Critical Actors Research Articles

Psychosocial Environment of Universities: How Satisfied are Academics with Work-Related Factors?

University academics are critical actors in knowledge production and human resource development through teaching and research. However, despite the significant roles of university academics in the knowledge society, the psychosocial work environment of universities particularly in developing nations has witnessed agitations, threats and strikes over one work-related issue or the other. The current study examined how academic staff of selected universities in Ghana perceived work-related factors in their psychosocial environment using the mixed methods explanatory sequential design. A sample of 376 academic staff were stratified and selected based on rank and gender. Structured questionnaire was employed to collect data for the quantitative phase of the study while semi-structured interview guide was used to gather the qualitative data. Results from the study showed that academic staff of universities were dissatisfied with criteria for promotion, salary, as well as training and development as they perceived these factors negatively in their psychosocial work environment. It was recommended that managements of universities in Ghana make pragmatic efforts to review conditions of service of academic staff in order to create favourable psychosocial work environments for university academics to promote effective teaching, research and innovation

How can communities influence alcohol licensing at a local level? Licensing officers' perspectives of the barriers and facilitators to sustaining engagement in a volunteer-led alcohol harm reduction approach.

Despite the World Health Organization's assertion that communities need to become involved in reducing alcohol harm, evidence of community engagement in alcohol licensing decision-making in England remains limited. The evaluation of the Communities in Charge of Alcohol (CICA) programme offers policymakers, Licensing authorities and public health practitioners, evidence regarding a specific volunteer-led, place-based approach, designed to enable community engagement in licensing with the aim of reducing localised alcohol harm. This study explored factors affecting the sustainable involvement of volunteers in alcohol licensing decision-making from six licensing officers' perspectives, through semi-structured interviews. Routinely collected crime, disorder, and hospital admissions data were reviewed for further context as proxy indicators for alcohol-related harm. Licensing officers perceived sustainable engagement to be impacted by: (i) the extent of alignment with statutory requirements and local political support; (ii) the ability of licensing officers to operationalise CICA and support local assets, and; (iii) the opportunity for, and ability of, volunteers to raise licensing issues. The perspectives of licensing officers indicate complexities inherent in seeking to empower residents to engage in licensing decision-making at a community level. These relate to statutory and political factors, funding, social norms regarding engagement in licensing decision-making, and the need for networks between critical actors including responsible authorities and communities. The evidence indicates that after increasing community capacity to influence alcohol availability decision-making at a local level, communities continue to struggle to influence statutory processes to affect alcohol availability where they live and work. More understanding of how to enable effective community engagement is required.

Examining the micro‐level challenges experienced by publicly funded university principal investigators

Although we know it is researchers at the micro‐level of universities that are the critical actors in acquiring external grant funding, it remains unclear to what extent universities provide a funding environment that suitably supports their pursuit and management of this funding. We address this subject through interviews with 41 publicly funded principal investigators (PIs) across four universities in New Zealand. We develop a grounded model that details an important distinction and void between funding success at the individual researcher level and having an effective funding environment at the institutional level. We also uncover a number of micro‐institutional level challenges based on the experiences of PIs and show how they are related to three reinforcing components that together, we further argue, comprise the university research funding environment: (1) pre‐grant funding support, (2) project implementation support, and (3) post‐grant recognition and motivation. Our findings offer a platform to develop dedicated policies and support structures within university strategies that are more explicitly focused on providing an effective institutional level funding environment. We make the case that these policies and supports must be tailored to meet the distinct needs of researchers at different stages of the funding process and with different levels of funding experience.

The Role of Faith-Based Organizations in Counter-Radicalization in Nigeria: The Case of Boko Haram

This article examines the role of faith-based organizations (FBOs) in counter-radicalization in Nigeria, with emphasis on the Boko Haram terrorist group operating in northeast Nigeria and the greater Lake Chad region. A qualitative methodological approach is employed that makes use of primary and secondary documents, key informant and stakeholder interviews, and focus group discussions with critical religious actors and organizations. The findings of the article suggest that FBOs play a critical role in the disengagement and deradicalization process of countering the ideological and radical messages of Boko Haram. However, challenges such as the lack of effective stakeholder involvement in the various initiatives by the state in counterterrorism, fear of reprisal and attacks, lack of unison by various FBOs and clerics in countering these negative messages, and the inability of relevant stakeholders in addressing structural factors such as poverty, social and economic exclusion, and unemployment that give rise to radicalization amongst other challenges, have impeded the effectiveness of the FBO sector in its counter-radicalization efforts in Nigeria. To address these challenges, the article proposes a bottom-up approach to counterterrorism that provides room for the multi-sectoral involvement of major stakeholders, especially FBOs, to complement pre-existing initiatives and other measures to counter the negative weaponization of religion by radical and rogue clerics, and also to prevent Boko Haram from expanding its frontiers.

Examining the Role of Economic Actors in Post-war Reintegration Processes: Case of Sierra Leone.

This paper examines post-conflict peacebuilding activities in Sierra Leone by critically looking at the role of economic actors in the reintegration process of its post-war Disarmament Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR) initiative. The civil war that lasted for 11 years in Sierra Leone, put doubts on the national governments ability to effectively provide both victims and perpetuators, the necessary protection and assistance needed to fully assume responsibilities within the communities. Because of this, poverty was further entrenched, thereby increasing the countries susceptibility to return to conflict. Though reintegration processes are continuous, integrative and involve exhaustive budgetary commitments, the process, in Sierra Leone was short-termed, not well coordinated and took time to begin delivering. With the United Nations, World Bank and the weak national government leading the process, financing was often insufficient or late, in combination with the lack of a coherent planning strategy; all these factors contributed to lapses in socio-economic profiling, skills and vocational training and spread disillusionment and resentment among ex-combatants and victims. Using content analysis, the paper argues that, post-war countries need active, equitable and profitable economic sectors if they are to graduate from conflict and from post-conflict aid-dependency. Moreover, as social contracts and corporate social responsibility to communities they govern and operate in, economic actors must create enabling environments and, generate jobs to support legitimate local capacities. The utility of this paper lies in the idea that for any post-conflict country to attain long-term social and economic development, reintegration programme design and activities, must holistically incorporate critical economic actors.

Bridging Hierarchies in Multi-Scale Models of Neural Systems: Look-Up Tables Enable Computationally Efficient Simulations of Non-linear Synaptic Dynamics.

Synapses are critical actors of neuronal transmission as they form the basis of chemical communication between neurons. Accurate computational models of synaptic dynamics may prove important in elucidating emergent properties across hierarchical scales. Yet, in large-scale neuronal network simulations, synapses are often modeled as highly simplified linear exponential functions due to their small computational footprint. However, these models cannot capture the complex non-linear dynamics that biological synapses exhibit and thus, are insufficient in representing synaptic behavior accurately. Existing detailed mechanistic synapse models can replicate these non-linear dynamics by modeling the underlying kinetics of biological synapses, but their high complexity prevents them from being a suitable option in large-scale models due to long simulation times. This motivates the development of more parsimonious models that can capture the complex non-linear dynamics of synapses accurately while maintaining a minimal computational cost. We propose a look-up table approach that stores precomputed values thereby circumventing most computations at runtime and enabling extremely fast simulations for glutamatergic receptors AMPAr and NMDAr. Our results demonstrate that this methodology is capable of replicating the dynamics of biological synapses as accurately as the mechanistic synapse models while offering up to a 56-fold increase in speed. This powerful approach allows for multi-scale neuronal networks to be simulated at large scales, enabling the investigation of how low-level synaptic activity may lead to changes in high-level phenomena, such as memory and learning.

Forest owners' preferences for contract-based management to enhance environmental values versus timber production

Forests are sources of multiple ecosystem services (ESs) essential for human wellbeing. Forest owners are critical actors to decide which benefits they produce from their forests. To support the uptake of alternative forest management strategies in a way that is beneficial from the perspective of society as whole, new incentive schemes could be implemented in the future. We applied the choice experiment method to investigate Finnish forest owners' potential participation in an incentive scheme in which they were asked to practice a ‘Timber Oriented’ or a ‘Nature Oriented’ management strategy according to the terms of a hypothetical contract. We found that the majority forest owners are willing to participate in the considered contract-based payment scheme, especially those supporting biodiversity and non-market ESs. Non-profitability attributes including biodiversity, carbon stock, and probability of climate change induced damage were highly valued. Forest owners prefer the management contract with the Nature Oriented strategy. Forest owners' preferences for the contract-based management and associated effects are heterogenous.

Do women’s rights organisations need ‘femocrats’? The negotiation of the Peruvian–Spanish agreement for development co-operation 2013–2016

ABSTRACT In 2005, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) approved the aid effectiveness principles for improving the impact of Official Development Assistance (ODA). Donor countries such as Spain understood this agenda as an opportunity to promote gender equality in their development co-operation policy. However, gender equality almost disappeared as a priority in most of the bilateral agreements after 2005. This puzzling outcome leads me to ask how the implementation of the Paris principles made gender equality less of a priority, and how the feminist movement can ensure that gender equality and women’s rights are at the centre of this agenda. To answer these questions, I examine the negotiation process of the Peruvian–Spanish Strategic Framework 2013–2016. This case shows how exclusionary informal mechanisms may leave women’s rights organisations out of negotiation processes. I argue that connections of feminist and women’s movements with ‘femocrats’ and gender critical actors inside state machineries are crucial to defend gender equality as a priority sector. This is particularly relevant in the post-COVID-19 scenario and the global goal of ‘building back better’ with a gender lens. Without the participation of gender justice advocates in aid negotiation processes, it becomes more difficult to prioritise gender equality in bilateral co-operation agreements and, consequently, to allocate funds for women’s rights organisations.

The Problematic of Judicial Accountability

Judicial officers are critical actors in the operation of the justice system. Because of the powers inherent in this role, protections for judicial independence and protections against judicial misconduct are equally essential elements in the design and operation of the justice system. Judicial self-regulation has been the primary arrangement for responding to substantiated allegations of misconduct that is deemed insufficient to warrant referral to parliament for consideration of removal from office. Reflecting on the relatively recent performance of systems and processes in responding to alleged judicial misbehaviour, this article seeks to foster discussion on the best means for achieving the balance between the power of the position and accountability for its exercise.

Choosing informal ways to acquire land

PurposeThis paper examines why some sets of people choose an informal way to acquire land. It also examines challenges and drivers within indigenous communities in South-western Nigeria. Policy recommendations were proposed for formalization. What precisely are the contextual reasons that can be established empirically for the prevailing extra-legal practices in the developing land market? What are the challenges, and how can the informal land market be graduated into the formal system?Design/methodology/approachIt begins with identifying the contextual features, drivers and challenges of the informal land market through a combination of literature synthesis and a pilot survey. Subsequently, copies of questionnaires were developed, tested and distributed to the critical actors in the informal land market. Lastly, a structured interview was conducted to elicit possible solutions from key actors (both formal and informal stakeholders). Data were analyzed using descriptive, inferential statistics and computer-aided qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS, Atlas. ti).FindingsThe absence of administrative bureaucracy was the predominant characteristic of the informal urban land market, while household income is the strongest predictor of the informal land market drivers. Informal documentation of transactions is also one of the most severe challenges in the informal urban land market. Consensus between statutory and customary institutions and other 15 governance-related recommendations is proposed to confirm informality to formality.Originality/valueThe paper's outcome will provide a rational guide to landowners, land administrators and other stakeholders on relevant information needed to develop a viable and healthy urban and rural land market.

Digital entrepreneurship and institutional changes: fintechs in the mobile payment sector

An institutional perspective allows the analysis of how critical actors legitimate new businesses and how entrepreneurs interact with existing institutional arrangements, which is particularly important when new digital ventures operate in mature and highly regulated markets, such as in the financial sector. This paper aims to analyze the institutional changes associated with digital entrepreneurship development by fintechs into the mobile payment sector. To achieve this goal, we conducted a case study with data collected from multiple sources, such as interviews with fintech entrepreneurs, document analysis, and a survey with 580 users and non-users of mobile payments. The Institutional Theory supported the understanding of institutional changes regarding the regulative, normative, and cultural/cognitive pillars of the mobile payment system needed to support the new entrants (fintechs) and the institutional work performed by different actors to promote the required institutional changes, especially the work of advocacy, defining, constructing identities and constructing normative networks.

Dendritic Cells Require TMEM176A/B Ion Channels for Optimal MHC Class II Antigen Presentation to Naive CD4+ T Cells.

Intracellular ion fluxes emerge as critical actors of immunoregulation but still remain poorly explored. In this study, we investigated the role of the redundant cation channels TMEM176A and TMEM176B (TMEM176A/B) in retinoic acid-related orphan receptor γt+ cells and conventional dendritic cells (DCs) using germline and conditional double knockout mice. Although Tmem176a/b appeared surprisingly dispensable for the protective function of Th17 and group 3 innate lymphoid cells in the intestinal mucosa, we found that they were required in conventional DCs for optimal Ag processing and presentation to CD4+ T cells. Using a real-time imaging method, we show that TMEM176A/B accumulate in dynamic post-Golgi vesicles preferentially linked to the late endolysosomal system and strongly colocalize with HLA-DM. Taken together, our results suggest that TMEM176A/B ion channels play a direct role in the MHC class II compartment of DCs for the fine regulation of Ag presentation and naive CD4+ T cell priming.

Passage of family laws in Kenya’s national assembly (11th parliament - 2013 to 2017): the impact of women legislators

ABSTRACT Women legislators prioritised and contributed to getting three family Bills passed in Kenya’s National Assembly 2013–2017. This was the first National Assembly in the country to benefit from gender quotas which increased the proportion of women in it from 7.62% in 2007 to 19.5% in 2013. This article examines the history of the family Bills and why women prioritised and supported them. It builds on global evidence that women legislators tend to focus on laws and policies addressing gender equality and social welfare issues. The research data is from a descriptive study of Kenya’s National Assembly 2013–2017 for a PhD thesis. The article establishes that women had a vested interest in and unanimously supported the family Bills, the passage of which mark a significant step towards addressing gender-based discrimination. This finding coheres with literature on women as critical actors to create policy change in line with the Critical Mass Theory. The article recommends that women legislators should initiate action to have existing laws amended so as to comprehensively address women’s rights. It further proposes that women should be represented in the most influential and strategic committees of the legislature.

Segmenting Wildlife Value Orientations to Mitigate Human–Wildlife Conflict for Ecotourism Development in Protected Areas

ABSTRACT Ecotourism is increasingly being adopted to improve the livelihoods of local communities and fulfill conservation goals. Many critical actors, including but not limited to governments and conservation organizations, believe that for ecotourism to be successful, local communities must appreciate and support wildlife conservation activities. Without evidence that communities’ value systems are oriented in a manner that aligns with the authorities’ sustainable development and wildlife conservation ideologies, strategies for how to achieve the most benefits for the most people will be based on anecdotes and assumptions. This study investigated residents’ value orientation towards wildlife in the context of Bardia National Park (BNP), Nepal. We surveyed residents from eight buffer zone communities surrounding BNP with a human–wildlife conflict (n = 871). Our findings revealed four distinct clusters of resident WVOs, creating challenges for BNP ecotourism development. Socio-demographic and resource management factors also play critical roles in shaping the sustainable development of BNP ecotourism.

The SDGs as an Operational Framework for Post COVID-19 Response and Recovery

Despite progress on a number of goals, the world was not moving fast enough towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals in the pre-COVID era. The Decade of Action started with the hit of the COVID-19 crisis, which stressed the urgent need to tackle the root causes of vulnerabilities. This paper explores the roles of different critical actors towards achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs), namely national governments; local and regional governments and local communities; and the business sector as well as the interactions among these actors that facilitate the implementation of the SDGs. The paper also discusses how the SDGs provide an operational framework for building back better during the response and recovery phases from the crisis and how the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the policy scene to reimagine the roles played by the different actors. Lastly, the paper elaborates on three critical factors that would shape the degree of progress in the next decade, namely dependable data, adequate finance and effective implementation of development policies.

Governance and interdependencies of critical infrastructures: Exploring mechanisms for cross-sector resilience

Much contemporary critical infrastructure research has been devoted to studies of the effects of risks stemming from interdependencies between critical infrastructures, here referred to asinterdependency-related risks. However, this research has placed limited emphasis on infrastructure actors’ efforts to manage such risks in practice, and it remains unclear to what extent and how critical infrastructure actors work to increase resilience related to interdependency-related risks. This paper explores mechanisms for addressing interdependency-related risks across three critical national infrastructure sectors in Sweden: transportation, energy and telecommunication. The paper combines a document study and an interview study, and nine mechanisms are identified: (1) Swedish critical infrastructures are subject to clear silo-structures, (2) dedicated individuals and personal relationships are central to existing cross-sector collaborations, (3) information-sharing occurs between sectors, including exchange of sensitive information, but is mainly based on trust or mutual information-needs, (4) while interdependencies are acknowledged, explicit and adequate methods and protocols for how to assess and manage interdependency-related risks seem to be scarce, (5) clear risk ownership, and a connection to physical interdependencies and the core business seems to influence the level of cross-sector engagement, (6) governance of interdependency-related risks is mostly reactive and heavily influenced by past events, (7) compliance have a potential for sparking collaboration, and finally, (8) customer demands in particular, and (9) economic factors in general, play an important role for incentivising cross-sector collaboration. Finally, the paper extensively discusses the implications of these findings and outlines the potential for future research directions to improve cross-sector resilience.

Financing renewable energy projects in the Dominican Republic: an empirical study

Purpose Currently, renewable energy (RE) sources represent a crucial pillar in obtaining sustainable development, one of the global goals for all countries. However, this presents a unique challenge for emerging and developing countries. As the technical and financial issues remain a significant barrier in implementing RE projects, several mechanisms are available to aid the financial aspect of investing and implementing clean energy projects. This paper aims to discuss new and traditional trends in the financial area of renewable investment, focusing on the Dominican Republic (DR), identifying the gaps in the financial area regarding RE. Design/methodology/approach An empirical study was conducted in the DR. This country is located at the heart of the Caribbean. Given the complexity of RE and developing countries issues and the scarcity of comparable research in the area, an interpretivist research paradigm along with the qualitative methodology was adopted. Primary data was collected through semi-structured interviews. The study sample includes: directors, chief executive officers and managers responsible for the implementation of RE strategies in their respective departments/organisations. NVivo software was used for data management and the collected data was analysed using content analysis. Findings The research highlighted several severe financial handicaps regarding RE in the DR: The lack of RE assets recognition; lack of RE investment loans; perceived RE risk; and lack of financial guarantor. After extensive interviews with critical actors in the RE sector in the DR, the possible solutions and recommendations for avoiding locking the energy and economic sector in fossil fuel debt are: (a) diversification of RE technology assets recognition, (b) implementation of government RE fund, (c) RE education on all actors and (d) introduction and adoption of new financial trends such as green bonds, bank pooling, cooperatives and more. Originality/value This paper provides information and knowledge related to financial tools and policies that are available for the RE projects in the DR. The results have a socio-economic impact. This research provides a better understanding of the key financial tools to be explored by RE project developers in the developing countries. This study shows the gaps that exist between the knowledge that the stakeholders should possess and the actual knowledge that exists in the country regarding the financial aspect of an RE project.

Women in Kyrgyzstan—Electorally Marginalized but Legislatively Influential: A Theory of Transactional Activism

AbstractHow can we understand the signing of legislation targeting violence against women in postcommunist countries where women are electorally marginalized? Although women are underrepresented in Kyrgyzstan, the country's parliament has passed bride theft and domestic violence legislation. This article proposes a theory of transactional activism: in postcommunist countries where women are electorally marginalized, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) can instigate legislative change if the state satisfies three necessary conditions permitting lateral links between NGOs working on behalf of women and vertical links between these nonstate actors and critical actors in parliament. The state must (1) establish a regulatory framework for NGO activity permitting the articulation and representation of women's interests; (2) demonstrate a rhetorical commitment to improving women's lives; and (3) facilitate the election to parliament of critical actors sympathetic to women's interests. In other words, women's substantive representation can occur without strong descriptive representation in the formal legislative arena if the state satisfies these conditions.

5G for the Support of Public Safety Services

Next-generation mobile technologies are the enablers for meeting the variable specific requirements of the public safety (PS) community. In particular, due to the development of commercially deployed 5G networks, PS providers look for ways to implement related solutions upon such infrastructures, potentially in a shared use with existing commercial networks. In particular, LTE and 5G NR networks are rapidly gaining recognition as an all-inclusive critical communications platform for the delivery of both mission and business critical applications. Within this scope, we take into account the innovative architectural approach that has been proposed by the 5G ESSENCE project, addressing the paradigms of edge computing and small cell as-a-service that has been realised via a cloud-enabled small cell infrastructure leveraging multi-access technologies in 5G, where we propose a dedicated PS use case, able to offer a mission critical push-to-talk service as well as a Chat and Localisation service. Each one of these services is associated to a dedicated network slice within the scope of the corresponding fundamental 5G ESSENCE architecture and both services are provided via suitable VNFs, thus offering great flexibility to serve PS needs together. We further discuss the overall scenario deployment with the related technical enablers and the proposed functionalities, per case. The corresponding end-to-end slicing makes possible to allocate both radio and cloud resources to the involved critical actors, in an automated and elastic way.

Consumption of Art in Times of Crisis

Abstract Since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, the arts and culture sector has faced a paradoxical situation. While demand for cultural and creative content has intensified over the lockdown period and digital access has become more critical than ever, economic indicators predict that the cultural sector will be one of the most affected and probably one of those that will recover slowly. Beyond short-term initiatives, such as surveys or data collection, aimed at providing artists and intermediaries with financial and logistical support, both academics and practitioners need to engage in a common mindset on the future of art consumption, especially from a consumer perspective. This article addresses the main challenges facing the arts and culture economy in times of global health crisis, identifying the specifics of cultural goods and services. Specifically, the paper shows the extent to which traditional consumption patterns have been affected and what research is needed to develop sustainable solutions. We argue that consumers will be critical actors in the recovery process, and in this respect four research directions are suggested: the collection of data on consumer cultural practices; consumers and digital cultural experience; consumer involvement and fidelity in art and culture; consumer welfare.