Subjective Dimensions Research Articles

Exploring the key drivers of inter-organizational knowledge transfer in projects: evidence from international construction projects

PurposeDespite the knowledge transfer in project contexts which has been extensively studied by scholars, the study on inter-organizational knowledge transfer in international construction projects is still scattered and unsystematic. This research aims to explore the key factors influencing inter-organizational knowledge transfer of international construction projects and analyze how these factors interact to create a synthetic framework that enhances the effectiveness of knowledge transfer (EKT).Design/methodology/approachAt first, eight factors influencing inter-organizational knowledge transfer within international construction projects were identified, which were from the four dimensions of subject, relationship, channel and context, namely cultural distance, connection strength, organizational climate, intercultural competence, information technology capability, transmit willingness, receive willingness and richness of transfer channels. Then, a conceptual model was developed and 13 hypotheses were formulated, which were derived from a literature review and in-depth survey. After that, data from 353 respondents were collected and analyzed, and the hypotheses were tested by structural equation modeling analysis and bootstrapping test.FindingsThe results suggest that cultural distance hinders transfer willingness, which further affects EKT. Connection strength affects EKT by positively influencing transfer willingness and channel. Besides, organizational climate and intercultural competence positively influence transfer willingness and further affect EKT, while information technology capability affects the richness of transfer channels.Originality/valueThis research gives a thorough examination of the determinants influencing inter-organizational knowledge transfer of international construction projects, thus formulating available approaches that project managers and personnel can employ to effectively facilitate EKT.

Toward a conceptualization of the musical self: A theoretical-methodological approach to subjectivity in independent musicians

The objective of this study is to advance a theoretical and methodological proposal for the analysis of subjectivity construction in independent musicians. Existing social and cultural theories of subjectivity have not satisfactorily addressed the artistic experience of musicians. We present an analytic model that highlights the place of language from a perspective informed by dialogical theories and which also incorporates the aesthetic dimension of subjectivity in the occupational field. By analyzing six narrative interviews, we offer a qualitative insight into how independent musicians subjectively experience their musical activity. We constructed dialogical dimensions associated with four subjective movements in the interviewees’ discourse: aesthetic, activity, authorship, and reflectivity. Our findings about the configuration of musical subjectivity yielded three core points of articulation: musical self, existential self, and musical-occupational self. The musical self emerges as a particular subjective configuration, since creative activity represents a point of vital and occupational grounding where the boundaries between work and subjective experience appear to fade. Employing the aesthetic dimension of subjectivity made it possible to add complexity to the articulation and integration of various subjective elements of a psychological and social nature that have traditionally been studied in isolation.

International and internal migration and the subjective wellbeing of wives left behind in Ghana

AbstractHusbands' labour migration has ramifications for significant family members, particularly wives left behind. However, limited studies have been conducted to examine the impacts of husbands' migration on women left behind married to international and internal migrants. Drawing on a purposive sampling survey of 298 Ghanaian women (international = 129 and internal = 169) in the Volta Region, we assessed their subjective wellbeing using three dimensions: self‐reported health, self‐reported satisfaction with life, and self‐reported happiness. The results from t‐tests show that on average, international women left behind have higher perceived health (3.72), perceived happiness (3.82) and satisfaction with life (3.19). Results from the multivariable binary logistic regression analyses reveal that while no variables predict self‐reported health for international women left behind, high frequency of communication is statistically associated with internal women left behind self‐assessed health. International women left behind who lived in nuclear households and internal women left behind who reported high wealth quintiles were both statistically associated with satisfaction with life, respectively. While demographic factors (age and duration of marriage) were significant predictors of happiness for international women left behind, neighbourhood type and frequency of communication predicted happiness for internal women left behind. The differences in variables predicting each of the subjective wellbeing dimensions demonstrate the concept's multidimensionality. It also highlights factors influencing subjective wellbeing outcomes of women left behind are not solely due to their husbands' migration. The policy implications of this study are highlighted.

On the Use of the Interpretive Approach in Qualitative Research: An Empirical Example

This paper presents a method of analysis and interpretation of the narrative data, based upon a study on experiencing warmth in the relationship between sisters, one of whom is a person with Down syndrome. The aim of the study was to describe and understand the meaning of the experiences in a sisterly relationship. Females aged 12–30 years, in four sibling groups, took part in the research. Two narrative interviews were conducted with each participant. The Family Relations Test (FRT), observational data, and a questionnaire for the parents on the sibling relationship were also used. The article describes in detail the data from one dyad. The results indicate that warmth is most often manifested through tenderness and closeness, and experiencing warmth is fostered by spending quality time together and enjoying it. The presence of the subject dimension—experiencing oneself as a person who is valued and close to the sister and the ability to decide—is also important. The high quality of the relationship is related to perceiving the sister with intellectual disabilities as an entity pursuing her aspirations rather than a person in need of protection and care. Simplicity of experiences, sincerity in communication, and simple language indicate attunement between the sisters. The results of this study supplement the outlook with the perspective of a person with a disability and the positive aspects of the relationship. This could have been difficult to obtain using quantitative methods.

Academic Displacement and the Multi-Dimensional Life of Migration Categories: Insights from Global South Migration

This article proposes academic displacement as a lens to analyse interconnections between skilled and forced migration, and discusses the policy, work and subjective dimensions of the phenomenon. The analysis suggests that policy construction of academic displacement is framed around a temporal oxymoron between short-term emergency intervention and long-term expectations around ‘rescued’ scholars’ capacity to engage in scientific excellence. It also rests on an individualistic interpretation of academic freedom. Differently, displaced scholars reassert the importance of the communitarian dimension of academic freedom. Being represented as exceptional/temporary guests risks bordering them from both their home academic community and their European ‘host’.

“She” power: role transition and self-empowerment of women in rural tourism

It is widely believed that participation in tourism empowers women, particularly by providing direct employment and income generation. However, this perspective frequently overlooks women’s agency and self-actualization. This study examines the Tingsong Cultural Community (TCC) in northeast China, integrating self-empowerment with role theory to focus on female participation in tourism. Utilizing multiple data collection strategies, both primary and secondary data were gathered between July 2019 and December 2022. Through inductive thematic analysis, the research unpacks the role transitions of Chinese rural women within tourism practices and the dynamics of self-empowerment. The findings reveal that: (1) role transition is a dynamic process involving exploration, identification, and obligation, marked by an enhanced sense of self-empowerment; (2) self-empowerment arises from awareness and interaction, benefiting from economic, cultural, and subjective dimensions; and (3) external support is essential for empowerment, ideally starting with vulnerable individuals to allow self-empowerment to develop organically. This study refines the concepts of role theory and self-empowerment while establishing the relationship between rural women’s role transitions and self-empowerment, contributing to existing knowledge. The practical implications related to external investment, endogenous development, and digital engagement are insightful for the sustainability of similar destinations.

Engaging with discursive complexities in mental health accessibility: Implications for acquired brain injury.

The psychosocial needs of people with acquired brain injury (ABI) have been neglected based on ableist assumptions of incapability to participate in mental health treatment. Although people without disabilities benefit from evidence-based mental health supports, these treatments remain inaccessible for those with disabilities after ABI. Discursive simplifications used in dominant conceptualisations of health and disability may maintain this inaccessibility. This paper examines the role of discursive constraints in concealing the complexities of ABI recovery, undermining the gradients of mental health exclusion among different ABI subpopulations, and muddying possibilities for enhancing mental health accessibility. An alternate discourse that challenges disabling societies in service of centring the whole person is proposed. Discursive opportunities are thus created by conceptualising the objective and subjective dimensions of disability as intermeshed, providing both the motivation to incentivise mental health inclusion, as well as a method to achieve it. By recognising the unavoidable impact of bodily impairments on social participation, participatory ideals can be actualised by accommodating ABI-related disabilities in mental health treatments. The possibilities for transformative research and practice are illuminated through examples of mental health treatments that have been preliminarily adapted using accommodations, and a research agenda for realising these possibilities is proposed.

Echoes of Player Experience: A Literature Review on Audio Assessment and Player Experience in Games

Player Experience (PX) in video games is a multifaceted construct encompassing affective, perceived, and subjective dimensions. While extensively explored in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and games user research studies, the practical evaluation of PX, especially concerning audio elements, remains challenging. This paper presents a Literature Review (LR) (n=26), which addresses the gap in the literature related to audio in PX evaluation, unveiling trends and issues. We used Creswell's methodology for LR, exploring three major research questions that investigate the approaches, instruments, and methodologies used to evaluate audio in digital games, the constructs of player experience related to audio assessment, and the challenges faced by researchers in this context. Our findings underscores challenges in the generalization of study outcomes, audio personalization and variation and audio-games evaluation. This work strives to bridge the gap between research and practice, fostering a deeper understanding of the intricate relationship between audio and PX in games.

Deficient salience and default mode functional integration in high worry-proneness subject: a connectome-wide association study.

Worry has been conceptualized as a relatively uncontrollable chain of thought that increases the risk of mental problems, such as anxiety disorders. Here, we examined the link between individual variation in the functional connectome and worry proneness, which remains unclear. A total of 32 high worry-proneness (HWP) subjects and 25 low worry-proneness (LWP) subjects were recruited. We conducted multivariate distance-based matrix regression to identify phenotypic relationships in high-dimensional brain resting-state functional connectivity data from HWP subjects. Multiple hub regions, including key brain nodes of the salience network (SN) and default mode network (DMN), were identified in HWP subjects. Follow-up analyses revealed that a high worry-proneness score was dominated by functional connectivity between the SN and the DMN. Moreover, HWP subjects showed hypoconnectivity between the cerebellum and the SN and DMN compared with LWP subjects. This cross-sectional study could not fully measure the causal relationships between changes in functional networks and worry proneness in healthy subjects. Functional changes in the cerebellum-cortical region might affect the modulation of external stimuli processing. Together, our results provide new insight into the role of key networks, including the SN, DMN and cerebellum, in understanding the potential mechanism underlying the high worry dimension in healthy subjects.

Beyond pain privacy and pain meters: a new vision for pain biomarkers.

To an individual, pain is unambiguously real. To a caregiver, assessing pain in others is a challenging process shrouded in doubt. To explain this challenge, many assume that pain "belongs" exclusively to the bearer of that experience and accept the dogma that pain is private. However, privacy also entails that it is not possible to identify, share, or communicate that experience with others. Obviously, this is not true and the consequences of pain privacy would be devastating for healthcare. Pain is indeed unique and subjective, but not necessarily private. Pain is in fact readily communicable, though perhaps not as effectively and reliably as caregivers would like. On the other hand, healthcare systems mandate objective metrics in pain diagnosis. Smiley face caricatures are a staple of clinical practice and a universal standard for reporting pain levels. These conditions create a double paradox: Assess a private experience that is inaccessible, and use numerical scales to measure subjective attributes. Navigating this stressful environment, medical professionals experience intellectual dissonance, patients are frustrated, and value-based care is undermined. Offering a way out, first, we refute the privacy and objectification of pain citing philosophical, behavioral, and neuroscientific arguments. We discuss Wittgensteinian views against privacy, explore the clear evolutionary advantage of communicating pain to others, and identify neural circuits in the mammalian brain that contribute to empathy. Second, we highlight the subjectivity of pain, embracing the complexity and uniqueness of an individual's pain. We also provide compelling evidence for brain mechanisms that actively shape the pain experience according to predictive coding principles. Third, we offer a vision for the development of biomarker technologies that assess pain fairly without engendering bias against the patient's narrative. Our recommendations are based on the overwhelming appreciation that "medicine by emoji" is inadequate for capturing the multidimensional nature of pain. Our view is that the most promising candidates for pain biomarkers consist of self-reports as ground truth augmented by physiological signatures of biological relevance to pain. Integration of subjective and objective multimodal features will be key for the development of comprehensive pain assessment models.

Primary school students’ ratings of teaching – do they differentiate between subjects and teachers?

ABSTRACT Our study aims to provide empirical evidence for and against the valid use of primary school students’ ratings of three generic dimensions of teaching quality (classroom management, supportive climate, cognitive activation). We examine whether students discriminate between corresponding dimensions in different subjects, taking into account whether these subjects are taught by the same or different teachers. Using data from the German Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study 2015 assessment of 3,853 fourth graders (M age = 8.8 years, 195 classes), we conduct multilevel-multigroup confirmatory factor analysis. The results suggest that students only differentiate between subjects when taught by different teachers. The findings also imply that valid inferences from student assessments may be affected by students’ experiences with multiple teachers.

The Subjective Dimension of a Journalist’s Professional Culture

The article is devoted to the professional culture of modern journalists as a dynamic phenomenon that has become the subject of discussion in the media employees’ corporation and the academic community. In this regard, the authors review the contradictory experts’ opinions on the future of the world and domestic press. The originality of the presented research is that the issues are considered from the journalists’ subjective point of view. For this purpose, the special technique of semi-structured in-depth interviews with acting editorial workers was developed as a part of a comprehensive research project “Professional Ideology of Journalism” organized by the Department of Theory of Journalism and Mass Communications of St. Petersburg State University. The results of the performed procedures are described in the article. Hypothetically, the authors assumed that, in a subjective dimension, the existing knowledge on the professional culture of a journalist and, in particular, the normative ideas on it would be noticeably corrected. Accordingly, the purpose of the study is to identify the real diversity of journalists’ subjective views on the profession and their position in it, as far as this is achievable within the framework of a particular research project. The analysis of the interview materials showed that the ideas and skills of media employees are formed without the direct infl uence of standards adopted in the global and national community, they are formed mainly on the basis of personal experience and communication in the industrial environment. Thus, culture gets a lot of subjective versions. This means that in the process of transformation of current journalism, individual creativity is enhanced, which is especially typical for the younger generation. On the other hand, the contours of the profession become blurred at the ideological, instrumental, and ethical levels. The authors of the article support regular discussions of the problems of the profession, which will contribute to the removal of emerging contradictions and to mutual understanding between generations. Keywords: professional culture of a journalist, subjective view, in-depth interview, standards, diversity

The Experience of Housing Discrimination and Housing Deprivation Across Social Groups in Ireland

This study focuses on housing inequalities across diverse social groups with respect to two housing indicators: subjective housing discrimination; and objective housing deprivation. By scrutinizing the correspondence in inequalities between the two indicators, we enhance the measurement of housing inequality and at the same time we shed light on the relationship between subjective and objective dimensions of housing— a relationship that has received little empirical examination so far. Existing research suggests that housing discrimination can contribute to housing deprivation through two channels: inadequate information and limited economic resources. Our focus is the post-2008 housing market crash era in Ireland. We use two separate large-scale individual-level surveys, the QNHS (2004, 2010, 2014) for analysing housing discrimination and SILC (2014, 2015) for analysing housing deprivation. Our findings reveal a robust convergence between perceptions of housing discrimination and objective housing deprivation across various social groups. Traditionally vulnerable groups—such as young individuals, those with disabilities, non-natives (excluding EU citizenship holders), single parents, and individuals without children—experience both discrimination and deprivation. Notably, certain groups exhibit persistent disparities in discrimination and disadvantage, even after considering factors like human capital, regional and tenure differences.

Toward a conceptualization of decent work in Africa: Development and cross-cultural validation of the Decent Work Triad (DWT) in Burkina Faso, Switzerland, and Togo.

Psychology of Working theorists recommend supplementing the Decent Work Scale (DWS) with subjective investigations of decent work across different cultural contexts. Building on this, the present study developed and validated the Decent Work Triad (DWT) for assessing the subjective aspects of decent work in a sub-Saharan African context. Using a Burkinabe sample for exploratory (N = 303) and confirmatory (N = 494) analyses, it consists of 8 items assessing three moral and value-based dimensions: Dignity, Corruption-Free, and Shamelessness. The scale showed good psychometric properties and invariance across country and gender in Burkina Faso (N = 494), Switzerland (N = 590), and Togo (N = 812). It also showed incremental validity in predicting work and life satisfaction beyond the DWS and discriminant validity along with constructs of marginalization and economic constraints, underscoring its robustness. The DWT's utility in understanding the subjective and cultural dimensions of decent work and its implications were discussed.

Recent onset mental illness severity: pilot study on the role of cognition, sensory modulation, and daily life participation.

Early detection of individuals at risk for onset of severe illness is crucial for prevention and early intervention, aiming to mitigate the long-term impact on both the individual and the community. While well-established models exist for predicting the onset and prolonged severity of illness, there is a gap in understanding illness-onset severity. This pilot study aimed to investigate premorbid objective and subjective dimensions of participation in daily life occupations, as well as sensory and cognitive functions as potential markers of the recent-onset mental illness severity. A total of 50 participants (men: N=26, 52%; women: N=24, 48%), aged 18-40 (M=26.2, SD=5.8) with recent-onset mental illness completed standard, well-established assessments of illness severity, cognitive biases and failures, neurocognitive status, participation in daily life, and sensory responsiveness thorough cross-sectional design. The differences between the groups of the illness severity were explored with descriptive statistics, followed by a Kruskal-Wallis test. Discriminant analysis was used suggesting a multi-varied model for the separation between the groups of illness severity. Three groups of illness severity exhibited differences in premorbid cognitive functions (F(2)=5.8, p<.01) and participation diversity (F(2)=3.8, p<.05). Combining these two indices explained 92% of the variance between the groups (Wilks' Λ = .68, χ2(4) = 17.7, p=.001), accurately classifying mild to marked illness severity (62.5-88.5%). The study contributes to revealing factors involved in the formation of more severe mental illness and suggesting possible avenues for early intervention and prevention. Cognitive biases and sensory modulation dysfunction may contribute to the illness formation. Still, the most effective markers of more severe mental illness onset are functional cognition and limited participation diversity. Since addressing these markers is a unique specialization within occupational therapy, the findings highlight the potential contribution theprofession can make to the early identification of the most vulnerable populations.

Utopian Science Fiction and Ethnic Future Imagination in Chinese Contemporary Science Fiction

Utopian science fiction, as a fusion of science fiction literature and utopian literature, integrates the construction of imagined interactions between people, technology, society, and the environment in future narratives. In doing so, it deepens the aesthetic value and social significance of science fiction literature. Chinese science fiction utopian future narratives use technological imagination to construct three models of expression. First, they re-examine the symbiotic patterns of technology, humanity, and time within the multiple dimensions of human subjectivity. Second, within the transformation of social structures, they reassess the subject and emotions, recognizing that the acceleration of social change has transformed human nostalgia into a series of rehearsals seeking future possibilities in the past. Third, within the dissolution of cultural politics, they reconsider space and the environment, reconstructing planetary existence through a model of deterritorialization. The imagined technological developments constitute the internal logic of Chinese science fiction utopian future narratives, suggesting that the future is an uncertain movement entangled with technology, time, space, and human nature. The confluence of technology, time, and humanity gives rise to people’s expectations and yearnings for eternal life. However, these three modes of narrating the future also lead us to return to Earth as the central theme, highlighting the planetary nature and reflecting on the meaning of existence.

From rationality to identity: the impact of using community health services for the aged on the well-being of older adults in China.

To better understand the outcome benefits of community health services for the aged (CHSA) and provide bottom-up identity for development, this study examined the impact of using CHSA on well-being of older adults from both objective and subjective dimensions. Data from 1,411 people aged 60+ in Shaanxi, China was used in this study. The OLS estimate was used to analyze the impact of using CHSA on well-being of older adults. Then, the instrumental variable estimate was further hired to examine associations among variables to address the potential endogeneity concerns. The heterogeneity among disabled and non-disabled group was also estimated. For objective well-being, the mental health (β = 0.44) and financial well-being (β = 0.59) of older people using CHSA were significantly higher than those not using any service. The impact on objective well-being were more significant in non-disabled group. For subjective well-being, life meaning (β = 0.54) and security (β = 0.72) were positively associated with CHSA utilization, while independence index (β = -0.33) was negatively related with CHSA utilization. The subjective well-being of disabled group using services increased more than non-disabled group. Findings underscore the positive, albeit group-selective, role of CHSA in improving well-being of older people in China and imply the necessity of high-quality development of CHSA and the targeted differentiation strategy.

La interpersonalidad en Karol Wojtyla (II)

The “philosophers of dialogue” discovered, at the beginning of the twentieth century, that the constitution of the modern self required the presence of a you. The discovery of the need for a you opened up different philosophical positions: some maintained the priority of the you over the I; others the priority of the we over the you and over the I; still others the priority of the personal subject over the interpersonal relationship. This text aims to explain Wojtyla’s position on this issue and why. The Polish philosopher maintains the priority of the personal subject over the relationship and, at the same time, that the I is constituted or realized through the you (the man through the woman and the woman through the man) and in the we. Thanks to the discovery of the subjective dimension of the person, Wojtyla discovers categories such as “self-determination”, “self-control”, “self-giving”, “psyche”, “soma”, etc., which are constitutive of the person and which we could not find in an anthropology that began with the you or the we. Furthermore, starting with the community seems to call into question personal freedom. On the other hand, Wojtyla maintains that the you and the we are absolutely necessary for the full realization of the self as a person. Through joint (good) action, one realizes oneself and, at the same time, others.

Painting matters: new materialism and new knowledge

ABSTRACT This article discusses the contributions of two individual research-creation projects focussed on the practice of painting and the matter of paint, emergent trans-disciplinary discussions regarding critical posthumanities, and new materialism. As an epistemological field, artistic research pursues knowledge in subjective, constructive and affective dimensions. It searches for new forms of understanding the world that do not reproduce existing modes of thinking, seeking to disrupt established research conventions regulating how the world is explored. Through reflections on the process of painting from a new materialist perspective, we define acts of painting as assemblages of human and non-human entities formed through complex intra-actions within a dynamic of becoming. Painting as practice is an embodied process of non-verbal material thinking, capable of enabling practitioners and viewers of artworks to experience, actualise and re-enact traces of affective registers. The article concludes with the proposal that painting practices within a new materialist framework enable modifications of personal affective registers contributing to transformations of the self and subjectivities.

Comparison between twin block appliance and mandibular advancement on clear aligners in the improvement of airway dimension: incremental versus maximum bite advancement.

The aim of the present retrospective study was to compare the changes resulting from treatment using the MA and the TB with special regard to the oro-and naso-pharyngeal sagittal airway dimensions in subjects with dentoskeletal Class II malocclusions and positive history of Sleep Disorder Breathing (SDB) diagnosed through the Pediatric Sleep Questionnaire (PSQ). This retrospective study involved 2 groups of subjects: patients treated with Twin Block (TB group: n = 22, 10 males, 12 females; mean age 12.0 ± 1.3 years) and patients treated with Mandibular Advancement (MA group: n = 23, 11 males, 12 females; mean age 12.2 ± 1.1 years). Pretreatment (T1) and posttreatment (T2) lateral cephalograms were analyzed. All patients underwent the PSQ to diagnose SDB. In both treated groups there was an increase in the airways dimensions and an improvement in symptoms related SDB. The statistical comparison of the changes between T1 and T2 in the TB group showed a significant increment in upper airway size (PNS-AD2, +1.50 mm + -3.30; McNamara's upper pharynx dimension, +2.21 + -4.21) after active treatment. The MA group showed similar results during active treatment with a significant increase in both upper (PNS-AD2, +2.72 + -2.65; McNamara's upper pharynx dimension, +2.97 + -3.07) and lower (PNS-AD1, +2.17 mm + -3.54) airway size. Despite the different structure of these two devices and the different advancement protocols, both appliances were valuable as a suitable treatment option for Class II patients with respiratory disorders, inducing an increase of upper and lower airway size and a significant reduction in diurnal symptoms.