Embrace Uncertainty Research Articles

Improvisational Research: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace Uncertainty

Improvisational Research: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace Uncertainty

A Conceptual Primer on the Potential of Adaptive Policies to Reduce Physical Inactivity.

Despite the existence of physical activity policies across many countries, insufficient physical activity remains a major global public health problem. Physical inactivity is an emergent feature of complex systems; it results from a wide range of factors at multiple levels that interact to influence behavior. Traditional approaches to public policy often fail within complex systems, largely due to unpredictability in how the system will respond. Adaptive policies, which are designed to allow for uncertainty about future system behavior and to change over time, may offer a promising solution. In this paper, we introduce the concept of adaptive policies and illustrate how this innovative approach to policy making may be beneficial for reducing physical inactivity. Drawing on existing literature and guiding principles for policy making, we provide 3 examples to illustrate how the concept of adaptive policies can be applied to address physical inactivity. The examples illustrate how changes to the way policies and interventions are developed, implemented, and evaluated could help to overcome some of the limitations in existing practices. A key challenge will be engaging policymakers to take a broader perspective of the physical activity system, develop policies that are designed to be adaptable across a range of different future scenarios, and embrace uncertainty and long-term adaptability. Adaptive policies may support decision makers globally to achieve the widespread and sustained changes necessary to increase population levels of physical activity.

REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH APPS AND EMPOWERMENT – A CONTRADICTION?

FemTech apps have billions of users globally. Yet, despite their popularity, we know little about these apps, often developed outside controlled and regulated healthcare. While these apps have been criticised for lacking privacy and for enforcing normative ideals on women, they are often marketed in terms of female empowerment. In this presentation, we present our analysis of the empowering potential of menstruation and pregnancy apps. We ask: How do these apps represent reproductive health? What kinds of empowering qualities are present in them? Are there any aspects of the technology that (inadvertently) counteract the empowering purpose? We investigate this through a comparative design investigation using what we call critical app-walkthrough methodology together with researcher use-diaries. We show in our analysis that there are three critical ways in which these apps represent reproductive health events to users through design. We analyze; 1) interface metaphors used to represent temporality, 2) datafication of reproductive health through input and output for intimate data tracking and 3) finally the ways predictions convey certainty over uncertainty and the implications of this. From our results, we present four design sensitivities meant to inspire designers to design for other types of period tracking experiences that might better empower bleeders; support lived temporalities, embrace uncertainty, empower the self, and design less.

Reimagining the cycle: interaction in self-tracking period apps and menstrual empowerment

FemTech, technology often in the forms of apps developed to specifically target female health issues, have billions of users globally. Yet, despite the popularity of e.g., period trackers or pregnancy apps, we know little about the potential impact of these technologies, often developed outside controlled and regulated healthcare. How interactive technology is designed, and in our case the cycle represented through the design, has the potential to shape women's understanding of menstruation. In this study we analyse the interaction design of nine of the most downloaded menstruation apps, asking how commercial menstruation apps represent the cycle through their interaction design. While previous research has criticized these types of apps for lacking privacy and for enforcing normative ideals on women, they are often marketed in terms of female empowerment and users do indeed seem to find them very useful for period and fertility tracking. However, the term 'empowerment' is today used broadly and is known for having many potential meanings. Even within the field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI), 'empowerment' is used frequently but rarely explicitly defined. The question then becomes what empowerment could mean for menstruation tracking. In order to begin exploring the way menstruation and the period is represented in current apps and the way that future apps could design for empowerment, we engage in a comparative design investigation using what we call critical app-walkthrough methodology where an app's design is explored comprehensibly at one point in time and apps interacted with over a longer time period through researcher use-diares. Our results center around three ways in which these apps represent the cycle to users through design. We analyse; (1) interface metaphors used to represent the temporality of bleeding, (2) datafication of menstruation through input and output for intimate data tracking, and (3) the ways fertility predictions convey certainty over uncertainty. In a second step, we then explore what empowerment could mean for period trackers and how design could support empowering experiences. Finally, we present four design sensitivities meant to inspire designers to design for other types of period tracking experiences that might better empower bleeders. These are: support lived temporalities, embrace uncertainty, empower the self, and design less.

Bridging the Gap Between Distant Disciplines

At Taxfix, we specialise in providing consumer-facing tax services at scale, for the German market. Achieving this requires close collaboration between tax advisors and service designers. Tax advisors are traditionally trained to be precise, avoid mistakes and vigilantly guard against errors. This contrasts sharply with service designers, who are inclined to take risks, embrace uncertainty, and value creative experimentation. In this article, we share insights on our recipe for how to find a productive mode of collaboration between two disiplines which on the face of it seem to be worlds apart.

Experimentation and collecting practice: balancing flexible policies and accountability in developing born-digital museum collections

ABSTRACT This article engages with current approaches to collecting born-digital objects in museums of art and design and reflects on the analysis of two case studies concerned with the respective acquisitions of a virtual reality artwork and a mobile app. The authors point to their non-standard preservation requirements and their unconventional objecthood to advocate for the value of adopting an experimental attitude to collecting. The case studies invite us to reconsider experimentation within the context of sensitive dialogic processes with creators and users who are unfamiliar with the conventions of museum collecting. Hence, the boundaries of experimentations are developed in relation to existing policies, organisational structures and practices, and defined by the stakes of multiple actors. To conclude, the authors argue that collecting institutions should prioritise building capacity and understanding needs and requirements for this emergent type of object, and embrace uncertainty over the imperative of long-term preservation in its fullest sense.

Entrepreneurial Orientation and the Creative Constraint of Corporate Political Activity

Organizations engage in corporate political activities (CPA) for a variety of reasons, though one widely accepted benefit is lowering a firm’s overall level of uncertainty. Yet CPA comes with its own set of costs, including restricting new market opportunity exploitation as firms invest scarce resources in government relationships rather than market opportunities. We argue that CPA creates ties to the government that binds a firm’s creative freedom, and this is too steep a cost for entrepreneurially oriented (EO) firms as EO firms prioritize experimentation to exploit new market opportunities, and embrace uncertainty. We also examine the contingent nature of this relationship based on two aspects of the focal firm’s rivals: the extent to which rivals receive government subsidies, and the extent to which the rivals incur regulatory sanctions. We test our hypotheses on a sample of S&P 1500 firms and find support for our theorized model.

Cameron B. R. Howard. The Old Testament for a Complex World: How the Bible’s Dynamic Testimony Points to New Life for the Church

While some have seen critical biblical scholarship as a death knell to the Bible’s capacity to inspire Christian faith and worship, Howard shows that this need not be the case. With a vibrant style of writing, she unlocks the possibility of rich theological reflection in critical contexts. I expect her book will be well received in mainline seminaries and among well-educated laypeople in mainline congregations. She offers a well-reasoned articulation of how critical theories of composition can lead to theologically shaped praxis today. Her aim is to “propose three modes of innovation that can be gleaned from the Old Testament: adapting popular culture, rethinking theological assumptions, and developing a new genre” (p. 3).Howard’s introduction and first chapter do for progressive Christians what John Walton and Brent Sandy’s Lost World of Scripture does for conservative evangelicals—it expands the layperson’s vision of how texts were produced and what that means for how to read them well. Howard problematizes the idea of authorial intent, affirming the complexity of oral and scribal traditions. She rejects the idea that there is “one correct meaning or interpretation for any given biblical text” (p. 27). Still, she affirms the Spirit’s role in energizing biblical interpretation, helping readers discern how to read creatively for their contexts.In ch. 2, Howard explores the Bible’s adaptation of other cultures. She uses Proverbs and the flood story as her first examples of the Bible’s literary dependence on other ANE texts. For Howard, the biblical flood account is both similar and different from these accounts, which gives this composite text its own theological appeal. Her second example is court tales, the “deeply entertaining” accounts of Joseph, Esther, and Daniel, which she calls “largely fictional” but which foster consideration of the relationship between the community of faith and worldly power (45, 54).Chapter 3 facilitates a revision of theological assumptions by highlighting distinct voices that interpret history differently. After surveying Zion theology in the OT, she concludes that it predates Ezekiel (p. 73), who offers a stunningly innovative view of God’s presence as portable and available to the exiles. Deuteronomy is her other example in this chapter. Howard accepts a late date for Deuteronomy—an invention during Josiah’s reign. However, she refrains from calling it propaganda, since we cannot discern what motivated its production (p. 65).In ch. 4, Howard considers the emergence of new genres. She explains that apocalypses are written from below, by marginalized peoples, as a way of reframing political tyrants as limited and under God’s ultimate control. For this reason, she cautions against the use of these texts by those in power. Howard notes the specificity and generality of this genre to provide explanatory power to the first generation of listeners as well as productive imagination for subsequent generations. For Howard, the Daniel apocalypses were written after-the-fact to “predict” the past and make sense of suffering. She compares the Bible’s apocalyptic literature with efforts of minority communities today to reframe their experiences of suffering.Howard closes her book with “biblical principles for creative change” drawn from the preceding chapters (pp. 113–21), encouraging readers to use creative storytelling to reimagine each community’s identity, to “recognize and celebrate” the diversity of perspectives in Scripture, center new voices, and “embrace uncertainty” in biblical interpretation and in the life of faith.Conservative readers who do not share Howard’s posture toward critical biblical scholarship may find this book frustrating or simply less helpful for their contexts. In my view, Howard is too pessimistic about human ability to discern literary design (p. 26) and too flippant in her claims that the Bible is dependent on other texts (p. 34). For example, she argues that the biblical flood story is dependent on Mesopotamian accounts simply because surviving Mesopotamian flood texts are much older than surviving biblical manuscripts. Howard fails to acknowledge the possible oral prehistory of the biblical text that complicates attempts to discern the direction of influence. No doubt, if this were a different sort of book, Howard could make a fuller case for her claim. Still, her conclusion is unsatisfying. If a devastating flood really happened (whether local or global), then it is no surprise that multiple cultures would preserve memories of the event. Many conservative readers could accept the possibility that the biblical account is told over against the Mesopotamian version, offering a different rationale, but they may struggle with her presumption of literary dependence on it.However, even those whose starting point differs can benefit from the ways that Howard highlights “creativity amid crisis” in the Bible (p. 83). Her method could fruitfully inform other interpretive communities as well, encouraging us to take a step back and consider how the larger scene of textual production and canon formation in its historical context might lend insights for the role of the church in response to this cultural moment.

SUSTAINABILITY-ORIENTED TECHNOLOGY EXPLORATION: MANAGERIAL VALUES, AMBIDEXTROUS DESIGN, AND SEPARATION DRIFT

Sustainability is a key societal challenge and has become an opportunity for innovation. While start-ups are prone to enter such new territories, established companies are more hesitant to leave current trajectories and embrace uncertainty linked to sustainability-oriented exploration. We present a case of a conventional high-tech firm of an owner-manager whose strong values of universalism led him to initialise a sustainability-oriented diversification by exploring renewable energy technologies. Our longitudinal study uncovers how changes in ambidextrous organisational design and represented managerial values ultimately resulted in failed exploration. Our contribution is threefold: First, we link individual-level managerial values of universalism with organisational-level phenomena of sustainability-oriented exploration and diversification. Second, we contribute to bridging hitherto mostly separate bodies of literature on sustainability-oriented innovation and ambidexterity to better understand how conventional firms can deploy their technological capabilities for sustainability. Third, we conceptualise the “separation drift” as fading organisational separation resulting in exploration failure.

How Different Quality Paradigms Undermine a Shared Value Base for Integrated Care: The Need for Collective Reflexivity.

In the development process of integrated care many impeding factors occur. Our premise is, that many of these barriers are related to the differences in values or perspectives. This article aims to clarify what an important challenge is for the further development of integrated care and for integrated care research. Professionals and managers in integrated care need to cope with and embrace uncertainty. However, that requires collective reflexivity. Collective reflexivity is a means to investigate the values of the partners interacting to co-create integrated care and to remove the roadblocks on the way.

Choices We Make in Times of Crisis

We present a new framework that allows understanding those we deem irrational in the climate debate. Realizing if the issue is one of information, beliefs, values or means opens the door for more constructive dialogue. Decision-makers diverge in their responses to the urgent need for action on climate and biodiversity. Action gaps are fueled by the apparent inability of decision-makers to respond efficiently to the mounting threats described by scientists—and increasingly recognized by society. Surprisingly, with the growing evidence and the accumulation of firsthand experiences of the impacts of environment crises, the gap is not only a problem of conflicting values or beliefs but also a problem of inefficient strategies. Bridging the gap and tackling the growing polarization within society calls for decision-makers to engage with the full complexity of the issues the world is facing. We propose a framework characterizing five archetypes of decision-makers to help us out of the current impasse by better understanding the behavior of others. Dealing with the complexity of environmental threats requires decision-makers to question their understanding of who wins and who loses, and how others make decisions. This requires that decision-makers acknowledge complexity, embrace uncertainty, and avoid falling back on simplistic cognitive models. Understanding the complexity of the issue and how people make decisions is key to having a fighting chance of solving the climate crisis.

Welcoming Confusion, Embracing Uncertainty: Educating Teacher Candidates in an Age of Certitude

This essay challenges the current emphasis on certainty, measurement and control in the field of education and the widespread view that confusion hurts students. Drawing on some recent analyses of Socrates as well as my own interpretation of his dialogues, I discuss how he might respond to the quest for certainty in education. Socrates would want us to welcome confusion and embrace uncertainty, and urge us to reconceptualize the quest for certainty as an ongoing process aimed at increasing complexity and enhancing understanding. Based on the insights I gleaned from Socrates, I argue that creating a space for perplexity and uncertainty in our classrooms is crucial for the goal of fostering citizens who are critical and independent thinkers. I conclude this essay by proposing a number of ways in which teacher educators can help their students welcome confusion and embrace uncertainty.

Super-Flexibility in Practice: Insights from a Crisis.

Flexibility is intuitively valued as a means of dynamically adapting to uncertainty. Historically, it has been especially prized during times of crisis. This is clearly demonstrated today as the current Coronavirus crisis is unfolding; there are many different dimensions of flexibility, ranging from versatility, agility, and resilience, to hedging, robustness and liquidity. For convenience, we fuse these terms together under the conceptual umbrella of “super-flexibility”. We define super-flexibility as a dynamic capability to simultaneously withstand turbulence AND adapt to fluid reality. Our field research has focused on how companies in Silicon Valley embrace uncertainty and drive adaptation. In this paper, we draw on the experience of a manufacturing firm facing the floods that hit Thailand in October 2011. The crisis enabled us to observe a situation in which the different nuances of flexibility collectively came into play within a compressed time-frame. In this paper, we showcase the practical application of super-flexibility in a crisis. First, we describe the conceptual foundations of flexibility and its different nuances. We then examine the chronology of the crisis as events unfolded. We conclude by distilling a number of “super-flexibility” lessons for business leaders.

How to Be a Positive Radiology Leader in Times of Crisis

How to Be a Positive Radiology Leader in Times of Crisis

We are not in control—embrace uncertainty and trust in what emerges. Peter Senge on the legacy and future of Change Management

Peter Senge is a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management and founder of the Society for Organizational Learning, a global network of organizations, researchers, and consultants dedicated to the “interdependent development of people and their institutions”. His book “The Fifth Discipline” (1990), considered to be one of the most important books on Change Management, was recognized by the Harvard Business Review as one of the seminal management books of the previous 75 years in 1997 and by the Financial Times as one of five “most important” management books.

Integrating Design and Planning in Informal Settlements

Informal settlements are often not included in the development plan of cities. Urban planning has increasingly been less concerned about provision of basic infrastructure and services to vulnerable communities living and working in informal conditions. Increasing official apathy pose major challenges to achieving the globally accepted goal of inclusive urbanization as envisaged in Sustainable Development Goals / SDGs.. Goal 11 that aims at creating Safe, resilient, inclusive and sustainable cities will remain distant until we factor in the informal living and working conditions into our current urban planning narrative.GazdharBandh is a Notified Slum by Slum Redevelopment Authority (SRA) of MMRDA (Maharashtra Metropolitan Region Development Authority). The slum pocket is located in western suburb of Santacruz west, Mumbai. Gazdhar Bandh shows high density informal housing within the “no development zone” as per the development plan 2034, in estuary conditions that is vulnerable to recurrent floods.Slum upgradation faces multiple challenges with the complex interplay of local diversities, relocation and livelihood concerns. Using the case study of Gazdar Bandh slum, we examine how community responses to housing and other design strategies like public spaces, streetscapes, and makeshift spaces as immediate responses can go a long way to build long term resilience and factored into the broader city level planning narrative. The findings broadly examine the question: How can urban planning and design embrace uncertainty and concludes with an operational framework drawing on participatory planning and good urban place engaging multiple stakeholders.

Leading your team into the unknown

Like any corporate operation, innovation requires effective leadership. But it’s a different kind than the core business calls for, involving skills and tactics many executives have yet to master. The authors’ study of companies that consistently launch novel offerings and enter new markets reveals the process that successful innovation leaders follow--one that draws on risk-reduction ideas developed over the past 50 years. This process, which the authors call the innovator’s method, is at heart a journey of discovery, and so the role of the person leading it is to set other people down a path and demonstrate a willingness to push boundaries and embrace uncertainty. Indeed, the innovation leader is not the chief decision maker but the chief experimenter, helping to identify critical assumptions on which new offerings are based, fashion experiments to test those assumptions with customers, and interpret the results. Preparing the organization to accept novel ideas is a crucial part of the job. Innovation leaders can do that by emphasizing that the process is aimed at minimizing the risks of innovation in the same way that other organizational processes minimize core operational risks. Finally, the innovation leader must give team members not just time (uninterrupted blocks are best) but also the resources and tools to explore the unknown. INSETS: A Comprehensive Approach to Innovation;Intuit?s Rules for Ethical Experimentation

Developing integrative research for sustainability science through a complexity principles-based approach

The importance of taking an integrative approach to research has long been integral to sustainability science, and has recently been highlighted as fundamental to the co-design of research and co-production of knowledge. Just what this means, however, and how to implement such a broad notion has escaped effective methodological development. In order to become more than a generic descriptor, integrative research needs to be conceptualized and presented in ways that offer guidance to researchers designing and conducting integrative research projects, whilst remaining broad enough to be relevant to the breadth and depth of sustainability-related problems. Drawing on complexity theory and fundamental aspects of integrative research, I present a methodological framing that seeks to achieve this balance. Using a definition of integrative research as “research in the context of complexity, with an action imperative”, I draw from complexity theory that proposes minimal specifications, generative relationships, focusing on enablers and seeking diversity as core features of a complexity-based approach. On that basis I propose four principles that can be used by researchers to guide the design and implementation of their projects: embrace uncertainty; engage stakeholders; be transdisciplinary; and have a learning orientation. Each of these principles is explained, and their relationships to research design, methodological framing, choice of methods and project development are presented. Two integrative research project frameworks are presented as examples of how this principles-based approach can be implemented in research design. Using this approach offers a simple but powerful structure to guide integrative research for sustainability science at the project scale.

“Now You See Me, Now You Do Not”: Dialogic Loopholes in Authorship Activity With the Very Young

The genesis for this paper lies in the problematic nature of assessment practice, as a central authorship activity, for early childhood education teachers. This paper draws on dialogic philosophy to explore this challenge based on a doctoral investigation of a very young child (White, 2009) and the strategic means by which she reveals and conceals meaning through dialogic loopholes that are generated through eavesdropping tactics. The central argument made is that what can be seen and interpreted, when language is not shared between dialogic partners, and is always and only an ontologic endeavor and never an epistemological truth. Seen in relation to the very young child, this tenet invites the potential to ”see” more and move beyond narrow definitions of learning as an outcome of authorial intervention on the part of the teacher, embrace uncertainty and difference as a central pedagogical stance and re-vision the infant as polyphonic hero in their own adventure plots.

A Practitioner’s Perspective on Modeling Prices and Trade in a Globalizing Natural Gas Market

This paper advances some principles for practical application of natural gas models that were used during the EMF 23 study. These principles emphasize a decision-focused perspective, embrace uncertainty, demand consistency of model results with observable facts, are capable of navigating the complexity of systems, and distinguish insight from unattainable precision. The principles are designed to foster the assistance of better decision making by models and modelers.