Insider Knowledge Research Articles

Speculation on racing odds in India

Horse racing has existed in India since the British established race clubs across the continent as places for socializing and legal gambling. Today, betting on horses in Delhi is a form of speculation, where bettors not only calculate probabilities of horses, but try to figure out insider knowledge of rigged races by observing the odds. This becomes particularly evident when betting odds on a particular horse suddenly change with an accelerating speed because people start betting for the same horse – a phenomenon, in finance, known as ‘herding’. Inspired by Clifford Geertz’ study of the connection between betting odds and deep play, the study identifies deeper causes of market volatility, beyond market strategies and crowd psychology, in the cosmology of uncertainty of the society in which the speculative market is located.

Evaluation of a Codesign Method Used to Support the Inclusion of Children With Disability in Mainstream Schools

Codesign is increasingly used for health research and service improvement. Codesign combines generative and exploratory methods, enabling collaboration between service end users and researchers as equal partners. The aim of this study was to evaluate a codesign method used to design an online education package about inclusive education for children with disability in mainstream schools. The study design was a multiple methods evaluation informed by participatory and transformative research paradigms, incorporating design sciences and public service approaches. A governance committee supported the process. The codesigners ( n = 12) included teachers, teacher assistants, parents, and allied health professionals. Process and outcome evaluation data were used; data collected were from verbatim transcripts of codesign workshop discussions ( n = 11), documents, Self-Report Level of Participation Surveys, and individual interviews ( n = 11). Thematic and descriptive analysis methods were used to describe the codesign processes, experiences, and outcomes. The key processes were identifying the issues through storytelling, voicing frustrations, being vulnerable, sharing insider knowledge, challenging other people’s roles, and deliberation and decision-making. Codesigners’ experiences and outcomes identified strengths and challenges in the method. A conceptual model is presented demonstrating interrelationships between processes, subprocesses, and codesigners’ experiences and outcomes. Codesign involves multiple, interrelated processes that support deliberation and creative design. Skills and resources are required to effectively facilitate what can be a meaningful, creative, and social process.

Cyber Security in Banking Sector

Because banks are very often target of a cyber-attack, they have also good security controls in place. This paper analysis modern threats to banks and proposes an approach to detect and visualize the risk of data leakage. In the first part of this paper, a comparative analysis of the most common threats to the banking sector is made, based on both bank reports and cyber security companies. The authors came to the conclusion that at the bottom line, insider knowledge is necessary, which is the result of data leakage. This paper comparatively analysis modern threats to banks and shows an approach to detect and visualize the risk of data leakage. In the second part of the paper, a model - based on network graph - that can enumerate the risk of data leakage is proposed. Graphing a network of an organization with the connections of data flow between assets and actors can identify insecure connections that may lead to data leakage. As is demonstrated in this paper, financial institutions are important targets of cyber attacks. Consequently, the financial sector must invest heavily in cybersecurity and find the best ways to counter cyber attacks and cyber bank robbery attempts.

A developmental view of mentoring talented students in academic and nonacademic domains.

The role of mentors for talented students varies according to developmental level and domain. Domains differ as to when they begin, peak, and end. Therefore, mentoring at the beginning of a talent trajectory may take place in middle school for a science student and in elementary school for a violinist. In the later stages of talent development, mentors are more likely to select their protégés than to be organizationally matched with mentees. As mentees gain the requisite skills and knowledge, mentors place more emphasis on modeling and coaching for psychosocial skills and insider knowledge (access to networks of information, attitudes, and behaviors rewarded by gatekeepers) that allow their mentees to stand out and, if necessary, endure pushback derived from proposing creative ideas or performances that challenge the status quo. The conclusions reported here are derived from studies of mentoring talented students, with an emphasis on identifying similarities across domains, and recognition that mentors' provision of insider knowledge is particularly important for low-income children and youth.

Supplier selection and management in hotel outsourcing: an exploratory study in Ghana

ABSTRACTThe aim of this study is to explore supplier selection and relationship management in hotels in the Accra Metropolis of Ghana. An explorative qualitative multiple case study was employed for the study. The results reveal that supplier identification was through the direct approach, agents/experts search, professional networks, request for proposal and supplier-self reconnaissance. Efficiency and effectiveness, cost of service, supplier credibility and inside knowledge were important in the selection process. The findings also reveal that relationship management was cardinal to safeguarding the buyer-supplier relationship. Contracts, job evaluation, downtime/lead time, supplier trustworthiness and guest comment cards were essential tools used in relationship management. The paper ends with some conclusions and managerial implications for hotel managers.

Comparing ‘deep’ insider knowledge: developing analytical strategies for cross-national qualitative studies

ABSTRACTOne overarching question in scholarly methodological discussions on qualitative comparative approaches concerns how it is possible to compare and generalise deep insider knowledge across (nationally) specific contexts. The aim of this article is to propose a research strategy that both facilitates the comparison and theorisation of such knowledge across nations and limits the risks of reproducing naturalised national ‘truths’. The strategy is developed within a feminist, cross-national, qualitative comparative analysis of how European countries addressed military deaths in connection with the ISAF mission in Afghanistan. The article underlines the importance of collective analytical work and of strategies that allow continuous movement between insider and outsider positions throughout the research process. A number of analytical strategies are presented: collective project design, alternating between analytical closeness and distance, and de-familiarising writing practices.

Making of a Mangaka: Industrial Reflexivity and Shueisha’s Weekly Shônen Jump

Behind-the-scenes disclosures, a staple of film and television production, have extended to the visible documentation of manga (comics) and anime (animation) production in Japanese media. This article examines manga “industrial reflexivity,” using as a case study publisher Shueisha’s most popular periodical, the best-selling shônen (boys) manga magazine, Shûkan Shônen Jump ( Weekly Shônen Jump). Jump’s documentary-like portrayals of the manga production process have bled out from the magazine in “exclusive” footage that takes viewers on behind-the-scenes tours exploring Shueisha offices or mangaka ateliers to spill insider knowledge and industry secrets. This article argues that such disclosures are borne out of industrial survival as much as education and promotion. Jump’s professional self-reflexivity is an example of an old media brand attempting to fight for relevance in a shifting media environment through appeals to the legacy and ecosystem of the manga magazine format itself.

Arguing from Experience: Travelees versus Travelers in Early Modern Exchanges

AbstractHow and why did early modern European ‘travelees’ dispute the accounts of their societies by foreign travel writers? A surprising number did so, challenging travelers’ claims to authority while countering foreign characterizations of their societies as fundamentally different from those of the travelers. This article examines several such rebuttals, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, as new sources for the cultural history of travel as experience. The travelees’ key criticism was that of the travelers’ epistemological limitations. Both travelers and travelees agreed on the importance of eyewitness experience as the basis for knowledge; but travelees effectively argued that even accurate reports of travel experience could be unreliable as the basis for ethnographic knowledge, since foreign travelers lacked the cultural competence to interpret their experiences. In turn, the travelees discussed here put forward their own alternative views of their societies, based on insider knowledge, as more authoritative and reliable. These travelees legitimated their counter‐narratives according to the same standards and protocols as their opponents, arguing for the commensurability of nature, of European cultures and of experience. The reception of their rebuttals suggests, however, that their critics judged such travelee‐polemicists by different standards than they did travelers from their own cultural context.

“You are the architect of your own success”: Selling financial freedom through real estate investment after the foreclosure crisis of 2008

After the U.S. foreclosure crisis of 2008, residential real estate investment became a dubious financial strategy. But in the real estate investment seminars I attended in Chicago and its surrounding suburbs in 2014 and 2015, the housing market's recent collapse was being repackaged into a space for ordinary people to seize financial freedom and find opportunity in the wake of crisis. This article explores how real estate seminar speakers use the long‐standing cultural and economic valorization of residential real estate and the reality television–driven approachability of house flipping to turn the grim inequities the crisis produced into a platform for selling insider knowledge to people with limited financial resources and experience. I argue that the seminars offer a window into understanding how market logics of taking on risk to build wealth circulate and become incorporated into the financial subjectivities and dreams of both investors and ordinary people. Seminar speakers insist that just as devalued homes can become valuable assets, passive workers can transform themselves into empowered market makers. Their framings speak to the pervasive power of rags‐to‐riches stories in the United States and to the cyclical nature of market making and dissolution under capitalism.

Using Inside Knowledge Campaign Materials to Improve Gynecologic Cancer Knowledge in Underserved Women.

Purpose: About 30,000 U.S. women die each year from gynecologic cancer, which disproportionately affects underserved and minority populations. This project aimed at increasing and assessing awareness of risk, symptoms, and recommended screenings and prevention activities in underserved women, through unique collaboration between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Inside Knowledge (IK) campaign, which was designed to educate women about gynecologic cancer, and the CDC's national network of organizations to reduce cancer-related disparities. Materials and Methods: CDC's national network and the IK campaign partnered to deliver tailored educational sessions about gynecologic cancer to three populations of women served by the participant organizations. Participant organizations included the National Behavioral Health Network (NBHN), Nuestras Voces (NV), and SelfMade. Pre- and post-session questionnaires were administered to assess knowledge changes. Results: Knowledge changes for risk factors, screening, and HPV vaccination varied by network organization, but all sessions increased correct identification of some symptoms. Baseline knowledge also varied among organization participants. Conclusions: Sessions were effective in increasing awareness of gynecologic cancer among underserved women; however, organizational information uptake differed. Additional resources containing specific interventions appropriate to particular underserved populations may be beneficial in increasing healthy behaviors, leading to a reduction in gynecologic cancer disparities.

Doing Indigenous Epistemology: Internal Debates about Inside Knowledge in Māori Society

Indigenous peoples around the world are exploring indigenous epistemology with the aim to reassert the validity of their own ways of knowing and being. This assertion is taking place not only among indigenous scholars in the academy but it is also happening among people with little or no schooling. In this context, indigenous people often think of themselves as having “inside knowledge” or being ‘”inside knowledge.” This raises the question whether being inside knowledge is a comprehensive frame forming subjectivity or whether indigenous actors are also active agents in the process of producing knowledge. In search for an answer to this question, I analyze an internal debate in a Māori community about the spiritual quality of water, which some Māori leaders were reconstructing in their struggle against an extension of water rights to a coal mining corporation. Following the ethnographic analysis, a plural conception of knowledge is proposed to allow for different ways of knowing.

Immigrant Entrepreneurship in an Emerging Economy: The Case of Turkey

This paper examines motivations for, and paths to, entrepreneurship among immigrants in Turkey based on interviews with 22 immigrant entrepreneurs in Istanbul. Findings suggest that immigrant entrepreneurs in a developing economy may be different from their counterparts in well‐established economies. First, immigrant entrepreneurs rely on their unique human and social capital in the process of starting businesses thanks to their ability to identify opportunities based on insider knowledge of the market in their home and host countries. Second, their ability to foster trusting relationships thanks to language, cultural, and religious knowledge permits immigrant entrepreneurs in an emerging economy to engage in less economically marginal activities.

Gaining ‘Raw Insider Knowledge’: The Benefits and Challenges of International Study Tours for Creative Industries Students

AbstractInternational short‐term study tours are a fast‐growing format for outbound education and provide exciting experiential learning opportunities for students in the creative industries disciplines. This success has encouraged researchers to seek a comprehensive view of the various concrete experiences that contribute to student learning during study tours. To that end, this article presents evidence from a qualitative online post‐tour questionnaire administered with students studying various art and design disciplines who participated in short‐term international study tours at a large Australian university in 2015. Using Kolb's Experiential Learning Theory as a framework, data collected explored student perceptions of which concrete experiences on a study tour are most impactful and which may actually hinder learning. Findings revealed: experiencing key industry venues are the most significant aspects of a study tour, rather than networking or personal growth; poor itinerary planning and travel issues are the least liked aspects of a tour, yet are often the most easily addressed with better tour management and planning; and students were positively impacted by unexpected gains in knowledge about their creative industries discipline. This study, therefore, provides unique insights into which concrete experiences may be most impactful as part of the experiential learning cycle within an international study tour for creative industries students.

Parity codetermination at the board level and labor investment efficiency: evidence on German listed firms

This study examines whether parity codetermination at German supervisory boards improves labor investment efficiency at firm level. We focus on labor, as it is an important production factor. Labor investment decisions are not easily reversible in the short term, given that hiring and firing costs are usually quite high due to labor regulation in Germany. As labor representatives are legally entitled to 50% voting rights at the supervisory board level (parity codetermination), we expect them to contribute insider knowledge to the supervisory board. As they have access to internal documents, we also expect them to reduce information asymmetry and potential agency conflicts between management on the one hand and outsiders such as investors or capital suppliers on the other. Both smaller information asymmetries and reduced agency conflicts, in turn, ought to increase a firm’s labor investment efficiency. Labor investment proxies for deviations from a firm’s optimal level of investment in labor in the form of over- and underinvestment, defined as hiring fewer employees than required to run profitable projects (underhiring) or retaining employees who are occupied with non-profitable projects (overhiring). We measure labor investment efficiency using such a net hiring optimum for a sample of German listed firms between 1995 and 2015. The results indicate that parity codetermination causes a lower deviation from the net hiring optimum. Our results are interesting for various stakeholders, especially for policymakers, managers, shareholders and employees who may not be aware of the importance of codetermination for firm efficiency, as well as for firms that are considering circumventing German legislation.

ESA Historical Records Committee Newsletter January 2019

ESA Historical Records Committee Newsletter January 2019

Israel’s Nuclear Programme

Israel is widely believed to possess nuclear weapons, but has never confirmed the existence of its nuclear program. Historians have for a long time largely relied on limited access to U.S. government documents and on the oral histories of those with inside knowledge of Israel’s nuclear program. However lately declassified documents demonstrated a semi-official recognition by the US Department of Defense that Israel a de facto acknowledgement by the US as a nuclear power. While the documents confirm what is already known regarding Israel’s nuclear arsenal, the political implications are potentially far-reaching, particularly in relation to Israeli’s negative attitude to Iran’s alleged nuclear program. Israel nuclear program is an essential part of long-term Israeli national security strategy and a security doctrine. National security has been at the forefront of the Israeli experience for seven decades, with threats ranging from terrorism, to vast missile arsenals, and even potential existential nuclear dangers. Israel state’s national security doctrine, in its broadest sense intended to protect and promote the state’s national security interests. One of the main features of this nuclear program development is the specifically nuclear relationship between Israel and US which acting as official guarantor of Israel security and consider it as the main recipient of American protection. The aim of this article is to describe and analyze nuclear strategy’s concept from a historical perspective-that is, to trace its evolution. Israel has long enforced a policy of opacity with regards to its nuclear program even though its existence is a common knowledge throughout the world. Today Israel considers Iran as the main geopolitical enemy. Iran acquires a nuclear weapon, it would be a “game changer” in the region and spark a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. Israel faces a threat to its national interest in that Iran could become a greater relative regional power. Israel has been particularly outspoken in the opposition to the JCPoA signed in 2015 as it concern was that even if Iran acts rationally according to realist understandings of national interest, it still may not be receptive to diplomatic efforts to stop its nuclear program.

Uterine Cancer Incidence and Mortality - United States, 1999-2016.

Uterine cancer is one of the few cancers with increasing incidence and mortality in the United States, reflecting, in part, increases in the prevalence of overweight and obesity since the 1980s (1). It is the fourth most common cancer diagnosed and the seventh most common cause of cancer death among U.S. women (1). To assess recent trends in uterine cancer incidence and mortality by race and ethnicity, CDC analyzed incidence data from CDC’s National Program of Cancer Registries (NPCR) and the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program and mortality data from the National Vital Statistics System (2). Most recent data available are through 2015 for incidence and through 2016 for mortality. Uterine cancer incidence rates increased 0.7% per year during 1999–2015, and death rates increased 1.1% per year during 1999–2016, with smaller increases observed among non-Hispanic white (white) women than among women in other racial/ethnic groups. In 2015, a total of 53,911 new uterine cancer cases, corresponding to 27 cases per 100,000 women, were reported in the United States, and 10,733 uterine cancer deaths (five deaths per 100,000 women) were reported in 2016. Uterine cancer incidence was higher among non-Hispanic black (black) and white women (27 cases per 100,000) than among other racial/ethnic groups (19–23 per 100,000). Uterine cancer deaths among black women (nine per 100,000) were higher than those among other racial/ethnic groups (four to five per 100,000). Public health efforts to help women achieve and maintain a healthy weight and obtain sufficient physical activity can reduce the risk for developing cancer of the endometrium (the lining of the uterus), the most common uterine cancer. Abnormal vaginal bleeding, including bleeding between periods or after sex or any unexpected bleeding after menopause, is an important symptom of uterine cancer (3). Through programs such as CDC’s Inside Knowledge* campaign, promoting awareness among women and health care providers of the need for timely evaluation of abnormal vaginal bleeding can increase the chance that uterine cancer is detected early and treated appropriately.

Working the ‘in-between-spaces’ for transformation within the academy

This paper considers the importance of ‘in-between spaces’ within the academy for challenging dominant institutional culture and hegemonic power relations towards a ‘de-colonised’ university. It questions ‘mainstreaming’ of transformational initiatives, as this can bring about regulation, rather than the turbulence that is often what is needed for substantive change to occur. I draw on a case study of the work of the Division for Lifelong Learning (DLL) at University of the Western Cape and in particular two examples of its marginal activities which were hosted regularly over a 10 year period. These are: the Vice-Chancellor’s Annual Julius Nyerere Lecture on Lifelong Learning and the cross-campus Annual Women’s Breakfast . I use documentary evidence and insider knowledge to reflect critically on the relevance of the spaces that were created for enacting such alternative institutional practices. I employ ‘knowledge democracy’ as a lens to bring the margins to the centre of the analysis. The argument is made that the work in the ‘in-between-spaces’ is a critical part of ‘decolonising education’ through disruptive, political, pedagogical, and organisational transformation. Keywords: decolonising education; feminist popular education; ‘in-between’ pedagogical spaces; knowledge democracy; lifelong learning; transformation

Research into the views of two child reference groups on the arts in research concerning wellbeing

ABSTRACTIntroduction: This paper explores an aspect of the process and outcomes of two children’s reference groups: the ways the young members of the reference groups consider the role of the arts in research concerning wellbeing.Methods: Two case studies draw on qualitative data from the projects offering insight into child reference group work over the life of a research project: from recommendations to implementation.Results: The findings demonstrate that both reference groups enabled the research to achieve a fuller engagement with meaning making in relation to data collection by consulting with children.Conclusion: The data reveal how the members offered “insider knowledge” to the researchers concerning the role of the arts in research concerning wellbeing. Themes within the analysis about the impact of the reference group’s knowledge and recommendations on the research project’s data collection methods include the role of the arts connected to empathy, safety and confidentiality and in relation to difference and choice.The Research in England was supported by the LankellyChase Foundation

Stealing Words, Transplanting Images

Abstract This article explores how the category “Chinese art” was articulated and consolidated in the early twentieth century by focusing on Stephen Bushell's Chinese Art, the first book in English defined in terms of this category. Bushell's monograph highlights the intercultural character of the category, which was transformed in its content and cultural significance, when ostensibly the same authentic knowledge, articulated in verbal and visual representations, was moved from China to Europe and back again. The article starts by examining how Bushell's insider knowledge of Chinese art was transformed to fit the institutional setting of the Victoria and Albert Museum. It then explores how the authoritative knowledge of Chinese art communicated in Bushell's book was appropriated in China by the journal Guocui xuebao 國粹學報 (Journal of National Essence) in the context of attempts to revive national culture. Both cases involved hitherto unnoticed repetitions of text and images. By analyzing the mechanism informing these repetitions, this article reveals the entangled history behind the distinctive articulations of “Chinese art” in Britain and in China. Moreover, the analysis shows how the same elements, whether words or pictures, acquired a substantially different significance as they moved between cultures. This is exemplified by the formulation of the newly emergent classifying category Zhongguo meishupin 中國美術品 (“Chinese art objects”) in Guocui xuebao.