Conceptual Work Research Articles

A case study of the development of a valid and pragmatic implementation science measure: the Barriers and Facilitators in Implementation of Task-Sharing Mental Health interventions (BeFITS-MH) measure

BackgroundFew implementation science (IS) measures have been evaluated for validity, reliability and utility – the latter referring to whether a measure captures meaningful aspects of implementation contexts. We present a real-world case study of rigorous measure development in IS that assesses Barriers and Facilitators in Implementation of Task-Sharing in Mental Health services (BeFITS-MH), with the objective of offering lessons-learned and a framework to enhance measurement utility.MethodsWe summarize conceptual and empirical work that informed the development of the BeFITS-MH measure, including a description of the Delphi process, detailed translation and local adaptation procedures, and concurrent pilot testing. As validity and reliability are key aspects of measure development, we also report on our process of assessing the measure’s construct validity and utility for the implementation outcomes of acceptability, appropriateness, and feasibility.ResultsContinuous stakeholder involvement and concurrent pilot testing resulted in several adaptations of the BeFITS-MH measure’s structure, scaling, and format to enhance contextual relevance and utility. Adaptations of broad terms such as “program,” “provider type,” and “type of service” were necessary due to the heterogeneous nature of interventions, type of task-sharing providers employed, and clients served across the three global sites. Item selection benefited from the iterative process, enabling identification of relevance of key aspects of identified barriers and facilitators, and what aspects were common across sites. Program implementers’ conceptions of utility regarding the measure’s acceptability, appropriateness, and feasibility clustered across several common categories.ConclusionsThis case study provides a rigorous, multi-step process for developing a pragmatic IS measure. The process and lessons learned will aid in the teaching, practice and research of IS measurement development. The importance of including experiences and knowledge from different types of stakeholders in different global settings was reinforced and resulted in a more globally useful measure while allowing for locally-relevant adaptation. To increase the relevance of the measure it is important to target actionable domains that predict markers of utility (e.g., successful uptake) per program implementers’ preferences. With this case study, we provide a detailed roadmap for others seeking to develop and validate IS measures that maximize local utility and impact.

How deep is your art: An experimental study on the limits of artistic understanding in a single-task, single-modality neural network.

Computational modeling of artwork meaning is complex and difficult. This is because art interpretation is multidimensional and highly subjective. This paper experimentally investigated the degree to which a state-of-the-art Deep Convolutional Neural Network (DCNN), a popular Machine Learning approach, can correctly distinguish modern conceptual art work into the galleries devised by art curators. Two hypotheses were proposed to state that the DCNN model uses Exhibited Properties for classification, like shape and color, but not Non-Exhibited Properties, such as historical context and artist intention. The two hypotheses were experimentally validated using a methodology designed for this purpose. VGG-11 DCNN pre-trained on ImageNet dataset and discriminatively fine-tuned was trained on handcrafted datasets designed from real-world conceptual photography galleries. Experimental results supported the two hypotheses showing that the DCNN model ignores Non-Exhibited Properties and uses only Exhibited Properties for artwork classification. This work points to current DCNN limitations, which should be addressed by future DNN models.

On the edge: a multilevel perspective on innovation complexities and dynamic attractors in the supply network

PurposeIn innovation management, the complexity inherited in the supply network may be necessary for success. This study aims to holistically examine innovation complexities and system attractors within a hierarchically nested supply network and explore how they dynamically interact and influence adaptive innovation processes.Design/methodology/approachTaking a complexity theory perspective, we employed a methodological bricolage approach using a single case study with multiple embedded units of analysis – namely, a supply network encompassing 36 firms. We drew upon primary data obtained from 42 interviewees and rich secondary data, and we employed a temporal exponential random graph model to examine the micro-foundations of the evolution of the sampled supply network over a decade.FindingsThis study presents a comprehensive overview of the innovation complexities—relational, temporal, dynamic, operational and structural – and how they manifest within a supply network. It also identifies three systemic attractors – point, periodic and strange – and elucidates their relationships with the complexities and their impact on innovative supply network dynamics. The resulting conceptual framework and working propositions provide a detailed perspective on the complex interplay between balanced order and chaos and the potentially unbalanced innovation states within a supply network.Originality/valueThis research offers an in-depth perspective on the innovation complexities and dynamic attractors within a supply network from a holistic, multilevel perspective. It advances complexity theory and deepens the understanding of supply networks as complex adaptive systems.

Reaching the Voters: Parties’ Use of Google Ads in the 2021 German Federal Election

Election campaigns during the pandemic showcased the increased use of costly digital campaigning by parties. While many studies focus on the use of Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and other social networking sites during elections, parties’ use of Google Ads remains widely unstudied. This is surprising given that parties spend a substantial proportion of their budget on Google Ads and Google reports on this spending and other details of the ads in its <em>Transparency Report</em>. Based on the equalisation vs. normalisation thesis, we identify party factors (size, age, government/opposition status, and electoral strongholds) that affect parties’ use of this instrument to a different degree in their campaigns. We aim to highlight parties’ use of Google Ads during the campaigns for the 2021 German Bundestag election, relying on the official data provided via Google’s Ad Library. We discuss both empirical work on the factors that determine the use of Google Ads and conceptual work on the merit and perils of such ads in democratic elections, and we present descriptive and exploratory findings of our deep dive into the archive of Google Ads.

Allostery at a Protein-Protein Interface Harboring an Intermolecular Motional Network.

Motional properties of proteins govern recognition, catalysis, and regulation. The dynamics of tightly interacting residues can form intramolecular dynamic networks, dependencies fine-tuned by evolution to optimize a plethora of functional aspects. The constructive interaction of residues from different proteins to assemble intermolecular dynamic networks is a similarly likely case but has escaped thorough experimental assessment due to interfering association/dissociation dynamics. Here, we use fast-MAS solid-state 15N R1ρ NMR relaxation dispersion aided by molecular-dynamics simulations to mechanistically assess the hierarchy of individual μs timescale motions arising from a crystal-crystal contact, in the absence of translational motion. In contrast to the monomer, where particular mutations entail isolated perturbations, specific intermolecular interactions couple the motional properties between distant residues in the same protein. The mechanistic insights obtained from this conceptual work may improve our understanding on how intramolecular allostery can be tuned by intermolecular interactions via assembly of dynamic networks from previously isolated elements.

An ontology-based text mining dataset for extraction of process-structure-property entities

While large language models learn sound statistical representations of the language and information therein, ontologies are symbolic knowledge representations that can complement the former ideally. Research at this critical intersection relies on datasets that intertwine ontologies and text corpora to enable training and comprehensive benchmarking of neurosymbolic models. We present the MaterioMiner dataset and the linked materials mechanics ontology where ontological concepts from the mechanics of materials domain are associated with textual entities within the literature corpus. Another distinctive feature of the dataset is its eminently fine-grained annotation. Specifically, 179 distinct classes are manually annotated by three raters within four publications, amounting to 2191 entities that were annotated and curated. Conceptual work is presented for the symbolic representation of causal composition-process-microstructure-property relationships. We explore the annotation consistency between the three raters and perform fine-tuning of pre-trained language models to showcase the feasibility of training named entity recognition models. Reusing the dataset can foster training and benchmarking of materials language models, automated ontology construction, and knowledge graph generation from textual data.

Water as a commodity: challenges and implications of the commercialization of a vital resource

Water, soil, and air are the planet’s natural capitals that have made life viable, and without them, biodiversity will disappear. The drought we are experiencing due to global warming puts everyone on alert to mitigate the risks to these vital common goods. Water is a resource in crisis due to scarcity, misuse, poor distribution to the most vulnerable populations, contamination, and pollution, but it still attracts the private sector's greed. Water privatization, distribution, and basic sanitation services have been touted as a panacea to solve urban problems. Several cities have followed the path of privatization, embracing neoliberal ideologies or using it as a lever to pay off state debts without considering social aspects. Studies demonstrating the positive or negative impacts of privatization are still rare. The objective of this conceptual work was to analyze trends in water management service providers around the world. The methodology was based on works published in journals and online. There has been a trend towards privatization. However, many cities have chosen to go in the opposite direction by municipalizing their water supply and sanitation services.

The Role of Curiosity in Virtual Environments: A Conceptual Integration.

Brands need to have a digital strategy. Yet, it is difficult to grab consumers' attention in virtual environments. We present the Curiosity in Virtual Environment (CVE) model, which integrates empirical and conceptual work on virtual environments, goal content, and curiosity. The model seeks to serve as a guiding framework and tool for research scholars and practitioners working in virtual environments who want to communicate with consumers. To elaborate and present the CVE, we first discuss the main characteristics of virtual environments and types of goal contents, followed by a brief introduction to the theoretical developments of curiosity. The model is then introduced, showing four quadrants in which practitioners should have an easier (more difficult) time grabbing consumers' attention. We then conduct a selective review of experimental studies on curiosity and consumption, identifying three voids in the field. We finish the article by suggesting directions for future research and acknowledging the limitations of the CVE model.

Mechanical behaviors and seismic performance of a novel rotary amplification friction damper (RAFD): Experimental and analytical studies

Friction dampers are widely used energy dissipators for the seismic fortification of engineering structures, due to their efficiency, reliability, and cost-effectiveness. Since the friction force is proportional to the normal load applied on the sliding interfaces for given friction materials, increasing the applied normal load is always the only approach to enhance the energy dissipation capacity of friction dampers. However, a large applied normal load may result in serious wear problems at the interfaces, which in turn affects the functionality of the damper. To address the above issue, a novel rotary amplification friction damper (RAFD) is proposed in the present study, which can realize several times amplified friction force for a given normal load due to the adopted amplification system. The conceptual design and working mechanism of the proposed RAFD are first introduced. Subsequently, a damper prototype was manufactured and experimental studies were carried out to examine the behaviors of RAFD. Then, a nonlinear mechanical model considering the gap between the gear and rack is developed based on the experimental results. Finally, an analytical model of a single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) system equipped with RAFD is established to investigate the control performance of RAFD in reducing the structural seismic responses and evaluate the influences of various parameters including gap and earthquake types (far-field and near-field ground motions). The analytical and experimental results demonstrate that the proposed RAFD showcases superior seismic control effectiveness compared to the traditional friction damper; the presence of a gap would reduce the control effectiveness of RAFD to some extent, while earthquake types have minimal impact.

Private commercial companies sharing health-relevant consumer data with health researchers in sub-Saharan Africa: an ethical exploration

ABSTRACT Sharing large digital-first datasets, including for purposes for which they were not originally intended, is a hallmark of the “big data revolution”. Through their routine operations, private commercial companies collect massive amounts of diverse data from their customers, some of which may interest those working in the public sector, such as health researchers. Researchers and government agencies worldwide have been increasingly using data from commercial entities (such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook/Meta, Twitter/X and Amazon, among others) to generate health-related insights. This article explores ethical issues raised by the practice of commercial companies sharing consumer data with third parties for the purposes of promoting health in the sub-Saharan African (SSA) context. First, as an illustrative example, it examines some of the ways telecommunication (telecom) companies in SSA shared mobility data from cellphone users with public health researchers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Second, it examines a recent debate about the ethical responsibilities of companies that collect, process and share user-generated data, drawing implications for the SSA context. Finally, since this is a relatively understudied subject, we point out some areas where future conceptual and empirical work could contribute to the development of relevant ethics guidance and regulatory governance in SSA.

Parents' experiences of waiting for their child's transplant: A focus on how healthcare providers can impact the waiting process.

Waiting for a child transplant is a form of suffering for parents, yet little research has explored how parents experience waiting and how healthcare providers can impact their waiting experiences. The purpose of this article is to investigate how parents experienced the process of waiting for their child's transplant with a specific focus on the impact of healthcare providers on parents' experience of waiting. Six parents from four different families participated in interviews and observations. Our narrative analysis suggested that parents had no narrative roadmap to navigate waiting and the importance of healthcare providers' tailoring the amount and type of medical information to a parents' needs. We discuss how waiting required parents to be hypervigilant and provide continuity of care for their child, and how this "managerial role" could lead to a loss of trust with their healthcare providers. Parents' accounts were replete with contradictions, and as an extension of this, waiting was full of contradictions. Findings contribute to conceptual, methodological, and practical work exploring how parents live in deep uncertainty about the future, and how healthcare providers can support parents in their child's transplantation and other life-threatening illness contexts.

The emergence of a modern paradigm for urban health

The importance of urban health in achieving global and planetary health goals is increasingly recognized. Cities offer important opportunities to improve health while also presenting significant challenges. As our understanding of and evidence for the importance of determinants of health beyond health care have grown, the need for urban health policies and actions that transcend disciplinary and sectoral boundaries and involve multiple stakeholders in urban decision-making has become clearer. Current urban health practice builds on decades of conceptual and operational work. This paper traces the evolution of the urban health paradigm through research, policy and practice in recent decades. We suggest that, despite the proven utility of urban health as a paradigm and its conceptual and practical evolution for effective urban health governance, significant challenges remain, especially related to implementing the systems approaches needed to improve health amidst the complexity of urban dynamics.

Blockchain implementation for food safety in supply chain: A review.

Food safety has emerged as the topmost priority in the current fast-paced food industry era. According to the World Health Organization, around 600 million people, approximately 1 in 10 individuals worldwide, experience illness due to contaminated food consumption, resulting in nearly 0.42 million fatalities annually. The recent development in software and hardware sectors has created opportunities to improve the safety concerns in the food supply chain. The objective of this review is to explain the fundamentals of blockchain and its integration into the supply chain of various food commodities to enhance food safety. This paper presents the analysis of 31 conceptual works, 10 implementation works, 39 case studies, and other investigations in blockchain-based food supply chain from a total of 80 published papers. In this paper, the significance of adapting conceptual ideas into practical applications for effectively tracing food commodities throughout the supply chain has been discussed. This paper also describes the transformative role of blockchain platforms in the food industry, providing a decentralized and transparent ledger to access real-time and immutable records of a product's journey. In addition, both the positive impacts and challenges associated with implementing blockchain technology in the food supply chain have been evaluated. In summary, the blockchain-based food supply chains offer greater transparency, traceability, and trust, ultimately resulting in higher standards of food safety and quality.

The Construction of “Mental Models”: Its Essence and Use in Various Fields of Psychology

Introduction. Mental models are a scientific psychological construct, which means that people create models of the external world in their minds and operate them to plan their activities. Today, mental models have found application in various fields: explaining the principles of human thinking and solving logical problems, creating models about time, sets, causes and effects, as well as in the field of learning, social relations, teamwork. However, in Russian, the subject of the study of mental models is practically not presented.Purpose. To examine works devoted to the study of mental models in various fields of psychology.Mental models in the field of thinking process research. A leading expert in the field of human thinking mechanisms P. N. Johnson-Laird put forward and substantiated idea, that in the process of reasoning, people actively create mental models that accompany logical operations and can influence them. Mental models are iconic, reflecting the meaning of objects of the external world, are deployed in a sequence corresponding to external events, and reflect external operations schematically.Mental models in learning. Mental models can be useful tools for constructing the educational process. Understanding and competent use of the natural mechanisms of the psyche of students can improve the process of modeling their knowledge of the world around them.Mental models in socio-psychological processes. The interaction of an individual with other people generates the process of forming their reflections in the internal space, creating models of behavior and possible reactions of others. In team interaction, an important factor in the effectiveness and viability of the team is the presence of common (team) mental models.Discussion. The use of the concept of mental models in various fields and a large number of conceptual and empirical works on this topic may indicate the universality of the phenomenon of models. Mental models as an explanatory principle are built into existing theories and enrich them.

A tutorial on open-source large language models for behavioral science.

Large language models (LLMs) have the potential to revolutionize behavioral science by accelerating and improving the research cycle, from conceptualization to data analysis. Unlike closed-source solutions, open-source frameworks for LLMs can enable transparency, reproducibility, and adherence to data protection standards, which gives them a crucial advantage for use in behavioral science. To help researchers harness the promise of LLMs, this tutorial offers a primer on the open-source Hugging Face ecosystem and demonstrates several applications that advance conceptual and empirical work in behavioral science, including feature extraction, fine-tuning of models for prediction, and generation of behavioral responses. Executable code is made available at github.com/Zak-Hussain/LLM4BeSci.git . Finally, the tutorial discusses challenges faced by research with (open-source) LLMs related to interpretability and safety and offers a perspective on future research at the intersection of language modeling and behavioral science.

The Prevalence of Self-Exploitation in Media Production: Analyzing the Impact of Technological and Societal Transformations

The development of science and technology and the changes of society have given a new look to traditional conceptual work. The developed network and ubiquitous communication have broken the time and space boundaries of work. Working from home has become a reality. Some people continue to predict that work will become a relaxed enjoyment. But the reality is frustrating. Not only did people not relax, but they also took on increasingly heavy work pressures. The boundaries between work and leisure are eliminated by heavy business, and the office is transformed into a place where people spend the most time. Therefore, work is no longer a pleasure, but self-exploitation behaviour. The unstable and unsafe nature of creative work in the media industry creates stress and anxiety, and the strong emotional pleasure associated with this kind of work exists. The tension between "pleasure" and "pain" in creative occupations has been fully proven. Unstable labour has now become a key feature of creative work. Creative occupations are driven by self-fulfilling desires and are places for exploitation and serious insecurity.

The Prevalence of Self-Exploitation in Media Production: Analyzing the Impact of Technological and Societal Transformations

The development of science and technology and the changes of society have given a new look to traditional conceptual work. The developed network and ubiquitous communication have broken the time and space boundaries of work. Working from home has become a reality. Some people continue to predict that work will become a relaxed enjoyment. But the reality is frustrating. Not only did people not relax, but they also took on increasingly heavy work pressures. The boundaries between work and leisure are eliminated by heavy business, and the office is transformed into a place where people spend the most time. Therefore, work is no longer a pleasure, but self-exploitation behaviour. The unstable and unsafe nature of creative work in the media industry creates stress and anxiety, and the strong emotional pleasure associated with this kind of work exists. The tension between "pleasure" and "pain" in creative occupations has been fully proven. Unstable labour has now become a key feature of creative work. Creative occupations are driven by self-fulfilling desires and are places for exploitation and serious insecurity.

Affective Atmospheres of Coloniality and the Decolonisation of Peace Education: Theoretical Insights and Political Possibilities

AbstractTwo recent lines of inquiry that have emerged in educational philosophy and research are the turn to affect theory and the call for decolonising education. Although there have been some efforts to bring these two lines of inquiry together and inform educational philosophy and research, there is still important conceptual work to be done, especially in the context of peace education, our focus in this paper. To initiate this work, we consider the concepts of affective atmospheres and atmospheric attunements that have been discussed within the context of affect theory. Drawing on these two concepts, we argue that fundamental to any attempts to decolonising peace education is elucidating the coloniality of affects. This is a necessary step towards dismantling the colonial affects that permeate peace education praxis and are maintained through perceptions of peace and conflict embedded within a Western, Eurocentric frame. The paper analyses the theoretical insights emerging from bringing these concepts together to bear on the decolonisation of peace education and discusses some political possibilities that are also enabled.

Thinking Like a Feminist: What Feminist Theory Has to Offer Sociology

What does feminist theory have to offer sociology? Defining feminist theory as work that problematizes the gender binary and the relations of domination that constitute and emerge from it, we explore four key aspects of feminist scholarship. We begin with work that explores gender as a structuring trope. We then turn to how gender is coconstituted with other structures of power and domination. Next, we survey how feminists have theorized the relationship between nature and the social through the body. Finally, we examine feminist epistemological claims. We conclude by demonstrating the inextricability of feminist conceptual work and feminist politics. As we move across these bodies of work, we show how they are linked with one another and suggest some of the ways in which thinking like a feminist would help sociologists better grasp the dynamics of the social worlds we study.

Processing paradoxes through chiasmic organising – the contribution of Merleau-Ponty process-oriented philosophy for a post-dualistic approach towards paradoxes in organisations

PurposeThis paper aims to critically examine traditional approaches to paradoxes and propose a new approach and perspective that views “chiasmic” organizing as a intertwining combination of structure and processes that facilitate the handling of multiple interrelations for processing paradoxes and harness their creative potential in organizations.Design/methodology/approachEmploying a cross-disciplinary approach, a literature review and a critical lens, along with conceptual work (typology), are used to identify problems and deficiencies in existing research on paradoxes. Specifically, it draws on Merleau-Ponty's process-oriented phenomenology and post-Cartesian ontology to gain a comprehensive understanding of post-dualistic forms of chiasmic organizing and its relationship with paradoxical phenomena.FindingsThe process-oriented phenomenology and post-Cartesian ontology used in this article offer valuable insights and a critical approach to comprehend post-dualistic forms of chiasmic organizing in relation to paradoxes. This understanding can help in tapping into the energizing and creative potential of paradoxes. The paper also highlights the significance of the “in(ter)-between” as a reversible principle in chiasmic organizing and proposes some implications.Research limitations/implicationsLimitations and implications of this study are identified and discussed.Practical implicationsThe paper offers practical implications for organizations in processing paradoxes.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to the existing literature by providing a conceptual critique and proposing a novel understanding of chiasmic organizing as an intertwining structure and mediating processes by employing a process-oriented phenomenology and post-Cartesian ontology. It also offers innovative ways to approach paradoxes and tap into their creative potentials, which can bring about change in organizations.