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Books > Reference & Interdisciplinary > Interdisciplinary studies > Institutions & organizations
This book provides historical sketches of the most significant national and international learned societies and academies located outside the United States. Complementing Joseph Kiger's Research Institutions and Learned Societies, which covers the United States, this volume includes profiles, arranged alphabetically, on some 100 organizations located in fifty-three countries. Each profile provides comprehensive, uniform, up-to-date information, including founding, history, purpose, activities, governance, current operations, and location of offices and archives, on the subject society. Entries conclude with sources of additional information. Appendices include chronologies, genealogies, and topical listings. The work includes a full index.
After more than two decades of widespread hardship for most nations, what are the different paths available for them to resume steady growth and welfare? Will they actually succeed in building new growth models that meet the challenges of the present phase of internationalisation? This book attempts to answer these questions by analysing different perspectives and discussing the conditions for new national growth trajectories to emerge. The book provides conceptual tools for characterising alternative growth regimes by analysing their institutional backgrounds and political context. Unlike standard convergence theories, the authors argue that the diversity of capitalism is likely to persist as national economies adapt to the forces of globalisation. Still these national paths remain strongly conditioned by the kind of governance set up at both regional and fully international levels. The Hardship of Nations will be of great interest to undergraduates and graduates in the social sciences - economics, political sciences, sociology, geography and management - who require an overview of the debates on growth of national economies in the present stage of globalisation.
Higher education and research institutions are confronted with changing and sometimes contradictory claims from state, industry and society, today. They have to face growing volatility and an acceleration and internationalization of the knowledge process. This book undertakes to develop a sector specific theory of governance of the public research sector and applies it to the German research system. The book is the outcome of a large interdisciplinary project. It analyzes the reforms in the German research system from an integrated perspective of law, economics and social sciences. The case of Germany is compared to reforms in other European countries such as Austria, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The study emphasizes an integrated approach considering the research function of universities as well as the non-university research sector. The focus is on the integration of external and internal governance. First, we pose the question how external competition and control mechanisms do influence internal governance of research institutions and universities and vice versa. Second, we discuss the consequences of these impacts on research. The book addresses scholars in the field of science and technology studies and research policy as well as actors responsible for establishing and implementing research policies. Managers of research institutions will find insights and guidelines for the strategic positioning of their institutions in a rapidly changing environment. Researchers in the field of governance may profit from the approaches to governance which are applied to the German research system in comparison to other research systems.
The result of major research on development, security and culture, this collection, and second volume "Sustainable Development in a Globalized World," outlines the emerging field of global studies and the theoretical approach of global social theory. It considers social relations and the need for intercultural dialogue to respect "the other."
Global rules are increasingly made without the direct involvement of states. This book explores what this privatisation of global rule-making means for democracy. Based on contemporary theoretical approaches to democratic global governance, it reconstructs three prominent rule-making processes in the field of global sustainability politics: the World Commission on Dams, the Global Reporting Initiative and the Forest Stewardship Council. The book argues that, if designed properly, private transnational rule-making can be as democratic as intergovernmental rule-making.
The rapid social and economic changes in China have brought about
unprecedented challenges and opportunities to international
stakeholders. This book provides valuable information about the key
sectors of China's health care system after its entrance into WTO,
including the pharmaceutical industry, health insurance services,
and hospitals and related health service provision in terms of
policies, legal framework and market potential. It offers a
critical analysis from a multi-disciplinary perspective of the
impact of WTO and globalization on China's health care
system.
Infrastructures are complex networks dominated by tight interdependencies between technologies and institutions. These networks supply services crucial to modern societies, services that can be provided only if several critical functions are fulfilled. This book proposes a theoretical framework with a set of concepts to analyse rigorously how these critical functions require coordination within the technological dimension as well as within the institutional dimension. It also shows how fundamental the alignment between these two dimensions is. It argues that this alignment operates along different layers characterized successively by the structure, governance and transactions that connect technologies and institutions. These issues of coordination and alignment, at the core of the book, are substantiated through in-depth case studies of networks from the energy, water and wastewater, and transportation sectors.
"The Europa Directory of International Organizations 2002" is an
extensive and unequalled one-volume research guide to international
organizations around the world. Offering truly international
coverage, it brings together contact details, further data and
definitions on over 1,700 international and regional organizations
world wide. It is extensively researched, covering a wide spectrum
of organizations from the UN and its specialized agencies to the
League of Arab States and Black Sea Economic Cooperation.
Presenting new material and a fresh perspective, Technology, Trade and Growth in OECD Countries, provides a unifying framework for the exploration of the role played by specialisation in economic growth and international competitiveness.
In the early 1970s, fuzzy systems and fuzzy control theories added a new dimension to control systems engineering. From its beginnings as mostly heuristic and somewhat ad hoc, more recent and rigorous approaches to fuzzy control theory have helped make it an integral part of modern control theory and produced many exciting results. Yesterday's "art" of building a working fuzzy controller has turned into today's "science" of systematic design.
This volume explores the unanticipated consequences of emulating, importing, or imposing new institutional models without commensurate attention to the particular constellations of interests, identities, norms, and social relations embedded in local communities. Each chapter is organized around a common problematic that has received only limited attention in the literature on institutional change: the dilemmas of deploying the rules, practices, and design of institutions that have been imported or imposed from external environments in regions where actors are more familiar with and find more legitimate locally embedded norms, practices, social relations, and knowledge structures. The volume strives to illustrate the analytic power of the concept of 'syncretism, ' a concept that can be fruitfully deployed to analyze common aspects of institutional change not easily captured in existing frameworks.
A study of the international NGO advocacy for social and environmental justice, this book looks at the fundamental issues of legitimacy, accountability and democracy that such activities involve and how they are manifested. It presents case studies on trade issues, labour rights, extractive industries and indigenous people in Asia and South America.
Drawing on the heritage of research that demonstrates the thoroughly gendered nature of work organizations, this book explores a key question that, as yet, remains unanswered: how does gendered organizational life affect individuals' identities as they go about their everyday working lives? This question is explored with theoretical insights from disciplines including sociology, geography, history and gender studies interwoven with a major new empirical study of doctors and nurses working in the British National Health Service.
Drawing on research from across Canada and beyond, education policy expert Sue Winton critically analyzes policies encouraging the privatization of public education in Canada. These policies, including school choice, fundraising, fees, and international education, encourages parents and others in the private sector to take on responsibilities for education formerly provided by governments with devastating consequences for the democratic goals of public education. Unequal Benefits introduces traditional and critical approaches to policy research and explains how to conduct a critical policy analysis. Winton explains the role policy plays in supporting and challenging inequality in the pursuit of a strong democracy and the public school ideal. In these idealized education spaces, policy decisions prioritize collective needs over private interests, which are made in public by democratically elected officials, and, more importantly, every child is able to access high quality education programs and enjoy their benefits at no cost. Written for parents, educators, policymakers, and other interested citizens, Unequal Benefits sheds light on how to participate in efforts to resist educational privatization and achieve the public school ideal across Canada.
With an ever increasing number of relationships between different companies, overseeing a portfolio of strategic alliances has become one of the most challenging tasks for managers. Indeed, the network, rather than the individual firm, has become the most relevant and effective form of organization in the economy. By integrating the most recent academic literature with practical new insights, this book develops a framework that will help both managers and academics to understand the intricate workings of the network economy. The author explores critical issues such as network strategy, network structures, partner selection, network management, and competition in and between networks. By studying the fundamentals of the managerial process, he is able to create a comprehensive and logical overview of successful management in the network economy. He highlights the fact that companies now need to manage whole networks, not just individual alliances, and that the days when firms operated in isolation are over. He also provides a unique and intriguing look at network tactics, demonstrating the tricks and ploys firms use in a network scenario. Throughout the book, interesting case studies are used to illustrate examples of effective network management in leading companies such as Cisco, Glaxo, Microsoft, Nokia and Toyota. This is the first volume to translate theoretical ideas on network management into practical guidelines. It will become an invaluable aid to business people at all levels including CEOs, alliance and strategy managers, and R&D managers. It will also be of immense value to academics interested in networks, innovation management and organisation, and policymakers involved with technology and anti-trust policy.
This book offers a new insight into one of the most interesting and long-lived institutions known to historians of science, the Chinese imperial Astronomical Bureau, which for two millennia observed, recorded, interpreted and predicted the movements of the celestial bodies. Utilising archival material, such as the resumes written for imperial audiences and personnel administration records, the book traces the rise and fall of more than thirty hereditary families serving at the Astronomical Bureau from the late Ming period to the end of the Qing dynasty. The book also presents an in-depth view into the organisation and function of the Bureau and succinctly charts the impacts of historical developments during the Ming and Qing periods, including the Regency of Prince Dorgon, the influence of the Jesuits, the relationship between the Kangxi and Yongzheng emperors and the He family and the failure of the bureau to predict correctly the solar eclipse of 1730. Presenting a social history of the Qing Astronomical Bureau from the perspective of hereditary astronomer families, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of Chinese Imperial history, the history of science and Asian history.
Post-baccalaureate education continues to expand at an accelerated rate as new degree programs are developed, enrollments rise, online instruction matures, and the number of institutions offering advanced degrees increases. Our level of understanding of graduate and professional education has not kept pace, especially in comparison to the depth of scholarship available on primary, secondary, and baccalaureate education. A Research Agenda for Graduate Education is a call to action for the graduate education community to commit to the same level of research and scholarship on itself that it expects from its students in their own disciplinary training. In this book, Brian S. Mitchell explores the current literature on graduate education for theoretical models that need testing, previous research that needs updating, and future research that may be explored. The book is divided into research questions on the science of graduate learning, graduate student career preparation, and graduate program improvement, with special attention placed on current research topics. Targeted at higher education researchers, including educational psychologists and disciplinary-based researchers specializing in graduate education, this volume will also be of interest to funding agencies, university administrators, and faculty mentors.
The value of the book lies in its reassessment of the distinctive features of the Chicago School, of its contributions in the theoretical and methodological fields and of its influence on the growth of sociology throughout the world and in America in particular. The book pays particularly close attention to the eclectic nature of the research methods used by the Chicago sociologists as they sought to integrate subjective and objective aspects of human life. It demonstrates that this eclecticism formed an integral part of their theories but also emphasises that empirical observation, too, was important, although not as an end in itself. While, for example, they were working on the concepts of organization, marginality and interaction, they did not consider these as ends in themselves but as additions to the development of a more general theoretical approach. Often in the past, and wrongly, Chicago’s theoretical contribution has been restricted to the urban sector. The book clearly and unequivocally reveals how the tendency to see the Chicago School as a 'theoretical' is the result of misinterpretation and of a failure to realize that, for the sociologists of the period, understanding the social dynamics of the city of Chicago was tantamount to interpreting the central tendencies of modern society itself. The book analyzes how empirical observation was important but not an end in itself. The Chicago School developed a profusion of sociological theories in many areas of inquiry and never opted for any one particular approach. The various essays in the book also make it clear that the School decisively contributed to the development of qualitative and quantitative techniques.
The theme of this book is that economic growth is key, but institutions and other national and subnational attributes matter as well. They are critical to explaining differences in social development and poverty reduction across countries and subnational areas that cannot be accounted for by growth alone. The book concludes that a more complete strategy needs to consider various institutional factors at the national and subnational levels to achieve rapid and sustained poverty reduction. Indeed, paying attention to these factors will benefit both growth and poverty reduction.
This book offers a bright and learned contribution on the famous German Theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg. Centering on his work Wissenschaftstheorie und Theologie (1973) it deals with his passion for an academically sound and respected theology, its radiation in an interdisciplinary university context in general and in the science-and-theology-dialogue in particular. Dr. Gulden Le Maire illuminates the role and function of theology in the German and Anglo-American educational-political landscape in the last decades of the 20st century. But she also offers a vision for the future of a healthy and fruitful academic theology in the German Academy and beyond. Michael Welker, Senior professor of Systematic Theology at the University of Heidelberg
The growth and development of the Lincoln Record Society in its first hundred years highlights the contribution of such organisations to historical life. In 2010 the Lincoln Record Society celebrates its centenary with the publication of the hundredth volume in its distinguished series. Local record societies, financed almost entirely from the subscriptions of their members, have made an important contribution to the study of English history by making accessible in printed form some of the key archival materials relating to their areas. The story of the Lincoln society illustrates the struggles and triumphsof such an enterprise. Founded by Charles Wilmer Foster, a local clergyman of remarkable enthusiasm, the LRS set new standards of meticulous scholarship in the editing of its volumes. Its growing reputation is traced here througha rich archive of correspondence with eminent historians, among them Alexander Hamilton Thompson and Frank Stenton. The difficulties with which Kathleen Major, Canon Foster's successor, contended to keep the Society alive duringthe dark days of the Second World War are vividly described. The range of volumes published has continued to expand, from the staple cartularies and episcopal registers to more unusual sources, Quaker minutes, records ofCourts of Sewers and seventeenth-century port books. While many of the best-known publications have dealt with the medieval period, notably the magnificent Registrum Antiquissimum of Lincoln Cathedral, there have also beeneditions of eighteenth-century correspondence, twentieth-century diaries, and pioneering railway photographs of the late Victorian era. This story shows the Lincoln Record Society to be in good heart and ready to begin its secondcentury with confidence. Nicholas Bennett is currently Vice-Chancellor and Librarian of Lincoln Cathedral.
Following mounting political and social pressures to increase public accessibility to higher education in Israel, in 1994 Israel's academic arena was transformed from a monolithic system consisting exclusively of research universities to a binary one comprised of both research universities and academic colleges. Within the system's expansions plans, Israel's Council for Higher Education prioritized the increased accessibility of higher education to peripheral populations, defining this as a central aim. This transformation was achieved in a short period of time through regional colleges that operated in the periphery and offered professional academic courses. In addition to these institutions, a number of University Extensions operated in Israel, founded based on the American Protestant Colleges model, introduced in Israel in the 1960's by Bar Ilan University. In 2000 all these institutions were officially included in the country's higher education system, resulting in a huge increase in the total number of students in academia, with higher education becoming accessible to the country's social and geographic periphery. This book reviews the evolution of Israel's academic system and examines the ways in which it has met the national aims defined by the Council for Higher Education in its plans.
This book explores the ways in which professional groups develop specific interactional procedures for conducting and representing their activities, all of which contribute to a distinctive collaborative identity. It highlights the drawbacks as well as the advantages of collaborative talk, pointing to ways of improving professional performance. Its investigation of topics such as identity, argument, narrative, and metaphor means that it should appeal to researchers outside the fields of applied linguistics and professional communication, for whom it is primarily intended.
This book is about a single image - the frontispiece to Thomas Sprat's History of the Royal-Society of London (1667). Designed by John Evelyn, and etched by Wenceslaus Hollar, it is arguably the best-known representation of seventeenth-century English science. The use of such plates to celebrate and legitimise the 'new' science of the period falls into a tradition that was well-established both in Britain and in Europe more generally, and which has increasingly attract attention from historians. Nevertheless, there are many questions to be asked about it and how it came into being. Was it an original composition by Evelyn, or is it based on earlier exemplars? Can all the scientific instruments, books and other objects that appear in it be identified, and what significance should be attached to their inclusion? Above all, how did the plate come to be designed in the first place, and what is its true relationship with Sprat's book? In order to assess such issues, this study provides a full analysis of Evelyn's image in its Royal Society setting and the wider world of early-modern science. The book first considers the overall iconography of the image and its message concerning Evelyn's conception of the society's role, before moving on to examine the myriad of details included in the plate and their significance. It concludes by considering the print's history after publication, including the extent to which Evelyn used copies to exemplify the combination of technological and artistic accomplishment to which he believed the society should aspire. |
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