Past Ideas Research Articles

Strategically addressing the post-COVID organization: the hope of employee experience

Purpose The post-COVID environment presents significant challenges for organizations. Unfortunately, many leaders and organizations are living in “post-pandemic.” Leaders must reframe their approaches to employee relationships and the nature of the workplace. Employee experience, which combines, user experience, design thinking and organizational development, provides a methodology and perspective that is needed to address these significant changes. The purpose of this paper is to readdress employee experience and how its approach challenges conventional approaches to human resources (HR) and employee engagement and demonstrate how it can serve as an indispensable tool for transitioning to the new workplace. Design/methodology/approach Employee experience has become ubiquitous in organizations, but unfortunately the underlying sources and philosophies that distinguish this approach are often neglected. This paper demonstrates the new, irreversible organizational world created by COVID-19, reviews the origins of the concept, reviews the six principles previously introduced and then explicates three philosophical paradigmatic shifts that must be undertaken to take advantage of employee experience and address the new organizational challenges. Findings Employee experience can serve as a strategic tool for addressing post-COVID-19 organizational challenges. Past ideas about engagement will not work. Three shifts deriving from employee experience’s roots in user experiences, design thinking and emergent organization development must be adopted. Instead of thinking structurally in which things are primary, leaders need to take a relational perspective which insists on relational primacy. Because experience is holistic and embodied, a phenomenological perspective must take the place of the usual behavioral perspective. Finally, leaders and HR must see the task ahead as a collaborative codesign with employees, insisting on radical participation. Research limitations/implications As with the medical challenges with the COVID-19 virus itself, the organizational challenges are new and have never been faced before. It is difficult to shift paradigms, challenge assumptions and redirect effort while maintaining operating organizations. Often, leaders and organizations are ill-equipped to address very novel situations from past experience and education. Much more research and practical implementations need to be conducted to continue to evolve the concept. Practical implications Organizations are facing many crises beyond the supply/demand economic issues caused by COVID-19. The social issues within the organizational world are often overlooked but having significant impact. Cultures have been attenuated and disrupted, employee expectations have changed and the remote job market has expanded opportunities for employment. As a result, retention, performance, loyalty and satisfaction have been negatively impacted. If organizations want to continue growth and productivity, they need to find new ways of working and operating. Social implications The nature of work, organization and employee/organization relationship is in transition. Because much of people’s lives are spent in the workplace, this shift has significant implications for relationships within and beyond the workplace. COVID-19 has also had an impact on mental health, life satisfaction and other aspects of the human experience. Experience in the workplace and outside the workplace are converging and impacting each other. The new reality cannot be ignored or denied. Originality/value Many organizations, leaders and HR practitioners are approaching the new reality with outdated and ineffective tools from the pre-COVID-19 world, tools that were questionably effective then. Reclaiming the revolutionary underpinnings of employee experience is a necessary but often neglected action.

Narrative and Material Tools of Resistance: Mobilizing Textile Crafts, Heritage, and Fashion in the Context of the Invasion of Ukraine (2022–2023)

In 2022–2024, textile and fashion scholars came together to write an anthology sharing a new vision of European history as seen through textiles, in the COST Action EuroWeb. During this period, the continent was still dealing with the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and was then faced with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Contemporary European history will be markedly defined by the ongoing war in Ukraine. One remarkable aspect of this conflict is the way textiles and dress appear daily in a variety of media outlets, mobilized as visual and semiotic means to communicate issues of war and national identity, especially by Ukraine. The first material embodiment signaling Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion is the national blue and yellow flag. As a color-coded textile marker, in Ukraine and internationally, the flag appears at rallies in support of the nation’s efforts to defend itself. Beyond the flag, this essay offers a critical reflection on how textiles and garments are used in times of conflict as narrative tools of self-identification, to enact and express a sense of cultural belonging and resistance. Throughout history, textiles and clothes have been “auxiliary materials for weaponry as well as for protection” in the context of war. In modern history, they are also integral components of a nation’s propaganda efforts toward the local population, as well as in diplomacy and international communication. For example, leaders of the Khmer Rouge dictatorial regime in Cambodia instituted an outfit, comprised of a black cotton garb inspired by farmers working in rice fields, a red and white krama scarf, and a Chinese-style cap, to convey ideas of a uniform peasant-driven Marxist society within and outside the country. Through our daily choice of clothing, we wear a tactile manifestation of identity and values, and global citizens sympathetic to either side of the conflict can physically and materially express their political views via clothing. Textile and fashion research commonly draws from museum collections, scholarly publications, and archaeological sources. This essay also engages with multi-modal forms of personal, public, and cultural expression, such as artworks, and garments, as well as podcast interviews, social media publications, and news pieces from commercial media outlets. This diversity of sources helps us to closely document how textiles and fashion have been showcased, discussed, and reclaimed in the recent political climate. They involve a range of actors, including craft communities, activists, civilians, political personalities, and heritage experts, which illuminate the many ways of negotiating Ukraine’s current situation. In this sense, this paper does not aim to provide a comprehensive overview of Ukrainian textile cultural heritage and history, or to assess its vast diversity of regional crafts. Our perspective is not essentialist or aiming to demonstrate direct links between today and the past; rather, we observe in this paper how ‘dressing the present’ is situated in and draws from multiple ideas of a textile past of Ukraine. We attempt to observe and document, nearly in real time, from February 2022 to mid-2023, the configuration and politics of textiles and fashion in the images of war shared in the media stream, and their significance to issues of cultural heritage, nationhood, and selfhood. Identifying these major textile phenomena, which have emerged during the war, reveals shifting, enduring, and conflicting narratives about Ukrainian cultural heritage and textile material culture. They are discussed in five interconnected sections: Zelenskyy’s attire of power and folklore, the vyshyvanka shirt’s rise to prominence, the revival of embroidery in individual women’s practice, resistance through community activism, and the necessity to preserve the archaeological and historical heritage of textiles in Ukraine in the face of destruction. In the case of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, dress has become a potent communication device in mass media, for Ukrainian people and in the international community. Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy, an experienced and effective communicator, initiated this movement by using his persona and changing his attire to embody the figure of a political leader actively engaged in the defense of his country’s freedom.

1964. Museos, visiones de historia y proyectos de nación

In this article, I propose to reflect on the concepts of legacy and historical and archaeological heritage in the history of Mexican museology since the 19th century. The way in which this heritage of the past was conceived determined the emergence of laws that later resulted in the current law (1972) and also caused the generation of an institutional dynamic that is particular to the Mexican environment and that is powerfully anchored in the nineteenth-century conceptions of what should be the representation of the "essence" of the nation. Likewise, I review the cycle of foundation and refoundation of national museums in 1964, where an idea of a common past that is not far from the romanticization of the pre-Hispanic past made during the previous centuries and that, at the same time, did nothing more than consoli-date a hegemonic and centralist idea of an ethnic group that, of course, could not represent all Mexicans.

Criar uma unidade africana através da história: a questão da origem dos antigos egípcios na historiografia pan-africanista de Cheikh Anta Diop

Este artigo aborda a proposta historiográfica de Cheikh Anta Diop (1923-1986) de cimentar a unidade africana por meio da construção ideacional de um passado comum, que remontaria ao Egito Antigo, e de um conjunto de fatores culturais que seriam partilhados pelas civilizações africanas existentes desde a Antiguidade até a contemporaneidade. Entre as fontes analisadas estão Origem dos antigos egípcios, texto apresentado por Diop em 1974 em colóquio da Unesco, e Nações negras e cultura, livro publicado em 1955. Em ambos estes trabalhos, Diop defende a tese de que os antigos egípcios eram negros. Exploraremos o contexto de produção da obra de Diop, fazendo referência ao ambiente intelectual em que formulou as suas ideias, à sua atuação política e à conjuntura internacional em que viveu. Discutiremos o impacto da sua obra e que inspiração podemos retirar dela, para além das críticas que também se podem fazer.

How can Europe and its industry transition to a more circular and sustainable society?

How can Europe and its industry transition to a more circular and sustainable society? Mattias Lindahl from Linköping University and Carl Dalhammar from Lund University explore how Europe and its industry can transition to a more circular and sustainable society. Society today focuses on doing things more efficiently. However, the starting point should instead always be what is the right (effective) thing to do – and to do that efficiently. Related to this, an industrial transition is necessary to shift to a more circular and sustainable society. The current situation results from past ideas on effective markets, legal concepts and cultures, business models, and thoughts on ownership and consumer culture.

Exploration of the Self in a Religious-Ethical Context from Late Antiquity through the Early Renaissance: St. Augustine, Boethius, and Petrarch - Past Ideas for our Future

There are many efforts to defend the Humanities against countless attacks by university administrators, the public, and, implicitly, even by students. In light of those problems, this article returns to three of the most important intellectuals in the history of western culture, St. Augustine, Boethius, and Francesco Petrarch, examining their respective fundamental dialogic narratives in which they probed their own self and discovered answers to the most critical questions in life. This paper suggests that we can profoundly promote the Humanities by returning to the bedrock of our discipline established by these three authors whose concepts about the self and its relationship with the transcendental being (the divine, Summum bonum, etc.) continue to offer central perspective also for the twenty-first century.

Store it in a Cool Place: Basements as Social Machines

This article discusses the role of basements in the settlement of relationships, allowing the possibility of editing of one’s own life and testing multiple sides of the self. Hence, it contests the accounts that present storing as a negatively coded process and basements as merely containers to be filled. After conducting ethnographic research in 37 cellars located in the liminal region of Eastern Estonia, I argue for the need to go beyond the understanding of storage spaces as passive repositories, and instead approach them as technologies of the meantime, with a relational impact and a future orientation. A basement allows us to keep old things and past ideas in the dark, for a while. In doing so, it facilitates the sorting of different relationships to people, places and events. Hence, one has to go down to understand how things upstairs fully are.

GREEN BOUGHS ON THE GRAVES: UNMOORING HERAT FROM IMPERIAL TIME

ABSTRACTThe aim of this article is to explore how popular historical knowledge disrupts the spacetimes produced by imperial power. To this end, I present my reading of a shrine guide that was composed by Asil al‐Din Waʿiz in 1460 and that documents the city of Herat's blessed dead. This work, the Maqsad al‐Iqbal, anchors Herat to space and time by both the graves of the city's myriad saints and the tales told about them locally. I investigate the ways in which the popular historical knowledge recorded in the Maqsad al‐Iqbal offers a counterpoint to the ideas of Herat's past that have been generated by dynastic chronicles, luxurious visual arts, and the grandeur of royal construction projects. I am interested not only in alternative historical visions themselves but in how nonelite productions of history resist easy adaptation into a hegemonic scheme and how the dead themselves are constantly at work in our narratives, breaking down every attempt at a singular, coherent past.

Idea crowdsourcing platforms for new product development: A study of idea quality and the number of submitted ideas

Organizational innovation communities for new product development (NPD) have become an integral part of organizations' strategy to find innovative ideas for new products with the help of their consumers. The success of these communities largely depends on users' idea submission and idea quality. While more ideas will increase the chance of finding novel ideas, more low-quality ideas will increase the costs of finding novel ideas. Although the idea crowdsourcing literature has grown significantly, it is relatively new and focused on idea crowdsourcing platforms for product improvement ideas where individuals submit ideas to fix software bugs or to request new features. By examining idea quality (measured by vote) and idea submission in idea crowdsourcing platforms for NPD, we aim to enrich our understanding of these contexts. Furthermore, we review the literature from two perspectives: individuals' own experiences (past performance) and the experiences of others (interaction with peers' ideas) and identify several key gaps in the literature. Using data from a pioneer innovation community for NPD, we find an inverted U-shape association between users' past performance (in terms of average quality of past ideas) and idea quality and idea submission. Additionally, interaction with peers' ideas (in terms of quantity and intensity) positively influences idea submission but does not impact idea quality. A complementary relationship between own experience and others' experiences was also not found. The findings provide new insights into idea crowdsourcing platforms for NPD and the determinants of individuals' idea submission behavior and idea quality on these platforms which have several implications for practice.

Трудовые интересы как ключевой фактор вовлеченности и эффективности работников образовательных технологий

Background. Work activity in a post-industrial digital society diYers fundamentally from our past ideas about work. Ze characteristics of this activity are changing just as rapidly, the motivation in employees of the information technology sphere, in particular. In this regard, the study of the role of labor interests, their relationship with the involvement and e[ciency of workers in this area remains an urgent problem. Objective. Ze research analyses the relationship between labor interests as a value-motivational, emotionally colored position of an employee, expressed in a practical attitude to work, and the organizational and job involvement and employee’s performance. Methods. To measure the level of employees’ involvement and their interest, an author’s questionnaire of 54 questions was compiled, including the scales of work and organizational involvement and the measurement of labor interests. Also, evaluation sheets to measure performance were developed in collaboration with the heads of the company in question. Zree groups of criteria were covered: qualitative, quantitative and temporal. Sample. Ze study involved personnel of an international company operating in the \eld of educational technologies in Russian and European markets. Ze survey involved respondents of various job levels from top management to specialists (N = 155, 48% women, 52% men), aged 18 to 36 years with work experience from 0.5 to 3 years. 60% of respondents have higher education, 40% of participants combine work and studies, reporting incomplete higher education. Results. Ze study results were veri\ed with the Spearman correlation analysis. Factors of organizational and work involvement, types of labor interests, as well as performance were subjected to veri\cation. Signi\cant correlations were found on almost all scales, which con\rmed the hypothesis that posited involvement of employees as being directly dependent on their interests. Career interests were signi\cantly associated with the qualitative criterion of performance at the level of p < 0.01. Referential interests also had a correlation with employees’ performance. It turned out that top managers of the company have the highest performance and involvement rates. Conclusion. From the obtained correlation of professional interests and work involvement, it follows that a person is more actively immersed in work when the professional interests are taken into account. Ze connection between corporate interests and organizational involvement was also con\rmed. It was found that organizational and job involvement are associated with such spheres of employees’ interest as group, career, professional, corporate and referential.

ВАМПИР КАК АГЕНТ ХРОНОПОЛИТИКИ СОВЕТСКОЙ НОСТАЛЬГИИ

the article is devoted to the consideration of the image of a vampire in modern popular culture in the context of chronopolitics, which constructs Soviet nostalgia. The authors consider the work of chronopolitics in relation to historical memory, which provides continuity between various collective memories existing within the framework of macronarratives. The theme of vampires in popular culture is a symbolic trend of popular culture, serving as a link between the past, present and future in alternative history projects, which successfully forms a picture of the world for virtual local communities. Thus, the image of a vampire can be considered an agent of chronopolitics, which today is mostly implemented in the format of nostalgia for the Soviet past. Nostalgia for the Soviet era reflects the constructed concept of historical memory of modern Russian society, in which there is a place not only for ideas about the real past, at least somehow consistent with historical reality, but also for various images of mass culture integrated into Russian history. The authors, using the example of the TV series “Food Unit” (2021), “Vampires of the Middle Lane” (2021-2022), “Karamora” (2022), show that despite the initial Western perception of the vampire as an image of mass culture, they organically fit into the ideas of the alternative Soviet past, acting as an agent of chronopolitics, keeper of historical memory and mediator between the past, present and future.

Designing Futures with Pasts

The impending climate catastrophe gives rise to an increased environmental awareness among many designers, who direct their work towards the paradigm of sustainability. While designing with an ‘ecological lens’ is necessarily oriented towards the future, we highlight the past as an inspiring realm to explore. Rather than recycling materials, we encourage the recycling of ideas as a combination of historiographic and speculative design methods. 
 We will present a framework that extends the idea of design as a ‘projecting’ activity into the idea of design as a constant negotiation process about the relevance and appropriateness of current and past technologies. Design revolves not just about what will be, but to a large extent about what should remain and what should recur, or as Jan Michl put it: “seeing design as redesign” (Michl 2002).We will illustrate the thought of designing futures with pasts by means of a research project that aims at developing a refrigerator for circular economy. The refrigerator – as the currently dominant technology to preserve food – will serve as a starting point to show how artefacts and architecture as well as human skills and knowledge in the preparation and preservation of food are historically interlinked. The history of food preservation unfolds not only along the evolution of the refrigerator, but encompasses household techniques like smoking, curing and fermenting, as well as long-forgotten architectural ‘answers’ such as deep-freeze community buildings. We will revisit three historical examples of food preservation and present the method ‘throwing’ past ideas into the future. 
 Three main arguments are presented in this richly illustrated paper: First, that historiography is a form of designing, second, that designing is constituted and influenced by path dependencies (cf. David 1985) that are deeply rooted in the past and third, that the past is a valuable source of inspiration when designing for sustainable development. Looking at history becomes a way of “mental window shopping” (Simon 1985, 188) for approaches that are to be reactivated and transformed.

Avenirs privatisés, contrôle du climat et résistance dans quelques dystopies écossaises récentes

This article addresses Scottish dystopian novels that move past ideas of the British state as Big Brother to envision future Scotlands encountering global problems of climate change and its exploitation by neoliberal regimes. After discussing Alasdair Gray’s 1982, Janine (1984) as an influential confrontation with the increasingly toxic military-industrial state of 1980s Britain, the essay interprets Matthew Fitt’s But n Ben A-Go-Go (2000), John Aberdein’s Strip the Willow (2009), and the multiple-author graphic novel IDP: 2043 (2014), edited by Denise Mina, as what Umberto Eco calls “novels of anticipation,” or warnings of the undesirable eventualities that present tendencies may bring about. The essay shows how these novels also anticipate recent critical perspectives on climate change and dystopia, particularly Amitav Ghosh’s call (2016) for fiction that confronts the potentially intractable effects of global weather events, and Tom Moylan’s advocacy (2020) of works that resist presenting dystopian spectacles for passive consumption and instead call upon readers for active, constructive interpretation.

Historical futures and future futures in environmental law pedagogy: exploring ‘futures literacy’

AbstractIn this paper, we begin reflecting on how ‘futures literacy’ – recently championed by UNESCO as a vital skill that allows people to better understand the role of the future in what they see and do – might be developed in environmental law pedagogy. Law and legal analysis tend to be absent from futures scholarship and we discuss various ways of engaging with environmental law as an important but underexplored site and means of future-making. We consider our shared teaching of an undergraduate module in which students examine historical legislation for what it says about past ideas of the environment's future and the action within the law necessary to safeguard it; and contemporary texts, including science fiction and poetry, imagining a future for the environment on and through which law operates. Futures literacy, we argue, is at its richest when ‘historical futures’ and ‘future futures’ are read together, or alongside one another.

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Higher Cognition: A Mechanical Perspective

Cognition is the acquisition of knowledge by the mechanical process of information flow in a system. In cognition, input is received by the sensory modalities and the output may occur as a motor or other response. The sensory information is internally transformed to a set of representations, which is the basis for downstream cognitive processing. This is in contrast to the traditional definition based on mental processes, a phenomenon of the mind that originates in past ideas of philosophy.

Medieval Scandinavian Studies—Whence, Whereto, Why

Medieval Scandinavian Studies started emerging as a discipline in the 19th century, at a time when Old Norse literature had become an important source both for the reconstruction of an alleged Germanic worldview, and the substantiation of national political claims. Scholars in the early 20th century consolidated this view, and thereby even coined public ideas of a Germanic past that became influential in the reception of the Middle Ages in general. To the present day, the popular fascination with these Middle Ages thus is strongly informed by Old Norse sources, and a wealth of recent adaptations seem to perpetuate this view. However, the same sources, as well as earlier scholarship, are used by extremist groups to substantiate populist and racist claims. Scholars in Medieval Scandinavian Studies find themselves at the intersection of these conflicting and yet connected spheres of appropriation. Their task to take a stance in this situation is all the more challenging as the international field struggles with cutbacks of budgets, study programs, and institutes. The present special issue seeks to bring together current opinions on this ambivalent state.

ARCHETYPAL BASIS OF POLITICAL MYTH: LITERARY TRADITION AND MODERNITY

The article examined the features of the archetypal foundations of the political myth, defined the functions of the myth, outlined the ways of its transmission and conceptualization in modern society, ñonsidering the manipulative effects of hidden ideological influence. Based on the analysis of the works of C. G. Jung, J. Durand, M. Eliade, R. Barthes, E. Cassirer, N. Frye and others the content components and features of the political myth are specified. The author of the article emphasizes the narrative and temporal essence of the political myth. It sets the symbolic constructs of self-determination of the community in political time and space, and also forms an idea of the glorious past, the actual (usually crisis) present and the desired idealized future. Accordingly, the political myth is viewed as a dynamic form of the narrative organization of political space and time, setting meaningful meanings and guidelines for the development of a community, also providing a connection between generations. The types of political myth are, first of all, heroic myths (represented by actual archetypal images) and genealogical myths (about the origins of the community, which usually legitimize the connection with the territory and the right to independent statehood). The evolutionary, typological and myth-making approaches to the analysis of the relationship between myth and literature are analysed. It has been proven that modern political myth conceptualizes reality through narratives and discourses, and literature is one of the most important translators of mythological information. It is noted that by filling mythological plots with socio-political content, history itself is mythologized, reconstructing historical memory. Moreover, literary heroes remain in the collective consciousness «living» witnesses of the epochs.The deep motives of narrative mythological oppositions and Trinitarian structures, actualized in modern images, are revealed. Archetypes are understood as energy sources for the formation of the subject content of a political myth, which is structured around a number of binary oppositions (Good – Evil, Life – Death, We (ours) – They (others)), and the cyclical nature of trinitarian structures of procedural implementation (origin – disappearance – preservation (revival)). The transformations of traditional mythological plots and archetypal images in the modern political branding are investigated.

EPISTĒMĒ VS SCIENCE

Is “science” the corresponding concept of its Greek progenitor, epistēmē? Traditionally, they were thought of as identical concepts. They are not, in more than one way, and the reader is called to evaluate them not based on their chronological order but on the specific systemic characteristics presented here. The crucial difference between the epistemonic (from epistēmē) method and the scientific method will also be presented. One of the main differences that will be discussed is related to logic, both as a concept and as a theory. What the authors present here is by no means a synthesis of past ideas; we do acknowledge that some similar ideas might have appeared in the past but never in the form presented here or within the system proposed in what follows. This work is not about who did not say whatever we propose or who might have some similar thoughts within some irrelevant context. All ideas here stem from original work done solely by us and the ensuing system is unique and of utmost important being also an external critique – the only truly external critique – to the institution of modern science and to the grave inconsistencies “scientists” cannot (for whatever reason) notice in it anymore.

Memory, Trauma, and Religious Identity

The so-called ‘memorial turn’ triggered a huge shift in historical studies of the late 20th century. It brought into focus stories of the ‘small people’ previously left out from the ‘grand narrative.’ For post-Soviet countries, the memorial turn can be perceived as an indicator of changes in society associated with the opportunity and interest of previously oppressed social groups and religious movements in finding their "roots," when the reconstruction of personal history becomes the history of the church and strengthens collective identity. In this essay, we attempted at reconstructing the traumatic history of the "little" people in the context of the history of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Our main source was Pavlo Derevinsky's memoir treatise, where he gave an account of his father's life and of the persecutions he experienced. The author of the treatise goes beyond the narration of the story of one person and appeals to the idea of a common past, creates important prerequisites for strengthening collective identity. The memoirs, too, provide an opportunity to look differently at the problem of religious and collective identity, often viewed, as limited to the preservation of traditions, religious symbolism, dogma, norms, or teachings. The memoirs, however, became an important tool for creating a collective identity based on a common traumatic story, which, due to the author's constant parallels between the past and the present, created a special feeling of community. Thus, belonging to common history, gives, too, an awareness of belonging to a certain group, nation, and country.