Theoretical Eclecticism Research Articles

Analysis of Human Resource Competency Development for State Civil Servants at Gowa “Gau Mabaji” Center, South Sulawesi

Qualitative research from this type of single instrumental case study is aimed at providing an alternative analytical framework regarding the discourse on developing human resource competencies for state civil servants, which specifically focuses on employees at the Center for Rehabilitation and Social Protection-Sentra Gau Mabaji in Gowa Regency, South Sulawesi. We use Critical Realism as a philosophical basis and an interpretative method modified from contemporary social studies, combined with theoretical eclecticism to allow for a more dynamic analysis. The purposive sampling technique was used with certain practical and methodological considerations to select only subjects who were relevant to the research objectives as respondents. The interviews were then conducted in depth and semi-structured by focusing on three aspects: Knowledge, Utilizing the coding conducted earlier, Skills and Attitudes are identified as dimensions of competency, forming a conceptual framework to steer the analysis. The outcomes present a phenomenological depiction that elucidates diverse perspectives among state civil servants concerning the development of human resource competencies. This exploration encompasses the aspects of knowledge, skills, and attitude, examining their interrelation with the individuals' status, duties, and functions as employees in the rehabilitation and social protection service.

Introduction to the Virtual Special Issue: Strategy Science’s Contributions to Doctoral Reading Lists

Introduction to the Virtual Special Issue: <i>Strategy Science</i>’s Contributions to Doctoral Reading Lists

Ecological Citizenship Discourse: A Critical Study of Citizenship Education in Indonesia

The research discussed that global and ecological citizenship discourse became vital for all current citizenship models; apart from the relational needs between humans and the environment, nature also needed to be preserved for survival and efforts to increase civic values. However, this conceptual-theoretical debate about the development and influence of this discourse created an antinomy among the dominant theories that had a place in contemporary citizenship discourse. Qualitatively, the research contributed to exploring the development of global and ecological citizenship discourse and its influence on students’ experiences of citizenship in Indonesia. It was built on ‘theoretical eclecticism’ and focused on the respondent’s ‘cognitive response’ combined with a critical realism perspective to analyze data, which was obtained randomly in various places and students from various majors by prioritizing the main aspects: mental existence; external existence; and essence as a knowledge domain; awareness; and their experiences. Each meeting lasted between 30 to 45 minutes with 100 respondents. Descriptively, the research results indicate that the development of global and ecological citizenship discourse has not received attention and has a significant impact on the discourse of education and citizenship experience in Indonesia. The ecological dimension lacks or does not yet have a close relationship with all other dimensions in the citizen’s experience as a form of civic virtue, including knowledge, awareness, and actions, both economic, social, and political.

American Religion in the Era of Increasing Polarization

Americans are increasingly polarized by a variety of metrics. The dimensions, extent, causes, and consequences of that polarization have been the subject of much debate. Yet despite the centrality of religion to early discussions, the analytical focus on America's divides has largely shifted toward partisan identity, political ideology, race, and class interests. I show that religion remains powerfully implicated in all dimensions of American polarization, and sociologists must once again make religion more central to their analyses. After outlining research on American polarization, focusing on the role of religion, I survey findings within the burgeoning literatures on cultural transformation processes, (White) Christian nationalism, complex religion, and Americans’ attitudes toward science in order to underscore the centrality of ethno-religious identities, religious demography, and religious institutions for both shaping and exacerbating various forms of polarization. Lastly, I propose an agenda for elucidating religion's ongoing role in understanding polarization beyond public opinion research at the macro-, meso-, and micro-levels. Though polarization research has been dominated by political scientists, leveraging religion in our analyses—not merely as a sui generis variable, but as a site of complex social behavior—facilitates novel sociological contributions to these literatures via our relative attention to multiple levels of analysis, theoretical eclecticism, and methodological fluidity.

Teorias pedagógicas na Educação do Campo: percepções e constatações a partir da análise de projetos político-pedagógicos no contexto da Ação Escola da Terra na UFBA

No artigo, cotejamos teorias pedagógicas em movimento na educação do campo, a partir de proposições de projetos político-pedagógicos de cinco municípios baianos cujos professores de escolas situadas no meio rural participaram da formação da Ação Escola da Terra promovida pela UFBA. Tal cotejamento visou verificar em que medida as teorias pedagógicas que subjazem nesses documentos se aproximam ou se distanciam dos pressupostos da pedagogia histórico-crítica, entendendo que o nível de aproximação implica em elemento que poderia favorecer, ou não, uma implementação efetiva dessa vertente pedagógica nos contextos educativos pesquisados. O resultado da análise documental revelou que prepondera na educação do campo desses contextos a pedagogia da educação popular, as pedagogias da prática e as pedagogias do “aprender a aprender”, caracterizando um ecletismo teórico, o que constitui um elemento obstaculizador, embora não decisivo, para a implementação da pedagogia histórico-crítica na educação do meio rural desses municípios.&#x0D; Palavras-chave: ação escola da terra, teorias pedagógicas, pedagogia histórico-crítica.&#x0D; &#x0D; Pedagogic theories in Rural Education: perceptions and confirmations from the analysis of political-pedagogical projects in the context of Ação Escola da Terra at UFBA&#x0D; ABSTRACT. In the article, we compare pedagogical theories in movement in rural education, based on propositions of political-pedagogical projects in five municipalities in Bahia whose teachers from schools located in rural areas participated in the formation of the Ação Escola da Terra promoted by UFBA. Such comparison aimed to verify to what extent the pedagogical theories that underlie these documents approach or distance themselves from the assumptions of historical-critical pedagogy, understanding that the level of approximation implies an element that could favor, or not, an effective implementation of this pedagogical aspect in the researched educational contexts. The result of the documental analysis revealed that the pedagogy of popular education, the pedagogies of practice and the pedagogies of learn to learn prevail in the field of education in these contexts, characterizing a theoretical eclecticism, which constitutes an obstacle, although not decisive, for the implementation of historical-critical pedagogy in rural education in these municipalities.&#x0D; Keywords: earth school action, pedagogical theories, critical historical pedagogy.&#x0D; &#x0D; Teorías pedagógicas en la Educación en el Campo: percepciones y hallazgos a partir del análisis de proyectos político-pedagógicos en el contexto de la Ação Escola da Terra en la UFBA&#x0D; RESUMEN. En el artículo, comparamos teorías pedagógicas en movimiento en la educación rural, a partir de proposiciones de proyectos político-pedagógicos en cinco municipios de Bahía cuyos profesores de escuelas ubicadas en áreas rurales participaron de la formación de la Ação Escola da Terra promovida por la UFBA. Esta comparación tuvo como objetivo verificar en qué medida las teorías pedagógicas que subyacen en estos documentos se acercan o se alejan de los presupuestos de la pedagogía histórico-crítica, entendiendo que el nivel de acercamiento implica un elemento que podría favorecer, o no, una implementación efectiva de esta pedagogía aspecto en los contextos educativos investigados. El resultado del análisis documental reveló que la pedagogía de la educación popular, las pedagogías de la práctica y las pedagogías del aprender a aprender prevalecen en el campo de la educación en estos contextos, caracterizando un eclecticismo teórico, que constituye un obstáculo, aunque no decisivo, para la implementación de la pedagogía histórico-crítica en la educación rural de estos municipios.&#x0D; Palabras clave: acción escuela tierra, teorías pedagógicas, pedagogía histórico-crítica.

Peripheral Nerve: Health and Medicine in Cold War Latin America

Peripheral Nerve: Health and Medicine in Cold War Latin America

Unrestrained Individuation

Abstract This essay focuses on a little-understood phase of Franco Moretti’s work that spans 1976 to 1986. My aim is to shed light on Moretti’s cultural background as it was formed in that period and to account for the transition from the Trotskyist, politically-militant stance of his first book, Literature and Ideologies in England in the 1930s, to the idiosyncratic, seemingly disengaged character of Signs Taken for Wonders and The Way of the World. Adorno’s concept of ‘unrestrained individuation’ plays a crucial role in the argument. Following a personal political crisis, Moretti opted to enact a form of critical individuation, encoding the explicit social antagonism of the earlier years within a highly personal style and a new theoretical eclecticism. In this way, by disguising it as an alluring form of individualism, Moretti managed to smuggle an antagonistic critical discourse into an increasingly neoliberal world that would soon prove hostile toward it.

Contemporary Revisionism in the Multilayered Political Order: Operationalisation, Techno-Social Conditions, Dilemmas

In opening this special issue, our conceptual essay reclaims the importance of revisionism for regional analysis. It identifies and offers key conceptual and analytical tools for a multifaceted analysis of revisionism, discussing its various forms in relation to the aims and risk propensity of a given country. As a transdisciplinary and theoretical eclecticism, dilemma analysis is utilised to bridge the divide between political science, international relations, and security studies. To ascertain the extent of revisionism, we offer and operationalise six dilemmas seen as central for grasping its contemporary parameters: political order, political regimes, technology, migration, the economy, and the international system.

In Praise of Eclecticism: Relational Thinking and Theoretical Assemblage

In this essay I trace a path through the intellectual history of the last thirty-five years by using the idea of relationality to connect widely different theoretical frameworks that have been used in the fields of ethnomusicology and musicology. These perspectives are all part of a generalized move away from the fixity of structuralism and towards more contingent, dynamic, and anti-foundationalist modes of understanding power, identity, embodiment, technology, and the sensory. Although philosophical perspectives must be addressed, I am fundamentally more interested in exploring the application of these ideas to empirical work—historical and ethnographic. To this end I sing in praise of theoretical eclecticism: the practice of selecting the most productive ideas from philosophy, social theory, and other fields, according to how well they can illuminate and frame an empirical project. To borrow a concept from a recently fashionable philosopher, I suggest that creating theoretical assemblages with clear points of connection to the principle topic of research might serve us well. Deleuze famously advocated for a rhizomatic rather than arborescent understanding of interconnection: “unlike trees or their roots, the rhizome connects any point to any other point, and its traits are not necessarily linked to traits of the same nature; it brings into play very different regimes of signs, and even nonsign states” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 21). Or more pithily: “We’re tired of trees. We should stop believing in trees, roots, and radicles. They’ve made us suffer too much” (15). Assemblages, for Deleuze and Guattari, are non-hierarchical consistencies that develop among these connections and they may link different strata. After tracing an outline of the legacy of relational thinking I will show how and why I have applied an anthropological assemblage theory of ethics and morality to my work on Malian balafonist Neba Solo in conjunction with older social and cultural theories. This essay also addresses the limits of Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of assemblage, and philosophical perspectives more generally, as resources for socially engaged empirical musical studies. The need to engage issues of power, inequality, diversity and gender inequality, I argue, requires engagement with the social sciences, such as sociology, anthropology, and economics. Emphasis on these social theoretical resources encapsulates one historical difference between musicology and ethnomusicology in terms of relational thinking.

Theorizing international security regimes: a power-analytical approach

This article seeks to develop alternative ways to conceptually grasp international prohibition/regulatory regimes. It attempts to go beyond existing, and piecemeal, analysis of regimes within the intellectual field of IR based on conventional grand/mid-range theorization. It is argued that traditional theorization of regimes fashioned as IR theory has hindered, rather than helped, to understand regimes in their complexities, vagaries, and in terms of various forces simultaneously involved. The article answers a question of how to strike a balance between theoretical eclecticism, which is believed to be vital for a comprehensive analysis of security regimes, and the need to have a uniting device to organize such research. It is for these reasons that a power-analytical approach utilizing four types of powers—productive, structural, institutional, and compulsory—is used, and its advantages for regime analysis are flagged. The value added of such an advancement lies in international security regimes being understood more plastically than through conventional lenses. Specifically, they are approached as intertwined sets of normative discourses, political structures (anarchies, hierarchies, and heterarchies), and agencies through which power operates within a given security issue area with a regulatory effect. Specific renderings of discourses and heterarchies establish channels through which sociopolitical and economic privileges get distributed; they create structural relations among actors with a possibility of their reversal or rearticulation; and they build up, challenge, and relocate walls of legal obligations.

Coming of age in academia: Canadian International Relations and the “optimistic interregnum” of the 1990s

Taking the view of International Relations (IR) as a socio-intellectual space conditioned by historical circumstances, and drawing on my personal reflections on international politics in the 1990s as a particularly important influence on my own professional and intellectual path in IR, this paper explores the 1990s as an exceptional period that shaped the decline of Canadian Foreign Policy as a field of study in Canadian IR. Bookended by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, at the beginning, and the start of the War on Terror at its finale, the 1990s can be read as an “optimistic interregnum” during which new possibilities arose for an inclusive, global transnationalism and the global governance of important problems. New ideas and new ways of conceptualizing IR through a global lens emerged. For Canadian students of IR in the 1990s, outward-looking globalism, transnationalism, cosmopolitanism, and theoretical eclecticism fit with the hopeful optimism of the times. In contrast, CFP—with its attendant requisite of policy relevance in service of Canadian national priorities—seemed inward-looking, parochial, and on the sidelines of important new intellectual currents and analyses.

Reconstructing Eclecticism: Bulgarian Economic Thought in the Ottoman Empire in the Nineteenth Century

This article deals with the explanation and reconstruction of the theoretical and methodological eclecticism typical of Bulgarian economic and social thought. This eclecticism brings together extremely opposite and mutually exclusive theoretical and methodological elements such as classical liberalism, physiocracy and mercantilism, protectionism, economic nationalism, Orthodox ethics, common sense, and a contradiction between economic policy objectives and means, among others. For this reason it is usually considered as immature economic thinking that is very hard to get ahold of within a logical framework. We propose an original theoretical reconstruction of eclecticism in Bulgarian economic and social thought from the Ottoman period by trying to bring its main components into a whole. Within this model we identify two main objectives of the economic studies from the period (national identity within the wider process of modernization and civilization), the main vehicles (liberalism, protectionism and economic nationalism, ethical principles, and sound reasoning), and two purely methodological features, the strong presence of French authors (and German to some extent) as well as extreme methodological diversity. The reconstruction of eclecticism is done in a comparative perspective with other European countries and regions.

Culture, profitability, non-financial reporting and a meta-analysis

Purpose– This paper aims to highlight key limitations of meta-analyses (and the underlying research) dealing with the correlation between corporate social environmental disclosures (CESDs) and financial measures, using cultural characteristics as moderating variables.Design/methodology/approach– This paper takes the form of a review. It discusses a research paper published in the current issue ofMeditari Accountancy Research, identifies general limitations of meta-analyses and makes recommendations.Findings– Several issues need to be taken into account by meta-analyses examining the correlation between CESD and financial measures over long periods of time. These include the effect of different accounting standards, the implications of the increasing use of fair value measures, the relevance of the users of corporate reports and the importance of corporate governance systems.Originality/value– The review contributes to the debate on the need for methodological and theoretical eclecticism when it comes to corporate governance research. Positivist techniques have their role to play, but these must be complemented by interpretive and critical analysis to provide a balanced account of the development and relevance of CSED.

An Integrated Model of Legal Transplantation: The Diffusion of Intellectual Property Law in Developing Countries

Why do some countries adopt exogenous rules into their domestic law when those rules contravene their specific interests? We draw on the policy-diffusion literature to identify four causal mechanisms that we hypothesize explain the adoption of such rules. While existing literature treats these mechanisms as independent, we argue that each works in combination with the others to facilitate legal transplantation. While one mechanism—coercion—tends to initiate the transplantation process, it fades over time and three others largely supplant it: contractualization, socialization, and regulatory competition. These mechanisms act in a mutually supportive manner. We test our claims via a quantitative analysis of legal transplants in the field of intellectual property (IP) that incorporates an original index of IP protection in 121 developing countries over more than 14 years. This article concludes with a plea for theoretical eclecticism, acknowledging multicausality and context-conditionality. Any comprehensive explanation of legal transplantation must include the identification of mutual reinforcement between causal mechanisms, rather than simply rank their relative contributions. “[Laws] should be so specific to the people for whom they are made, that it is a great coincidence if those of one nation can suit another” argued Montesquieu in The Spirit of the Laws (1961:295). Apparently, history is full of coincidence. Laws frequently travel across both time and space. Sections of the Code of Hammurabi, enforced in Babylonia four thousand years ago, were integrated into Persian law, made their way into Greek law, and were subsequently incorporated into Roman law (Watson 1974:22–23). The Roman legacy then inspired the European Civil Codes that include elements of the ancient text. More recently, the European Codes have served as models for legal reform in countries as diverse as Peru, Egypt, and Japan. Legal transplantation proves particularly puzzling in situations of asymmetric interests: Those in which the interests of the adopting state conflict with those of the state in which the rule originated. Why would a country adopt foreign rules that run counter to its own interests? Existing scholarship lacks adequate answers to this question. This article argues that the explanation for legal transplantation lies not in any single causal mechanism but in the succession and reinforcement of multiple mechanisms. In making this claim, we favor analytical eclecticism and answer the call of Sil and Katzenstein for “complex causal stories that forgo parsimony in order to capture the interactions among different types of causal mechanisms normally analyzed in isolation from each other within separate research traditions” (2010:412). The article proceeds in three main sections. The first draws upon legal and political scholarship to build a typology of causal mechanisms for legal transplantation. It intro

Whistle-blowing by external auditors in South Africa

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to explore how notions of disciplinary power manifest themselves in audit regulatory developments. When it comes to research on the relationship between audit quality and regulation, much of the prior scholarly work has kept to the positivist tradition of quantitative analysis under the guise of “economic rationality”. In contrast, this research takes an interpretive approach to provide an alternate and unique perspective, using motifs of Foucauldian power and control to illuminate the operation of external regulation in a South African setting. The paper examines what may be loosely described as a mandatory whistle-blowing duty imposed on external auditors.Design/methodology/approach– Detailed interviews with some of South Africa's leading corporate governance experts are used to highlight the disciplinary effect of an auditor's duty to bring reportable irregularities to the attention of an independent regulator.Findings– Blowing the whistle on irregularities contributes, not only to increasing the information made available to stakeholders, but to creating a valid expectation of auditors serving the public interest by enhancing a sense of transparency and accountability. Elements of resistance to panoptic-like control are, however, also present suggesting that, in part, the regulation may simply be creating the illusion of active reporting.Research limitations/implications– The research relies on a relatively small sample of subject experts and does not provide a complete account of regulatory developments taking place in South Africa and abroad. Additional research on the role of whistle-blowing in an external audit setting is needed focusing particularly on similarities and variations in interpretations of reporting by auditors from the perspective of more diverse stakeholder groups.Practical/implications– Mandatory reporting of irregularities by auditors can provided additional useful information for stakeholders and may contribute to demands for more effective reporting by auditors.Social implications– Arms-length regulation of the audit profession should not be seen only as a means of improving audit quality and the utility of audit reports. Powerful social forces are also. This research demonstrates how laws and regulations have a potential disciplinary effect on the audit profession that contributes to a restoration of confidence in the audit process after it is best by scandals, even if motifs of power and control are somewhat illusionary.Originality/value– This research addresses the need for more detailed analysis of precisely how mechanisms of accountability and transparency operate in the broader corporate governance arena. The paper also contributes to the calls for more detailed, context-specific studies of audit. Finally, this paper is one of the first to employ a critical theoretical perspective on audit in an African setting, responding to the need for contextual, methodological and theoretical eclecticism in the area of corporate governance research.

The dawn of detachment

This article draws on Elias’s observations on the origins of political economy and sociology as well as his theory of involvement and detachment to supplement standard accounts of the history of sociology. It shows how, in the 1840s, sociology bifurcated into two tracks. Track I was the highly ‘involved’ partisan track associated with Marx and Engels and track II was the relatively ‘detached’, non-partisan track pursued by Saint-Simon, Comte, Lorenz von Stein and others. These two tracks continue to shape contemporary sociology as basic orientations. The polarization of class conflict predicted in Marx’s theory is contrasted with the class interdependence model in Lorenz von Stein, in particular. Elias’s work is understood as a synthesis of later developments in track II in which he strongly reaffirmed the historical separation of sociology from philosophy. Elias’s work is presented as a central theory of society and as a promising alternative to the prevailing practice of theoretical eclecticism in sociology.

El enfoque multimodal y las escuelas de Psicoterapia

Se realiza una reseña de la terapia multimodal creado por Arnold Lazarus, describiendo el estado integrativo presente de una persona, a partir de los siete modales o variables de la personalidad total: Biológico, afectivo, sensaciones, imágenes, cognitivo, donductas y social. Expone el perfil multimodal como un instrumento que discrimina lo único, lo irrepetible de cada individuo. Finalmente distingue el eclecticismo teórico y el eclecticismo técnico, valorizando el aporte de otros enfoques.

Some questions on the relationship between theory and research in the application of method of observation

The article discusses the gradual abandonment of the efforts to verify hypotheses and complex theoretical assumptions in the social sciences by observation. The first section shows the classical understanding that emphasized the importance of the theoretically directed observation. The second section shows the efforts towards inclusion of the observed in the interpretation of observations. The third section contains an analysis of the impact of today?s strict division on the qualitative and quantitative methodology. This influence can be seen in a complete separation of the structured observation and participatory observation, the disintegration of observation as a research procedure, its replacement by ethnography and case study method, as well as abandoning more general theoretical ambition within qualitative methodology. The fourth section analyzes the epistemological consequences of efforts to understand the fieldwork primarily as a power relationship and to transform the observed into the subjects of research. Development of the attitudes on the relationship between theory and research in the application of methods of observation in social sciences is associated with theoretical eclecticism in the field of contemporary sociological theory and distancing from philosophy of science with its understanding of the role of research programs and research traditions in the field of growth of scientific knowledge.

Book Review: Decoding Organization: Bletchley Park, Codebreaking and Organization Studies

There is no doubt that this is an ambitious book. In the introduction, Professor Grey makes it clear that he has two concerns. The first is to analyse and explain the organization of Bletchley Park: the British Intelligence and cryptography centre popularly credited with bringing World War II to an early conclusion by decoding German communications. The second is to cure a rot that has set into the discipline of organization studies. Like a modern-day Marcello, Grey pronounces that �something has gone badly wrong with the field of organization studies� (p. 5), supporting this verdict with the obligatory string of reference to such luminaries as Starbuck, Weick, Greenwood, Czarniawska, Gabriel, Suddaby, Hinings, McKinlay and Hardy. This �something� is a loss of relevance. Setting himself against both the North American dominated, neo-positivist orthodoxy of the Academy of Management, and the more Eurocentric tradition of Critical Management Studies, Grey calls for an organization studies that de-familiarizes, but still speaks to, organizational experience, combining fine-grained empirical analysis with a theoretical eclecticism that resists dogmatism to embrace whatever is useful in explaining �organization�. Anyone who has ever attended a meeting of the Academy of Management can surely attest to his observation that �much academic work in the field has become highly specialised, quantified and abstract, seeking to identity statistical relationships between different, artificially isolated variables� (p. 6). Participation in the Critical Management Studies conference, or even selected streams at EGOS, should substantiate his assertion that �some parts of the field � are concerned with extremely arcane debates in social theory, and scarcely refer to concrete human experience at all� (p. 6). The result of this two-pronged desertion of the real, Grey argues, means that organization studies succeeds in de-familiarizing lived organizational experience but at the expense of relevance and fidelity to the complex messiness �

Shifting Paradigms and Dynamics of Indonesia-China Relations: Toward the Best Use of Theoretical Eclecticism

In the last two decades, Indonesia has been swiftly maneuvering between China and the United States in the context of the great powers' contest in the region. But a look further into history shows deeper dynamics of Indonesia-China relations, in which Indonesia demonstrates paradigm shifts of its China policy on the verge of China's rise toward great power status. This article argues for the best use of theoretical eclecticism to comprehend Indonesia's policy perspective toward China's rise as a great power.