. Papers addressing family members and healthcare staff perceptions of their relationships with each other were considered for this review. Studies in this review also included those relating to interventions to promote constructive staff,family relationships including organisational strategies, staff,family meetings, case conferencing, environmental approaches, etc. The review considered both quantitative and qualitative research and opinion papers for inclusion. Data collection and analysis, All retrieved papers were critically appraised for eligibility for inclusion and methodological quality independently by two reviewers, and the same reviewers collected details of eligible research. Appraisal forms and data extraction forms designed by the Joanna Briggs Institute as part of the QARI and NOTARI systematic review software packages were used for this review. Findings, Family members' perceptions of their relationships with staff showed that a strong focus was placed on opportunities for the family to be involved in the patient's care. Staff members also expressed a theoretical support for the collaborative process, however, this belief often did not translate to the staff members' clinical practice. In the studies included in the review staff were frequently found to rely on traditional medical models of care in their clinical practice and maintaining control over the environment, rather than fully collaborating with families. Four factors were found to be essential to interventions designed to support a collaborative partnership between family members and healthcare staff: communication, information, education and administrative support. Based on the evidence analysed in this systematic review, staff and family education on relationship development, power and control issues, communication skills and negotiating techniques is essential to promoting constructive staff,family relationships. Managerial support, such as addressing workloads and staffing issues; introducing care models focused on collaboration with families; and providing practical support for staff education, is essential to gaining sustained benefits from interventions designed to promote constructive family,staff relationships. [source]


Integrating new information and communication technologies in a group decision support system

INTERNATIONAL TRANSACTIONS IN OPERATIONAL RESEARCH, Issue 6 2000
N. Karacapilidis
Abstract We view group decision making as a collaborative process, where decision makers can establish a common belief on the dimensions of the problem by following a series of well-defined communicative actions. Having first defined these actions, this paper reports on the exploitation of recent advances in information and communication technology, which can be used to: (i) remove the communication impediments among spatially dispersed decision makers; (ii) efficiently elicit and represent the domain of knowledge; (iii) develop efficient mechanisms to structure and consistently maintain the decision analysis; and (iv) automate the decision making process itself. Automation concerns coherence and consistency checking, detection of contradictions, truth maintenance, and information retrieval techniques. [source]


Linking reductionist science and holistic policy using systematic reviews: unpacking environmental policy questions to construct an evidence-based framework

JOURNAL OF APPLIED ECOLOGY, Issue 5 2009
Andrew S. Pullin
Summary 1. There is a mismatch between broad holistic questions typically posed in policy formation and narrow reductionist questions that are susceptible to scientific method. This inhibits the two-way flow of information at the science-policy interface and weakens the impact of applied ecology on environmental policy. 2. We investigate the approaches to building policy in the health services as a model to help establish a framework in applied ecology and environmental management by which reductionist science can underpin decision making at the policy level. 3. A comparison of policy documents in the health and environmental sectors reveals many similarities in identifying approaches and specific interventions that might achieve policy objectives. The difference is that in the health services, information on the effectiveness of potential interventions is far more readily available through the collaborative process of systematic review. 4.Synthesis and applications. Decision makers are increasingly looking to produce policies that are shaped by evidence through evidence-based policy making. The approach that we outline here provides a framework for structuring systematic reviews to deliver the evidence on key policy issues in a way that will see a faster return and provide better use of the systematic review methodology in environmental management. [source]


The psychologist's role in the collaborative process of psychopharmacology

JOURNAL OF CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 6 2002
Kenneth A. Weene
This is a discussion of a collaborative approach between psychologists, physicians, patients, and others in the administration of psychotropic medication. It is based on a systems point of view. In that perspective, not only are the people indicated above a system, but also the patient is considered from a holistic-systems point of view. It requires that the psychologist not only be a member of the system, and a well-versed in medication member at that; (s)he must also be an observer of the system, be able to take a meta perspective, in order to be able to exercise some unique functions,functions for which psychologists are well-trained. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Clin Psychol 58: 617,621, 2002. [source]


Inter-organizational Collaboration and the Dynamics of Institutional Fields

JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES, Issue 1 2000
Nelson Phillips
While many aspects of the collaborative process have been discussed in the management literature, the connection between collaboration and the dynamics of institutional fields has remained largely unconsidered. Yet, collaboration is an important arena for inter,organizational interaction and, therefore, a potentially important context for the process of structuration upon which institutional fields depend. In this paper, we argue that institutionalization and collaboration are interdependent; institutional fields provide the rules and resources upon which collaboration is constructed, while collaboration provides a context for the ongoing processes of structuration that sustain the institutional fields of the participants. [source]


Using photographs and narratives to contextualise and map the experience of caring for a person with dementia

JOURNAL OF NURSING AND HEALTHCARE OF CHRONIC ILLNE SS: AN INTERNATIONAL INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL, Issue 3 2009
PGCLT (HE), Penny Hibberd RGN
Aim., To capture the meaning and context of how carers adapt and develop their relationships throughout their caring role. Background., Family carers play a pivotal role in supporting and caring for a person living with dementia at home. To date, the majority of social research on carers has focussed upon the stress and burden that such demands evoke, and limited attention has been paid to locating the carer's own construction of their role with a relationship-centred approach. This paper attempts to build on this emerging understanding. Design., A participative, qualitative study using photographs and supportive narratives to contextualise and map carer's experiences of caring for a person with dementia. The study was conducted in one area of South East England, UK with all necessary ethical permission to conduct the study obtained prior to data collection. Method., Data was obtained between May,June 2008 with nine carers recruited from a not for profit organisation based in the UK. Photographs were taken by participants using a 27-print disposable camera with supporting written narratives provided on six photographs that participants selected to best represent their caring role and relationship. These photographs and supporting text were then shared with other participants in a focus group. Through this process, participants were helped to sort and group the data into narrative themes. Results., From this collaborative process, the group identified four types of caring relationships, these were: recognising (1); transforming (2); stabilising (3); and ,moving on' (4). Photographs and the supporting narratives were used to illustrate each type of relationship that helped to give meaning and shape to everyday life. Conclusion., The four types of caring relationships help nurses and other service providers to understand how carers of people with dementia construct and manage their day-to-day life. Recognition of a carer's personhood needs to be acknowledged in order to promote and support their role throughout the caring trajectory. Relevance to clinical practice., Recognition of the knowledge and skills held by carers of people with dementia can help inform professional decision-making and provide a platform for practice intervention. [source]


Social norms, coordination and collaboration in heterogeneous teams

MANAGERIAL AND DECISION ECONOMICS, Issue 7 2008
Marilyne Antonetti
This paper considers the coordinating role of social norms in a heterogeneous team of workers. We define an optimal unit of production as a form of organisation involving several teams and members, with the following properties: (i) a social norm operating to coordinate individual efforts; (ii) a team with heterogeneous skills, enabling generation of synergies. Our model suggests that competences of the best worker are transferred to his or her peers. This collaborative process enhances team efficiency but only if there is an implicit ex ante coordinating device based on social norms that discourage free riding. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Doctors' perspectives on their innovations in daily practice: implications for knowledge building in health care

MEDICAL EDUCATION, Issue 10 2008
Maria Mylopoulos
Context, When individuals adapt their practice in order to solve novel or unexpected problems of practice, they are creating new knowledge. This form of innovation development is understood as a core competency of adaptive expertise and the basis for knowledge building community practice. However, little is known about the ways in which this knowledge, produced through daily, innovative problem solving, is developed, identified and shared by health care professionals. Methods, Following this line of inquiry, we conducted semi-structured interviews with a saturation sample of 15 clinical faculty staff at the University of Toronto. Results, A grounded theory analysis of the results showed that our participants held the view that innovation was focused on outcomes, developed through research practice and diffused for adoption in the broader community. As a result, their own individual improvements to daily practice were excluded from this view of innovation. Furthermore, their perceptions of innovation limited participants' engagement in the sort of collaborative process that is central to the practice of knowledge-building communities. Conclusions, This research demonstrated that thinking about innovation and innovative practice must be changed in order to foster the development of knowledge-building communities in medicine. [source]


PUBLIC ANTHROPOLOGY: The 2009 UN Climate Talks: Alternate Media and Participation from Anthropologists

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 3 2010
Edward M. Maclin
ABSTRACT, The United Nations climate talks in Copenhagen during December of 2009 were surrounded by numerous side events. Some anthropologists and other social scientists at these events used the Web as a technology for reporting on activities as they occurred. The success of alternate publishing fora is difficult to gauge, but these weblogs reflect some of the difficulties faced by lone researchers in observing and reporting on large-scale meetings. Some geographers, in contrast, came to Copenhagen as part of an effort organized through the Association of American Geographers. Such a planned and collaborative process may be useful for anthropologists at future meetings. [source]


Interdisciplinary Collaboration: A Study in Progress

PUBLIC HEALTH NURSING, Issue 4 2002
Carol Boswell R.N., Ed.D.
A multidisciplinary, multi-institutional collaborative effort was initiated to address the perspectives of health care literacy in an urban/rural area of west Texas. This article presents the mechanisms utilized in the development and implementation of this collaborative process. Individuals within multiple institutions realized the importance of working together to address health care issues. As a result of this consortium development, an initial endeavor addressing health care literacy and functional health status was initiated. The development of the consortium and the project is presented in this article to provide a model for consortium development applicable to other professions. [source]


Sharing designer and user perspectives of web site evaluation: a cross-campus collaborative learning experience

BRITISH JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY, Issue 3 2002
Penny Collings
In this paper we present an online, collaborative process that facilitates usability evaluation of web sites. The online workspace consists of simple and effective proformas and computer,mediated discussion space to support usability evaluation. The system was designed and used by staff and students at two universities. Students, working in small teams, at each university, developed web sites and then evaluated the usability of web sites developed at the other university, using the results to improve their own sites. Our project evaluations show that the process provides valuable feedback on web site usability and provides students with the experience of usability evaluation from two important perspectives: those of a user and of a developer. Further, students develop important generic skills: the ability to participate in and critique computer supported cooperative work environments. [source]


Skills needed to help communities manage natural resource conflicts

CONFLICT RESOLUTION QUARTERLY, Issue 3 2008
Loretta Singletary
Competition for natural resources has spawned unprecedented conflict between users, resulting in litigious and legislative actions. Citizens often expect Cooperative Extension professionals to engage communities in collaborative processes to manage these conflicts. This paper examines thirty-five skills Cooperative Extension professionals need if they are to engage communities in collaborative processes. Survey methodology is used to assess the skills extension professionals perceive as most needed, and the ranked means of the perceived skill needs are presented. The results offer information useful to strengthen the capacity of extension professionals to play an important role in helping citizens manage natural resource conflicts. [source]


Contamination: Nursing Diagnoses with Outcome and Intervention Linkages

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NURSING TERMINOLOGIES AND CLASSIFICATION, Issue 2 2007
Laura V. Polk DNSc
PURPOSE.,To relate the collaborative processes involved in the evolution of environmental nursing diagnoses and the linkages between two new nursing diagnoses and their associated interventions and outcomes; to describe the environmental health implications of contamination. DATA SOURCES.,Published research articles, official reports, textbooks, and collaborative discussion with experts in community and global health. DATA SYNTHESIS.,Reflection following review of the literature and collaboration with experts led to the development of a new schema for environmental diagnoses and development of two new diagnoses, allowing for greater clarity and distinction between the contamination diagnoses and risk for poisoning diagnosis. CONCLUSIONS.,An environmental nursing diagnosis schema, with its emphasis on contamination, infection, and violence, provides nurses with a holistic framework for making judgments about environmental influences related to individual, family, community, and global health. The diagnoses of Contamination and Risk for Contamination provide necessary language to describe human responses and risk states that may arise following exposure to environmental contaminants. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS.,Development of environmental diagnostic labels and delineation of the linkages to nursing outcomes and interventions will allow nurses to take active roles in identifying environmental components that affect health and planning care that responds to environmental health needs. Greater clarity in the use of language will allow nurses to incorporate environmental concepts appropriately in nursing assessments and improve the accuracy of the diagnostic process and selection of distinct interventions and outcomes. This will result in better outcomes for patients and communities and permit greater accountability of nursing's contribution to environmental health. [source]


Interaction between tool and talk: how instruction and tools support consensus building in collaborative inquiry-learning environments

JOURNAL OF COMPUTER ASSISTED LEARNING, Issue 3 2009
H. Gijlers
Abstract The process of collaborative inquiry learning requires maintaining a mutual understanding of the task, along with reaching consensus on strategies, plans and domain knowledge. In this study, we explore how different supportive measures affect students' consensus-building process, based on a re-analysis of data from four studies. We distinguish between scaffolds that aim at supporting students' collaborative processes and scaffolds that aim primarily at supporting the inquiry learning process. The overall picture that emerges from the re-analysis is that integration-oriented consensus-building activities are facilitated by scaffolds that provide explicit instruction in rules for effective collaboration and by scaffolds that encourage students to collaboratively construct a representation. Scaffolds that display inter-individual differences between students' opinions resulted primarily in quick consensus-building activities. [source]


A collaborative approach to the implementation of clinical supervision

JOURNAL OF NURSING MANAGEMENT, Issue 2 2002
C. Spence MSc
Aim,This paper discusses a collaborative approach to implementing clinical supervision, which was initiated between a primary care trust and a school of nursing and midwifery. Background,To enable clinical supervision to proceed successfully and to be perceived as beneficial, this necessitates a collaborative partnership between clinicians, managers and educationalists. Key issues,The different stages of the initiative will be explored and the paper will consider examples of the collaborative processes involved. The evaluation of the project is examined and suggestions for the future continuation of the initiative are discussed. Conclusion,There is evidence that this has been a successful initiative and that a collaborative way of working can be beneficial when implementing clinical supervision. [source]


A naturalistic observation of children drawing: Peer collaboration processes and influences in children's art

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR CHILD & ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT, Issue 90 2000
Chris J. Boyatzis Associate Professor
There are striking gender differences in boyS' and girlS' artistic styles. A naturalistic observation of children drawing sheds light on the sociocognitive and collaborative processes through which peers influence each other's art. [source]


Information Modelling as a Paradigm Shift

ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN, Issue 2 2009
Dennis Shelden
Abstract Building information modelling (BIM) is not just a change in software or skills sets, it requires a paradigm shift. Dennis Shelden, Chief Technology Officer of Gehry Technologies, outlines the more ,fundamental, subtle and profound decisions' on the road to BIM. It is necessary to fully consider not only the impacts both ,upstream' and ,downstream' from the conventional design phase, but also the possible creative restrictions as there is a potential trade-off that comes with the emphasis on collaborative processes. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Apprentissages et actions: étude comparative de structures multipartites

CANADIAN JOURNAL OF ADMINISTRATIVE SCIENCES, Issue 3 2002
Marie-France Turcotte
Résumé Notre article traite des apprentissages issus d'organisations visant à gérer des enjeux sociaux complexes, soit les processus multipartites de collaboration (PMC). Notre analyse comparative de deux cas de PMC dans le domaine de l'environnement corrobore la thèse selon laquelle la diversité de perspectives de leurs participants contribue à l'émergence d'apprentissages et d'innovations. Cependant, il appert que le groupe multipartite, en tant qu'organisation, est limité dans sa capacité d'implanter des idées nouvelles et de poser des actions. Par contre, les acteurs peuvent par la suite agir sur la base des connaissances acquises et des nouveaux concepts développés au cours du PMC. De plus lorsque la diver sité de perspectives est temporairement limitée par la création de sous-groupes de travail, des actions peuvent aussi être entreprises. Abstract Our paper addresses the issue of learning occurring in organizations put in place to manage complex social issues, namely multistakeholder collaborative processes (MCP). Our comparative analysis of two environmental MCP cases supports the thesis that the diversity of the participants' perceptual framework contributes to learning and innovation. However, it appears that the multistakeholder setting, as an organization, is limited in its capacity to implement new ideas and to engage actions. Nevertheless, our analysis suggests that participants could later on take actions on the basis of the knowledge acquired and new concepts developed through the MCP. Furthermore, when the diversity of perspective is temporarily reduced through the creation of small task teams, actions can also be taken. [source]