Conceptual Artifacts Research Articles

Perceptual Fluctuations within the Entrepreneurial Journey: Experience from Process-Based Entrepreneurship Training

The entrepreneurial idea and opportunity are formed in the entrepreneurial process, which is characterized by entrepreneurial learning. During the entrepreneurial journey, the entrepreneur repeatedly reassesses the maturity of his business/venture idea and venture creation process to enter the market. The entrepreneur’s decisions are influenced by both objective and affective circumstances. This study aims to identify and map the fluctuations of idea–opportunity perception and affection by a student entrepreneur throughout the entrepreneurial learning journey simulating a genuine entrepreneurial (learning) process. The data collection of variables took place during an entrepreneurship course that modeled the entrepreneurial journey via process-based entrepreneurship training and applying feasibility and attractiveness self-assessment, observation and in-depth interviews. A small group of doctoral students developed their business ideas during a process-based entrepreneurship course. After each lesson and homework, they assessed the feasibility and attractiveness of their idea and opportunity. The results showed asynchronous fluctuations in these individual context-based perception variables, frequently depending on the progression of the entrepreneurial journey. The study added the concept of affective artifact and some generalizing dimensions to describe the entrepreneurial journey. Recommendations are given for the implementation and research of entrepreneurial process-based training.

Development of Products and Services in Small Enterprises: Artifact to Discuss Creative Logics

The innovation of companies’ product and service portfolio is a challenge, especially for small companies with limitations on their resources. The scientific literature that focuses on innovation and creativity in organizations is predominantly centered on the new product development (NPD) approach, projected for the reality of large companies. From this scenario, we used the Action Design Research (ADR) method to develop an artifact that helps consultants and teachers to understand and expose creative logics that are different than those used in NPD, allowing them to help entrepreneurs, future entrepreneurs and managers of small companies to develop their product and service portfolio. Following the principles of ADR, researchers and practitioners (teachers and consultants) collaborated in the development of the artifact. Successive versions of the artifact were tested in the field: in classrooms by the teachers and in small companies by the consultants. The lessons learned through this design process were formalized in meta-requirements and meta-designs, in accordance with the precepts of the design theory that serve as the foundations of ADR. These meta-specifications facilitate the critical analysis and evolution of the proposed artifact in addition to the conception and proposition of new artifacts for the same class of problem.

Video Data Analysis for Tracing Emotional Aspects of Collaborative Design and Making Processes

The purpose of the article is to introduce a systematic, three-level video analysis method for tracing the emotional aspects of a collaborative design and making process. Maker-centred learning can evoke strong emotions affecting students’ motivation because it involves them in externalising their ideas through conceptual, visual and material artefacts. For analysing longitudinal collaborative processes, we developed the visual Making-Process-Rug video analysis method, which enables tracing materially mediated verbal and embodied making processes. We provide examples of the method using data, where a team of seventh-grade students performing regular schoolwork were engaged in using traditional and digital fabrication technologies for inventing, designing, and making artefacts. Taking a case study perspective, we focus on a team of four students who worked on a smart product project. We analysed video recordings from the team’s 11 hours of design and making sessions on three levels: macro, intermediate and micro. The benefit of the three-level method is that it allows simultaneous analysis of social-discursive and materially embodied aspects of activities. It also enables analysing large samples of video data systematically, and focusing on both micro-level and macro-level perspectives of activity. The method for identifying emotions from video data has potential for educational research on various fields, however, the culture-specific expressions and interpretations of emotions require special attention when developing the method further. Keywords: basic education, collaborative process, emotional expression, Making-Process-Rug, sociomateriality, video analysis method

Performance Information Artifacts

The field of performance management is premised on the centrality of measurement and performance information use in everyday decision making and practice. Information is managed through the use of information systems, but research shows that implementing these technological systems is not enough. This research responds to recent calls for a better understanding of performance information use and the role of dialogue among stakeholders in promoting learning and system change. Through case analysis and qualitative modeling, it proposes the concept of performance information artifacts, and the need for effective boundary spanners to promote effective learning and knowledge sharing in performance dialogue.

Trust but Verify: How to Leverage Policies, Workflows, and Infrastructure to Ensure Computational Reproducibility in Publication

This article distills findings from a qualitative study of seven reproducibility initiatives to enumerate nine key decision points for journals seeking to address concerns about the quality and rigor of computational research by expanding the peer review and publication process. We evaluate our guidance in light of the recent National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM, 2019) report on Reproducibility and Replicability in Science recommendation for journal reproducibility audits. We present 10 findings that clarify how reproducibility initiatives contend with a variety of social and technical factors, including significant gaps in editorial infrastructure and a lack of uniformity in how research artifacts are packaged for dissemination. We propose and define a novel concept of assessable reproducible research artifacts and point the way to an improved understanding of how changes to author incentives and dissemination requirements impact the quality, rigor, and trustworthiness of published computational research.

Connecting Discourse and Domain Models in Discourse Analysis through Ontological Proxies

Argumentation-oriented discourse analysis usually focuses on what is being said and how, following the text under analysis quite literally, and paying little attention to the things in the world to which the text refers. However, to perform argumentation-oriented discourse analysis, one must assume certain conceptualisations by the speaker in order to interpret and reconstruct propositions and argumentation structures. These conceptualisations are rarely captured as a product of the analysis process. In this paper, we argue that considering the ontology to which a discourse refers as well as the text itself provides a richer and more useful representation of the discourse and its argumentation structures, facilitates intertextual analysis, and improves understandability of the analysis products. To this end, we propose the notion of ontological proxies, i.e., conceptual artefacts that connect elements in the argumentation structure to the associated ontology elements.

Open Data for Sustainable Development on a Knowledge-Based Economy: The Case of Botswana

A review of sustainable economic development perspectives reveals a lack of data-driven approaches that meet the needs of knowledge-based economies. This paper presents a conceptual design artefact, a theoretical framework that maps the open data pathway toward the achievement of a knowledge-based economy and sustainable economic development with a specific reference to Botswana. The proposed framework models the transition from open data to open knowledge. It further establishes the potential impact of that transition on the realisation of a knowledge-based economy, sustainable economic development, and the attainment of a knowledge society. The method adopted in the development of the framework involves three processes: 1) review of literature on key research concepts; 2) identification of relationships between research concepts; and 3) design and development of the proposed open data framework. The proposed framework will serve as a point of reference in open data-driven economic transitions and transformations in Botswana. This design artefact can be customised to meet the economic needs of other developing countries.

Analysis of students’ ideas and conceptual artifacts in knowledge‐building discourse

AbstractThis study proposes a new methodological approach to evaluate students’ knowledge‐building discourse. First, we discuss the knowledge–creation metaphor of learning. In the metaphor, theories mention that learners should consider their collective knowledge objects or artifacts that materialize as a result of their collaborative discourse. Second, we argue the necessity of developing new analytics to evaluate student learning. We describe how students’ ideas and their conceptual artifacts can be examined in discourse analysis. Third, we demonstrate the application of our analytics to real discourse data. We conducted a new type of social network analysis of discourse to examine how students continuously improve their ideas. Further, we conducted another network analysis of discourse, called the Epistemic Network Analysis, by coding students’ epistemic actions as conceptual artifacts to create and examine their ideas.

Metaphorization in english-language terminological field "animal diseases" in linguocognitive aspect

The article deals with the cognitive mechanisms of using metaphor in veterinary terminology of English language. The material of the study was the terms-metaphors of the terminological field of "animal diseases". Based on the theory of conceptual metaphor, the main donor zones, which served as a source of metaphorical nominations for the designation of animal diseases, were identified within the field under study. The types of metaphorical transferences (structural, gestalt, diffuse) that exist in the terminological field "animal diseases" are characterized. The main categories of varieties of metaphorization of the studied terminological field are analyzed. It is concluded that the processes of metaphorization demonstrated extraordinary activity in terminology, being based on the use of signs of some subject spheres to refer to others. The Gestalt variety was dominant in the process. It was established that the donor zone HUMAN is the most productive one for making terms-metaphors to designate animal diseases since human consciousness is prone to percept an outer world in close association with personal experience of biological and social character. Productive to the English terms of the terminological field of "animal diseases" is the conceptual sphere ARTIFACT as a man-made object. Gestalt metaphorical variation based on the use of visual and auditory gestalt is relevant to this donor zone. For the formation of metaphor terms, the most typical one is visual gestures based on the external similarity of animal disease symptoms to man-made objects, or as a result of their associations with artifact coloring. In the terminological field "animal diseases", this group includes such names as coronavirus infection – "coronaviruses most commonly affect cattle, birds, cats, dogs and humans. The shape of the coronavirus is reminiscent of balls with large (about 20 nanometers) tentacle projections arranged in the form of a solar corona, for which they are called», pastous (from lat. Pastosus – doughlike ) – swollen, portals of infection – "place of penetration of pathogenic microbe in the body" drum belly –"excessive accumulation of gases in the intestine caused by increased fermentation processes and impairment of its motor-secretory function"), laky blood - «destruction of the stroma of erythra of oocytes with the excretion of hemoglobin. "

Diamela Eltit: la noción de periodismo tétrico, ideología y discurso en la prensa (neo) liberal chilena

Este artículo analiza la historicidad del concepto de “periodismo tétrico”, formulado por la escritora Diamela Eltit, para designar un conjunto de prácticas comunicativas que componen el discurso ideológico de la prensa liberal chilena. Las reflexiones de Diamela Eltit sobre el accionar del sistema de medios en Chile, se insertan en una tradición de estudios teóricos sobre la comunicación, iniciada a fines de la década del 60, que identificó las estrategias discursivas para construir la realidad social definida por la amenaza al orden social instituido, despojando de sentido a las demandas sociales. El artefacto conceptual periodismo tétrico, reactualiza el campo semántico del discurso periodístico liberal en la modernidad globalizada. Permite abarcar la emergencia de nuevos géneros periodísticos de representación de la realidad en clave “espectacular”, sobre la base de la función alegórica del mito, la violencia simbólica y los efectos de realidad. El periodismo tétrico es una operación discursiva que reproduce en las noticias la desigualdad estuctural del sistema, y más aún, fragmenta esta desigualdad en oposiciones binarias que omiten lo ominoso del contexto social en que emergen los sucesos noticiados. De este manera, provoca una desconección sintática entre el sujeto de la noticia, el relato social que la envuelve y el predicado que la nomina.

An Axiomatic Categorisation Framework for the Dynamic Alignment of Disparate Functions in Cyber-physical Systems

AbstractAdvancing Industry 4.0 concepts by mapping the product of the automotive industry on the spectrum of Cyber Physical Systems, we immediately recognise the convoluted processes involved in the design of new generation vehicles. New technologies developed around the communication core (IoT) enable novel interactions with data. Our framework employs previously untapped data from vehicles in the field for intelligent vehicle health management and knowledge integration into design. Firstly, the concept of an inter-disciplinary artefact is introduced to support the dynamic alignment of disparate functions, so that cyber variables change when physical variables change. Secondly, the axiomatic categorisation (AC) framework simulates functional transformations from artefact to artefact, to monitor and control automotive systems rather than components. Herein, an artefact is defined as a triad of the physical and engineered component, the information processing entity, and communication devices at their interface. Variable changes are modelled using AC, in conjunction with the artefacts, to aggregate functional transformations within the conceptual boundary of a physical system of systems.

La creación y utilización educativa de artefactos identitarios

El propósito de este ensayo es ilustrar la noción de artefacto identitario a través de dos ejemplos que suponen vincular el currículum y la práctica educativa con la subjetividad del aprendiz. Por artefacto identitario entendemos cualquier producto elaborado por el estudiante (textual, visual, multimodal) en el que invierte en su producción sus particulares experiencias, ámbitos de interés y aspectos que para él o ella son significativos, y que el docente utiliza con finalidades pedagógicas para optimizar los procesos de enseñanza y aprendizaje. Después de situar el concepto de artefacto identitario a partir del principio de la significación de Vygotski según el cual la creación y utilización de signos y símbolos para regular nuestra conducta es aquello que define los procesos psicológicos superiores; se exponen y discuten dos ejemplos que pretenden ilustrar cómo se puede utilizar, con fines educativos, dichos artefactos identitarios. Se considera, en la sección de discusión y conclusiones, que dichos artefactos identitarios pueden convertirse en artefactos educativos que permitan poner en relación las experiencias y contextos de aprendizaje dentro y fuera de la escuela.

Thinking Beyond Imitation

This study explores the manufacture, use, and archaeological classification of ceramic commensal vessels from western Sicily dating from the late Iron Age and Archaic periods (approximately 900-600 BC), addressing the stylistic transformation of pottery manufactured by indigenous Sicilians following social contact, interaction, and entanglement with foreigners. Potters blended various styles of form and decoration to manufacture ceramic vessels which continue to challenge theoretical frameworks that attempt to classify and interpret them. Previous studies have utilized models of material imitation and emulation, yet have seldom explored the social significance of their production and use. More recent studies break from these predecessors, applying post-colonial perspectives to evaluate critically and contextualize these products of social entanglement. Unfortunately, many of these interpretations fail to distinguish between material and behavioral classifications, inadequately employing theories of social behavior to characterize material culture. Here, the distinction between material and behavioral classification is emphasized, differentiating between physical styles and the social behaviors associated with the production, use, and discard of objects. The concept of mixed-style artifacts is presented as an alternative to previous classificatory models, distinguishing and parsing between material and behavioral classifications to contextualize and understand these artifacts. Using this approach, mixed-style Sicilian pottery can be classified more objectively, divorcing such classifications from subjective biases. Consequently, such pottery appears to be a product of local potters who, operating as communities of practice, incorporated elements of foreign style alongside indigenous ones, creating a material manifestation of the social middle ground. In this way, the mixedstyle concept varies from strict imitation as it more accurately accounts for the selective incorporation of particular styles to synthesize something new, albeit familiar.

The Anthropocene: age of complexity, foresight and innovation?

PurposeSpecific examples or brief case-histories in different fields or disciplines illustrate the inventive process from conception to realization.Design/methodology/approachThe authors examine predictions made in 2007 by “China experts” about what the Chinese business environment would look like in 2017. Their predictions were accurate in respect of around two-thirds of the issues they were asked to consider. The authors focus on the one-third of issues about which they were wide of the mark and examine the likely reasons.FindingsThe newly named Anthropocene is a time of increasing conception, research, design, development, evaluation and exploitation of new artifacts and services. Objectivity: careful problem-analysis assures the authors’ understanding of innovating pathways.Research limitations/implicationsTrial-and-error methods may be disorderly, log-type research records are not kept, accidents not considered relevant.Originality/valueExamples cited are transdisciplinary, often requiring inputs from other economic or cultural sectors. These complexities should be of incalculable value to innovators with single-field backgrounds.

The foundation of information science: one world or three? A discussion of Gnoli (2018)

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to make a critical analysis of the views put forward by Claudio Gnoli (2018) in this paper concerning philosophical problems in library and information science (LIS).Design/methodology/approachThe paper presents the basic ideas in Gnoli (2018) and discusses the set of basic assumptions, concepts and conclusions put forward.FindingsIt is argued that the idea of the theory of levels is basically sound, but we do not need to consider the material world, the mental world (minds) and the world of mentefacts as three different worlds. They represent different levels with different kinds of emergent properties in the world. Further, although the concepts of artifacts and mentefacts are useful, there are other terms within LIS, such as document, work and object that have been influential and should be discussed in this context. It is also argued that subjective vs objective knowledge is often confused with private vs public knowledge, which is problematic. Finally, it is claimed that the cognitive view and the “sociological view” are not about two different levels of reality but are competing views about the same reality.Originality/valueThe paper clarifies some aspects of the analytical framework of domain analysis and adds to the developments of the philosophical dimensions of information within LIS.

Practice and Structure as Concepts of a Sociology of Visual Communication: Toward a Methodology of Visual and Structural Analysis

The concept of practice occurs frequently in current research about the visual. However, the term remains problematic as it cannot always clarify the complexity of the topic. Following an initial discussion of the subject area and central questions of a sociology of visual communication, I proceed to show that visual practices are embedded in many different social structures that condition forms of practice. This aspect is reflected on theoretically with reference to the concept of artifacts outlined by Herbert Simons in Sciences of the Artificial. As Simons does not seek to establish any connection to sociology, his thoughts must first be developed for the discipline. This is achieved, inter alia, by taking up the structural concepts of Giddens and Luhmann. Having established this background, the notion of practice is reconsidered in relation to the structures of social realities and to a concept of the sociology of visual communication. In the discussion, methodological and methodical conclusions are drawn from these conceptual considerations, which are important for the further development of the analysis of the visual.

Sur la nature et l’artefact (neuf fragments tisses). Hommage a Francisco Infante

This article follows our several previous studies in Russian art of the XXth century. It is dedicated to Francisco Infante-Arana (born 1943), Russian painter of Spanish origin, creator of a “new artistic language” (State Prize of the Russian Federation, 1996), author of an original theory of art developed since 1976 and named the “concept of artifact”. If the spiritual continuity between the work of Francisco Infante and that of Kazimir Malevich has already been established for a long time as a commonplace in contemporary art studies (just remember the title of a series of works by Francisco Infante, “Suprematic Games. Hommage to Malevich”, 1968, from the cycle “Spontaneous Games in Nature”), the relationship between the inventor of the concept of artifact and the founder of the abstractionism in painting, Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944), has not yet been a subject of targeted research. In our current study, we propose to address this uneasy issue by returning to the origins of the philosophical thought, and namely to the speculations on the phenomena of art in their relation to the phenomena of nature. This approach seems justified insofar as the abstractionism radically challenges the very foundations of art, reposing, since ancient times, on the primacy of mimesis, and rebuild this ruined aesthetic system, paradoxically, on the principles which, having been scrutinized more closely, seem not to lack some affinity with the worldview of the first “philosophers”, so-called Presocratics. Thus, our purpose will be to raise the first elements of the Ancient Greek thought that appear at the base of the artistic creation and theoretical representations of Francisco Infante.

Anthropic Concepts

AbstractNatural kind concepts have the function of tracking categories that exist independently of our beliefs and purposes. But not all ways of tracking categories in the natural world involve conceiving of them as natural kinds. Anthropic concepts represent groups of natural, mind‐independent entities that are apt for serving various human interests, goals, and projects. They represent the natural world under a practical mode of presentation, as a set of material resources that can be transformed to further a host of functions and ends. I argue that cross‐cultural studies of traditional ecological knowledge provide evidence that many chemical, mineral, and biological concepts that are frequently taken to be natural kind concepts turn out on closer inspection to be anthropic concepts. Anthropic concepts are distinguished from artifact concepts, and a form of realism about the anthropic kinds that they refer to is defended.

Sermons in Stones. Argument and Artefact for Sustainability

The focus of the study is on the values, priorities and arguments needed to advance ‘design for sustainability’. The discussion critiques conventions related to innovation and technology and offers a product design approach that emphasises minimal intervention, integrated thinking-and-doing, reinstating the familiar, localization and the particularities of place. These interdependent themes are discussed in terms of their relationship to design for sustainability and are clarified through the conceptualization, design, production and use of a simple functional object that is, essentially, a ‘symbolic sustainable artefact’. Although it is fully functional, its practical usefulness in contemporary society would probably be seen as marginal. Its potential contribution is as a symbol of an alternative direction. It asks us to consider aspects of our humanity that are beyond instrumental approaches. It challenges sustainable initiatives that become so caught up in practical and environmental concerns that they fail to question the underlying values, priorities and social drivers which affect how we act in the world; those behaviours and norms that have created the very problems we are so urgently trying to tackle. The discussion is accompanied by a parallel series of photographs that document the relationship between argument, locale and the creation of the conceptual artefact. These photographs convey some of the qualitative differences between the place of much contemporary artefact acquisition, i.e. the shopping mall, and the particular locale that yielded the artefact created during this study; they are also useful in conveying the potential relationship that exist between place and the aesthetics of functional objects.

Ski Accidents and Liability of Possessor or Owner of Artifact - Focusing on Concept and Defects of Artifact of Article 758 of Civil Act -

Ski Accidents and Liability of Possessor or Owner of Artifact - Focusing on Concept and Defects of Artifact of Article 758 of Civil Act -