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Alternative Understanding (alternative + understanding)
Selected AbstractsMULTILEVEL FRAMING: AN ALTERNATIVE UNDERSTANDING OF BUDGET CONTROL IN PUBLIC ENTERPRISESFINANCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY & MANAGEMENT, Issue 2 2010Lars Fallan This paper addresses the question as to why there tends to be recurring budget deviations in public sector service organizations. In the public sector, budgets and actuals are loosely coupled, and budgets may serve other institutional functions than control purposes. However, little research has addressed how the framing of budget information may explain the different functions of the budgets as control devices. The paper argues that the valence of budget deviations varies between organizations, and that organizations that have a positively oriented valence towards budget surpluses have a propensity to underspend the budgets. Consequently, organizations that have a positively oriented valence towards budget deficits tend to overspend the budgets. The empirical part analyses the budget situations in the Central Bank of Norway and in a large university hospital in Norway. In the case of the Bank, it was found that underspending of budgets was framed as performance measures indicating high organizational efficiency. The Hospital, on the other hand, showed a different picture as budget deficits were the situation during all years studied. One main finding was the key actors' roles as translators of the society's expectations as to the fulfilling of the organizations' missions. These translators function as mediators between the institutional context and pressures, the organizations' goals and the internal budget processes. The conventional wisdom that the budget also acts as a means of communication and as symbols and ritual acts that reflect the institutional contingencies of the organizations, is further developed by describing how organizations' goals valence the role of budgets. [source] Rethinking the Personal and the Political: Feminist Activism and Civic EngagementHYPATIA, Issue 4 2007THERESA MAN LING LEE The slogan "the personal is political" captures the distinctive challenge to the public-private divide posed by contemporary feminists. As such, feminist activism is not necessarily congruent with civic engagement, which is predicated on the paradoxical need to both bridge and sustain the public-private divide. Lee argues that rather than subverting the divide, the politics of the personal offers an alternative understanding of civic engagement that aims to reinstate individuals' dignity and agency. [source] Resisting Homosexual Law Reform in Britain in the 1950s: the Passions of Earl Winterton,AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND HISTORY, Issue 2 2010Kate Gleeson The Sixth Earl Winterton was an eccentric who is too easily dismissed as a homophobe and bigoted critic of the reforms proposed in the Wolfenden Report. But his outbursts in the Parliament against homosexuality point to his personal concerns for British masculinity and to an alternative understanding of masculinity that has received scant attention in the assessment of gay law reforms initiated by Wolfenden. Sociologists insist that the main function of homophobia is the maintenance of heterosexuality and patriarchal homo-society. In this article I examine Winterton's arguments in their historical context, not to understand "homosexualism" which affronted him, but for what they say between the lines about British manliness, identity, intimacy and friendship. Winterton's is one version of a masculine self that experienced being cut adrift and betrayed by the cultural and political shifts which the Wolfenden Report both signified and embodied. I think now, after studying the history of sex, we should try to understand the history of friendship, or friendships. That history is very, very important (Michel Foucault, 1982)., [source] Autonomy, Interdependence, and Assisted Suicide: Respecting Boundaries/Crossing LinesBIOETHICS, Issue 3 2000Anne Donchin Western philosophy has been powerfully influenced by a paradigm of personal agency that is linked to an individualistic conception of autonomy. This essay contrasts this conception with an alternative understanding that recognizes a social component built into the very meaning of autonomy. After reviewing feminist critiques of the dominant conception of autonomy, I develop the broad outlines of a relational view and apply this reconceptualization to a concrete situation in order to show how this altered view reconfigures understanding of the participants' relationships and each of their personal perspectives. The situation chosen, physician-assisted suicide, is intended principally to illustrate one respect in which a relational conception of autonomy reframes a controversial moral issue and reveals perspectives toward it that are likely to be obscured when autonomy is viewed through the lens of the dominant individualistic conception. My principal aim is to show that when autonomy is understood relationally, respecting others' autonomy is likely to be a far more complex issue than is apparent within the standard conception, both for those with professional responsibilities and often for personal intimates as well. [source] The place and function of power in community psychology: philosophical and practical issuesJOURNAL OF COMMUNITY & APPLIED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 4 2007Adrian T. Fisher Abstract Much of the training of psychologists in the western world follows a logical positivist, scientist-practitioner model based in scientific objectivity and removed from politics. In this paper, we explore issues around alternative understandings of the role and place of psychologists and psychological actions. In so doing, we discuss a number of issues of ontology, epistemology and pragmatics to demonstrate that the role and function of power in our society need to be addressed more directly and more politically in order for us to successfully achieve our roles as community psychologists. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] "New" Mainstream SLA Theory: Expanded and EnrichedMODERN LANGUAGE JOURNAL, Issue 5 2007MERRILL SWAIN How have the ideas raised by Firth and Wagner (1997) influenced the construction of second language acquisition (SLA) theories? In this article, we take the position that prior to and since 1997, there was and has been a notable increase in SLA research and theory that prioritizes sociocultural and contextual factors in addition to acknowledging individual agency and multifaceted identities. This article focuses on 4 major influences on a growing body of SLA research: sociocultural theory of mind, situated learning, poststructural theories, and dialogism. We highlight aspects of these perspectives that have been used in SLA theory, and provide examples of research that illustrate the richness and complexity of constructs such as languaging, legitimate peripheral participation, subjectivity, and heteroglossia. These perspectives and constructs address Firth and Wagner's call for a reconceptualization of SLA by offering alternative understandings of language and language learning. [source] "New" Mainstream SLA Theory: Expanded and EnrichedMODERN LANGUAGE JOURNAL, Issue 2007MERRILL SWAIN How have the ideas raised by Firth and Wagner (1997) influenced the construction of second language acquisition (SLA) theories? In this article, we take the position that prior to and since 1997, there was and has been a notable increase in SLA research and theory that prioritizes sociocultural and contextual factors in addition to acknowledging individual agency and multifaceted identities. This article focuses on 4 major influences on a growing body of SLA research: sociocultural theory of mind, situated learning, poststructural theories, and dialogism. We highlight aspects of these perspectives that have been used in SLA theory, and provide examples of research that illustrate the richness and complexity of constructs such as languaging, legitimate peripheral participation, subjectivity, and heteroglossia. These perspectives and constructs address Firth and Wagner's call for a reconceptualization of SLA by offering alternative understandings of language and language learning. [source] | ||||||||||