Mainstream Thinking Research Articles

The origins of business analytics and implications for the information systems field

ABSTRACTLike many other disciplines, the information systems (IS) community has embraced big data analytics and data science. However, in the rush to exploit the popularity of this latest trend, the areas of big data analytics and data science that are most relevant to the IS field are not made clear. While many consider data analytics as an evolution of decision support systems (DSS), that is, as a technology that needs to be managed or enhanced, this essay traces the complex origins and philosophy of analytics instead back to Luhn’s text analytics in the late 1950s, Naur’s Computing as a Human Activity and his datalogy, Tukey’s Future of Data Analysis of the 1960s, and Codd’s relational database schema in the 1970s, well before big data analytics and data science became industry buzzwords. Many of what is now considered mainstream thinking in big data analytics and data science can be traced back to these visionaries. This essay examines the implications of the complex origins of data analytics and data science for the IS field, specifically on how those different discourses impact future research and practice.

Both Like and Unlike: Rebirth, Olfaction, and the Transspecies Imagination in Modern Chinese Buddhism

This essay considers the importance of the transspecies imagination for moral cultivation in contemporary Chinese Buddhism. Drawing on scriptural, theoretical, and fieldwork-based ethnographic data, it argues that olfaction—often considered the most “animalistic” of the human senses—is uniquely efficacious for inspiring imaginative processes whereby Buddhists train themselves to inhabit the perspectives of non-human beings. In light of Buddhist theories of rebirth, this means extending human-like status to animals and recognizing the “animal” within the human as well. Responding to recent trends in the Humanities calling for an expanded notion of ontological continuity between the human and non-human—notably inspired by critical animal studies, post-humanism, the new materialism, and the “ontological turn”—this essay contends that Buddhist cosmological ideas, like those that demand the cultivation of the transspecies imagination, present resources for moral reflection that can challenge and enrich current mainstream thinking about humanity’s relation to the nonhuman world.

Designing EthAKUL: a mobile just-in-time learning environment for bioethics in Pakistan

In developing countries such as Pakistan, bioethics has not been included in mainstream thinking in medical education. The authors’ experiences suggest that current methods of teaching bioethics are problematic as students are unable to translate theory to practice. Alternative pedagogies, such as just-in-time learning (JiTL) using mobile devices, may be able to foster the development and implementation of ethical reasoning among nurses, doctors, and medical and nursing students. This research was conceived to determine the effectiveness of mobile JiTL – anytime, anyplace learning through mobile devices – for teaching bioethics. After obtaining ethical clearance, a participatory design (PD) approach was adopted to ensure input from all stakeholders for the design of ‘EthAKUL’, comprising a mobile app, five modules and just-in-time pedagogy. The name of the app is an acronym evoking ethics, learning and the university where the project originated. As a part of the design process, three PD workshops were held with junior doctors, nurses, nursing students, medical students and bioethics teaching faculty, and five meetings were held with faculty members, to discuss functional specifications and user-acceptance testing of the app. The feedback related to the nature of common ethical issues encountered in clinical settings, the existing process of teaching and learning bioethics, and the requested features of the app were recorded. These data sets were analyzed and synthesized into functional and technical specifications for the mobile app. The software programmers developed the app with the close involvement of the stakeholders. The development of teaching content continued alongside this process. While this enabled EthAKUL’s developers to incorporate needs of all stakeholders, challenges were encountered in the process relating to the pragmatic and conceptual aspects of JiTL, ML and PD. We discuss the implications of this research in bringing about transformative changes in higher education.
 
 How to cite this article: 
 NASEEM, Azra; GHIAS, Kulsoom; BAWANI, Sohail; SHAHAB, Mohammad Ali; NIZAMUDDIN, Sameer; KASHIF, Waqar; KHAN, Kausar S; AHMAD, Tashfeen; KHAN, Murad. Designing EthAKUL: a mobile just-in-time learning environment for bioethics in Pakistan. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in the South. v. 3, n. 1, p. 36-56, Apr. 2019. Available at: 
 https://sotl-south-journal.net/?journal=sotls&page=article&op=view&path%5B%5D=70&path%5B%5D=40
 
 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
 To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Seeing is Believing: Diatoms and the Ocean Carbon Cycle Revisited

Terrestrial ecologists and biogeochemists are in direct contact with their objects of study via sense organs evolved in those environments; they hence share a common awareness because they can all see the whole elephant, as in the ancient Indian parable. Pelagic ecologists and biogeochemists on the other hand are the blind men groping different parts of the elephant - the protist-dominated biome of the planet - in attempts to understand its structure and functioning in terms of organism life cycles and the biogenic elements of which they are made. The pelagial is an alien world for us that we can only sense through instruments of our making: the propensity for bias is enormous. Throughout my career I have been acutely aware of this fundamental problem faced by protist ecologists. In this essay I would like to convey an impression of the subjective driving forces that led me to the conclusions I reached on the relationships between ocean ecology and biogeochemistry in the light of evolution by natural selection. Key personal encounters with sinking diatom blooms are recounted to illustrate how my convictions grew that led me to challenge mainstream thinking of the time.

A critical reflection on a research partnership

This critical reflection asks what contributions a research partnership, active between 1997 and 2014, made to knowledge about student learning in higher education. It focuses on three overarching projects. The first, on assessment, addressed ways to empower students in assessment processes and make them fairer for students from diverse backgrounds. The second, on student retention and success, identified ways for students to integrate into higher education while also advocating that institutions adapt their cultures and practices to meet the needs of students from diverse backgrounds. The third, on student engagement, attracted considerable interest for a conceptual organiser of this complex construct. It included ten proposals for action and recognised the impact of non-institutional factors on engagement. It also found that engagement is best researched within institutions. A critical reflection on the influences of the projects suggests that their impact on assessment was negligible. However, the retention and engagement projects have influenced mainstream thinking.

German Policy through the Lens of Russian Mainstream Thinking

The article explores the way in which German policies are portrayed in the Russian mainstream narrative. It concentrates on the ‘real sovereignty’ theory, which seems to have captured the mainstream thinking of world politics in Russia. Three aspects of this theory are discussed: first, whether it withstands the test of the Ukraine crisis; second, whether it can provide the Russian political establishment with an appropriate explanation of the current state of relations with Germany, at its lowest since reunification; and finally, if it gives the Russian political establishment a pretext to believe that the strategic partnership is not terminated but only temporarily suspended. The mainstream Russian narrative provides grounds for Moscow to believe that a strategic partnership with Germany is still feasible. However, the underlying purposes of such a partnership, as seen in Berlin and Moscow, are rather different and can hardly be reconciled.

Laughing matters: humour as advocacy in education for the disabled

Humour is an advocacy tool used by women organisers in Sāmoa, an Independent State in the Pacific. Examining the use of humour (jokes, sarcasm, banter, and clowning) in social action research reveal creative ways that advocates and activists can challenge systems of normalcy. This paper examines humour as an informal conversational and non-confrontational strategy used by (non)disabled Indigenous women to support the creation of schools for disabled students. Thematic analysis of the data shows that the women’s use of humour supports their agenda of transforming exclusive structures in education and policy. Using humour as an organising strategy also shifts mainstream thinking about disabled people as easy targets of offensive and degrading humour. The paper explores humour as an organising strategy that provides new supports into inclusive spaces for the education of disabled people in the global South.

Legacies, lags and long‐term trends: Effective flow restoration in a changed and changing world

Abstract Human impacts on natural ecosystems are pervasive and will play out more severely as human populations and per capita resource use increase. Freshwater ecosystems are critical for human well‐being and experience a diverse range of human‐induced pressures. Most river systems throughout the world have much‐altered flow regimes. The Murray–Darling Basin in southeastern Australian has been the focus of an extensive water reform process to address the over‐allocation of water for human uses. This has included many scientific investigations, hydrological modelling and the development of institutional and market structures to reallocate water. Substantial recovery of water has been achieved, which has been used to restore aspects of the natural flow regime. We reviewed recent papers on responses to flow restoration in the Murray–Darling Basin and complemented this with inferences from the global literature. Ecological responses to flow restoration are often inconsistent, site and taxon specific and difficult to detect. By combining ideas from mainstream thinking in restoration ecology with the insights from our review, we propose a conceptual model for understanding responses to flow restoration. This model incorporates key factors that influence the size of ecological responses to restoration, including existing ecological condition, legacy impacts of past change, interactions with other variables, life‐history traits of taxa and broad‐scale and long‐term trends due to climate or land‐use change.

Disengaging citizens? Climate change communication and public receptivity

ABSTRACTThe mainstreaming of climate change through processes of media communication and political advocacy carries with it an imagined public. Drawing on qualitative data from 11 focus groups and 19 life history interviews carried out in the Republic of Ireland1 in 2010, the paper reveals a significant mismatch between the perceived characteristics of this imagined audience, and the practices and experiences of a socially embedded Irish public. Moreover, we observe the emergence of restrictive forms of discourse around climate change that leave little room for connecting with the topic, thereby serving to delegitimise it as a matter of public interest. Given the necessity for climate action and decarbonisation efforts that reach across diverse social and cultural arenas, we see potential for a broadening of public debate in line with key principles of deliberative democracy, with a view to achieving a more open and inclusive politics of climate change. Although we recognise the limitations of mainstream deliberative democracy thinking, including its inherent rationalism, we believe that its explicit commitment to inclusiveness and transparency offers a viable alternative to current disengagement and exclusion of citizens from meaningful climate change debate and action.

Writing From the Edge.

On the 30th Anniversary of Nursing Science Quarterly, the 17-year journey of conceiving, launching, and guiding the "Teaching-Learning Column" was explored in this dialogue with Dr. Sandra Schmidt Bunkers, adjunct professor of nursing, South Dakota State University Brookings, South Dakota, founding contributing editor of the column, and Dr. Barbara Backer Condon, Professor of Nursing, Briar Cliff University, Sioux City, Iowa, contributing editor, 2012-2016. Reflecting on the shared stories, the challenge is offered to continue the tradition of the column in reading, writing, and thinking from the edge, to bravely consider what might be, daring to go beyond the confinements of mainstream thinking, and to vision as yet unimagined possibilities in teaching-learning in nursing.

Bandwagons I, too, have known.

Bandwagons come in waves. A plant breeder, just like a surfer, needs to carefully choose which waves to be on. A bandwagon is an idea, activity, or cause that becomes increasingly fashionable as more and more people adopt it. In a 1991 article entitled Bandwagons I Have Known, Professor N. W. Simmonds described several bandwagons that he encountered in his career, beginning with induced polyploidy and mutation breeding and ending with the then-new field of biotechnology. This article reviews and speculates about post-1990 bandwagons in plant improvement, including transgenic cultivars, quantitative trait locus (QTL) mapping, association mapping, genomewide (or genomic) selection, phenomics, envirotyping, and genome editing. The life cycle of a bandwagon includes an excitement phase of hype and funding; a realization phase when the initial hype is either tempered or the initial expectations are found to have been too low; and a reality phase when the useful aspects of a bandwagon become part of mainstream thinking and practice, or when an unsuccessful bandwagon is largely abandoned. During the realization phase, a new bandwagon that draws our attention and gives us renewed optimism typically arises. The most popular bandwagons, such as QTL mapping, are those for which the needed experimental resources are accessible, the required technical knowledge and skills can be easily learned, and the outputs can almost always be reported. The favorite bandwagon of any plant breeder has, in one way or another, resulted from Mendel's seminal discoveries 150years ago. Our community of plant breeders needs to be continually diligent in welcoming new bandwagons, but also in hopping off from those that do not prove useful.

Fundamentos macroeconômicos nas perspectivas de Marx e Keynes: contribuições para a heterodoxia

RESUMO: A necessidade de definir fundamentos microeconômicos para os modelos macroeconômicos, presente no pensamento dominante na economia contemporânea, pode ser questionada com base em diferentes abordagens teóricas. Posições como as de Marx e Keynes permitem a apreensão das ações dos agentes econômicos (grupos ou classes) como influenciadas e limitadas pelo ambiente social e macroeconômico, fornecendo visões de fundamentos macroeconômicos da microeconomia, ao invés da visão ortodoxa de fundamentos micro da macroeconomia. Essa forma de apreensão lança luz sobre diferenças de perspectivas da heterodoxia quando se trata de intervir sobre o contexto macroeconômico.

Unconventional monetary policy, liquidity trap, and asset prices

ABSTRACTThis article offers a fundamental critique of monetary policy implemented in the United States following the 2007–8 global financial crisis. It aims to show that the misunderstanding of the mainstream theoretical thinking underlying monetary policy actions led to the ineffectiveness of the policy response to the 2007–8 global financial crisis. The conventional view that monetary policy is the stabilization tool has serious flaws and is ineffective for bringing about economic recovery. The Federal Reserve’s experiment with the so-called unconventional monetary policy exposed the weakness of the conventional belief in understanding how banks operate, how the monetary authority can influence the yield curve, and how the monetary transmission mechanism works, resulting in prescribing an ineffective treatment to boost economic activity. In this regard, it is argued that the Federal Reserve’s decision to let long-term interest rates be market determined represents a significant self-imposed constraint, which limits policy options regarding monetary policy actions and the effective control of long-term interest rates. By limiting the setting of policy rates only to the overnight interest rate, the ability of the monetary authority to influence long-term interest rates is both weak and indirect.

Post-Growth and Post-Extractivism: Two Sides of the Same Cultural Transformation

Mainstream thinking – embedded within capitalist globalisation – leads us to accept the impossibility to imagine an economy that does not promote growth, as much as a world without oil, mining and agribusiness is impossible. Within this mainstream thinking, we can find people from every political stance, from neoliberals to socialists. Reality, however, is that we must overcome such views, that is the great task of this moment. On the one hand, we must rethink the question of economic growth, and free ourselves from its shackles before we enter into a global socio-environmental debacle with unforeseeable consequences. On the other, it is increasingly urgent to move from an extractivist perspective focused on the demands of capital, towards a view that prioritises a dignified life to its fullest extent and enables the construction of structurally democratic societies.

Macroeconomic foundations in the perspectives of Marx and Keynes: contributions to the heterodox thought

The need to define microeconomic foundations for macroeconomic models, which is present in the mainstream thinking in contemporary economics, can be questioned on the basis of different theoretical approaches. Positions like those of Marx and Keynes permit the comprehension of the actions of economic agents (groups or classes) as influenced and limited by the social and macroeconomic environment, providing views of macroeconomic foundations of microeconomics, instead of the orthodox view of micro foundations of macroeconomics. This comprehensionsed slight on distinct perspectives in heterodox thought regarding the intervention in the macroeconomic context. JEL Classification: E11; E12; B50.

Singing the Everyday, Sign(al)ing the World: On Catalogic Poems

This article analyzes three poems: Jacques Prévert’s “Tentative de description d’un dîner de têtes à Paris-France” (1931), Bob Dylan’s “Desolation Row” (1965), and Jaume Sisa’s “Qualsevol nit pot sortir el sol” (1975). They are interrelated examples based on the list concept and loosely interconnected as all of them elaborate lists of people that can be found in, or are related to a specific place. In these three poems we can recognize a mixture of Eco’s distinction between the “poetics of everything included,” and the “poetics of the etcetera.” Similar to Proust’s use of the enumeration, they establish relationships and divisions, and this has a therapeutic function. The three poems are written against the grain, opposing the mainstream thinking of the day, based on enumeration chaotically cataloguing, and with perceptional attention to the everyday: class differences and the monotony and beauty of working (Prévert); claiming a place where to live (Dylan); enjoying friendship, celebration and happiness as post-hippie values based on a magical childlike world (Sisa). Everyday life is filled with the unorganized accumulation of objects and beings and the unbearable inclination to make sense of it all. These are long catalogic poems that sing the everyday, signaling alternatives to the world, helping us reassess it.

The Idea of Bildung in the Current Educational Discourse: A Response to Irene Heidt

Author(s): Hu, Adelheid | Abstract: It is surprising that there is a young academic in 2015 working intensively on the German philosopher and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) and his concept of Bildung. In times where – as the author states herself – educational systems globally tend to follow neoliberal principles and where the visibility, commodification, and instrumentalization of knowledge produce a “culture of performativity” (Masschelein a Simons, 2006, p. 19) within a so-called knowledge society, Humboldt’s ideas about Bildung seem very far away from the current mainstream thinking and policy making. But maybe it is just because of this current dominance of neoliberalism in education that it is worth remembering a philosopher and linguist who developed a neo-humanistic concept of Bildung which emphasizes a process of holistic growth, self-realization of the individual as an entirety, freedom, and self-understanding as well as a sense of social responsibility, and which puts the development of the individual’s unique potential and self at the center of educational processes. In her paper the author not only analyses Humboldt’s philosophical concept of Bildung itself but traces the process of its institutionalization in which Humboldt himself, having become a Secretary of Education under Frederick III, was actively involved. Heidt analyses how the concept of Bildung lost the impetus of freedom and autonomous agency and became an instrument for selection and an agent for social and cultural reproduction, discipline, and control. Today’s concept of Bildung is very much – according to Heidt – influenced by neoliberal thinking and so much altered as to become hardly recognizable. For Heidt, Bildung – similar to Humboldt’s concept but at the same time radically transformed – can only be found outside of educational institutions, e.g., in social networks or street art in cosmopolitan big cities. Bildung, according to the author’s main hypothesis, paradoxically no longer takes place in globally stratified educational institutions, but in a kind of alternative counter world and very much through the medium of language.

‘Recycling oil money': procurement politics and (un)productive entrepreneurship in South Sudan

Since its inception as a semi-autonomous state in 2005, the South Sudanese government procurement sector has been a booming business. Funded by oil income, the government procurement regimes have become instrumental institutional mechanisms for the allocation of rents within the political marketplace. This type of ‘rentier' politics is often considered to be anti-developmental in mainstream thinking about statebuilding in fragile states, while others argue that rentierism is not growth-retarding per se, but that its impact on development depends on how rents are utilized and reinvested. Taking the latter less-normative approach to rentierism as a starting point, this article begins by identifying patterns of rent allocation that characterized the government procurement sector during the 2005–2011 interim period. Following the political decision to shut down oil production in early 2012, the rent process that had sustained these clientelistic arrangements became suddenly unsustainable. In this context, another cadre of entrepreneurs comprised largely of diaspora returnees with higher technological capabilities and transnational linkages started to gain ground within the government procurement sector, signifying the emergence of a potentially ‘developmental' feature in the rent process. Notwithstanding, while the 2012–2013 austerity period arguably precipitated certain developmental features, it also uprooted the political settlement, which culminated in the December 2013 crisis, pushing the young country back to civil war.

“The Ocean Is on Fire”

This article attempts to extract a few lessons from two years in my life with a “difficult” foster son and to share the effects of these lessons on one's professional life. It addresses issues surrounding the acquisition of language, culture, and identity. The overarching lesson is that learning occurs within a relational setting. Teachers and students share roles and simultaneously question their identities through a process that involves resistance and distraction in order to understand the purpose underlying their participation within this game of learning. Rather than offering a set of insights or practices that can simply transfer into a classroom plan, this article outlines my caretaking experience to stress the pedagogical need for fundamental attitudinal shifts that force us to incorporate spontaneity into our plans and to appreciate the value of others' perspectives, no matter how different they might be from mainstream thinking.

Joseph Heath's Morality, competition, and the firm: the market failures approach to business ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014, 424 pp.

Review of Joseph Heath's Morality, competition, and the firm: the failures approach to business ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014, 424 pp.Anyone who has taught or taken a business ethics course will be familiar with the tired debate between shareholder theory and stakeholder theory. Shareholder (or stockholder) theory is almost always represented by a Milton Friedman opinion piece from a 1970 issue of New York Times Magazine that traditionally plays a role in the business ethics classroom comparable to that of the 'heel' in a professional wrestling match. It announces in its title the view it purports to defend: The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits (Friedman 1970). (Friedman's piece actually contains a variety of arguments that are difficult to reconcile with each other, which makes his ultimate views on the social responsibility of business both more nuanced and harder to pin down than the title suggests.) Swooping in to rescue business from Friedmanite moral laxity is usually an article expounding stakeholder theory by its founding father, R. Edward Freeman, who claims that the firm's managers should advance the interests of all of a firm's stakeholders, not merely those of shareholders, as an ultimate goal.Shareholder theory and stakeholder theory have both generated enormous literatures. When reading through the three decades' worth of contributions to this literature, one gets the sense that there is little left to say. shareholder-stakeholder debate has grown stale, but it never reached a particularly satisfying resolution. big questions that originally set off the debate remain open: What are the ethical responsibilities of the corporate manager? What factors must the corporate manager take into account, and how, in order to run the corporation ethically?Over the past decade, University of Toronto philosopher Joseph Heath has written a series of papers that put forward a new way of thinking about these central questions of business ethics. Heath's work features extensive use of economic theory. This is relatively common in business ethics. Indeed, as I have mentioned, one of the articles that gave rise to business ethics as an academic discipline was written by none other than Milton Friedman. But usually, economic approaches to business ethics are used to argue for extremely minimalist views about the ethical obligations that apply to corporate managers. What separates Heath's work from much of the previous business ethics literature is his extensive use of economic theory to justify a much more demanding set of ethical norms for business. Morality, competition, and the firm is a collection of essays on his novel alternative to stakeholder and shareholder theories, which he dubs the 'market failures' approach to business ethics. (Six of the chapters in the book develop and defend core elements of this approach, and the remaining eight chapters address related subjects relevant to the evaluation of markets, firms, and agents.)Heath's book is essential reading for scholars and students interested in new ways of thinking about the foundations of business ethics. But the themes in the book are also likely to be relevant to scholars working at the intersection between ethics, political philosophy, political economy, and economics more broadly. There is tension, to put it mildly, between mainstream views in political philosophy and mainstream views in economics. What is distinctive about Heath's work is that it links mainstream egalitarian views about justice in political philosophy to certain aspects of mainstream thinking about economics. Indeed, one of the most important chapters in the book, Efficiency as the implicit morality of the market (which I will briefly discuss later), gives an explicit and detailed account of how norms of economic efficiency are compatible with a commitment to a strict egalitarian theory of justice. …