High Level Of Ambiguity Research Articles

Stability & reconstruction operations as mega projects: Drivers of temporary network effectiveness

Mega projects require a temporary network of contributors. Stability & Reconstruction Operations are examined as mega projects, characterized by high levels of ambiguity and a non-permissive environment. The objective of this paper is to introduce a developmental view on managing a temporary network of contributors, and to examine in which dimensions development needs to take place. Drawing on mega project management and network theory, development of a temporary network of contributors is conceptualized using four phases: forming, storming, norming and performing. Data collection for our qualitative case study on Afghanistan focused on international actors involved in Afghanistan. We identified development challenges across four dimensions: heterogeneous stakeholders, governance, knowledge and coordination routines, and performance management. Researchers and practitioners may use this developmental view to better understand why mega projects fail or succeed, in particular when these concern heterogeneous network partners and (potentially) adversarial relationships among stakeholders in the project's local context.

Development of an Instrument to Assess Capacity for Systems Thinking

With the rapid growth and integration in technology and information, the behavior and structure of complex systems presents escalating challenges. Complex systems are marked by high level of ambiguity, uncertainty, and emergence. These conditions impose challenges and difficulties for practitioners responsible to successfully manage and design complex systems. There is a fundamental need to have a cadre of individuals who are capable of dealing with increasingly complex systems and their problems. One response is Systems Thinking, which can provide a holistic thinking paradigm that opens new channels and opportunities to think differently about complex systems as a whole unit. This paradigm will enable individuals to avoid solving the wrong problems. The emphasis of this paper is to explore possible applications of a research-based instrument developed to capture the level of systems thinking for individuals who engage and design complex systems. The Systems Thinking Profiles produced by the instrument represent individual inclination to adapt a systemic perspective for engaging and solving complex system problems, and reflects a state that can be enhanced through training and/or education to improve capacity for systems thinking.

Penser un événement de conversion religieuse en clinique

What should be the clinical approach to the event represented by a religious conversion, adherence or attraction to extreme groups and ideas? It requires a conceptual analysis, an ethical and epistemological approach at the centre of social situations presenting a high level of ambiguity, tinged even with a certain sense of unreality, as is being experienced in France.

Exploring Conceptual Art

any philosophers and critics agree that Conceptual Art is distinguished not only to be a loose collection of various practices but especially for its significant contradictions that increase the theoretical controversy about it. According to the theorist Donald Brook (1972) the phrase «Conceptual Art» has different senses and it is used with a general nonacceptance. His argument is based on the following premises: (i) this obscure label refers to many kinds of processes and objects; (ii) artists’ justifications about them are vague; (iii) their writings, in many cases, are in gibberish. So defining Conceptual Art is a complex matter. Brook acknowledges that this difficulty is related to four uses of the phrase: to indicate a primacy of a conceptual approach to art in contrast to the perceptual one; to emphasise that Conceptual Art is art of ideas and not art of physical objects; to claim that it is also an artistic process based on a semantic paradox that changes art and points out the critical approach to its nature; to remark the restricted meta-activity character through which art became essentially a comment on itself. The four uses of the phrase «Conceptual Art» singled by Brook reveal a high level of ambiguity due to its use. Nominally we could use the phrase to refer to an artistic movement or a general set of new experimental practices of the 60s that don’t accept the traditional methods of art making. In the first meaning the phrase is differently coined and used by two artists, and it is not completely working if referring to other kinds of artistic movements. Conceptual Art in this case would be the name of the artistic movement initially based upon the creative activities and the critical statements of many different artists, largely American. In the second meaning instead, the phrase is used to describe a decisive tendency for the profound change of art due to the new experimental practices of the 60s that also established a large part of the successive artistic evolution until today. The controversy about Conceptual Art is corroborated by this nominal ambiguity that reflects: the uncertain nature of Conceptual Art, its invisible boundaries but, at the same

Managing contract manufacturer quality in the presence of performance ambiguity

Brand-owing firms have been outsourcing the production of complete finished products to contract manufacturers (CMs) for some time. Increasingly, brand-owning firms have been employing CMs to produce products for which performance ambiguity is high. Doing so poses challenges for the management of CM performance. As expected, we find that quality performance ambiguity has a significant negative relationship with CM conformance quality performance, as reported by the buyers (the brand-owning firms). Drawing from and expanding the quality management (QM) literature, we assess the effectiveness of key constructs, derived primarily from the “supplier QM” meta-construct, at mitigating the detrimental effect of ambiguity. Two constructs consistently moderate the ambiguity-CM quality performance link. Heavily emphasizing quality at the time of CM selection moderates this relationship in the expected direction (i.e., it mitigates the challenges created by ambiguity). Surprisingly, we find that using one CM amplifies the negative relationship between ambiguity and conformance quality performance. One possible explanation is that employing only one CM aggravates existing opportunism concerns with regard to conformance quality performance under high levels of ambiguity.

Health Messaging to Individuals Who Perceive Ambiguity in Health Communications: The Promise of Self-Affirmation

The perception that extant health messages about risk factors for a disease are ambiguous can be associated with greater anxiety and reduced interest in taking precautionary action. In this experiment, 247 female alcohol consumers who perceived varying degrees of ambiguity in current cancer prevention messages read an unambiguous article about the documented link between alcohol consumption and breast cancer. Before reading the article, half were given the opportunity to self-affirm by reflecting on an important value—a technique previously shown to enhance receptivity to threatening messages. The authors found that self-affirmation increased message acceptance among those who perceived relatively higher levels of ambiguity in cancer communications. Also, the relation between perceived ambiguity and risk perception became positive among self-affirmed participants, suggesting they had become less defensive. Self-affirmation may be an effective technique to use when delivering health communications to audiences who perceive a lack of consistency in prevention messages.

Exploring the Tension between Clarity and Ambiguity in Goal Setting for Innovation

In this article we analyse the role of goal setting for innovation in an R&D context. The literature on goal setting for innovation is inconclusive; some scholars claim that goals should be ambiguous in order to inspire novel ideas, but others claim that clear project goals are important in order to undertake innovation projects in an efficient manner. We aim to explain this inconsistency by taking a more fine‐grained view of innovation where we study goal setting in relation to exploratory aspects such as idea generation separately from exploitatory aspects such as idea implementation. The results from an empirical survey study in the R&D department of an automotive company reveal that a general ambition to be innovative is positively related to all phases of innovation, but the effects of clear project goals are more complex. We found that idea novelty increases under conditions of either high or low levels of goal clarity, whereas mid‐range levels of goal clarity are related to fewer novel ideas. These findings inform existing knowledge about goal setting and innovation, and in particular challenge the body of literature showing that only high levels of ambiguity in goal setting are a fruitful means for innovation.

“Feeling Almost like Everyone Else” – Israel’s Electronic Monitoring Program: Perceptions and Attitudes among Released Prisoners and Their Supervisors

The growing use of various methods for electronic monitoring (EM) in the Western criminal justice system has led researchers to examine the social and personal consequences of this type of monitoring. This article examines perceptions toward the EM program among supervised released prisoners and their supervisors in Israel. Questionnaires were given to all released prisoners participating in the EM program in 2010, as well as to 12 supervisors and Parole Board members. The EM program’s strong focus on occupation, therapy, and developing a good relationship with a therapist, compared with the alternative of continued custody, appears to have led most released prisoners to express, or at least declare, a high level of positive expectations for the future and a sense of partnership with the normative circles surrounding them. However, supervisors expressed a high level of ambiguity over the program’s goals and operational protocols. While program supervisors emphasized the importance of the rehabilitation and therapeutic elements of EM, Parole Board members showed mixed reactions toward the program.

Public ICT Innovations: A Strategic Ambiguity Perspective

Public Information and Communications Technology (ICT) innovations are seen as having the potential to usher in a new era of technology-enabled models of governance in emerging economies. While it may be desirable for the implementation of such innovations to be underpinned by precise planning, structure and clarity, policy implementers in emerging economies are confronted instead by situations where ambiguous goals and means are standard. This paper considers high levels of ambiguity as a relatively enduring and intrinsic aspect of public ICT innovations in emerging economies. Drawing on an ethnographic study of Bangalore one, an innovative public ICT project implemented in Bangalore, India, the paper examines how strategic ambiguity is deployed by key public actors to chart the course of the implementation process and to steer it towards reasonable outcomes. Theoretically, the paper suggests that although strategic ambiguity is a precarious and unsettling condition in general, it can work effectively in contexts that are reasonably tolerant of ambiguous norms. The findings of the study also present arguments for why evaluation mechanisms need to be fundamentally reframed in order to assess the extent of implementation success of public ICT innovations in emerging economies.

System requirements engineering in complex situations

The purpose of this paper is to present an alternative systems thinking---based perspective and approach to the requirements elicitation process in complex situations. Three broad challenges associated with the requirements engineering elicitation in complex situations are explored, including the (1) role of the system observer, (2) nature of system requirements in complex situations, and (3) influence of the system environment. Authors have asserted that the expectation of unambiguous, consistent, complete, understandable, verifiable, traceable, and modifiable requirements is not consistent with complex situations. In contrast, complex situations are an emerging design reality for requirements engineering processes, marked by high levels of ambiguity, uncertainty, and emergence. This paper develops the argument that dealing with requirements for complex situations requires a change in paradigm. The elicitation of requirements for simple and technically driven systems is appropriately accomplished by proven methods. In contrast, the elicitation of requirements in complex situations (e.g., integrated multiple critical infrastructures, system-of-systems, etc.) requires more holistic thinking and can be enhanced by grounding in systems theory.

Technology‐based service proposal screening and decision‐making effectiveness

PurposeDecision‐making in early stages of technology‐based service (TBS) innovation projects proves to be challenging. Current failure rates in service innovation are high, while the investments in innovation projects are substantial. Research suggests that enhancing decision‐making in the screening stage could substantially increase success rates. By investigating the screening decision process from an information processing perspective, this article aims to identify antecedents of effective TBS screening decision‐making, and could thus help companies to enhance their decision‐making and reduce innovation project failure rates.Design/methodology/approachReviewing literature regarding service innovation, new product screening and decision‐making under uncertainty, we identify antecedents of decision‐making effectiveness in the TBS screening stage. Hypotheses are developed and tested with data from 251 TBS innovation projects.FindingsThe study demonstrates the importance of decision‐making team composition, information use and decision perspective for innovation success. Decision‐maker experience and perspective mediate effects of team composition.Research limitations/implicationsFurther research is needed to investigate screening decision‐making. The authors provide a research agenda based on our findings.Practical implicationsThe study helps screening committees enhance their decision‐making process, by optimizing committee composition, and making better use of decision maker experience and information.Originality/valueLittle is known about how decision makers exploit information and previous experience in dealing with the high levels of ambiguity, complexity and uncertainty in a TBS proposal screening setting. This is the first study to approach the problem from an information processing perspective.

Leading and Following (Un)ethically in Limen

We propose a liminality-based analysis of the process of ethical leadership/followership in organizations. A liminal view presents ethical leadership as a process taking place in organizational contexts that are often characterized by high levels of ambiguity, which render the usual rules and preferences dubious or inadequate. In these relational spaces, involving leaders, followers, and their context, old frames may be questioned and new ones introduced in an emergent way, through subtle processes whose evolution and implications may not be easy to grasp even by those participating in them.

An Adaptive Thresholding Multiple Classifiers System for Remote Sensing Image Classification

A multiple classifiers system which adopts an effective weighting policy to combine the output of several classifiers, generally leads to a better performance in image classification. The two most commonly used weighting policies are Bagging and Boosting algorithms. However, their performance is limited by high levels of ambiguity among classes. To overcome this difficulty, an adaptive thresholding criterion was proposed. By applying it to SAR and optical images for terrain cover classification, comparisons between the multiple classifiers systems using the Bagging and/or Boosting algorithms with and without the adaptive thresholding criterion were made. Experimental results showed that the classification substantially improved when the adaptive thresholding criterion was used, especially when the level of ambiguity of targets was high.

CONSTITUTIONAL CONSTRAINTS UNDER AMBIGUITY: A GAME-THEORETIC APPROACH

In the paper a game between private and public individuals is set in order to study under which conditions the former would like to limit ex-ante the choices of the latter. Ambiguity, as distinguished from risk, is explicitly introduced by means of capacities and Choquet Expected Utility. It is shown that constitutional constraints are necessary to prevent private individuals from being exploited by public individuals whenever citizens feel a too high level of ambiguity.

Self‐archiving and the Copyright Transfer Agreements of ISI‐ranked library and information science journals

AbstractA study of Thomson‐Scientific ISI ranked Library and Information Science (LIS) journals (n = 52) is reported. The study examined the stances of publishers as expressed in the Copyright Transfer Agreements (CTAs) of the journals toward self‐archiving, the practice of depositing digital copies of one's works in an Open Archives Initiative (OAI)‐compliant open access repository. Sixty‐two percent (32) do not make their CTAs available on the open Web; 38% (20) do. Of the 38% that do make CTAs available, two are open access journals. Of the 62% that do not have a publicly available CTA, 40% are silent about self‐archiving. Even among the 20 journal CTAs publicly available there is a high level of ambiguity. Closer examination augmented by publisher policy documents on copyright, self‐archiving, and instructions to authors reveals that only five, 10% of the ISI‐ranked LIS journals in the study, actually prohibit self‐archiving by publisher rule. Copyright is a moving target, but publishers appear to be acknowledging that copyright and open access can co‐exist in scholarly journal publishing. The ambivalence of LIS journal publishers provides unique opportunities to members of the community. Authors can self‐archive in open access archives. A society‐led, global scholarly communication consortium can engage in the strategic building of the LIS information commons. Aggregating OAI‐compliant archives and developing disciplinary‐specific library services for an LIS commons has the potential to increase the field's research impact and visibility. It may also ameliorate its own scholarly communication and publishing systems and serve as a model for others.

Damage Identification Using Modal Data: Experiences on a Prestressed Concrete Bridge

Large scale tests with progressive damage on a prestressed concrete highway bridge have been performed to investigate the sensitivity of several damage detection, localization, and quantification methods based on modal parameters. To investigate the quality of modal parameters, the data set of one damage step was analyzed by several output-only identification techniques. Although the bridge was severely cracked, natural frequencies as well as mode shapes display only minor changes. However, the relative changes of mode shapes are larger than those observed for natural frequencies. A novel damage indicator, called mode shape area index, based on changes of mode shapes, has been developed and found as the most sensitive damage detection approach. Damage detection or localization via changes of the flexibility matrix performed better than natural frequencies or mode shapes alone. The application of the direct stiffness calculation and a sensitivity-based model update technique showed results having a high level of ambiguity about the location and quantification of damage also at the highest damage level. Evaluating the information collected in this study the test results indicate that an early stage damage identification in prestressed concrete bridges is hardly possible because of the nearly complete recovery of stiffness after closing of cracks in prestressed concrete and the effect of environmental parameters on modal data.

Goal Programming Formulations For A Comparative Analysis Of Scalar Norms And Ordinal Vs. Ratio Data

Goal programming has proven a valuable mathematical programming form in a number of venues. There has been a similar rapid growth in interest in data mining, where a variety of different data types are encountered. This paper applies goal programming formulations to compare relative performance of L1, L2, and L∞ norms as well as ordinal and ratio data types in a dynamic predictive environment. The models are applied to compare relative accuracy and stability in forecasting a professional athletic environment. Results confirm that ratio data provide more accurate forecasts than ordinal data. Responsiveness to error can be good and bad in prediction. Too much response to outlying events makes the predictor “nervous” and unreliable. L1 metric models are much easier and faster to solve, but involve higher levels of ambiguity than nonlinear models. L1 metric models also were more responsive to changes, but correspondingly tend to be more affected by unexpected outcomes.

Foreign Policy Decision Making in Familiar and Unfamiliar Settings

The concept of policy makers’ familiarity with a decision task has received considerable attention in recent years in the literature on decision making by analogy, intuitive decision making, and dynamic versus static decision making. The effect of familiarity on the decision strategy change of high-ranking officers of the U.S. Air Force is tested to see whether and how familiar versus unfamiliar decision tasks affect decision strategy change during the decision-making process. Results support the noncompensatory principle of political decision making and poliheuristic theory: Leaders are sensitive to negative political advice, which is often noncompensatory. They first use dimensions to eliminate noncompensatory alternatives and then evaluate acceptable alternatives. This two-stage process is even more pronounced in unfamiliar decision settings with low or high levels of ambiguity—a situation that characterizes many foreign policy crises.

Family, Alzheimer's disease and negative symptoms.

The aim of this study is to look at the correlation between the presence of apathy measured by Marin's scale and family complaints related to withdrawal and the loss of motivation, or depression. The multicentre study was performed on 58 non-demented elderly people, 132 outpatients with Alzheimer's-type dementia, as well as their main caregiver. After agreement of the patients and the family, the patients were assessed using different scales: Cornell's for depression, Marin's for apathy, MMS for cognitive disorders, and IRG for dependence. At the same time, two self-administered questionnaires were given to the patients' families: one concerning a list of complaints scored from 1 to 4 relating to various disorders and the other addressing the boundary ambiguities translated from Boss' questionnaire. The 58 non-demented people were 81.20 years old+/-13.75. One hundred and thirty-two demented patients were included: 39 men and 93 women. The mean age was 79.47 years+/-9.03. The first family complaint relates to the loss of motivation (65%). Apathy and depression occur more frequently in dementia, in particular when the MMS is degraded. Depression and apathy attracted a high complaint score. In our study the score of boundary ambiguity is higher among patients with a weak cognitive status. A high level of ambiguity is accompanied by a high score of family complaints. When the family complaint concerning the loss of motivation is present, apathy is significantly more common. Family complaints about withdrawal and loss of motivation are frequently present, and are congruent with the actual presence of apathy in the patient. It bears witness to the distress felt by families faced with the loss of ability noted in the demented person. The family's difficulties are increased by the patient's depression.

Partnership: Issues of policy and negotiation

has become one of the code words of our times. Being a partial euphemism and a token of political negotiation, the concept of contains a very high level of ambiguity. Partnership schemes are rarely well defined one-off deals between partners with clearly differentiated goals, but rather sites of continuing political and economic renegotiation. It is the purpose of this paper to try to capture some characteristic aspects of this conflict and renegotiation in a number of recent local government partnership schemes.