Coherent Conceptual Framework Research Articles

Playgrounds as Residual Areas—Case Study of a Playground Regeneration Proposal in Târgu-Mureș, Romania

Playgrounds are envisaged as spaces designed to provide a safe and enjoyable environment that facilitates physical activity among children and adolescents. However, in various instances within cities formerly under socialist governance, these playgrounds have suffered neglect and lacked maintenance, coherent conceptual frameworks, professional oversight, suitable materials for playground structures, and attention to vegetation or potentially toxic elements. They became residual areas in the city’s built environment. Presently, the evaluation and the regeneration of playgrounds in cities have emerged as a significant task. Amidst the densely populated urban fabric, these spaces hold considerable importance for outdoor activities, social interaction, recreational pursuits, and the healthy development of future generations. Simultaneously, these places can play a crucial role in a city’s green infrastructure, local landscapes, and the challenges of sustainability prompted by climate change. The landscape analysis of 22 playgrounds classified them based on land use characteristics, location, functions, equipment, quality, and accessibility. A case study in Târgu-Mureș, scrutinized in detail within this analysis due to its proximity to the city center, within a densely populated urban area, and its multifaceted functionalities, underscores the need for a comprehensive approach encompassing diverse disciplines to address its manifold usage requirements.

Impact of service innovation on consumer repurchase intentions - based on the intermediary role of live streaming and industry chain management

Service innovation significantly influences consumer repurchase intention through live streaming and industry chain management. Despite this impact, within the realm of cross-border commerce, e-commerce entities have often neglected to scrutinize the nexus between service innovation and consumer repurchase intention, resulting in a dearth of scholarly investigations on this subject. Accordingly, this study endeavors to establish a coherent conceptual framework elucidating the relationship between service innovation and consumer repurchase intention; Employing live streaming and industry chain management as mediating variables, the research conducts a comprehensive examination and analysis. One questionnaire was administered: Questionnaire was disseminated to 606 consumers engaged in cross-border e-commerce transactions. Utilizing SPSS26, questionnaire underwent correlation and multiple regression analyses. Findings underscore a positive correlation between service innovation and consumer repurchase intention. Moreover, service innovation exhibits a favorable association with live streaming and industry chain management, thereby exerting a positive influence on consumer repurchase intention. Consequently, service innovation plays a pivotal role in enhancing consumer repurchase intention, particularly when mediated by live streaming and industry chain management.

Group emotions and their role in EU foreign policy: a social relational model on how emotions travel between EU member states

ABSTRACT EU foreign policy is highly dependent on EU member states, but we still lack a coherent conceptual framework that does justice to the interdependences and co-constitutive relations between EU countries. Building on relational theory and social psychology, we develop a social relational model about group emotions in the Council that conceptualises under what conditions emotions play a role in EU foreign policy decision-making. We formulate scope conditions detailing when the performance of emotions might allow member states to accumulate relational power (e.g. process power), which can in turn allow for the emergence of group emotions and even drive policy changes. Most notably, we shed light on group dynamics within the Council, determining if and how group emotions inform the EU´s policy response to norm contestation. Our framework helps understand why processes of emotional appraisal, contagion, and emergence might sometimes help propel the EU into action, whereas other times they seem to have little or no effect.

A Theory of Offensive Cyberspace Operations and Its Policy and Strategy Implications

The significance of Offensive Cyberspace Operations (OCO) in cyber warfare and national security is increasingly recognised, yet academic literature lacks a dedicated theoretical framework to fully articulate its unique aspects and strategic dimensions. Traditionally enveloped within the broader context of information warfare, OCO's distinct characteristics have often been overlooked. Addressing this gap, our paper aims to delineate the specificities of OCO and establish a structured conceptual model that enhances understanding and operational clarity. To achieve this, the study adopts an interpretive approach, drawing from existing literature on information warfare and cyberspace, alongside official U.S. government and military publications on cyberspace operations. Employing the theory-building method, we focus primarily on conceptualization. This involves creating a coherent conceptual framework through abstraction, synthesis, and diagramming, informed by seminal works in the field. Among the paper's key contributions are detailed conceptual models that shed light on OCO's integration within the broader cyber domain, the influence of U.S. policy and strategy on OCO, and the critical triad for successful operations: access, vulnerabilities, and payloads. Furthermore, we elucidate the primary and secondary components of OCO, specifically cyberspace attack and exploitation, offering new insights into their roles and implications. Thus, the framework includes conceptual maps highlighting OCO's key elements, relationships, and challenges, aiming to advance academic discourse, practical strategies, and policy in cyberspace operations. This effort marks a significant step forward in both theoretical engagement and practical application within the field.

Event segmentation in ADHD: neglect of social information and deviant theta activity point to a mechanism underlying ADHD

BackgroundAttention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is one of the most frequently diagnosed psychiatric conditions in children and adolescents. Although the symptoms appear to be well described, no coherent conceptual mechanistic framework integrates...

Sports integrities: a conceptual and methodological framework for analysis and policymaking

ABSTRACT Since the manipulation of sport competitions became one of the main threats to sport integrity, both the academy and international organizations have sought to establish a coherent conceptual framework that defines what criteria determine a manipulation and what are the factors that might cause it. Although the literature has shown that the manipulation of sport competition is a multifaceted phenomenon that includes individual, relational, organizational and institutional variables, most of the authors have focused their explanations on individual factors, and institutional prevention campaigns continue to understand match-fixing as a problem of moral failure of on-field sports actors. This work proposes a novel dynamic framework for analysis based on the theoretical roots on Morin’s paradigm of complexity and Archer’s critical realism. In addition to articulating the micro, meso, and macro factors together, the paper defends the idea of three conceptions of integrity, personal, competition and institutional, often operating simultaneously in the same space. Each one of these integrities, operates across individual, organizational and structural levels, acting recursively on the others, generating the gears of the global sports integrity. We then discuss the reasons, structures, opportunities and incentives that each of these integrities creates and fuels. We argue that the errors and ineffectiveness of the fight against the manipulation of sport competitions are largely due to a lack of understanding of, and appreciation for, the different conceptions of integrity and their interactions that require different approaches and differentiated public policies. We conclude with innovative possibilities for more effective policy-making processes in this space.

New Public Governance as a new wave of the public policy: theoretical approach and conceptualization of the trend

PurposeThe paper's primary purpose is to define and characterize the innovative concept in public management theory, New Public Governance (NPG), from its theoretical framework and the view of public management institutions. The second objective is to create a logical framework to explain this notion. The broader role of this paper is to expand the understanding of this contemporary public management trend.Design/methodology/approachThe methodological approach of the authors' research is based on a deep understanding of theoretical sources, particularly the scientific precursors in the literature surrounding the NPG theory. The authors used the following methods to achieve the paper's goals: critical thematic literature review and synthetic comparative analysis.FindingsIn regards to scientific analysis, the goals of NPG were achieved, considering that its concept and main characteristics were displayed in definitional terms as a trend in public management, emphasizing institutional cooperation and co-production, having strengths in social inclusion and weaknesses in the lack of participatory experience of the actors. Additionally, the authors created the original 6-CO coherent conceptual framework describing the flows in the NPG operation based on theoretical foundations. The analysis of theoretical sources not only allowed the collection of common and disconnected features of the reasoning behind the definition and depth of the NPG but also insufficient development of the theory in existing sources.Originality/valueThe paper demonstrates critical new scholarship surrounding the NPG theory because it (1) applies one of the latest trends in public management, (2) juxtaposes various academics' understanding of the concept and, most importantly, (3) advances the theory of NPG with the original 6-CO coherent conceptual framework as a practical implication of the theory originator.

Enhancing Fairness in Performance Appraisals: A Conceptual Framework Through a Systematic Literature Review

This study aims to comprehensively explore the multifaceted landscape of performance appraisals and, consequently, construct a coherent conceptual framework that augments the fairness and effectiveness of performance evaluation processes. The research design employs a meticulous, systematic literature review, drawing from 42 carefully selected articles from Scopus. This methodology facilitates in-depth analysis of diverse variables and dimensions associated with performance appraisals, particularly concerning the design of appraisal systems, the psychological elements at play, and the often-overlooked political influences. Within this intricate interplay, the study endeavors to unearth insights into the intricate mechanisms that govern the goal-setting process and the subsequent execution of performance appraisals within the dynamic public sector. Through an analytical lens, this study's findings enrich the development of a conceptual framework that transcends theoretical boundaries, finding practical resonance within the realm of performance appraisals. This framework, fortified by a holistic understanding of key dimensions and influential factors contributing to subjective bias, is a powerful instrument for unraveling and addressing fairness concerns inherent in performance appraisal practices. Ultimately, the framework presents a systematic trajectory for heightening the efficacy of performance appraisal design and execution, all underpinned by the overarching objectives of nurturing an environment of acceptable fairness.

Re-centering civil rights in the reauthorization of ESEA: An equitable, ecological, evidence-based framework

This article considers the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) in light of current educational inequities and the impact of the pandemic. The reauthorization presents an opportunity to center equity and justice and revitalize the civil rights aspects of the law. The authors review recent studies about the myriad ways the COVID-19 pandemic affected students, teachers and school systems and situates the reauthorization within the broader political context, including federal aid to states and districts during the pandemic. The authors present overarching policy recommendations: (1) a restructuring of the law’s titles to focus on students, teachers, and systems (i.e. schools and districts); (2) a focus on the principles of racial equity, an ecosystem approach to serve students’ needs across policy silos (i.e., housing and health), and a focus on research evidence; (3) policy targets for students; (4) policy targets for educators, including professional renewal and retention; (5) policy targets for the education system as a whole, including a focus on fiscal equity and facilitating regional approaches to cross-sector collaborations. The article presents a coherent conceptual framework for a redesign of ESEA with an emphasis on equity, evidence use, and ecosystems that is argued would directly address the needs of students, teachers, and systems.

Learning and reasoning with graph data.

Reasoning about graphs, and learning from graph data is a field of artificial intelligence that has recently received much attention in the machine learning areas of graph representation learning and graph neural networks. Graphs are also the underlying structures of interest in a wide range of more traditional fields ranging from logic-oriented knowledge representation and reasoning to graph kernels and statistical relational learning. In this review we outline a broad map and inventory of the field of learning and reasoning with graphs that spans the spectrum from reasoning in the form of logical deduction to learning node embeddings. To obtain a unified perspective on such a diverse landscape we introduce a simple and general semantic concept of a model that covers logic knowledge bases, graph neural networks, kernel support vector machines, and many other types of frameworks. Still at a high semantic level, we survey common strategies for model specification using probabilistic factorization and standard feature construction techniques. Based on this semantic foundation we introduce a taxonomy of reasoning tasks that casts problems ranging from transductive link prediction to asymptotic analysis of random graph models as queries of different complexities for a given model. Similarly, we express learning in different frameworks and settings in terms of a common statistical maximum likelihood principle. Overall, this review aims to provide a coherent conceptual framework that provides a basis for further theoretical analyses of respective strengths and limitations of different approaches to handling graph data, and that facilitates combination and integration of different modeling paradigms.

Unlocking the Black Box: Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) for Trust and Transparency in AI Systems

Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) has emerged as a critical field in AI research, addressing the lack of transparency and interpretability in complex AI models. This conceptual review explores the significance of XAI in promoting trust and transparency in AI systems. The paper analyzes existing literature on XAI, identifies patterns and gaps, and presents a coherent conceptual framework. Various XAI techniques, such as saliency maps, attention mechanisms, rule-based explanations, and model-agnostic approaches, are discussed to enhance interpretability. The paper highlights the challenges posed by black-box AI models, explores the role of XAI in enhancing trust and transparency, and examines the ethical considerations and responsible deployment of XAI. By promoting transparency and interpretability, this review aims to build trust, encourage accountable AI systems, and contribute to the ongoing discourse on XAI.

The Legislative Text as a Legal Story: a Storytelling Approach to Contemporary Legislative Drafting

A recent approach to legislative drafting, seen in common law jurisdictions which particularly praise plain and accessible legal communication, includes the presentation of legislative provisions to readers in a storytelling format. The legislative story develops progressively, by introducing legal characters, and describing relations, activities, and events. The paper draws on a number of drafting techniques, namely narrative-style drafting, the location of legal definitions in the structure of a legislative act, new types of legal definitions, the formal identification of terms and their signposting, as well as directness and personal tone. Based on various Commonwealth drafting directions, a legislative text is perceived and analyzed as a legal story written by lawyers and legislative drafters. This is in line with the discursive approaches of text linguists, such as De Beaugrande and Dressler, or van Dijk and Kintsch, who looked at the text as a process. Thus, text linguistics might be an adequate methodological framework to describe a legislative narrative. To successfully tell a legislative story, the identified elements of the storytelling approach are needed, such as a coherent conceptual framework, clear formal identification of terms, their adequate location in the structure of a legislative act, and more. The storytelling approach in common law legislation may be worth considering in continental (civil law) jurisdictions to improve the readability, accessibility, and clarity of laws.

What does it mean to have an equal say?

AbstractDemocracy is the form of government in which citizens have an equal say in political decision-making. But what does this mean precisely? Having an equal say is often defined either in terms of equal power to influence political decision-making or in terms of appropriate consideration, i.e., as a matter of attributing appropriate deliberative weight to citizens’ judgement in political decision-making. In this paper I argue that both accounts are incomplete. I offer an alternative view according to which having an equal say is having a say as an equal. That is, having an equal say is to be defined in terms of citizens’ occupying a role of political decision-makers, i.e., the political office of the democratic co-ruler of the polity, such that no citizen is a secondary or auxiliary decision-maker; they rule together as equals. This view aligns with the traditional understanding of democracy as rule by the people while providing a coherent conceptual framework for specifying what it means for democratic citizens to have an equal say which incorporates the strengths of alternative accounts and overcomes some of their challenges.

Why biogeographical transition zones matter

AbstractBiogeographical transition zones are areas of overlap, replacement or partial segregation between different biotas, which are sets of taxa sharing similar geographical distributions as a result of a common evolutionary history and ecological affinities. Transition zones occur in a few particular areas of the world where historically contingent processes have allowed different biotic elements to coexist and interact. Evolutionary or historical biogeographers have traditionally characterized transition zones by the overlap of different biotic elements. More recently, authors applying track analyses have detected transition zones by the presence of nodes or by conflicting results in cladistic biogeographic analyses. Ecological biogeographers have taken a different approach, usually applying quantitative methods, for example, species turnover indices to analyse the strength and breadth of biogeographic transition zones. Some authors consider transition zones to represent outstanding areas for analysing the principles shaping biotic assembly, whereas others have dismissed them, sometimes as artificial. Biogeographical transition zones are particularly interesting for a truly integrative biogeography, being natural laboratories where the interaction of historical and ecological processes can be analysed fruitfully, and are especially appropriate for an integrative approach, epistemologically grounded in integrative pluralism. A coherent conceptual framework to analyse transition zones, however, is still lacking.

The CFHealthHub Learning Health System: Using Real-Time Adherence Data to Support a Community of Practice to Deliver Continuous Improvement in an Archetypal Long-Term Condition.

CFHealthHub is a learning health system active in over 50% of adult CF Centres in England, supporting people with CF to develop habits of self-care around adherence to preventative inhaled therapy. This is achieved through the delivery of a behaviour change intervention, alongside collection of objective adherence data. As is common to long-term conditions, adherence to prescribed therapy is low, despite clear evidence of beneficial long-term impact on outcomes. This article explains how CFHealthHub is underpinned by coherent conceptual frameworks. We discuss how application of implementation and quality improvement strategies has facilitated CFHealthHub's progression from a pilot study to a large, randomised control trial and now to a learning health system, becoming embedded within routine care. CFHealthHub is now able to support real-time health technology assessments, quality improvement and research trials and is in the process of being implemented in routine clinical care across participating centres.

Cognitive-motivational mechanisms of political polarization in social-communicative contexts.

Healthy democratic polities feature competing visions of a good society but also require some level of cooperation and institutional trust. Democracy is at risk when citizens become so polarized that an ‘us versus them’ mentality dominates. Despite a vast multidisciplinary literature, no coherent conceptual framework of the microlevel dynamics that increase or decrease polarization has been presented. In this Review, we provide a conceptual framework to integrate scientific knowledge about cognitive–motivational mechanisms that influence political polarization and the social-communicative contexts in which they are enacted. Ego-justifying and group-justifying motives lead individuals to defend their own pre-existing beliefs and those of their in-group, respectively. However, a distinct class of system-justifying motives contributes to asymmetric forms of polarization. Whereas conservative-rightist ideology is associated with valuing tradition, social order and maintenance of the status quo, liberal-leftist ideology is associated with a push for egalitarian social change. These cognitive–motivational mechanisms interact with social influence processes linked to communication source, message and channel factors, all of which might contribute to increased or decreased polarization. We conclude with a discussion of unanswered questions and ways in which our framework can be extended to the study of culture and institutions.

Role of Charismatic Leadership and Technology Self-Efficacy in HRIS Use Behavior: A Conceptual Study

The current study claims that the Human Resource Information System (HRIS) Use Behavior, plays a salient role in utilizing the information technology as intended. Thus, organizations investing in information technology are in dire requirement of developing and implementing the effective interventions. The purpose of this is to optimize information technology adoption and its maximum usage among the HRIS users. The existing knowledge base in HRIS Use Behavior hardly addresses the relationship of Charismatic Leadership and Technology Self-Efficacy in the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT). The current study has developed an ‘integrative conceptual model’ contributing a theoretical extension of the UTAUT model, which fills he identified theoretical gaps, grounded on UTAUT, Charismatic Leadership theory, and the Social Cognitive Theory. The salient feature of this study is that it conceptualizes and introduces two constructs: 1) Technology Self-Efficacy and 2) Charismatic Leadership, in extending a validated information system Use Behavior or ‘explanatory model’ as a theoretical contribution. This concept paper argues that the Charismatic Leadership and Technology Self-Efficacy have a positive relationship among the UTAUT model's HRIS Use Behavior-related variables. However, it can be integrated towards arriving at a ‘coherent conceptual model’ to be researched and validated. This particular study has developed a ‘coherent conceptual framework’ in studying the phenomenon of HRIS Use Behavior. Furthermore, it studies the role of Charismatic Leadership and Technology Self-Efficacy in affecting the psychological aspect of the end users of a Human Resource Information System (HRIS)

Tracking local and regional climate im/mobilities through a multidimensional lens

Recent scholarship on climate mobilities and mobility justice calls for dynamic, relational, and agent-centered approaches to comprehend the complex decision-making that compels certain people to leave the places they call home, encourages or forces others to stay put, and acknowledges those who engage with mobile populations in host countries. Yet, these efforts fall short of advancing a coherent conceptual framework to make sense of the multifaceted, subjective, and affective aspects of climate-related movements and deliver more inclusive research agendas in the context of regional environmental change. This article aims to address this gap by introducing a multidimensional visual heuristic that we call the im/mobility cube. This framework makes it possible to systematically examine relational and intersectional struggles of mobility and (dis)placement, along three interconnected axes: the lived experiences of moving, remaining in place, and receiving mobile subjects upon arrival; the role of climate change as part of a complex web of drivers; and the consequences that mobility and immobility have on people’s lives, livelihoods, and well-being, from desirable benefits to intolerable losses. This heuristic foregrounds the embodied inequalities and often intimate kinopolitical struggles that im/mobile populations face, at the juncture of their aspirations and capabilities, complex subject-making processes, and ever shifting relations of power. As such, our conceptual lens sharpens the focus on the simultaneity and linkages of climate-driven im/mobility encounters within regional contexts and their diverse and courageous protagonists.

Kinds of Harm: Animal Law Language from a Scientific Perspective.

Simple SummaryClarity and consistency of legal language are essential qualities of the law. Without a sufficient level of those, legal acts are often hardly capable of determining legal duties appropriately. The review of rules governing the protection of animals reveals that the current language remains far from satisfactory. Therefore, the paper discusses the most sensitive notions relevant for defining animal harm and argues for action to make the legal language of respective legal regulations more scientifically accurate and adequate to the actual needs of animal protection.The current language of animal welfare laws is inconsistent and unclear in the basic terms pertaining to animal sensations and potential harms. In the case of law, the exact language often plays an essential role in determining legal duties and establishing their scope. Thus, for further progress in animal law, a coherent and unified basic conceptual framework is needed. To establish such a framework, the relevant legal terminology should be discussed in a prescriptive rather than interpretive manner while drawing on the medical sciences. Here, we propose a way to clarify the relevant terms to prevent misconceptions and improve the consistency of animal law.

Elevating the Value of Urban Location: A Consumer Preference-Based Approach to Valuing Local Amenity Provision

Estimating the non-market monetary values of urban amenities has become commonplace in urban planning research, particularly following Rosen’s seminal article on hedonic theory in 1974. As a revealed preference method, the hedonic approach decouples the market price of a house into price components that are attributable to housing characteristics. Despite the potential contribution of this theory in a planning context, three main limitations exist in the conventional applications: (1) variable measurement issues, (2) model misspecification, and (3) the problematic common use of global regression. These flaws problematically skew our understanding of the urban structure and spatial distribution of amenities, leading to misinformed policy interventions and poor amenity planning decisions. In this article, we propose a coherent conceptual framework that addresses measurement, specification, and scale challenges to generate consistent economic estimates of local amenities. Finally, we argue that, by paying greater attention to the spatial equity of amenity values, governments can provide greater equality of opportunities in cities.