Institutional Artifacts Research Articles

The role of perceived expertise and trustworthiness in research study and clinical trial recruitment: Perspectives of clinical research coordinators and African American and Black Caribbean patients.

This study investigates the role of source credibility on minority participant recruitment, particularly African American and Black Caribbean patients. A total of nine focus groups (N = 48 participants) were conducted with both patient groups and clinical research coordinators (CRCs). Using the elaboration likelihood model as a guiding framework for analysis, this study found that the credibility of research coordinators (or other professionals who recruit for research studies and clinical trials) was instrumental in shaping attitudes of prospective participants. The perspectives of patients and CRCs aligned closely, with few exceptions. For both groups, professionalism and professional displays (clothing, institutional artifacts) enhanced perceived expertise, a core component of credibility. Trustworthiness, another important component of credibility, was fostered through homophily between recruiter and patient, expressions of goodwill and assuaging anxiety about CRCs' financial motivations for recruitment. Additionally, CRCs believed that credibility was supported when CRCs could emphasize transparency and truthfulness in communication. The importance of these findings for the development of empirically-based training programs to improve communication practices in recruitment contexts is discussed.

Numbering and Boat IDs: The Dehumanizing Use of ID Numbers in Australia’s Border Regime

The practice of identifying people by ID numbers rather than their names, which the authors term here “numbering,” has been extensively recorded in carceral and bordering institutions. While the argument for using identification numbers (ID numbers) is that they enable the reliable mapping between a person and designated institutional artifacts, according to people who have been subjected to numbering, its effect is to dehumanize, erasing individuals’ identities so that they might be more effectively abused as objects. To explore these logics, our article provides a critical reading of Boat IDs in Australia’s notorious border regime based on the first-hand accounts of people subjected to numbering. We apply a ‘technology-in-practice’ lens to analyze ID numbers as biopolitical apparatuses of carceral recognition and erasure that work to materialize power relations of domination and subjugation.

Legal office

This paper has three aims. The first is to explicate what kind of entity legal offices are and what their specific mode of existence amounts to. The second is to explain in virtue of what these offices can be said to be legal. Finally, third, to show the relevance of the actual use of legal offices for their existence. The main argument is that, ontologically, legal offices are best understood as immaterial institutional artifacts. This is because they can be created only if there is collective recognition of the relevant constitutive norms, which confer the status function of legal office, accompanied by the relevant deontic powers, and can continue to exist only for as long as this recognition is maintained. Furthermore, it is argued that so-called derived legal offices (e.g., the legislature and judiciary) are legal in virtue of the legal norms that constitute them, and the so-called original legal office (i.e., the constitution-maker) in virtue of the citizens’ norm of recognition (i.e., in virtue of its being collectively regarded as a legal office by the relevant community). Finally, the paper argues that as institutional artifacts, legal offices can be said to exist only on the condition that they are, at least initially, filled with officials actually carrying out the deontic powers accompanying the offices they hold and for as long as the initial citizens’ collective recognition of the original officials is not withdrawn.

APOSTAS FORMATIVAS DE PORTFÓLIOS COLETIVOS EM DIÁLOGO COM A PESQUISA CIENTÍFICA

ABSTRACT: An overview of research on the use of portfolios in teacher education is presented, in order to identify propositions arising from the research and relate them to education proposals assumed in all of the public notices approved by Coordination for Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES) in Institutional Teacher Training Scholarship (PIBID) of a Higher Education Institution (IES) for the use of portfolios. PIBID is briefly presented, and the mapping of scientific articles is described in its three stages: identification, classification and analysis. The classification of articles according to geographic regions has enabled us to realize that the theme is spread across all Brazilian regions and that the same is observed in relation to international productions. The analysis stage consisted of a categorization in the light of Discursive Textual Analysis. The resulting categories addressed research on: the portfolio itself; the portfolio for teacher evaluation; the portfolio as a student's reflection; the portfolio as a record of the training network; the portfolio as an institutional artifact for certification; the discourse of the participants about the portfolios; and the bibliographic discourse on portfolios. It has been concluded that there is resonance between the education proposals assumed for the use of portfolios in PIBID of an IES and the categories of analysis, with the exception of the proposal on the epistemic potency of writing. Some categories resulting from the mapping did not appear as education proposals: the portfolio for teacher evaluation, the portfolio as an institutional artifact for certification, and the portfolio by itself.

Making Institutional Archives Discoverable: Communicating a Library Project’s Value, Part 1

How librarians and archivists communicate the value of a major project, like making institutional archives discoverable online, to all community stakeholders can be challenging when they are not receptive to the change or don’t see the project’sproposed value. This column is a first-hand account of the challenges associated with communicating the results of a lengthy and complicated project that has high perceived value by librarians and archivists to community stakeholders with minimal understanding of a this project’s limitations and scope. In this column, we will summarize lessons learned from an 11-month-long archival digitization and discoverability project that saved institutional artifacts from further decay. The project frustrated stakeholders who couldn’t search for most of the digitized artifacts due to the lack of metadata which prevented easy searching and locating items they were looking for.

Is the analysis of the concept of law a(n) (im)modest conceptual analysis?

ABSTRACT This paper aims to inquire whether an analysis of the concept of law is an exercise of analysis in its modest or immodest form. Our inquiry suggests that the Jacksonian distinction between modest and immodest conceptual analysis, so eagerly applied by many legal scholars, is inapplicable to analyzing a specific part of the concept of law. The crux of our argument lies in the relation between the folk theory of law and the content of the developed concept of law. As an artifact concept, the concept of law must depend on the pre-existing content of the folk conception of law (which we term the ‘foundational folk theory’). This part of folk theory determines the collective intentionality necessary to bring an institutional artifact, such as law, into existence. A large part of the argument for this conclusion depends on the acceptance of a realist and functional, post-Searlean theory of artifactual types.

In defence of constitutive rules

Although the notion of constitutive rule has played an important role in the metaphysical debate in social and legal philosophy, several authors perceive it as somewhat mysterious and ambiguous: the idea of a specific kind of rules that are supposed to be “magically” constitutive of reality seems suspicious, more a rationalistic fiction than a genuine explanation. For these reasons, reductionist approaches have been put forward to deflate the explanatory role of this notion. In this paper, I will instead try to defend constitutive rules. My thesis is that the notion of constitutive rule is explanatorily helpful because it gives a complete account of an important phenomenon in the social and legal domain, namely, that of artifactual entities endowed with statuses that can have emergent normative properties. Conceiving of these entities as rule-constituted artifacts is an important part of what H. L. A. Hart called “the internal point of view” toward law, and for this reason constitutive rules should be included in an explanation of that point of view as an integral part of the life of institutions. The structure of my argument will be as follows. First, I will provide an example of an important phenomenon in the internal point of view, namely, the fact that individuals can have normative reactions not about the specific regulation of an institution but about its underlying purpose and rationale—what in the legal domain is called the ratio of a norm. Then I will identify two reductionistic approaches on constitutive rules. The first approach is exemplified by Brian Epstein’s idea that the phenomena explained by constitutive rules are better explained in terms of metaphysical (grounding/anchoring) relations. The second kind of reductionism is instead exemplified by the idea (held by several authors, among whom Alf Ross, Riccardo Guastini, Frank Hindriks, and Francesco Guala) that the phenomena explained by constitutive rules can be accounted for in terms of regulative rules plus a certain terminology. I will try to show that neither of these approaches can explain normative reactions to the ratio of an institution from an internal point of view: While the first cannot explain the fact that the reaction is strongly normative, the second cannot explain the fact that the reaction is about the ratio of a normative entity. Constitutive rules can instead explain both things and should be preserved as an important notion for the analysis of institutional ontology. By way of constitutive rules we create something: immaterial, rule-based institutional artifacts that can have emergent normative properties.

Barriers and Motivations to Integrating Environmental Performance in the BSC: a case study in health care

PurposeThis study aims to explore the barriers and motivations to integrating environmental performance into balanced scorecards (BSCs).Design/methodology/approachThis research adopted a qualitative case study approach with semi-structured interviews within an Australian public health service organisation. Secondary document analysis was performed using annual reports, strategic plans and website data.FindingsThe internal barriers creating resistance to incorporating environmental performance dimensions into the BSC include the existing role of environmental disclosure, insufficient sustainability BSC knowledge, lack of BSC champion support, organisational culture and limited environmental commitment practices. Solutions revealed to support decisions to integrate environmental performance in the BSC include recruiting sustainability expertise, articulating financial motivations and recognising external pressures.Practical implicationsThe findings provide suggested actions for other organisations facing similar challenges regarding integrating environmental performance into a BSC.Social implicationsIn the current business environment, organisations face growing pressure to consider environmental performance in their BSCs. This study provides insights into the potential problems that prevent or delay the integration of environmental issues into BSCs.Originality/valueThis study provides evidence on how institutional and external factors influence barriers and motivations to embed environmental performance measures into a BSC. This study demonstrates how health-care organisations can effectively overcome barriers by modifying specific institutional artefacts. This is an important contribution to the body of knowledge because there is limited empirical research regarding integrating environmental issues into a public sector BSC that projects key organisational commitment indicators.

The Cadet’s Creed: Critical Discourse in Archives Instruction

The Cadet’s Creed was written by a Norwich University professor in 1927 and is a key text for the university’s present-day Corps of Cadets. This autoethnographic essay uses the lens of Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) to reflect on a project in a Public Speaking class that explored the historical and contemporary dimensions of the Creed, particularly the author’s little-known connection to the Vermont Eugenics Survey. This text has a multimedia presence and can be found on the campus website, in published documents, on plaques, and also in spoken performance when cadets recite it to affirm their loyalty to Norwich and the Corps. Today, Norwich University has two student populations, military cadets who study alongside “civilian” students. Both groups were challenged yet ultimately affirmed by this difficult project. Student reflections demonstrate that CDS can draw students into a nationwide conversation that attempts to reconcile historic institutional artifacts with contemporary society.

Religious Adherence, Women-Friendliness, and Representation in American State Legislatures

AbstractNational and cross-national studies demonstrate that the probability of women candidates' emergence and success is lower in more religious areas. One recent study of the U.S. House of Representatives even suggests that the effect of religiosity may be so powerful as to render insignificant other contextual factors, including a district's baseline women-friendliness. We argue that this finding is an institutional artifact; in less competitive contests with more internally similar constituencies, both religion and other contextual factors should affect women candidates' emergence and victory. We test this proposition using state legislative data and find that while women are less likely to run and win in more religious areas, district women-friendliness has an independent, positive effect on women's candidacies. These effects are particularly noteworthy in districts with large evangelical Protestant populations and affect Republican and Democratic women similarly.

Non-institutional learning technologies, risks and responsibilities: a critical discourse analysis of university artefacts

Non-institutional technologies include external or third-party technologies that are not officially sanctioned or supported by higher education institutions (HEIs) but may be used by staff for educational purposes. These include free, open-source and open-access technologies such as social media sites, apps and online services. The literature identifies a number of risks and ethical considerations when using digital technologies, such as security, safety, privacy and legal compliance (Common Sense n.d.). This study analyses institutional artefacts, including policy and guidance documents, to explore how institutions are addressing the risks of educational technologies identified throughout the literature. Critical discourse analysis was conducted on nine artefacts, obtained from seven UK HEIs. The study found that institutional policies and guidance documents do not sufficiently address some of the key risks identified in the literature (e.g. security risks), nor consider the ethical issues emerging from the use of profit-making educational products. Users of these technologies (including teaching staff) are assigned a broad range of complex and potentially time-consuming responsibilities concerning the evaluation, selection and operation of these technologies. For example, to ensure compliance with data protection legislation, however, no artefact stated how this should be achieved. The study therefore identifies significant inadequacies in institutional policies and guidelines, and questions whether appropriate quality assurance processes and safeguards are in place when non-institutional technologies are used for higher education.

The Value of Aggregated High-Resolution Intraoperative Data for Predicting Post-Surgical Infectious Complications at Two Independent Sites.

Surgical procedures carry the risk of postoperative infectious complications, which can be severe, expensive, and morbid. A growing body of evidence indicates that high-resolution intraoperative data can be predictive of these complications. However, these studies are often contradictory in their findings as well as difficult to replicate, suggesting that these predictive models may be capturing institutional artifacts. In this work, data and models from two independent institutions, Mayo Clinic and University of Minnesota-affiliated Fairview Health Services, were directly compared using a common set of definitions for the variables and outcomes. We built perioperative risk models for seven infectious post-surgical complications at each site to assess the value of intraoperative variables. Models were internally validated. We found that including intraoperative variables significantly improved the models’ predictive performance at both sites for five out of seven complications. We also found that significant intraoperative variables were similar between the two sites for four of the seven complications. Our results suggest that intraoperative variables can be related to the underlying physiology for some infectious complications.

A critical review of how communication scholarship is represented in textbooks: the case of organizational communication and CCO theory

ABSTRACTA significant issue for any academic field is how key theories are represented in textbooks. Textbooks are important institutional artifacts that organize entire subject areas, and thus key sites for assessing how scholarly ideas are developed and understood. However, the field of communication studies has done little to investigate how the key theories of our discipline are represented in our textbooks. This critical essay seeks to remedy this shortcoming with an exemplar investigation from the field of organizational communication and CCO Theory. We summarize the current state of CCO thinking and explore how this theory is portrayed in organizational communication textbooks, while also discussing implications of textbook representations for the broader field of communication studies.

Subjects of Technology: An Auto-Archeology of Attention Deficit Disorder in Neoliberal Time(s)

This essay (re)presents my own experiences living with attention deficit disorder (ADD) as a child and adult to provide a radically historical, contextual, and critical autoethnographic conceptualization of this “learning disability.” Specifically, by building upon Ragan Fox’s “auto-archeological” method, a critical perspective that “unite[s] autoethnography and Foucault’s theories of discourse,” I draw upon institutional artifacts, psychiatric diagnoses, and interviews with close family members to show that ADD is a “technology of the self” that economizes the body in accordance with a distinctly neoliberal temporality. This temporalizing process, I show, is reinforced by a range of other neoliberal technologies of selfhood and ultimately cultivates the very “deficit framework” that ADD diagnoses are aimed at healing. The conclusion questions the legitimacy of ADD outside of the various technological interfaces that make the disability visible as a public problem and considers the intimate connections between neoliberalism, ableism, and the contemporary university.

The Rule of Recognition and the Emergence of a Legal System

The relevance Hart attaches to the rule of recognition, as well as some of its characterisations in The Concept of Law, indicate that the rule of recognition is first and foremost a rule in virtue of which other rules are legal rules. It explains the existence of legally valid norms as such. As a matter of conceptual truth, the satisfaction of the rule of recognition constitutes a norm as law. It can thus be said that the rule of recognition plays an important ontological role and thus has the character of a constitutive rule. But what is the rule of recognition constitutive of? Does it constitute merely particular legal rules as members of a system or a particular legal system as a whole? From what Hart says about the rule of recognition, it can be inferred that it certainly serves at least the first function. It is no doubt the constitutive rule of particular legal rules as elements of a system. However, even though this is not what Hart claims (at least not explicitly), one might also be tempted to see it as a constitutive rule of a legal system as such. What I claim in the paper is that the rule of recognition, given the way it is presented by Hart, cannot be a constitutive rule of any legal system as a whole, but rather a constitutive rule of legal rules as elements of a legal system. Since I take the legal system to be an institutional artifact kind, I claim that, in order to account for a legal system as a whole, at least two further constitutive rules, in addition to the rule of recognition as a token-element constitutive rule, are needed – one constitutive of legal officials and the other constitutive of a legal system as a token. However, given the central role the legal officials' practice occupies in establishing a particular instantiation or token of a legal system, I also claim that the rule of recognition cannot be understood as 'merely' a token-element constitutive rule but also as a legal system's implementation or concretisation rule.

Unintended consequences: institutional artefacts, closure mechanisms and the performance gap

ABSTRACTRenewable technologies often feature in policies to improve the energy efficiency of buildings. Designers introduce predicted energy values for specific technologies, but are surprised when the technologies fail to perform as expected. Three building projects are used to explore the effect of construction processes on the energy performance of building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) technology. In two cases BIPV failed to deliver expected energy generation, while in the third, dramatic changes in project processes and technical specifications were needed to achieve the specified output. A social construction of technology (SCOT) analysis documents how the energy generation of BIPV disappeared from view at certain points as actors focused on building features. A contribution is made to the theoretical development of SCOT by responding to two issues: privileging of cognitive closure mechanisms and the neglect of institutional analysis. The concept of inflection mechanisms is introduced as a second type of closure mechanism. More specifically, the role of institutional artefacts (e.g. planning requirements and schedules) in the construction process is found to contribute to the performance gap. To reduce the ‘performance gap’, practitioners need to focus on the distribution of design responsibility, sequencing of work and the location of expertise.

The rule of recognition and the emergence of a legal system

The paper claims that the rule of recognition, given the way it is presented by Hart, cannot be a constitutive rule of any legal system as a whole, but rather a constitutive rule of (primary) legal rules as elements of a legal system. Since I take the legal system to be an institutional artifact kind, I claim that, in order to account for a legal system as a whole, at least two further constitutive rules, in addition to the rule of recognition as a token-element constitutive rule, are needed – one constitutive of legal officials and the other constitutive of a legal system as a token. However, given the central role the legal officials' practice occupies in establishing a particular instantiation or token of a legal system, I also claim that the rule of recognition cannot be understood as 'merely' a token-element constitutive rule but also as a legal system's implementation or concretisation rule.

Pravilo priznanja i nastanak pravnog sustava

The paper claims that the rule of recognition, given the way it is presented by Hart, cannot be a constitutive rule of any legal system as a whole, but rather a constitutive rule of (primary) legal rules as elements of a legal system. Since I take the legal system to be an institutional artifact kind, I claim that, in order to account for a legal system as a whole, at least two further constitutive rules, in addition to the rule of recognition as a token-element constitutive rule, are needed – one constitutive of legal officials and the other constitutive of a legal system as a token. However, given the central role the legal officials' practice occupies in establishing a particular instantiation or token of a legal system, I also claim that the rule of recognition cannot be understood as 'merely' a token-element constitutive rule but also as a legal system's implementation or concretisation rule.

Policing Diversity and Vulnerability in the Post-Macpherson Era: Unintended Consequences and Missed Opportunities

The ripple effects of the Macpherson inquiry were felt by police organizations worldwide. However, the points Macpherson was making were never to be limited to race, ethnicity, or cultural difference. Nonetheless, the policies and practices to emerge since the Macpherson report have taken race and cultural difference as a template for the development of an ever-increasing number of siloed responses to vulnerability in the policing process. In this article, we examine the essential need to depart from the historical and siloed framing of police–race relations. Instead, we argue that policies and practices should respond to vulnerability as a fundamental socio-cultural characteristic of all criminal justice encounters. After much public scrutiny, many vulnerable groups have now become the target of non-negotiable, precautionary protocols for police to abide by, in order to address the disadvantage caused by a variety of attributes (such as age, mental health, language). This siloed approach to diversity and the cultural awareness and quota models that emerged from the Macpherson recommendations are no longer adequate for the increasing differentiation of modern societies. We suggest that Macpherson’s recommendations, despite their success, have left in their wake a series of institutional artefacts that have ossified policing responses to diversity. As a more realistic template to address a wider understanding of diversity, we propose re-centring vulnerability as a ubiquitous characteristic of all criminal justice encounters through the use of Herring and Henderson’s framing of critical diversity (2011).

Can There Be an Artifact Theory of Law?

The paper aims at attempting an inquiry into what the claim that 'law' by its nature or character is an artifact, in fact, would entail and what, in the end, an artifact theory of law might look like. Before embarking on such an inquiry, I will, however, first try to indicate at least some potential payoffs of the artifactual understanding of law (Section 2). In order to be able to answer certain ontological questions concerning legal systems as artifact kinds, I will outline in what follows a general theory of artifacts (Section 3). I will do this by exploring several theories of artifacts developed in general philosophy, drawing mostly on those of R. Hilpinen, A. L. Thomasson, L. R. Baker and P. Bloom, since their theories present themselves as general theories of artifacts, capable of being applied to any artifact kind. Furthermore, since I take legal systems to be institutional in character, and thus different from 'ordinary' artifacts, I will introduce certain elements of social (institutional) ontology and set the ontological grounds for 'institutional artifacts' as a distinct artifact type (Section 4). This will form the basis of a rough sketch of what an artifact theory of law might look like and what the challenges for such a theory might be (Section 5).