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The metaverse, although yet to be fully realized, offers a compelling vision: a scalable and interoperable ecosystem of virtual worlds that can be simultaneously accessed by multiple users using continuous, user-generated, and embodied identities (i.e., avatars). Since the metaverse will likely achieve widespread user adoption once innovators and early adopters recognize its values, it must evolve in a direction that appeals to these groups. However, it remains unsure what aspects of the metaverse innovators perceive as opportunities and challenges when engaging with early adopters. This article describes the opinions of users who influence the metaverse's mass adoption, clarifying their perception of what already works well, holds high potential, and presents challenges. By synthesizing and critically evaluating this information, the article offers guidance for the future development and use of the metaverse and provides insights concerning its diffusion in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A response is presented to the article "Idea Generation in Abductive Thinking: Not One but Three Approaches," which is published within the same issue of the journal. The authors note that the article in question discusses "three idea-generation approaches to theory creation: disciplined imagination, hunches, and serendipitous insights," but that they find this confusing.

This paper provides policy recommendations for accelerating the adoption of Fossil-Energy-Free Technologies and Strategies (FEFTS) in the EU agricultural sector. Faster adoption of these technologies and strategies is crucial to achieving the medium- and long-term sustainability targets laid out in EU policy. The prepared policy recommendations originate out of the key outputs and findings of the Horizon 2020 project "AgroFossilFree", including an assessment and evaluation of the current energy use status in EU agriculture, survey results on farmers' needs, ideas and interests on the adoption of FEFTS, FEFTS categories identified through an online inventory of FEFTS called the AgEnergy platform, and key innovative processes through national and transnational workshops that combine expertise from hundreds of keys stakeholders (researchers, innovation brokers, policymakers, farmers, and industry representatives). The policy recommendations are synthesized and presented in the form of 19 policy briefs split into three main categories: those that are related to energy issues in farming and can be applied to any farm and FEFTS type; those that are specific to certain agricultural production systems; and those that are necessary for FEFTS integration in agriculture in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, motivated by widespread declines in wild bees, ecologists have prioritized learning about patterns of wild bee communities across the landscape at the expense of learning about the population‐level mechanisms driving those patterns. In this essay, we seek to revitalize the tradition of studying wild bee populations in a way that both contributes key knowledge for bee conservation and builds a strong conceptual understanding of the processes underpinning bee populations. We address two widespread concerns about investing in population‐level research. First, that population‐level studies are too conceptually narrow to provide broad inference. If population‐level studies are couched in general ecological theory, then findings from a single species can be generalized to many. We highlight how wild bees would make excellent candidates for exploring five areas of general ideas in population ecology, including nutritional ecology, drivers of vital rates, phenology and voltinism, habitat selection, and movement. Second, we address the concern that methods for studying bees at the population level are too difficult to implement. Methods for conducting population‐level studies of bees—specifically, identifying living bees in the field and studying individuals throughout their life cycles—are feasible to implement at the scales appropriate for answering population‐level questions, for example, a few species at a few sites. To facilitate adoption of these ideas, we developed an online field guide (www.watchingbees.com) and a detailed methods manual. More generally, we emphasize the value of linking data‐rich pattern‐oriented approaches in ecology with an understanding of the basic biology and mechanisms that generate those patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early detection of weak external signals is increasingly critical for strategic agility. While many organizations scan for weak signals, most dismiss them as anomalies, principally due to poor amplification strategies. Several challenges hinder the necessary amplification and sensemaking of weak signals for organizational awareness. This article analyzes 139 proof-of-concept projects with startups and 15 interviews with executives involved in the projects at a leading German mobility corporation, and it reveals four actions to amplify weak external signals, thereby enhancing organizational hyper-awareness. It illustrates the actions with examples and presents the implications for both weak signals and strategic agility management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how gender affects idea endorsement. We depart from the existing approach, which considers the effect of gender and other factors in isolation, and propose that endorsement depends on who suggests which ideas and in what ways. Drawing upon expectancy violations theory, we argue that "positive counter-stereotypical voice"--conceptualized as an idea that signals desirable traits stereotypically associated with the opposite gender--is more likely to be endorsed compared to "positive yet stereotypical voice" (i.e., that signals desirable traits consistent with stereotypical expectations of the speaker's gender). We argue that communal voice for men and agentic voice for women constitute positive counter-stereotypical voice, whereas agentic voice for men and communal voice for women constitute positive stereotypical voice. Then, we examine why positive counter-stereotypical voice results in positive evaluations--endorsement--by arguing that it affects attributions of competence and benevolence, albeit differently for men and for women. We test our hypotheses across three studies--one field and two experimental. Combined, we contribute to both the voice and gender literatures and shed new light on our understanding of howand why women and men get their ideas endorsed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The power of the media to persuade, change and transform public opinion is undeniable. Through the process of propaganda and consent production, the media determines the public's agenda and is effective in the adoption of an idea or the display of a behavior. The main source of information used in the Covid-19 epidemic, which affected the world agenda, including our country, was mainstream media and new media. However, it has been frequently emphasized, especially in the mainstream media, that Covid-19 vaccines are the most effective method of protection in the treatment of the epidemic and that they must be used in the name of public health. Despite the mainstream media's persuasion tactics and consent production about the need to be vaccinated, an average of 9% of the population over the age of 18 has never been vaccinated against Covid-19. The main purpose of this study is to determine who the mass of people who are not vaccinated against Covid-19 consists of, despite intense media propaganda and consent production, to reveal what kind of resistance this mass displays against the media, their reasons for not being vaccinated, and their basic personal and ideological motivations for not being vaccinated. In addition, it is to determine what differences there are between the information sources of this audience in terms of mainstream media and new media. In this context, the demographic and ideological characteristics of the population who have not been vaccinated against Covid-19, their motivations for not being vaccinated, their perspectives on official institutions, mainstream media and new media are among the subjects examined in the research. For this purpose, an online survey was conducted with the Snowball Method, adhering to the Random Sampling technique, with a total of 2038 people representing the population who have never been vaccinated throughout Türkiye, adhering to the Quantitative research technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Creativity drives profit in an idea economy, and many companies organize teams to facilitate creativity. This paper investigates the strategic deployment of individuals to boost a team's creativity. More individualistic team members tend to generate highly original ideas yet are less likely to share these ideas. We theorize that adding a connector—an individual strongly predisposed to form and foster relationships—to a team will enable more idea sharing among individualistic team members, thus increasing the likelihood that the team's creative potential will be realized. We leverage a new conceptualization of the "connector" construct to identify connectors and then use an experiment to study the impact of their presence or absence on team creative performance. Our results support these predictions and suggest that connectors improve team creativity by enabling others to share in the creative process and not because connectors themselves exhibit greater creative performance than their average peer. Data Availability: The data reported in the paper are available from the authors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past research on idea implementation has focused on employees trying to win social support for their own ideas, yet employees are often handed ideas to implement that were developed by others. We propose and test hypotheses on such handoffs, focusing on how handing employees relatively mature ideas to implement may lead them to build less creative final products. We tested our hypotheses using two studies: an archival study of 5,676 movies in the U.S. film industry and a complementary experiment. Results suggest that late handoffs yielded less creative final products than no or early handoffs, meaning it was costly to creativity when employees implemented relatively mature ideas without driving at least some of their prior development. However, "serialized late handoffs"--wherein implementers were handed relatively mature ideas after an earlier handoff between two other individuals--were less costly to creativity than late handoffs from one other individual. Mediation results suggest that late handoffs reduced implementers' creativity by restricting their sense of psychological ownership and the coherence of their final products. This research advances theory on idea implementation, handoffs, and psychological ownership in creative work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grasping the true value of ideas is essential for corporate innovation success. When it comes to forecasting the value of one's own innovation ideas, however, people may err systematically. In this paper, we shed light on this ideator's bias, and examine when and why certain ideas are more prone to biased evaluations. Specifically, we argue that biased idea evaluations depend on the self-efficacy that ideators may derive from their specific role and social identity in the firm when generating a specific idea. We test our theoretical predictions of such a situation-specific perspective on overconfidence by using a corporate dataset on process innovations and their valuations. Furthermore, we triangulate our predicted mechanism and rule out alternative explanations through a series of additional interviews and four scenario-based experiments. Consistent with our situation-specific, identity-based account, we find that ideas from employees at a higher (vs. lower) organizational level, and from employees generating ideas in groups (vs. individually) are more prone to an ideator's bias. In doing so, our study helps explain when the ideator's bias prevails in a real-life organizational context, raises caution about some current proxies to identify high-potential ideas, and provides fresh insights to established theories around overconfidence and self-efficacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employees' creative ideas often do not receive positive assessments from managers and, therefore, lose the opportunity to be implemented. We draw on Dutton and Ashford's (1993) issue-selling framework to test a dual-approach model predicting that employees' use of both high levels of idea enactment behaviors (characterized by use of demos, prototypes, or other physical objects when presenting ideas) and high levels of upward influence tactics will have an interactive effect on the extent to which their creative ideas are positively assessed by their supervisors and, in turn, implemented. We found support for this interactive effect of idea enactment and influence tactics in two studies: a field study of 192 employees and 54 supervisors in a video game and animation company and an experimental study with 264 participants. In the experimental study, we also demonstrated that the benefits of using this dual approach are more likely to accrue when selling a more novel idea rather than a less novel, more mundane one. Both studies highlight the mediating role of supervisors' creativity assessment in implementing employees' creative ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When organizations crowdsource ideas, they select only a small share of the ideas that contributors submit for implementation. If a contributor submits an idea to an organization for the first time (i.e., is a newcomer), and the organization does not select the idea, this may negatively affect the newcomer's relationship with the organization and willingness to submit ideas to the organization in future. We suggest that organizations can increase newcomers' willingness to submit further ideas by providing a thus far understudied form of feedback: rejections. Though counterintuitive, we suggest that rejections encourage newcomers to bond with an organization. Rejections signal contributors that an organization is interested in receiving their ideas and developing relationships with them. To test our theory, we examine the crowdsourcing of 70,159 organizations that received ideas from 1,336,154 contributors. Using text analysis, we examine differences in how rejections are written to disentangle the mechanisms through which rejections affect contributors' willingness to continue to interact with an organization. We find that receiving a rejection positively impacts newcomers' willingness to submit ideas in future. This effect is stronger if the rejection includes an explanation and is particularly pronounced if the explanation matches the original idea in terms of linguistic style. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article will explore the rhetorical and theological significance of the metaphor of divine adoption in the Hebrew Bible. In Ps 22:10–11 and Ps 71:6–9 God is not only said to pull the psalmist out of his/her mother's womb, but in a context in which many mothers all too often died in childbirth, the newborn is cast upon God who steps in as the adoptive mother. This idea of divine adoption is further found in Psalm 68:5 when God is described as the "Father of orphans... [who] gives the desolate a home to live in". And in Psalm 27:9–10, God is praised by the psalmist as "God of my salvation!" saying that "if my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will take me up". In a context in which fathers and mothers either have died or have forsaken their children, God is thus portrayed as the adoptive parent who, as evident in the creative reinterpretation of Ps 68:5 in the African American spiritual referenced in the title of the essay serves as "Mother to the motherless, and father to the fatherless". I argue that when it is important to keep in mind the complexities associated with this metaphor, which includes not only the multiple layers of trauma associated with the origin and reception of this metaphor but also the trauma associated with the adoptive process and the ongoing relationship between parent and adopted child that may be fraught with ambiguity. Read in the context of individual and collective trauma, this article makes a case for the interpretative potential of this metaphor in times when people literally and figuratively have felt, and still may be feeling, like motherless (and fatherless) children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Process improvement in healthcare is informed by knowledge from the private sector. Skilled individuals may aid the adoption of this knowledge by frontline care delivery workers through knowledge brokering. However, the effectiveness of those who broker knowledge is limited when the context they work within proves unreceptive to their efforts. We therefore need greater insight into the contextual conditions that support individuals to broker process improvement knowledge to the frontline of care delivery, and how policy makers and organizations might generate such conditions.Methods: Our research took place in a healthcare system within an Australian State. We undertook a qualitative, embedded single case study over the four year period of a process improvement intervention encompassing 57 semi-structured interviews (with knowledge brokers, policy makers, and executive sponsors), 12 focus groups, and 137 h of observation, which included the frontline implementation of actual process improvement initiatives, where knowledge brokering took place.Results: We identified four phases of the process improvement intervention that moved towards a more mature collaboration within which knowledge brokering by improvement advisors began to emerge as effective. In the first phase knowledge brokering was not established. In the second phase, whilst knowledge brokering had been initiated, the knowledge being brokered lacked legitimacy amongst frontline practitioners, resulting in resistance. Only in the fourth and final phase of the intervention did the collective experience of policy makers result in reflections on how they might engender a more receptive context for knowledge brokering.Conclusion: We highlight a number of suggested actions that policy makers might consider, if they wish to engender contextual conditions that support knowledge brokering. Policy makers might consider: ensuring they respect local context and experience, by pulling good ideas upward, rather than imposing foreign knowledge from on high; facilitating the lateral diffusion of knowledge by building cultural linkages between people and organizations; strengthening collaboration, not competition, so that trans-organisational flow of ideas might be encouraged; being friend, not foe, to healthcare organizations on their knowledge integration journey. In sum, we suggest that top-down approaches to facilitating the diffusion and adoption of new ideas ought to be reconsidered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A boom in technological advancements over the last two decades has driven a surge in both the diversity and power of analytical tools available to biomechanical and functional morphology research. However, in order to adequately investigate each of these dense datasets, one must often consider only one functional narrative at a time. There is more to each organism than any one of these form–function relationships. Joint performance landscapes determined by maximum likelihood are a valuable tool that can be used to synthesize our understanding of these multiple functional hypotheses to further explore an organism's ecology. We present an example framework for applying these tools to such a problem using the morphological transition of ammonoids from the Middle Triassic to the Early Jurassic. Across this time interval, morphospace occupation shifts from a broad occupation across Westermann Morphospace to a dense occupation of a region emphasizing an exposed umbilicus and modest frontal profile. The hydrodynamic capacities and limitations of the shell have seen intense scrutiny as a likely explanation of this transition. However, conflicting interpretations of hydrodynamic performance remain despite this scrutiny, with scant offerings of alternative explanations. Our analysis finds that hydrodynamic measures of performance do little to explain the shift in morphological occupation, highlighting a need for a more robust investigation of alternative functional hypotheses that are often intellectually set aside. With this we show a framework for consolidating the current understanding of the form–function relationships in an organism, and assess when they are insufficiently characterizing the dynamics those data are being used to explain. We aim to encourage the broader adoption of this framework and these ideas as a foundation to bring the field close to comprehensive synthesis and reconstruction of organisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Estudios Sociológicos is the property of El Colegio de Mexico AC and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Estudios Sociológicos is the property of El Colegio de Mexico AC and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Brain disease has become one of this century's biggest health challenges, urging the development of novel, more effective treatments. To this end, neuromodulation represents an excellent method to modulate the activity of distinct neuronal regions to alleviate disease. Recently, the medical indications for neuromodulation therapy have expanded through the adoption of the idea that neurological disorders emerge from deficits in systems-level structures, such as brain waves and neural topology. Connections between neuronal regions are thought to fluidly form and dissolve again based on the patterns by which neuronal populations synchronize. Akin to a fire that may spread or die out, the brain's activity may similarly hyper-synchronize and ignite, such as seizures, or dwindle out and go stale, as in a state of coma. Remarkably, however, the healthy brain remains hedged in between these extremes in a critical state around which neuronal activity maneuvers local and global operational modes. While it has been suggested that perturbations of this criticality could underlie neuropathologies, such as vegetative states, epilepsy, and schizophrenia, a major translational impact is yet to be made. In this hypothesis article, we dissect recent computational findings demonstrating that a neural network's short- and long-range connections have distinct and tractable roles in sustaining the critical regime. While short-range connections shape the dynamics of neuronal activity, long-range connections determine the scope of the neuronal processes. Thus, to facilitate translational progress, we introduce topological and dynamical system concepts within the framework of criticality and discuss the implications and possibilities for therapeutic neuromodulation guided by topological decompositions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of the formation of an innovative economy, great attention in management in recent years has been paid to the problems of mastering and implementing the management of an organization based on quality. Quality management is one of the key functions of both corporate and project management, the main means of achieving and maintaining the competitiveness of any organization. The historical experience of the USA, Japan, Germany, and a number of other countries shows that ensuring the steady and harmonious development of any enterprise through the use of effective management systems based on quality is one of the main levers with which they managed to overcome the economic crisis and take a strong position in the world market. The research topic is relevant due to the great importance and significance of the integration mechanisms for the development of enterprises and organizations based on quality management. Thus, the construction of a functional model allows you to develop new solutions for bringing enterprises to a new level of development. In recent years, the role of quality in ensuring the competitiveness of products and enterprises has significantly increased, which requires the management of organizations to develop and implement modern management models that meet the requirements of international and national standards. This article discusses an algorithm for the formation and implementation of a functional model for the development of an organization based on quality management in an educational organization. The feature of quality management policy in an educational organization is analyzed. A process of forming a functional model based on standardization, which is based on the implementation of interrelated processes that increase the efficiency of an organization in obtaining the intended goals, is proposed. This article describes the algorithm of formation and realization of the functional model of development of the organization on the basis of quality management in education. Analyzed features of the policy of quality management in educational organizations. The proposed formation process of the functional model on the basis of standardization is based on the implementation of interrelated processes that increase the organization's effectiveness in obtaining goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article co-authored by three researchers aims at proposing an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach in Religious Studies, including archeological, historical and anthropological perspectives, taking into consideration quite different historical scenarios. For instance, we have a look upon the religious context at the Neolithic site at Çatalhöyük as well as a look upon the Hebrew texts from the point of view of its material culture, considering the reception of the first Christian writings from different archaeological sources related to late Antiquity, and the adoption of the idea of canonicity to a shamanic context in the Amazon area. All these approaches here entertained highlight a common theorical ground among them, that is, emphasizes the relationship between religion and power, between orality and writing, image and canon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper addresses the issue of determining the parameter values of the agent-based model of social campaign message adoption relying on Bass's classical innovation diffusion model. The problem concerns the parameters that reflect the influence of advertising and social communication on the adoption of the idea conveyed in the social campaign. Due to the fact that the factors influencing the behavior of message recipients are conditioned by their personality, circumstances or reaction to the environment, the conventional methods for estimating these parameters may not deliver a model reproducing reality with the required accuracy. Therefore, this paper proposes a procedure for determining the values of agent-based model parameters that relies on an experimental data acquisition procedure using a combination of cognitive neuroscience techniques and a survey method. The presented research examines a social campaign promoting road safety. The obtained results prove the suitability of the suggested solution for estimating the parameters of the agent-based model of social campaign message adoption. The proposed approach contributes to the methodology of data collection and parameter estimation in building agent-based models, although it is not without some limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Lua Nova is the property of CEDEC and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Tumor Treating Fields (TTFs) is a new tumor electric therapy that has success with many tumor types. This modality is very low-intensity alternating current (AC) fields (1-3 V/cm) and intermediate frequency (100-300 kHz). The delivery of TTFs was applied only through completely insulated electrodes by using external high voltage to avoid any reactions that may occur through using conductive electrodes, specially the generation of oxidative reactions. In order to achieve the required effect, the patient can be exposed to the technique for continuous three days, which may lead to long-term side effects. The adoption of the idea that TTFs should be applied through insulated electrodes did not give the chance to evaluate the uninsulated electrodes to conduct TTFs. This study aims to evaluate the possibility of using uninsulated electrodes, find the optimum exposure time, and determine the accompanying oxidative stress on human non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC) cells. Here we found that applying TTFs through uninsulated electrodes produced 18-29% tumor growth inhibition for exposure time of 2.5 min to 40 min without significant oxidative stress. These findings will lead to the possibility of using the uninsulated electrodes TTFs in simple technology. The treatment quality will be improved by highly decreasing the exposure time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although a growing literature explores occupational identity, or the overlap between “who we are” and “what we do,” this literature has not fully considered how occupational identity may interact with technological change. In this paper, we explore this interaction, asking how an occupation’s identity shapes and is shaped by its interactions with a new technology. We focus, specifically, on the relationship between librarians and Internet search. Drawing on an analysis of 22 years of articles from library journals, we demonstrate how and why librarians initially discounted Internet search and differentiated themselves from it. We argue that these responses were associated with a “paradox of expertise,” by which librarians missed innovation opportunities around one of the most important information technologies in history precisely, and ironically, because of their deep knowledge of non-Internet searching. Later, however, we demonstrate how librarians engaged with this same technology, drawing upon it to redefine their occupational identity. Our findings demonstrate how occupational identity conditions the interpretation of a technology, while also showing how these interpretations can change with ongoing interactions. We also illustrate how occupational identity itself can change in response to new technology. Finally, we elaborate upon why expert insiders may not actually be best positioned to pursue emerging technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What strategies can materials scientists employ to combat the global trend in admiration of research accomplishments to the detriment of depreciation of inventive educational efforts? Materials science has and will continue to be a science at a crossroads. Sociology and philosophy of science are studied at universities, but what would be sociologic trends and philosophical principles that apply uniquely to materials science?. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the advantages of using the wicked problem framework to rethink the governance-of-emerging technologies problem. It mentions various approaches that have been advocated for governing emerging technologies, describing not only their advantages but also their flaws and limitations. It also mentions how the wicked problem concept provides a viable framework for moving forward with a governance system.

We examine institutional change processes through a longitudinal archival study of First-Class County Cricket in England. We find that institutional change occurs in mature organizational fields when organizations located at the field center, periphery, and in between trigger different multilevel processes. Our results show that when society-level evolutionary change created organization-level resource pressures that undermined the central values of a mature field, the group of actors between the field center and periphery served as intermediaries in the institutional change process bringing the societal, field, and organizational levels back into alignment. Our process model was supported over two cycles of change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present work deals with the study of the antecedents and consequences of satisfaction in retailing through two variables of special relevance, such as innovation and store image. By differentiating between innovation in marketing and in technology, the goal is twofold: to analyze the chain of effects innovation in marketing (technological innovation - image - satisfaction -- word-of-mouth) and to study the moderating effect of activity sector in these relationships. Based on a sample of 820 customers from food, textile, home and electronics retailers, on the one hand, the results confirm the chain of relationships; and the category of the commercialized product also moderates the influence of image on satisfaction. There are important academic and business implications, as well as interesting lines for further research in this field. Among them, it should be noted that marketing innovation influences on technological innovation. Thus, the consumer perceives the adoption of new ideas by the store as a relevant antecedent of its technological development. The influence of technological innovation on the consumer's image about the store has also been confirmed. Moreover, image shows a significant impact on satisfaction, and satisfaction influences on loyalty. Finally, the results confirm that the influence of image on customer satisfaction is different based on the activity sector of the store. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transferring ideas, either from one country to another or between different professional environments, can lead, many times, to the erroneous reception of the theoretical and empirical implications of not only certain premises, but of entire schools of thought. Unfortunately, this is the case of the way the Copenhagen school was adapted and internalized in the Romanian military-academic environment. The article aims to lay the groundwork for the rectification of errors generated by the way the Copenhagen school was adopted in Romania. It plans to overcome the simple idea that the Copenhagen school represented just an expansion of the concept of "security" and to unearth the ontological premises, the evolution of theoretical thought, as well as the implicit and explicit normative implications of the Copenhagen school. The article's main aim is to show that the initial theories of the founders of the Copenhagen school, as well as their further developments, are not adequate to being used in a military-academic environment and that the attempts to use them rely on a fragmentary and disparate adoption of some ideas. The central ideas of this school are more relevant for the civilian academic environment, especially political science, which treats the idea of "democracy" as a fundamental concept and explores the way to reach the desirable political regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With in a social network, users interact with each other by sharing news, picture, videos, political content or product promotion content. This makes social networks information diffusion(or marketing) platform. To realize the extent of the adoption of such ideas, it becomes important to study the dynamics of adoption underlying within the social network. However, to analyze social networks as information diffusion/marketing platform, many challenges have to be met. In this paper, we address one of the challenge, namely Influence Maximization in Social Networks. Our main purpose is to select k influential users which can gain maximum spread while cost of selecting k users is minimum. In this paper, a) We have proposed an degree heuristic algorithm under Independent Cascade Model (ICM) to extract top k influential users efficiently. b) A modification in ICM is proposed which derives propagation probability based on similarity metrics. The proposed work is implemented and evaluated on two network data- sets, academic collaboration is taken from the online archival database arXiv.org. The obtained results prove that degree heuristic algorithm is very efficient and has influence spread far better than many centrality based heuristics and close to benchmark greedy algorithm. On the other hand, modification in ICM has a significant stable increase in the influence achieved for implemented algorithms compared to influence achieved by the same algorithms on classic ICM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alice wants to join a new social network, and influence its members to adopt a new product or idea. Each person v in the network has a certain threshold t (v) for activation , i.e. adoption of the product or idea. If v has at least t (v) activated neighbors, then v will also become activated. If Alice wants to make k new friends in the network, and thereby activate the most number of people, how should she choose these friends? We study the problem of choosing the k people in the network to befriend, who will in turn activate the maximum number of people. This Maximum Influence with Links Problem has applications in viral marketing and the study of epidemics. We show that the solution can be quite different from the related and widely studied influence maximization problem where the objective is to choose a seed or target set with maximum influence. We prove that the Maximum Influence with Links problem is NP-complete even for bipartite graphs in which all nodes have threshold 1 or 2. In contrast, we give polynomial time algorithms that find optimal solutions for the problem for trees, paths, cycles, and cliques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alice wants to join a new social network, and influence its members to adopt a new product or idea. Each person v in the network has a certain threshold t (v) for activation , i.e. adoption of the product or idea. If v has at least t (v) activated neighbors, then v will also become activated. If Alice wants to activate the entire social network, whom should she befriend? More generally, we study the problem of finding the minimum number of links that a set of external influencers should form to people in the network, in order to activate the entire social network. This Minimum Links Problem has applications in viral marketing and the study of epidemics. Its solution can be quite different from the related and widely studied Target Set Selection problem. We prove that the Minimum Links problem cannot be approximated to within a ratio of O (2 log 1 − ϵ ⁡ n) , for any fixed ϵ > 0 , unless N P ⊆ D T I M E (n p o l y l o g (n)) , where n is the number of nodes in the network. On the positive side, we give linear time algorithms to solve the problem for trees, cycles, and cliques, for any given set of external influencers, and give precise bounds on the number of links needed. For general graphs, we design a polynomial time algorithm to compute size-efficient link sets that can activate the entire graph. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Previous research studies assume that influential consumers ("influentials"), who play a powerful role in the marketplace, are persuasive (or not) based on innate, static personality traits. By contrast, this paper proposes an emergence-based view of influentials. Grounded in dynamic self-concept theory, this research establishes that individuals possess an "influential" self-concept that can be activated by firm-originated communications. Specifically, the authors examine the impact of firm feedback on the three dimensions of influentials (and the corresponding traits and behaviors): who they are (propensity to connect with others), who they know (WOM) and what they know (expert power). Design/methodology/approach: The study tests whether an influential self can be evoked by marketers using a longitudinal experimental test with data collected in three periods. The data are analyzed using a multi-mediation model and partial least squares structural equation modeling. Findings: The results reveal that even after controlling for the extroversion trait, firm-originated positive feedback increases perceived expert power of participants, which increases word-of-mouth behavior in a subsequent period, both directly and indirectly via an enhanced propensity to connect with others. Research limitations/implications: Cultivating the influential self-concept requires time to ensure that the self-concept is sufficiently realized to become an enduring self-concept. Practical implications: By cultivating influentials, practitioners are able to leverage diffusion mechanics and reduce costs and inefficiencies associated with traditional customer relationship management marketing strategies focused on finding them. Social implications: These findings have implications across all domains that rely on the diffusion and adoption of ideas or products via influentials, including but not limited to public policy, politics, public health and sustainability, in that influentials can be evoked and leveraged to diffuse ideas in these important social domains. Originality/value: This paper provides empirical evidence that firms can evoke influential consumer behavior challenging existing views of influence as a static personality trait. It casts a line to connect influential consumers to the nascent study of social emergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with Jewish mobile multimedia cultural-heritage, root-diaspora tours and apps. The author presents and compares UNESCO Creative Cities Network of Central and Eastern Europe in which Jewish communities were numerous before the World War II - Budapest (Hungary), Kraków (Poland), Prague (Czech Republic), Kaunas (Lithuania). Also, article deals with other cities of Jewish cultural heritage that are not listed in UNESCO Creative Cities Network as Warsaw, Poland and Vilnius, Lithuania, but propose multimedia tours. I will analyse, how aspects of creative city are included and highlighted in multimedia tours and apps. Visiting of memory sites is very relevant aspect of memory culture, related to other creative and cultural industries - tourism, heritage, museums etc. Cityscape and sites of memory of the Holocaust as cultural topography materialize and embody traumas, regrets, and responsibility to remember past. Contemporary technologies as mobile multimedia tours and apps are designed to aid travellers and tourists to find heritage and other touristic objects in a map, it provides general practical information, as well as maps, photos, augmented reality, and Jewish itineraries. Herewith these new technologies are changing very deeply not only travelling habits or photography practices, they fundamentally transform our relation with cultural heritage and memory. Mobile phones became not only devices for communication, but also as digital prosthetic memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the shifting representations of control over and via ICTs on the cover of TIME magazine (1950-2017). We focus on the subject positions and forms of agency the magazine ascribes to different social actors and on the solutions advanced for remaining in control of technological change. Informed by discourse analysis methodology, our analysis of the corpus (N = 81 covers) identifies four central themes: the configuration of the relationship between humanity and technology; the construction of youth as both potentially powerful and vulnerable "others"; the identification of technocapitalists and creative visionaries as the ultimately powerful drivers of innovation and progress; and the disruptive effects of virtuality. Through these discourses, the magazine legitimizes an entrepreneurial approach to ICTs as the means to retain agency against the "inevitable" technological development, while also positioning the technocapitalist elite as the drivers of our common future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Management research often bears little resemblance to management practice. Although this research- practice gap is widely recognized and frequently lamented, there is little discussion about how it can be bridged. We partly remedy this problem in this paper by describing our experiences with the Network for Business Sustainability. Our experiences showed that the paradoxes underlying the relationship between research and practice make bridging this gap difficult. We argue that the reason why the research-practice gap endures is that bridging it is beyond the capabilities and scope of most individuals, and we call for the creation of intermediary organizations like the Network for Business Sustainability. We close by outlining some of the activities that can be undertaken by these boundary-spanning intermediary organizations, with the hopes of better aligning management research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How did the dramatic changes in the business environment over the past 30 years affect the development of advertisements? This paper responds to this question with evidence from 120 interviews with creative leaders collected between 1977 and 2007. Creative leaders across the 30-year period were consistent regarding the importance of unearthing big ideas. However, their interviews reflected how the implementation and evaluation of the ideas changed in response to globalization, technological advances, expanded media offerings, and shifting client and consumer attitudes. In addition, responses of current creative leaders were analyzed and trends for the future of advertising are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We extend understanding of information-revealing bandwagons by considering a common condition under which adoption of a practice by small organizations, rather than large ones, has a disproportionate influence on future adoption propensities. We hypothesize that when the value of adoption increases with organizational size, smaller adopters have such disproportionate influence because they allow observers better to infer that adoption will be profitable for their own organization. We elaborate the theory by predicting that alternative information sources moderate the influence of smaller adopters. Empirically, we test our theory with longitudinal data on the adoption of the ISO 9000 quality management standard. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Journal of Agricultural Economics & Social Sciences is the property of Egyptian National Agricultural Library (ENAL) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Background: Changes in behavior and adoption of new ideas are very complex and multifaceted, and have resulted in several decades of research, which have produced several theories and conceptual models of dissemination of awareness and adoption of new ideas. Objective: To find out which medium is more effective in creating public health awareness regarding family planning and to investigate the factors involved in making effective public health campaigns in the district. Study type and settings: The cross-sectional study was conducted in four Tehsils of District Kasur i.e. tehsil Kasur, tehsil Chunian, tehsil Kot Rada Kishan and tehsil Pattoki. Methodology: By using simple, random and clustered sampling technique, six hundred (600) survey questionnaire forms, three hundred (300) in English for literate / educated people and three hundred (300) in Urdu for illiterate people were distributed. The administrative division of Kasur District was used to make clusters. Each tehsil was considered as a cluster in order to cover the both rural and urban areas. One hundred and fifty (150) questionnaire forms were distributed to be filled in each cluster / tehsil. The chi-square test was applied to identify the significance of difference of health education strategies provided by health workers and mass media regarding family planning. Results: It was found that only 38% people know about vaccination campaign, 45% people know about nutrition, 48% people know about sanitation and 61% people know about the contraception. The study also found that mass media (T.V, radio, newspaper) disseminates (29%) and interpersonal communication (health workers / change agents) contribution is 71% in creating awareness about the use of contraception in family planning. Conclusion: It was found that health workers/ change agents were more effective than mass media (T.V, radio, newspaper) in creating awareness about contraception among masses in District Kasur. Affirming diffusion of innovations that after the initial flow of information through the mass media the spike in adoption is caused by interpersonal communication and mediation of opinion leaders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]