Pre-existing Organization Research Articles

Paving the way for new regional industrial paths: actors and modes of change in Scania’s games industry

ABSTRACTRecent scholarly work has enhanced our understanding of how new path development activities are enabled or constrained by ‘regional environments’, made up of pre-existing industrial structures, knowledge organizations, support structures and institutional configurations. This paper moves beyond overly static views on regional environments. We develop a dynamic perspective by analysing conceptually and empirically how a constraining environment can be transformed into one that enables the development of new growth paths. The paper offers a typology of various modes of change, including layering, adaptation and novel application that are used by key actors to ‘manipulate’ the regional support structures to facilitate new regional industrial path development. The conceptual framework is applied to a case study of the digital games industry in the region of Scania, southern Sweden. Our findings suggest that the creation of a more enabling environment for the growth of the digital games industry has been the outcome of multi-scalar processes and combinations of various modes of change employed by a few key individuals operating in the newly emerging path.

Examining the Link between Popular Participation and Successful Political Resistance

Recent work on campaigns of civil resistance posits a causal link between nonviolence and campaign success mediated by levels of popular participation. Formal causal mediation analysis reveals a robust null effect along this causal pathway. A separate, instrumental variables analysis of the unconditional average effect of participation on nonviolent resistance movements’ likelihood of victory casts further doubt on the notion that larger campaigns strictly outperform smaller ones. However, where resistance is led by a pre-existing socio-economic or political organization – such as a trade union, a religious community, or a political party or front – greater popular participation does appear to be beneficial.

Evidence for the value of health promotion interventions in natural disaster management.

A rapid review of literature was conducted to identify effective health promotion (HP) intervention strategies that relate to the management of disasters from natural hazards, including prevention, preparedness, response and recovery measures. Searches were conducted in formal literature from 2000 to 2011 and then updated to 2013. Out of 719 relevant abstracts, 57 studies were selected for more detailed review. In total, 16 studies were annotated for the narrative synthesis; these articles all reported an outcome-oriented evaluation of an HP-related intervention in a natural disaster situation in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) or vulnerable populations in high-income countries (HIC). These 16 studies were also assessed for quality of their evaluation design. Although it was not possible to select only strong study designs, LMIC weak designs were matched with stronger designs in HIC most of the time. A narrative synthesis was conducted to report the results. In the preparedness and mitigation stages, there were six articles referring to four HP strategies. In the response and recovery phases, there were 10 articles referring to an additional four HP strategies. HP plays a role in regaining a sense of control after disaster through: engaging victims of disaster in group decisions (including children), collaboration and networking, recognition of local strengths and assets, conducting community needs assessments, respecting local knowledge, training local resources as part of an ongoing system and use of pre-existing community focal points or organizations as trusted locations for community services and reconnections.

Looking North of Vienna: The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe as a Facilitator of Arctic Security

Though the Arctic is known as a region of peace, military activity and militarization continue to influence it. The literature on Arctic security asserts that no international organization exists that can deal with military issues in the region. This article challenges this assertion by arguing that the osce is the perfect organization to coordinate Arctic security because of its initial purpose of facilitating nato-Russia relations in Europe, which is precisely the same relationship that requires coordination in the Arctic today. Given that all eight Arctic states are members, the osce is almost a pre-existing security organization for the Arctic. The article examines the security environment in the Arctic, the current institutional regime and the origins of the osce. Furthermore, it explores osce csbms as empirical examples of how the osce already builds military predictability in the Arctic.

Tana Johnson. Organizational Progeny. Why Governments are Losing Control over the Proliferating Structures of Global Governance

According to mainstream functionalist theories of international law and relations, international organizations are vehicles of states, tied to their masters by meticulous legal instructions. As Jan Klabbers recently pointed out in this journal, functionalism was based on the idea of establishing peace by channelling international relations into the purportedly technical, a-political realm of international organizations. Research of the last couple of decades has profoundly rebutted the assumption that international organizations are a-political. They have been discovered, among others, to serve as platforms for the formation of epistemic communities, as agorae for political deliberation and contestation or to use their bureaucratic potential and the flexibility of their mandates to establish a degree of independence from their principals. The book by Tana Johnson, professor of political science at Duke University, adds another important perspective that has not been explored so far. She turns our attention to the fact that institutional design might matter for the international organization's independence from member states. As chief witness for her thesis, she summons the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Originally a brainchild of the US government, it is today a fairly independent institution fallen from grace with its master. Johnson argues that it owes its independence to the influence of international bureaucracies - that is, staff of other international organizations, upon the process that led to its establishment. The thesis puts the spotlight on the fact that a majority of new international organizations that saw the light of the day during the last decades was fostered by pre-existing international organizations (at 8). In elaborating this argument, Johnson rigorously applies state-of-the-art research methods in political science. For international lawyers, her book resembles a methodological showcase, offering them an easily accessible grasp of the methodological potency of their neighbouring discipline.

Electronic Health Record for Intensive Care based on Usual Windows Based Software.

Background and objectives:In Intensive Care Units, the amount of data to be processed for patients care, the turn over of the patients, the necessity for reliability and for review processes indicate the use of Patient Data Management Systems (PDMS) and electronic health records (EHR). To respond to the needs of an Intensive Care Unit and not to be locked with proprietary software, we developed an EHR based on usual software and components.Methods:The software was designed as a client–server architecture running on the Windows operating system and powered by the access data base system. The client software was developed using Visual Basic interface library. The application offers to the users the following functions: medical notes captures, observations and treatments, nursing charts with administration of medications, scoring systems for classification, and possibilities to encode medical activities for billing processes.Results:Since his deployment in September 2004, the EHR was used to care more than five thousands patients with the expected software reliability and facilitated data management and review processes. Communications with other medical software were not developed from the start, and are realized by the use of basic functionalities communication engine. Further upgrade of the system will include multi-platform support, use of typed language with static analysis, and configurable interface.Conclusion:The developed system based on usual software components was able to respond to the medical needs of the local ICU environment. The use of Windows for development allowed us to customize the software to the preexisting organization and contributed to the acceptability of the whole system.

Everything Old is New Again?

The transition to a cast iron industry was essential to the development of ancient China. Previous studies, however, did not address precisely how this process occurred and how the preexisting bronze industry could have served as the foundation for the transition. This paper develops a framework focusing on three parameters—techniques, assemblages of final products, and production organization—to investigate the mechanism of the transition to cast iron. Results of two case studies indicate that the three parameters do not demonstrate dramatic changes between the two industries. Also, cast iron and bronze foundry workers were not segregated; they often worked side by side at the same foundry. Very likely, the cast iron foundry workers adopted and adjusted the original bronze production techniques and, consequently, maintained the preexisting organization. This study illustrates how cast iron manufacturing developed based on the indigenous bronze production in the Central Plains of China, and aims more broadly to contribute to the discussion of technological transitions in archaeological contexts.

Formation of Microvascular Networks: Role of Stromal Interactions Directing Angiogenic Growth

In the adult, angiogenesis leads to an expanded microvascular network as new vessel segments are added to an existing microcirculation. Necessarily, growing neovessels must navigate through tissue stroma as they locate and grow toward other vessel elements. We have a growing body of evidence demonstrating that angiogenic neovessels reciprocally interact with the interstitial matrix of the stroma resulting in directed neovascular growth during angiogenesis. Given the compliance and the viscoelastic properties of collagen, neovessel guidance by the stroma is likely due to compressive strain transverse to the direction of primary tensile forces present during active tissue deformation. Similar stromal strains control the final network topology of the new microcirculation, including the distribution of arterioles, capillaries, and venules. In this case, stromal-derived stimuli must be present during the post-angiogenesis remodeling and maturation phases of neovascularization to have this effect. Interestingly, the preexisting organization of vessels prior to the start of angiogenesis has no lasting influence on the final, new network architecture. Combined, the evidence describes interplay between angiogenic neovessels and stroma that is important in directed neovessel growth and invasion. This dynamic is also likely a mechanism by which global tissue forces influence vascular form and function.

Assessing and strengthening internal alignment of new marketing units: An interpretative tool

Business-to-business (B2B) marketing is a complex field requiring companies to put in place organizational units that are able to handle multifaceted interaction processes at the customer interface. Moreover, B2B marketing is characterized by high levels of technological, institutional etc. change. As a consequence, and in order to adapt to new market conditions, companies create new organizational units to take over tasks such as key account management, category management or social media management. These new units are developed within the pre-existing organization. Typically, these new units also display a high degree of cross-functionality since their activities are interdependent with the activities of other units. Hence, the question of alignment is of major importance. In this conceptual paper, we provide a framework for both scholarly research and managerial application. It is based on the concept of frame alignment and offers a lens allowing analyzing internal aligning processes for new B2B marketing units.

Liberation Theology: The Radicalization of Social Catholic Movements

This article argues that pre-existing networks and organizations were crucial to the development of liberation theology in Latin America. Drawing on concepts from social movement theory, I demonstrate that in the early and mid-twentieth century, the Catholic Churches in Brazil and Chile had favorable political opportunities, organizational resources, and insurgent consciousness which facilitated the rise of liberationist movements and organizations in both countries. For the case of Chile, data is drawn from forty interviews with Chilean activists and representatives of the Church with ties to social Catholic movements of the 1950s and 1960s. The article makes two contributions to the literature on liberation theology: (1) by placing lay activists at the center of analysis it offers a corrective to research which emphasizes the role of Church elites in the emergence of liberation theology; and (2) it demonstrates the importance of pre-existing networks and organizations for movement emergence. The article closes by examining the long-term consequences of activism and suggests directions for future research.

「テーマ型」地域活動において既存組織が形成する社会ネットワークの可視化

「テーマ型」地域活動において既存組織が形成する社会ネットワークの可視化

How gender hierarchies matter in youth activism: young people's mobilizing around sexual health in Ecuador and Peru

Despite a growing body of research on youth activism, few studies examine how this intersects with gender. Our study aimed to explore whether and how young activists themselves perceived gender hierarchies as needing to be addressed through their collective action on sexual health in Peru and Ecuador. Using Grounded Theory (GT), qualitative data were collected and analyzed from young activists across four cases. Cases ranged in complexity from a single youth organization operating at the district level to numerous youth organizations articulating at the national level. We linked the GT analysis to a conceptual framework based on contemporary theorizing of gender and social movements. Accordingly, young activists perceived gender, and even class, ‘race’ and age, as salient to their collective actions. These actions corresponded to the social movement concept of mobilizing structures that consist of preexisting structures, tactics, and organizations. Young activists understood gender and other social categories as imbued by power differentials and, therefore, as social hierarchies, within which their activism was embedded. The study thereby demonstrates the need for an enhanced conceptual framework for the study of youth activism and its intersection with gender hierarchies.

The influence of categorical organization on verbal working memory

The aim of this study was to show the positive effects of categorical organization on verbal working memory (WM), in a modified version of a double task, such as the Listening Span Test (LST) (Daneman & Carpenter, 1980). Two experiments were performed comparing sentences with the typical definitional format (i.e., superordinate term, copula, and specification) to sentences simply describing objects or events. The results of the two experiments, with participants from children aged 6 to adults, revealed that word recall was better in Categorical sentences than in Descriptive sentences and are interpreted in terms of retrieval facilitation, due to pre-existing organization in semantic memory, at least from the age of 8 onwards. Recall performance was also better with sentences giving True statements than those giving False statements. Furthermore, Categorical False sentences are more effective in enhancing recall than Descriptive False sentences since they violate well-established semantic expectations. Such variables were also found to act among participants with a lower WM span, by this confirming that pre-existing organized information may compensate for less efficient WM.

Triton X-100 promotes a cholesterol-dependent condensation of the plasma membrane

The molecular components of membrane rafts are frequently defined by their biochemical partitioning into detergent-resistant membranes. In the present study, we used a combination of epifluorescence and two-photon microscopy to visualize and quantify whether this insolubility in detergent reflects a pre-existing organization of the PM (plasma membrane). We found that the treatment of cells with cold TX (Triton X-100) promotes a profound remodelling of the PM, including a rapid rearrangement of the glycosphingolipid GM1 and cholesterol into newly formed structures, only partial solubilization of fluid domains and the formation of condensed domains that cover 51% of the remaining membrane. TX does not appear to induce the coalescence of pre-existing domains; instead, the domains that remain after TX treatment seem to be newly formed with a higher degree of condensation than those observed in native membranes. However, when cholesterol was complexed physically by treatment with a second detergent, such as saponin, cholesterol did not separate into the newly formed structures, condensation of the domains was unaltered, and the relative area corresponding to ordered domains increased to occupy 62% of the remaining membrane. Our results suggest that detergent can be used to enrich ordered domains for biochemical analysis, but that TX treatment alone substantially alters the lateral organization of the PM.

Informal actors and institutions in mobilization: the periphery in the ‘Tulip Revolution’

Mobilization in the south of Kyrgyzstan immediately prior to and during the March events was, it is argued here, a very complex process. Using a framework of incentives, the author illustrates that people were encouraged to protest through a mix of purposive, material and solidarity incentives, and that within this mix, grievances often occupied a secondary place. The following elements are highlighted in the run-up to mobilization in the south: conjuncture; patronage networks based on traditional solidarity (tooganchilik); and pre-existing organizations and institutions, such as the institutions of the aksakal (elder), kurultai (assembly) and palvan (wrestler).

Open source electronic health record and patient data management system for intensive care.

In Intensive Care Units, the amount of data to be processed for patients care, the turn over of the patients, the necessity for reliability and for review processes indicate the use of Patient Data Management Systems (PDMS) and electronic health records (EHR). To respond to the needs of an Intensive Care Unit and not to be locked with proprietary software, we developed a PDMS and EHR based on open source software and components. The software was designed as a client-server architecture running on the Linux operating system and powered by the PostgreSQL data base system. The client software was developed in C using GTK interface library. The application offers to the users the following functions: medical notes captures, observations and treatments, nursing charts with administration of medications, scoring systems for classification, and possibilities to encode medical activities for billing processes. Since his deployment in February 2004, the PDMS was used to care more than three thousands patients with the expected software reliability and facilitated data management and review processes. Communications with other medical software were not developed from the start, and are realized by the use of the Mirth HL7 communication engine. Further upgrade of the system will include multi-platform support, use of typed language with static analysis, and configurable interface. The developed system based on open source software components was able to respond to the medical needs of the local ICU environment. The use of OSS for development allowed us to customize the software to the preexisting organization and contributed to the acceptability of the whole system.

Directed forgetting of recently recalled autobiographical memories.

In 6 experiments, the authors investigated list-method directed forgetting of recently recalled autobiographical memories. Reliable directed forgetting effects were observed across all experiments. In 4 experiments, the authors examined the impact of memory valence on directed forgetting. The forget instruction impaired recall of negative, positive, and neutral memories equally, although overall, participants recalled fewer unemotional memories than emotional memories. The preexisting organization of memories enhanced the directed forgetting effect, and a release from forgetting occurred only when the forgotten memories were directly cued. The authors discuss the roles of emotion, retrieval dynamics, and organization in these effects and suggest that the directed forgetting of recently recalled autobiographical memories may reflect the inhibition of recently formed memories of remembering, that is, episodic inhibition. The authors consider the implications of these findings for the control of autobiographical remembering in everyday life.

Constructing Pentecostalism: On Issues Of Methodology And Representation

Pentecostalism may be broadly or narrowly defined though, for practical purposes, a broad understanding is preferable. Questions about the origins of Pentecostalism have long been debated: did it spread out to the rest of the world from the USA or were its origins more diffuse? Historiographical problems occur in any account and a solution to these is to see Pentecostalism as a missionary movement, or at least deriving one of its roots from pre-existing missionary organisations and activities. After its establishment and the failure of early hopes, Pentecostalism re-thought itself and subsequent historical analysis needs to take account of the various categories of networks by which it is expressed; indeed it is the proposal of this paper that Pentecostalism may be defined by reference to the historical and contemporary networks to which its adherents belong. Indigenous Pentecostal churches (those not directly connected with western Pentecostal denominations) are not always free of western influence, and this makes the theological analysis complex.

Hardt and Negri's Empire and the ‘Multitude’ in the Argentinazo of December 20011

In their book Empire, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri argue that world capitalism has entered a new stage of development. Empire has transcended imperialism as the locus of capital, and is opposed by a Multitude that is different from, and has greater potential for change, than pre-existing class organisations and alliances.2 More recently, Negri and Cocco claim that their theory can explain the popular uprising in Argentina in December 2001. They state that the Multitude is ‘walking on two legs’; the ‘movements of movements’ represented by the World Social Forum, and the Argentinazo of December 2001. When the popular uprising burst on the scene in December 2001 it became the first clear expression of the Multitude against the Empire. The Multitude came out on the streets on 19 and 20 December, uniting the middle class, workers and unemployed across class lines as an opposition to Empire:

From Science to Multiculturalism: Postmodern Trends in Environmental Organizations

Postmodern social theory has had little impact on studies of global environmental activism and politics, and has often been treated with suspicion. Yet, in this article, I argue that social science theories of both postmodernization and cultural modernization can provide insights into how globalizing processes have affected environmental politics. Where current perspectives on globalization and environmental politics tend to focus on globalization's homogenizing effects, postmodernization arguments suggest that globalization and postmodern social trends have given rise to hybrid, multicultural politics. In the environmental realm, these trends have challenged environmentalists whose claims are based on science and encouraged hybrid forms of environmental activism linking ecological issues to issues of race, ethnicity, religion, and gender. To explore these shifts in environmental politics worldwide, I examine two categories of nonprofit environmental organizations: environmental science organizations and multicultural environmental organizations. Results of an event count analysis show that, for nations, public education predicts the establishment of environmental science organizations. Multicultural environmental organizations were established later, in the 1980s and onward, and tended to be established in countries with preexisting environmental science organizations. I argue that social science theories of cultural modernization and postmodernization can best explain these patterns.