Theoretical Tensions Research Articles

An exploratory analysis of repeat victimisation of domestic violence disclosure scheme applicants

ABSTRACT This study explores the impact of the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme (DVDS) on repeat victimisation among applicants. By analysing all ‘Right to Ask’ applications to Avon & Somerset Constabulary in 2021, the study investigates the extent of prior domestic abuse victimisation and the influence of disclosure decisions on subsequent reports. The findings reveal that 80% of applicants had prior victimisation records, and disclosures were made in 53% of the cases. The probability of subsequent abuse reports increased significantly for those with prior victimisation when disclosures were made, highlighting the need for robust support mechanisms post-disclosure. The study complements debate around the theoretical tension between empowerment and responsibilisation within DVDS and calls for enhanced support systems and rigorous outcome evaluations. These results suggest that while DVDS aims to protect victims, its effectiveness in reducing victimisation requires further empirical validation and comprehensive support strategies.

Polar Neptunes Are Stable to Tides

There is an intriguing and growing population of Neptune-sized planets with stellar obliquities near ∼90°. One previously proposed formation pathway is a disk-driven resonance, which can take place at the end stages of planet formation in a system containing an inner Neptune, outer cold Jupiter, and protoplanetary disk. This mechanism occurs within the first ∼10 Myr, but most of the polar Neptunes we see today are ∼Gyr old. Up until now, there has not been an extensive analysis of whether the polar orbits are stable over ∼Gyr timescales. Tidal realignment mechanisms are known to operate in other systems, and if they are active here, this would cause theoretical tension with a primordial misalignment story. In this paper, we explore the effects of tidal evolution on the disk-driven resonance theory. We use both N-body and secular simulations to study tidal effects on both the initial resonant encounter and long-term evolution. We find that the polar orbits are remarkably stable on ∼Gyr timescales. Inclination damping does not occur for the polar cases, although we do identify subpolar cases where it is important. We consider two case study polar Neptunes, WASP-107 b and HAT-P-11 b, and study them in the context of this theory, finding consistency with present-day properties if their tidal quality factors are Q ≳ 104 and Q ≳ 105, respectively.

Departures of Tainted Outside Directors: A Threshold Approach From Two Competing Theoretical Perspectives

Although a tainted outside director’s social status may serve as a buffer against devaluation owing to an affiliate firm’s corporate financial misconduct, the extent of this buffer effect is unclear. We propose a threshold approach by introducing the expectancy violation perspective, which generates a theoretical tension from the network-embeddedness perspective, to clarify the following question: From which perspective does the buffer effect of social status become more salient? Specifically, we propose an inverted U–shaped relationship between the directors’ social status and the departure of tainted outside directors from host firms. We theorize that when directors’ social status exceeds a certain threshold, the network-embeddedness perspective is more dominant than the expectancy violation perspective. Moreover, a host firm’s external stakeholder attention and board social status moderate the inverted-U effect such that its turning point shifts to the right because such contingencies increase the threshold for the buffer. Using a sample of tainted outside directors penalized for associated firms’ financial misconduct, we find evidence that supports our predictions. Our study helps clarify the boundary between the competing theoretical perspectives of expectancy violation and network embeddedness to explain the phenomenon of tainted director departure.

No substitute for strong institutions: Impact of accelerators on new venture performance

Accelerators are gaining popularity in the entrepreneurship ecosystem for accelerating new ventures by providing benefits such as learning, sorting, and signaling. However, theoretical tension exists about whether these benefits are contingent on quality of institutions. The institutional-void view suggests that accelerator benefits are more pronounced in countries with weak institutions, while the institutional-support view posits the importance of strong institutions for realizing the benefits of accelerators. In this study, we theorize and test the moderating role of institutions in assessing the impact of accelerators on new venture performance using a generalized difference-indifferences technique on a worldwide accelerator database. At the baseline, the findings are consistent with previous literature, which shows a positive impact of accelerators on new ventures performance. More importantly, the key insight of our study is that the positive impact of accelerators is higher in countries with stronger institutions, thus favoring the institutional-support view. These findings contribute to emerging empirical research that assesses the impact of business accelerators on new venture performance.

Photomimesis and the anti-aesthetic

ABSTRACT Although James Joyce is famous for his stylistic difficulty, perhaps no feature of his writing is more paradoxical than what may be its most conventional technique: his frequent descriptions of light, or what I term photomimesis. This essay uncovers the theoretical tensions of this outwardly simple descriptive trope. Through readings of passages from across Joyce’s oeuvre, I show how light, a classic emblem of literary beauty, repeatedly converges with literary effects that problematise the aesthetic distinctions his texts seek to establish. In Ulysses, the stubborn persistence of photomimesis undermines Joyce’s experiments with what Brian Richardson calls ‘anti-aesthetic’ prose, and thus reveals his basic commitment to good style. Yet if the photomimetic sentence remains a hidden paradigm of literary beauty, it also disrupts the coherence of Joyce’s aesthetic system. For Stephen Dedalus, light epitomises beauty in art. But the actual experiences of light narrated in Joyce’s works imply that it also produces a sensuous pleasure rigourously excluded from Stephen’s aesthetics. For Joyce, the very paradigm of literature’s aesthetic autonomy is thus also a form of non-art: photomimesis at once short-circuits Joyce’s experiment with the anti-aesthetic and violates his aesthetic ideal of radiance, or claritas, itself.

The Paradox of Elites in Civil Society: A Comparative Study on Civil Society Leaders’ Satisfaction with Democracy in the UK and Sweden

AbstractThe presence of an elite group in civil society elicits a discursive friction between the long-standing normative understanding of civil society, acting as a check on government overreach and autocratic tendencies, and elite theories. Robert Michels’s iron law of oligarchy posits that as individuals rise in the ranks to become organizational leaders, they begin to take on elite attributes, and their priorities align with those of other elites and away from those of their constituents. Michels’s argument echoes with today’s populist anti-elitist rhetoric and the way populism rejects any intermediary bodies between the people and the political leaders, including interest organizations in civil society. As an attempt to empirically probe this theoretical tension, this paper explores satisfaction with the way democracy is working among the top-level leaders of the most well-resourced national-level civil society organizations in Sweden and in the UK, drawing on a survey study conducted in 2020–21.

The Crisis of Logic and the (In)stability of Science

Abstract The purpose of this paper is 1) to focus on the last section of the In Parmenidem, analyzing Proclus’ reflection on the relationship between the First God and what he calls the “axioms of contradiction”, accompanied by an attempt to harmonize in a subordinate sense the Aristotelian perspective with the Platonic one; 2) to analyze the reception of this idea in Nicholas of Cusa, the first Latin author to be systematically influenced by the In Parmenidem. It will be possible to show how Cusanus develops a perspective that, on the one hand, finds its explicit antecedent in Proclus and, on the other, how he radicalizes Proclus’ perspective, developing theoretical tensions that we can find unsystematically in Proclus’ own thought. Proclus is aware that the Principle of all reality—and of science itself—must be conceived as in itself unknowable. At the same time, he seeks to save the ability of human knowledge to describe reality. Starting from an idea of the relationship between God and the laws of contradiction close to that of Proclus, Cusanus develops an epistemology that, on the one hand, recognizes the principle of contradiction as the ultimate principle of reason and, on the other hand, comes to the conclusion of a separation between thought and reality outside thought.

Дюркгейм, социальный эгоизм и уборка слоновьего дерьма, или Почему «жить без кайфа — это вторяк»

This text is neither about Émile Durkheim nor about the movie. It is a small exercise to demonstrate how a local sociological theory can be applied to analyze a certain work of fiction. To do this, we examine one theoretical tension contained within the French sociologist’s ideas about the nature of human egoism. The reference to the movie Babylon (2022) is therefore no more than illustrative. Nevertheless, it allows us to vividly describe the ideal-typical characteristics of “egoistic” suicide.

Mini-publics and the legitimacy dilemma: how theoretical tensions are resolved in practice

Mini-publics and the legitimacy dilemma: how theoretical tensions are resolved in practice

The Fundamental Tension in Integrated Information Theory 4.0's Realist Idealism.

Integrated Information Theory (IIT) is currently one of the most influential scientific theories of consciousness. Here, we focus specifically on a metaphysical aspect of the theory's most recent version (IIT 4.0), what we may call its idealistic ontology, and its tension with a kind of realism about the external world that IIT also endorses. IIT 4.0 openly rejects the mainstream view that consciousness is generated by the brain, positing instead that consciousness is ontologically primary while the physical domain is just "operational". However, this philosophical position is presently underdeveloped and is not rigorously formulated in IIT, potentially leading to many misinterpretations and undermining its overall explanatory power. In the present paper we aim to address this issue. We argue that IIT's idealistic ontology should be understood as a specific combination of phenomenal primitivism, reductionism regarding Φ-structures and complexes, and eliminativism about non-conscious physical entities. Having clarified this, we then focus on the problematic tension between IIT's idealistic ontology and its simultaneous endorsement of realism, according to which there is some kind of external reality independent of our minds. After refuting three potential solutions to this theoretical tension, we propose the most plausible alternative: understanding IIT's realism as an assertion of the existence of other experiences beyond one's own, what we call a non-solipsistic idealist realism. We end with concluding remarks and future research avenues.

Speculating with Care: Worker-centered Perspectives on Scale in a Chat-based Health Information Service

Seeking to address barriers to in-person care, governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) globally have been pushing for scaling chat- or phone-based information services that rely on care workers to engage with users. Despite theoretical tensions between care and scale and the essential role of care workers, workers' perspective on scale and its impact on care provision is rarely centered early on in decisions to scale. In this paper, we examine care and scale from the perspective of medical support executives (MSEs) who support a chat-based health information service for maternal and child health deployed across multiple states in India. We draw on observations of MSEs' work, interviews with MSEs, NGO staff who implement the service, and families who use the service, and speculative design sessions conducted with MSEs. We find that by centering MSEs' perspectives, we can differentiate between growth of the relationships and heterogeneity that enable social impact, versus scale-thinking that promotes the decontextualization of care. We leverage our findings to discuss implications for scale and automation in chat-based health information services, including the importance of human connection, place, and support for care workers.

Automation-augmentation paradox in organizational artificial intelligence technology deployment capabilities; an empirical investigation for achieving simultaneous economic and social benefits

PurposeThe purpose of this research study was to understand the simultaneous competitive and social gains of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) usage in organizations. There was a knowledge hiatus regarding the contribution of the deployment of ML and AI technologies and their effects on organizations and society.Design/methodology/approachThis study was grounded on the dynamic capabilities (DC) and ML and AI automation-augmentation paradox literature. This research study examined these theoretical perspectives using the response of 239 Indian organizational chief technology officers (CTOs). Partial least square-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) path modeling was applied for data analysis.FindingsThe results indicated that ML and AI technologies organizational usage positively influenced DC initiatives. The findings depicted that DC fully mediated ML and AI-based technologies' effects on firm performance and social performance.Research limitations/implicationsThis study contributed to theoretical discourse regarding the tension between organizational and social outcomes of ML and AI technologies. The study extended the role of DC as a vital strategy in achieving social benefits from ML and AI use. Furthermore, the theoretical tension of the automation-augmentation paradox was explored.Practical implicationsOrganizations deploying ML and AI technologies could apply this study's insights to comprehend the organizational routines to pursue simultaneous competitive benefits and social gains. Furthermore, chief technology executives of organizations could devise how ML and AI technologies usage from a DC perspective could help settle the tension of the automation-augmentation paradox.Social implicationsIncreased ML and AI technologies usage in organizations enhanced DC. They could lead to positive social benefits such as new job creation, increased compensation to skilled employees and greater gender participation in employment. These insights could be derived based on this research study.Originality/valueThis study was among the first few empirical investigations to provide theoretical and practical insights regarding the organizational and societal benefits of ML and AI usage in organizations because of their DC. This study was also one of the first empirical investigations that addressed the automation-augmentation paradox at the enterprise level.

Medicine in the field: Growing connections between environmental and medical history

AbstractThis article argues that Environmental History and History of Medicine are disciplines that are natural allies and productive partners; successfully working across the sub‐disciplines will be essential to understanding current and future crises, including climate change and pandemics. While it is relatively easy to find acknowledged intersections between histories of science and/or technology and of the environment, so far these are less systematic and substantial in the history of medicine. Partly this is because there are points of serious methodological and theoretical tension, but I argue that these can function as moments of contact and provocation. Most obviously Environmental History poses challenges to historians of medicine in terms of the scale of our work in both its chronological and conceptual reach, and how we incorporate the non‐human, and even the non‐biotic as historical actors. History of Medicine offers approaches to help environmental historians negotiate their relationships with science, in particular the balance between science as a subject of study or as a source of data. Both disciplines share the struggle of combining focused, heavily contextualised local histories with the pressing need for globalised and ‘big picture’ historical explanations. In this review I will outline the main historiographical challenges to working across these subdisciplines—particularly in terms of scale and focus—and then consider the most productive intersections of these fields before making recommendations for future collaborative work.

Foreign Equity Valuations of Emerging Market Firms: The Effects of Institutional Distance and Information Spillovers

This paper investigates the so far unexplored theoretical tension associated with foreign investor valuations of emerging market firms (EMFs) that tap into global capital markets. One line of argument expands the liability of foreignness perspective into the capital market domain where a foreign firm faces legitimacy and unfamiliarity issues. In contrast, there is recognition of the benefits to global investors in EMFs associated with geographic portfolio diversification. Our core premise is that EMFs face a cost–benefit trade-off associated with the extent of institutional distance when venturing abroad in search of financial resources. Based on a theoretical model grounded in institutional theory, we find a curvilinear effect of institutional distance on foreign equity valuations. Furthermore, we show that information spillovers through a focal firm’s domestic capital market and international product market strategies moderate this relationship.

The Evolution of Developmental Theories Since Piaget: A Metaview

History counts and cannot be overlooked. As a case in point, the origins of major theoretical tensions in the field of developmental psychology are traced back to Piaget (1896–1980), who paved the way to major discoveries regarding the origins and development of cognition. His theory framed much of the new ideas on early cognitive development that emerged in the 1970s, in the footsteps of the 1960s’ cognitive revolution. Here, I retrace major conceptual changes since Piaget and provide a metaview on empirical findings that may have triggered the call for such changes. Nine theoretical views and intuitions are identified, all in strong reaction to some or all of the four cornerstone assumptions of Piaget’s developmental account (i.e., action realism, domain generality, stages, and late representation). As a result, new and more extreme stances are now taken in the nature-versus-nurture debate. These stances rest on profoundly different, often clashing theoretical intuitions that keep shaping developmental research since Piaget.

SAME/DIFFERENCE? TOWARD A SAPPHIC/NONBINARY SEXUALITY OF HISTORY

ABSTRACTWhat is the next step when one has published a strong intervention in a field but later recognizes that one's angle of vision deserves new scrutiny? In this article, which began as a roundtable talk, I return to The Sexuality of History: Modernity and the Sapphic, 1565–1830 (2014) to interrogate its “same‐sex” logic through a nonbinary/trans lens. My book argues that seventeenth‐ and eighteenth‐century representations of the sapphic became a flash point for European cultures grappling with questions of power and governance, desire and duty, mobility and difference in an age of colonialism, racial capitalism, revolution, and reaction. In figuring the sapphic exclusively through notions of sameness, however, The Sexuality of History does not do justice to trans and nonbinary figures both historical and fictional. Is there a place among sapphic subjects for these figures, and, if so, with what implications? I argue here for a both/and approach that requires recoding certain figures as nonbinary while still insisting on their efficacy as signs of the sapphic. This recoding encourages a more nuanced exploration of the cultural work performed by sapphic representations and a more expansive conception of what I have called a sapphic episteme. Such revisionist thinking may be useful at a time of social and theoretical tensions at the intersections of “lesbian” and “trans.”

Beyond Binary Oppositions? The Elusive Identity of the International Organization in Contemporary International Law

Abstract Much of the conceptual work on international organizations situates the identity, nature or legal form of the institution between binary oppositions: ‘open’ vs ‘closed’, ‘agora’ vs ‘actor’, ‘contract’ vs ‘constitution’, etc. These oppositions are informative and revealing of tensions underpinning different aspects of international institutions: the extent to which they are vehicles for their member states versus autonomous actors in their own right; that they have limited, derivative and defined powers, but are also able to evolve and adapt to take on new competences and unforeseen powers, and so on. At the same time, insofar as many of the core doctrines of international institutional law, on e.g. personality, powers, responsibility, etc., rely most heavily on the European Union and the United Nations – arguably two of the most unique institutional structures – as evidence for these doctrinal developments, it is clear that there is something more special, unique, indeed sui generis that needs to be thrown into the conceptual mix in order to fully understand the nature and importance of international institutions in contemporary international law. In this way, I will argue, international institutions have a more complex identity and relationship with international law in which they not only exist within (closed) and as part of (open) contemporary international law, but also aim to overcome its limitations, to transform it in some way. For this reason, rather than being competing understandings of international institutions, the interplay between these kinds of binary oppositions actually only reflect back broader theoretical tensions ingrained within international law as a decentralised legal system – a condition which makes it impossible to definitely ‘pin down’ the seemingly elusive identity of the international organization. However, it is also a condition which allows for the construction of tentative hierarchies and forms of more centralised governance within international law, whilst always leaving scope (through legal form) to challenge any such pretentions to authority. This article is part of the iolr Special Forum on ‘Contested Fundamentals of the Law of International Organizations’.

Book Review François-Xavier DeVaujany, Jeremy Aroles, Mar Péretz (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of phenomenologies and organization studies, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2023

The recently edited The Oxford Handbook of phenomenologies and organization studies looks at the world of phenomenologies as they apply to the world of organizations while focusing on both the theoretical tension and its relevance for scholars of Management and Organization Studies (MOS). In this review, I concentrate on the concept of ‘circularity’ and of ‘precession’ to show how philosophy can arise from the bottom of practices and ultimately reveal itself as a practice, as the editors of this Handbook suggest.

At høre det uhørte: Teologisk epistemologi som dialogisk livsorientering

What does it mean to listen to what cannot be heard? In this article, the “unheard-of” is explored along two different tracks: (a) as something God-given or divinely revealed (in the context of theology and philosophy of religion) and (b) as something egregious or criminal (in the context of ethics and trauma studies). Theological epistemology is here developed with a special focus on the limits of the cognition and knowledge of God in Christianity (Anselm of Canterbury, Luther) and contemporary Judaism (Buber, Levinas), and on the significance of dialogue and second-person encounters. Epistemology is connected with a hermeneutics of the senses, where the human being is regarded as a witness who “listens” to something transcendent which can only be articulated on the basis of acoustic or auditory metaphors but nonetheless remains inaudible. In relation to an ethical and religious life-orientation (Kant, Stegmaier, etc.), listening is described as medio-passivity “in-between” activity and passivity, subjectivity and alterity. It is argued that the listener’s personal responsivity (Waldenfels) and responsibility (Buber, Levinas) remain opposed to “resonance” (Rosa) and an “echo” (Nancy) that has no distinct voice. Methodologically, epistemology as dialogical life-orientation is seen as part of a theory-practice feedback-loop which requires patient, hospitable listening practices in view of irresolvable theoretical tensions and fruitful paradoxes that always spur further thought.

Were the scale of excitability a circle: Tracing the roots of the disease theory of alcoholism through Brunonian stimulus dependence

The disease theory of alcoholism, and by extension, of addiction, forms the theoretical basis of an expansive scientific industry, one which musters tremendous resources in the service of research, rehab clinics, and government programs. Revisiting the early work on the disease theory of alcoholism, this paper analyzes the apperance of the disease theory of alcoholism in the eighteenth/nineteenth century works of Rush, Trotter, and Brühl-Cramer as emergent of a theoretical tension within the Brunonian system of medicine, that of stimulus dependence. Establishing both the shared Brunonianism of these figures and the concept of stimulus dependence, I argue it is here that one finds the nascent formulation of the modern dependence model of addiction, pushing out alternative models, such as Hufeland's toxin theory.