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Clumsy Solutions For A Complex World
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Book Synopsis Clumsy Solutions for a Complex World by : M. Verweij
Download or read book Clumsy Solutions for a Complex World written by M. Verweij and published by Springer. This book was released on 2006-08-31 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Clumsy Solutions for a Complex World is a powerful and original statement on why well-intended attempts to alleviate pressing social ills too often derail, and how effective, efficient and broadly acceptable solutions to social problems can be found.
Book Synopsis Clumsy Solutions for a Wicked World by : Marco Verweij
Download or read book Clumsy Solutions for a Wicked World written by Marco Verweij and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 2011-08-26 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This follow-up to Clumsy Solutions for a Complex World (Palgrave, 2006) seeks to understand why even well-intended efforts to resolve pressing international and global problems so often appear to fail spectacularly and what can be done to remedy this. The author analyzes four of the biggest global governance failures of the last few decades.
Book Synopsis The New Public Leadership Challenge by : S. Brookes
Download or read book The New Public Leadership Challenge written by S. Brookes and published by Springer. This book was released on 2010-05-13 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawn from the results of five seminars this unique book looks at the four areas of: public sector reform; essential features for public leaders; public leadership in action; and the outline of a public leadership approach for the future. It seeks to give public leadership a firm foothold within the study of leadership in general.
Book Synopsis Complex Problem Solving by : Peter A. Frensch
Download or read book Complex Problem Solving written by Peter A. Frensch and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2014-04-04 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents a state-of-the-science review of the most promising current European research -- and its historic roots of research -- on complex problem solving (CPS) in Europe. It is an attempt to close the knowledge gap among American scholars regarding the European approach to understanding CPS. Although most of the American researchers are well aware of the fact that CPS has been a very active research area in Europe for quite some time, they do not know any specifics about even the most important research. Part of the reason for this lack of knowledge is undoubtedly the fact that European researchers -- for the most part -- have been rather reluctant to publish their work in English-language journals. The book concentrates on European research because the basic approach European scholars have taken to studying CPS is very different from one taken by North American researchers. Traditionally, American scholars have been studying CPS in "natural" domains -- physics, reading, writing, and chess playing -- concentrating primarily on exploring novice-expert differences and the acquisition of a complex skill. European scholars, in contrast, have been primarily concerned with problem solving behavior in artificially generated, mostly computerized, complex systems. While the American approach has the advantage of high external validity, the European approach has the advantage of system variables that can be systematically manipulated to reveal the effects of system parameters on CPS behavior. The two approaches are thus best viewed as complementing each other. This volume contains contributions from four European countries -- Sweden, Switzerland, Great Britain, and Germany. As such, it accurately represents the bulk of empirical research on CPS which has been conducted in Europe. An international cooperation started two years ago with the goal of bringing the European research on complex problem solving to the awareness of American scholars. A direct result of that effort, the contributions to this book are both informative and comprehensive.
Book Synopsis Cultures and Crises by : Mary Douglas
Download or read book Cultures and Crises written by Mary Douglas and published by SAGE Publications Limited. This book was released on 2013-05-17 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written in the last two decades of her life, Cultures and Crises finds Mary Douglas developing analyses of critical conditions facing contemporary societies, sometimes in the company of distinguished co-authors across the whole gamut of social sciences. The essays focus on the collaborative development of 'cultural theory' from the 'grid and group' analysis of the 1970s through to its application and elaboration in her later thought. The material covers questions of culture and institutions, the challenges to culture posed by climate change and the nature of risk in culture. What emerges is the most complete picture of Mary Douglas's cultural theory that is currently available to us. The book will add to the legions of Douglas's readers across the disciplinary divisions of the social sciences. Mary Douglas was one of the most widely read social anthropologists of the 20th Century. She is celebrated both as a literary stylist and an anthropological thinker who challenged common presuppositions and understandings of religion, economy and society. As a cornerstone of modernism in social anthropology, and a precursor of 21st Century interdisciplinarity, her work remains highly influential both within and outside the social sciences. Richard Fardon is Mary Douglas's Literary Executor and Head of the Doctoral School and Professor of West African Anthropology at SOAS, University of London, UK.
Download or read book In the Bubble written by John Thackara and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2006-02-17 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How to design a world in which we rely less on stuff, and more on people. We're filling up the world with technology and devices, but we've lost sight of an important question: What is this stuff for? What value does it add to our lives? So asks author John Thackara in his new book, In the Bubble: Designing for a Complex World. These are tough questions for the pushers of technology to answer. Our economic system is centered on technology, so it would be no small matter if "tech" ceased to be an end-in-itself in our daily lives. Technology is not going to go away, but the time to discuss the end it will serve is before we deploy it, not after. We need to ask what purpose will be served by the broadband communications, smart materials, wearable computing, and connected appliances that we're unleashing upon the world. We need to ask what impact all this stuff will have on our daily lives. Who will look after it, and how? In the Bubble is about a world based less on stuff and more on people. Thackara describes a transformation that is taking place now—not in a remote science fiction future; it's not about, as he puts it, "the schlock of the new" but about radical innovation already emerging in daily life. We are regaining respect for what people can do that technology can't. In the Bubble describes services designed to help people carry out daily activities in new ways. Many of these services involve technology—ranging from body implants to wide-bodied jets. But objects and systems play a supporting role in a people-centered world. The design focus is on services, not things. And new principles—above all, lightness—inform the way these services are designed and used. At the heart of In the Bubble is a belief, informed by a wealth of real-world examples, that ethics and responsibility can inform design decisions without impeding social and technical innovation.
Book Synopsis Conflict and the Social Bond by : Michalis Lianos
Download or read book Conflict and the Social Bond written by Michalis Lianos and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-06-11 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is violent conflict inevitable? What is it in our social nature that makes us conduct wars, genocides and persecutions? The answer lies in how we are programmed to bond and form communities that demand loyalty in order to let us belong. The analysis in this book cuts through the social sciences in order to show the fundamentals of violent conflict. The book investigates conflict at the level of sociality. It reorganises existing theories of conflict under that perspective and brings them to bear upon the link between violence and togetherness. It introduces the key concept of closure to describe the conditions under which human groups start to perceive their position as similar and their reality as polarised. This is how normality starts breaking down and fault lines appear. Violent conflict is then analysed as a reaction that seeks change more rapidly than conditions seem to allow. Global comparative data from numerous studies – including M. Mousseau's works – are used to disentangle the factors that contribute to "democratic peace", that is, the fact that democratic societies do not go to war with each other. This inquiry reveals the new dimension of sociodiversity, which allows societies where individuality is strong to constantly produce alternatives and avoid closure. The book concludes with a coda on peace and sociodiversity which explains how contemporary societies can ensure durable peace and adequate social justice at the same time. Written in a clear and direct style, this volume will appeal to students, researchers and scholars with an interest in political sociology, anthropology, international relations, war studies, as well as conflict and peace studies.
Book Synopsis Principles of Sustainable Business by : Rob van Tulder
Download or read book Principles of Sustainable Business written by Rob van Tulder and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-11-04 with total page 1062 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The basic function of companies is to add value to society. Profits are a means to an end, not an end in itself. The ability of companies to innovate, scale and invest provides them with a powerful base for positive change. But companies are also criticized for not contributing sufficiently to society’s grand challenges. An increasingly VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) world creates serious governance gaps that not only require new ways of regulation, but also new ways of doing business. Can companies effectively contribute to sustainable development and confront society’s systemic challenges? Arguably the most important frame to drive this ambition was introduced and unanimously adopted in 2015: the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDG-agenda not only defines a holistic set of global goals and targets, but also foundational principles to guide meaningful action to their achievement by 2030. Multinational companies have signed up to the SDGs as the world’s long-term business plan. Realizing the SDGs provides a yearly $12 trillion investment and growth opportunity, while creating hundreds of millions of jobs in the process. But progress is too slow – witnessing society’s inability to deal with pressing human, ecological, economic and health crises – whilst the vast potential for societal value creation remains underutilized. This book provides a timely account of the systemic, strategic and operational challenges that need to be addressed to enhance the effectiveness of corporate involvement in society, by using the SDGs as the leading principles-based framework for actionable, powerful and transformative change. Principles of Sustainable Business is written for graduate and postgraduate (executive) students, policymakers and business professionals who want to understand the complex challenges of global sustainability. It shows how companies can design and implement SDG-relevant strategies at three levels: the macro level, to assess whether the SDGs present wicked problems or opportunities; the micro level, to develop and operationalize innovative business models, design new business cases and navigate organizational transition trajectories; and the meso level, to develop fit-for-purpose cross-sector partnering strategies. Principles of Sustainable Business presents innovative tools embedded in a coherent sequence of analytical frameworks that can be applied in courses for students, be put into practice by business professionals and used by action researchers to help companies contribute to the Decade of Action.
Book Synopsis An Introduction to the Sociology of Ignorance by : Linsey McGoey
Download or read book An Introduction to the Sociology of Ignorance written by Linsey McGoey and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-01-08 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ignorance is typically thought of as the absence or opposite of knowledge. In global societies that equate knowledge with power, ignorance is seen as a liability that can and should be overcome through increased education and access to information. In recent years, scholars from the social sciences, natural sciences and humanities have challenged this assumption, and have explored the ways in which ignorance can serve as a vital resource – perhaps the most vital resource – in social and political life. In this seminal volume, leading theorists of ignorance from anthropology, sociology and legal studies explore the productive role of ignorance in maintaining and destabilizing political regimes, entrenching corporate power, and shaping policy developments in climate science, global health, and global economic governance. From debates over death tolls during the war in Iraq, to the root causes of the global financial crisis, to poverty reduction strategies at the World Bank, contributors shed light on the unexpected ways that ignorance is actively harnessed by both the powerful and the marginalized in order to achieve different objectives. This eye-opening volume suggests that to understand power today, we must enrich our understanding of ignorance. This book was originally published as a special issue of Economy and Society.
Book Synopsis Systems Analysis Approach for Complex Global Challenges by : Priscilla Mensah
Download or read book Systems Analysis Approach for Complex Global Challenges written by Priscilla Mensah and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-04-09 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, which contains a collection of review articles as well as focus on evidence-based policy making, will serve as a valuable resource not just for all postgraduate students conducting research using systems analysis thinking but also for policy makers. To our knowledge, a book of this nature which also has a strong African focus is currently not available. The book examines environmental and socio-economic risks with the aim of providing an analytical foundation for the management and governance of natural resources, disasters, addressing climate change, and easing the technological and ecological transitions to sustainability. It provides scientific and strategic analysis to better understand the dynamics of future energy transitions, their main driving forces, enabling factors, barriers, as well as their consequences for the social, economic and environmental dimensions of human wellbeing. Science-based policy advice is achieved through an integrated assessment and modeling of how to simultaneously address the major energy policy challenges in the areas of environment (climate change and air pollution), energy poverty (or access to affordable and clean energy for the poor), energy security and reliability. It also aims to improve our understanding of ecosystems and their management in today’s changing world—in particular, the current state of ecosystems, and their ecological thresholds and buffering capacities. It provides support for policy makers in developing rational, realistic and science-based regional, national and global strategies for the production of fuel, food and fibre that sustain ecosystem services and safeguard food security. Finally, it addresses the human development dimension of global change based on comprehensive studies on the changing size and composition of human populations around the world by analyzing both their impacts and the differential vulnerabilities by age, gender and level of education.
Book Synopsis The politics of airport expansion in the United Kingdom by : Steven Griggs
Download or read book The politics of airport expansion in the United Kingdom written by Steven Griggs and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-16 with total page 437 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The massive expansion of global aviation, its insatiable demand for airport capacity and its growing contribution to carbon emissions make it a critical societal problem. Alongside traditional concerns about noise and air pollution, airport politics has been connected to the problems of climate change and peak oil. Yet it is still thought to be a driver of economic growth and connectivity in an increasingly mobile world. The politics of airport expansion in the United Kingdom provides the first in-depth analysis of the protest campaigns and policymaking practices that have marked British aviation since the construction of Heathrow Airport. Grounded in documentary analysis, interviews and policy texts, it constructs and employs poststructuralist policy analysis to chart rival groups and movements seeking to shape public policy. This book will appeal to people interested in the history of aviation and airports in Britain, local campaigns and environmental protests, and the politics of climate change.
Book Synopsis Global Governance and Corporate Responsibility in Conflict Zones by : M. Feil
Download or read book Global Governance and Corporate Responsibility in Conflict Zones written by M. Feil and published by Springer. This book was released on 2011-12-02 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Corporations in conflict zones and their provision of security are particularly relevant for understanding whether private actors are increasingly sources of governance contributions that regulate public goods. Feil highlights the discrepancies between political and theoretical expectations of corporate engagement and governance contributions.
Book Synopsis Human Rights Protection in Global Politics by : K. Mills
Download or read book Human Rights Protection in Global Politics written by K. Mills and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-01-15 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited book by Mills and Karp brings together political, legal and moral perspectives on the responsibilities of human rights protection in world politics today. It critiques a narrow focus on states' 'violations' of human rights, incorporates non-state actors, and looks beyond the 'Responsibility to Protect' policy framework.
Book Synopsis Resolving Messy Policy Problems by : Steven Ney
Download or read book Resolving Messy Policy Problems written by Steven Ney and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-05-16 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our lives increasingly take place in ever more complex and interconnected networks that blur the boundaries we have traditionally used to define our social and political spaces. Accordingly, the policy problems that governments are called upon to deal with have become less clear-cut and far messier. This is particularly the case with climate change, environmental policy, transport, health and ageing - all areas in which the tried-and-tested linear policy solutions are increasingly inadequate or failing. What makes messy policy problems particularly uncomfortable for policy makers is that science and scientific knowledge have themselves become sources of uncertainty and ambiguity. Indeed what is to count as a 'rational solution' is itself now the subject of considerable debate and controversy. This book focuses on the intractable conflict that characterises policy debate about messy issues. The author first develops a framework for analysing these conflicts and then applies the conceptual framework to four very different policy issues: the environment - focussing on climate change - as well as transport, ageing and health. Using evidence from Europe, North America and the Asia-Pacific, the book compares how policy actors construct contending narratives in order to make sense of, and deal with, messy challenges. In the final section the author discusses the implications of the analysis for collective learning and adaptation processes. The aim is to contribute to a more refined understanding of policy-making in the face of uncertainty and, most importantly, to provide practical methods for critical reflection on policy and to point to sustainable adaptation pathways and learning mechanisms for policy formulation.
Book Synopsis Contested Waterscapes in the Mekong Region by : Francois Molle
Download or read book Contested Waterscapes in the Mekong Region written by Francois Molle and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-05-04 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The catchment area of the Mekong River and its tributaries extends from China, through Burma/Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and to Vietnam. The water resources of the Mekong region - from the Irrawaddy and Nu-Salween in the west, across the Chao Phraya to the Lancang-Mekong and Red River in the east- are increasingly contested. Governments, companies, and banks are driving new investments in roads, dams, diversions, irrigation schemes, navigation facilities, power plants and other emblems of conventional 'development'. Their plans and interventions should provide some benefits, but also pose multiple burdens and risks to millions of people dependent on wetlands, floodplains and aquatic resources, in particular, the wild capture fisheries of rivers and lakes. This book examines how large-scale projects are being proposed, justified, and built. How are such projects contested and how do specific governance regimes influence decision making? The book also highlights the emergence of new actors, rights and trade-off debates, and the social and environmental consequences of 'water resources development'. This book shows how diverse, and often antagonistic, ideologies and interests are contesting for legitimacy. It argues that the distribution of decision-making, political, and discursive power influences how the waterscapes of the region will ultimately look and how benefits, costs and risks will be distributed. These issues are crucial for the transformation of waterscapes and the prospects for democratizing water governance in the Mekong region. The book is part of the action-research of the M-POWER (Mekong Program on Water, Environment and Resilience) knowledge network. Published with IFAD, CG|AR Challenge Program on Water & Food, M-POWER, Project ECHEL-EAU and HEINRICH BOLL STIFTUNG
Book Synopsis Putting Design Thinking to Work by : Steven Ney
Download or read book Putting Design Thinking to Work written by Steven Ney and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-07-04 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book discusses how the methods and mindsets of design thinking empower large organizations to create groundbreaking innovations. Arguing that innovations must effectively tackle so-called “wicked problems,” it shows how design thinking enables managers and innovators to create the organizational spaces and practices needed for breakthrough innovations. Design thinking equips actors with the tools and methods for harnessing the creative tensions inherent in pluralist, often conflicting disciplinary approaches. This, however, requires the transformation of contemporary organizational cultures away from monolithic, integrated models (or identities) toward more pluralist, dynamic and flexible institutional identities. Based on real-world cases from a wide range of organizations around the globe, the book offers managers and innovators practical guidance on initiating and managing the cultural transformations required for effective innovation.
Book Synopsis After the Ivory Tower Falls by : Will Bunch
Download or read book After the Ivory Tower Falls written by Will Bunch and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2022-08-02 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Will Bunch, the epic untold story of college—the great political and cultural fault line of American life Winner of the Athenaeum of Philadelphia Literary Award | Longlisted for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction | "This book is simply terrific." —Heather Cox Richardson | "Ambitious and engrossing." —New York Times Book Review | "A must-read." —Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains Today there are two Americas, separate and unequal, one educated and one not. And these two tribes—the resentful “non-college” crowd and their diploma-bearing yet increasingly disillusioned adversaries—seem on the brink of a civil war. The strongest determinant of whether a voter was likely to support Donald Trump in 2016 was whether or not they attended college, and the degree of loathing they reported feeling toward the so-called “knowledge economy" of clustered, educated elites. Somewhere in the winding last half-century of the United States, the quest for a college diploma devolved from being proof of America’s commitment to learning, science, and social mobility into a kind of Hunger Games contest to the death. That quest has infuriated both the millions who got shut out and millions who got into deep debt to stay afloat. In After the Ivory Tower Falls, award-winning journalist Will Bunch embarks on a deeply reported journey to the heart of the American Dream. That journey begins in Gambier, Ohio, home to affluent, liberal Kenyon College, a tiny speck of Democratic blue amidst the vast red swath of white, post-industrial, rural midwestern America. To understand “the college question,” there is no better entry point than Gambier, where a world-class institution caters to elite students amidst a sea of economic despair. From there, Bunch traces the history of college in the U.S., from the landmark GI Bill through the culture wars of the 60’s and 70’s, which found their start on college campuses. We see how resentment of college-educated elites morphed into a rejection of knowledge itself—and how the explosion in student loan debt fueled major social movements like Occupy Wall Street. Bunch then takes a question we need to ask all over again—what, and who, is college even for?—and pushes it into the 21st century by proposing a new model that works for all Americans. The sum total is a stunning work of journalism, one that lays bare the root of our political, cultural, and economic division—and charts a path forward for America.
