Search

Eusocial species live in colonies with a reproductive division of labour into fertile reproductive castes and sterile non-reproductive castes, an overlap of generations and cooperative brood care. A further distinction can be usefully made between primitively eusocial species which do not have morphological caste differentiation and highly eusocial species which do. Ropalidia marginata is a tropical primitively eusocial wasp that has been extensively studied, especially compared to other tropical social wasps. R. marginata has several distinct traits, such as a docile queen, well-developed age polyethism, and decentralized work regulation, which makes it different from other primitively eusocial wasps and reminiscent of highly eusocial species. Since tropical wasps, especially those belonging to the genus Ropalidia have been poorly studied, we cannot be sure whether R. marginata is unique or its traits are more common among tropical Ropalidia species. To begin to overcome this problem, we have extended our research to the congeneric and sympatric Ropalidia cyathiformis. Here, we compare and contrast what we now know about these two species, especially concerning their reproductive and non-reproductive division of labour. We find that R. cyathiformis, unlike R. marginata, has a behaviourally dominant queen, weak and rigid age polyethism, likely uses behavioural dominance to regulate worker reproduction and individual workers self-regulate their own non-reproductive activities. We, therefore, conclude that R. marginata is indeed unique and argue that R. marginata is intermediate between primitively and highly eusocial wasps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Collaborative information behavior researches explain different types of functions and activities that people utilize in teamwork information-oriented environments by interacting with each other. The aim of this paper is to analyze the methodological structure and identify the main variables in existing CIB, CIS, and CIR studies. Methodology: All papers extracted from international databases including Scopus and Web of Science from 1997 to 2019 were reviewed in terms of quality and appropriateness. Then the full text of 91 selected articles was assessed. Based on a prepared checklist, information was extracted in a variety of fields such as first author, year, main subject, type of study, analysis tools, variables studied, and number and type of participants. Finding: The evaluation of the articles' methodology showed that the most methodological structure was qualitative in 39 papers. Also, an investigation of the measurement tools showed that data were collected in 28 articles by questionnaire, 13 articles by interview, and questionnaire. Seventy-four percent of the selected studies have been done by mixed methods in the last five years. Conclusion: This systematic review investigated the published papers in the field of CIB, CIS & CIR to evaluating of the research content structures and components. Team awareness, interaction, information sharing, collaboration, division of labor, communication, problem-solving, and cognitive dimension have been identified as the main elements of CIB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay uses a dialogue as a way of articulating complicated ideas on Li's (2014) paper to relate the notion of materiality of land-to-land grabbing and other dimensions of "materiality" invested by various lines of research on land. The work of Li is used as it mentions the idea of "inscription" and the use "title deed" that are "material" in a physical sense that conveniently articulates with the argument that the cadastral boundary is the "form" of land as real property rather than an open access resource, a situation which does not exist in most real-world situations. The treatment of a land boundary in terms of property rights in neo-institutional economics is discussed. The significance of land boundary re-delineation in global development, as a subject for those who employ the concept of "materiality", is highlighted by itemizing specialisms in the professional division of labour in the land market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Abbé Sieyès is usually portrayed as a thoroughly modern thinker and a critic of the nostalgic Classical Republicanism of some of his contemporaries, in favour of a "modern republicanism", founded upon the division of labour and commercial sociability in a nation composed of equal labourers and producers. But Sieyès's unpublished manuscripts suggest he, in fact, regarded modern labourers as unskilled "Machines du Travail", dulled by work and incapable of exercising the duties of citizenship, a critique grounded in a critical account of commercial society as compared to the ideal republican polity. Where most scholars regard this as either a simple contradiction or a passing juvenile nostalgia, this paper argues that, influenced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Sieyès consistently sought to counteract the degrading effects of the inequalities generated by commercial society and the division of labour. It was on this basis that Sieyès sought to construct a new political system which would reconcile participatory politics with representative government, enabling all citizens to enjoy a life of Active Citizenship. Based on these insights, this paper reinterprets Sieyès's political project as an attempt to reconcile the classical conception of citizenship with the demands of a commercial society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper makes a major intervention in the historiography of elites through analysis of the experience of women occupational elites born in post-war Britain. The paper draws on a new set of oral history interviews recently conducted with women born in the post-war decades with an entry in Who's Who which is the leading biographical dictionary of 'noteworthy and influential' people in the UK. The women we interviewed were all highly occupationally successful and those analysed here also attended one of twelve elite girls' schools. This article argues that our interviewees can be separated into two distinct post-war cohorts: one born between early 1940s and mid-1950s and the other born late 1950s to late 1960s. The shape and structure of the cohort's trajectories were different, their relationship to their careers were different, and, even though both groups faced sexual discrimination and unequal divisions of labour, the nature of these gendered inequalities changed too. By foregrounding elite women within this shifting historical context, this article illuminates broader trends in both classed and gendered experience and how this related to the changing nature of the economy in recent history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Solid waste recycling in developing countries has been largely relying on the informal recycling sector which intelligently uses the tacit knowledge within the hierarchical network of labor division to capture the value from the geographically uneven distribution of waste generation and demands on secondary materials. Previous studies on solid waste recycling mainly have a material-centric view on economic value. In this paper, an entropy-weighted recyclability index (EWRI) is developed to quantify the recyclability of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) in China at the prefectural city level by integrating the road transportation density and regional recycling capability into the categories of waste physical components regarding the cost to deliver the waste from generating sources to the conversion sites for recycling. The result confirms the existence of an east-west gradient regional disparity in recyclability of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) among cities for the recyclable components. The 339 prefectural cities were classified into 4 grades, namely "best, good, normal, and difficult" for the recyclability of local MSW with guidelines for planning of regional recycling infrastructure, respectively. In conclusion, general guidelines for the building of wise-waste city infrastructure to fit the local context in developing countries is advised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Processes of outsourcing and offshoring have driven the changing spatial divisions of labour through foreign investment and development of peripheral regions into key offshore destinations for business services. This paper focuses on the role of elites, transnational and domestic, in the transformation of Romania into a major business services offshoring location in Central Eastern Europe (CEE) over the last two decades. The paper reveals the role of elite agency in connecting domestic resources to business services global production networks (GPNs) in order to drive domestic institutional transformation. A lot has been written about the agency of labour; yet there is a gap in our understanding of the agency of elites, specifically how transnational elites articulate with other elites at the national-, meso- and micro-level and produce institutional changes. Drawing on literature on enclave creation and dual economies, the paper illustrates how the alliance between domestic and transnational elites shaped transformation across the sector by implementing labour market flexibilisation and by crafting a 'sound' business environment in terms of infrastructure, investment incentives and bureaucratic framework to emulate institutional conditions of the home country. The development of the Romanian business services sector into an 'enclave economy' has become dependent on collaborative networks with domestic universities and intermediary organisations, which played a key role in facilitating foreign investment attraction and linking domestic resources to the needs of multinational firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unequal divisions of paid work and care among new parents contribute to increasing inequalities. One explanation for this is joint utility maximization and the benefits of partners (temporarily) specializing in paid work and care. This paper examines the (dis)advantages of specializing compared to dividing tasks more equally by studying whether differences in specialization between same-sex and different-sex couples lead to differences in household earnings after entering parenthood. Using register data from Norway, Finland, Denmark, and Sweden and examining first-time parents, we show that female couples have a more equal within-couple income development during the transition to parenthood than different-sex couples do. However, we find no differences in household income (including or excluding social transfers) between the two types of couples. Although a more equal task division may be preferred from an individual perspective, our results show no evidence of a "best strategy" when it comes to maximizing household income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a novel meta-heuristic algorithm named Rhinopithecus Swarm Optimization (RSO) to address optimization problems, particularly those involving high dimensions. The proposed algorithm is inspired by the social behaviors of different groups within the rhinopithecus swarm. RSO categorizes the swarm into mature, adolescent, and infancy individuals. Due to this division of labor, each category of individuals employs unique search methods, including vertical migration, concerted search, and mimicry. To evaluate the effectiveness of RSO, we conducted experiments using the CEC2017 test set and three constrained engineering problems. Each function in the test set was independently executed 36 times. Additionally, we used the Wilcoxon signed-rank test and the Friedman test to analyze the performance of RSO compared to eight well-known optimization algorithms: Dung Beetle Optimizer (DBO), Beluga Whale Optimization (BWO), Salp Swarm Algorithm (SSA), African Vultures Optimization Algorithm (AVOA), Whale Optimization Algorithm (WOA), Atomic Retrospective Learning Bare Bone Particle Swarm Optimization (ARBBPSO), Artificial Gorilla Troops Optimizer (GTO), and Harris Hawks Optimization (HHO). The results indicate that RSO exhibited outstanding performance on the CEC2017 test set for both 30 and 100 dimension. Moreover, RSO ranked first in both dimensions, surpassing the mean rank of the second-ranked algorithms by 7.69% and 42.85%, respectively. Across the three classical engineering design problems, RSO consistently achieves the best results. Overall, it can be concluded that RSO is particularly effective for solving high-dimensional optimization problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the trade-off between the demand for efficiency and the demand for meaningful work. It asks whether this trade-off should be treated as inevitable or potentially resolvable, at least under reformed conditions. It compares historical and contemporary debates where the trade-off features. It focuses initially on Adam Smith's account of the division of labour in which less meaningful work is assumed to be the necessary price of higher efficiency. It then examines Karl Marx's analysis of work, showing how it differs from that of Smith. Marx addressed the scope for achieving meaningful work whilst supporting needs fulfilment in a future socialist society. In addition, the paper looks at how the ideas of Smith and Marx relate to modern discussions that focus on the capacity of new digital technologies to lighten work. Finally, it draws lessons for welfare economics on how meaningful work and efficiency might be reconciled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The paper engages with the devastating consequences that the belated neoliberal reformation of the Greek welfare state – initiated after the 2009 economic crisis – had on income inequality and poverty. • It is argued that these reformations rely on the manner with which Greece has developed its relations within the global – mostly European – capitalist division of labor as a peripheral economy. Greece's economic affairs are approached as intimately conditioned by a multifaceted institutional structure of dependencies that outstrips its ability to exercise economic policy for its own interest. • Essentially built upon premises of a core-periphery dependency paradigm, the paper takes the view that since the onset of the 2008 global crisis, the EU anti-labor agenda is extended to country-members – such as Greece – which were long regarded as being poorly integrated or "lagged behind". The large-scale reformation of the Greek welfare state is exemplified and a novel interpretation of estimating the country's poverty level with attention paid to the ineffectiveness of the implemented reforms, is offered. • New estimation methods show the failure of neoliberal welfare policy in assisting even the most vulnerable members of the population, a process known as "targeting". This last part is further supported by genuine evidence drawn from several waves of microdata surveys (see Section 6) illustrating the uneven relation between Greece and the EU. • Three different measures of poverty and efficiency are presented based on original analyses of the official datasets, showing the extent of the overall income loss and the widening gap between Greece and the EU. The paper holds a critical view on EU austerity policies, with particular emphasis given to Greece. It is maintained that the main causes for the implementation of neoliberal reforms should be examined in the manner with which the Greek economy has developed in relation with the European capitalist division of labor as a peripheral economy. Greece is approached as intimately conditioned by a multifaceted institutional structure of dependencies that outstrips the country's ability to exercise economic policy for its own social interests. Essentially built upon the premises of a core-periphery dependency paradigm, the periodic post-war reconfigurations of the EU architectural design offered enough room to the formation of a stricter policy framework along these lines. By developing a set of differentiated indices on European poverty, the devastating consequences of the belated neoliberal reformation of the country's welfare state are highlighted. All calculations are based on microdata sets of EUSILC surveys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In spite of remarkable results obtained, China requires more sophisticated economic structure and flexible institutions to foster its development in a more difficult context. Particularly important are the integration of public and private sectors, proper division of labor between them, and cooperative distinction of roles. The expansion of the private sector and entrepreneurship have been leading factors in China's economic miracle. However, despite the numbers of new private enterprises increasing, their dynamic innovation slowed down in recent years. This negatively affects the sustainability of China's economic growth. This paper considers several reasons for the attenuation of Chinese entrepreneurship and considers that it requires the revival of enterprise and ownership reform together with support to their innovative role. The latter should complement innovation in the public sector to counterbalance the biased structure and nature of Chinese innovation and afford new international challenges. This paper contributes to identifying solutions for reversing the deterioration of entrepreneurship in the frame of enterprises and ownership reform. Solutions lie in institutional innovation, like accelerating the pace of market-oriented reform, improving corporate governance for state-owned enterprises and commercial banks, strengthening domestic competitions, and deepening the mixed ownership reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In ecological economics, common themes notwithstanding, there is a lack of consensus in basic views, with no signs of convergence. All the while, ecological, economic, and social crises continue to deepen globally. A question arises: philosophical speculation and mathematical modeling aside, how can we make progress in theory and praxis when there are mutually incompatible views and sources are transdisciplinary? This article describes a transdisciplinary methodology for effective collaboration that is already emergent in ecological economics, but which has not yet been identified. The method employed in the paper allows for but also is an extension of traditional empirical method. One looks not only to output (of, for example, disciplines) but also to operative methods generative of output. And so, for example, in the effort to interpret an author's writings, one adverts not only to familiar sources of data but also to one's own experience. Within this broader focus, components of the methodological solution to the problem in ecological economics begin to come into view. More specifically, sample texts from the literature reveal eight distinct but mutually dependent modes of thought and expression (or, in other words, eight distinct tasks). Four are past-oriented, and four are future-oriented. It also becomes evident that, at this time in history, these modes often are inadvertently combined in semi-random, fragmentary, and counter-productive ways. By the same token, however, when looking to future possibilities, emergent in contemporary ecological economics is a potential methodology for effective collaboration that will be explicitly centered on the eight modes identified. Because it will be grounded in operative methods rather than discipline-specific output, the methodology will be transdisciplinary functional collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been widely argued that China has prepared for launching cyberwarfare against the United States for long time. There are two reasons for this. First, the revolution of cyber technology changed the offense-defense balance, which will lead to frequent cyber conflicts. Second, with the relative decline of the United States and the rising up of China in recent years, there has been growing concerns about a Thucydides Trap between the two great powers, and cyberwar is very likely to happen. However, except for disputes on cyber espionage, China showed restraint on the offensive use of its cyberpower. This paper argues that China's strategic thinking on cyber offense, defense, and cyberwarfare has been evolving over the past decades. Through content analysis of official documents and academic writings, this paper sheds light on the recent discussions and development of China's cyber offense and defense strategy. With China's gradual access to the global Internet and extensive participation in the international economic division of labor, maintaining the stability of global cyberspace is of greater significance to China, and the cost of launching cyber warfare is higher and higher. Such findings help avoid miscalculation and maintain strategic stability between China and the United States in cyberspace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to characterise the position of highly educated African migrants in the Finnish labour market and to examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on that position. Design/methodology/approach: The paper is based on the biographical work stories of 17 highly educated African migrant workers in four occupation areas in Finland: healthcare, cleaning, restaurant and transport. The sample was partly purposively and partly theoretically determined. The authors used content driven thematic analysis technique, combined with by the biographical narrative concept of turning points. Findings: Using the case of highly educated African migrants in the Finnish labour market, the authors show how student migration policies reinforce a pattern of division of labour and occupations that allocate migrant workers to typical low skilled low status occupations in the secondary sector regardless of level of education, qualification and work experience. They also show how the unique labour and skill demands of the COVID-19 pandemic incidentally made these typical migrant occupations essential, resulting in increased employment and work security for this group of migrant workers. Research limitations/implications: This research and the authors' findings are limited in scope owing to sample size and methodology. To improve applicability of findings, future studies could expand the scope of enquiry using e.g. quantitative surveys and include other stakeholders in the study group. Originality/value: The paper adds to the knowledge on how migration policies contribute to labour market dualisation and occupational segmentation in Finland, illustrated by the case of highly educated African migrant workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revisits Tocqueville's famous portrait of the American female, which begins with assertions of her equality to males but ends with her self-cloistering in the domestic sphere. Taking a cue from Tocqueville's extended sketch of the "faded" pioneer wife in "A Fortnight in the Wilderness" and drawing connections to Tocqueville's criticisms of the division of industrial labor, I argue that the American girl's ostensibly free choice to remove herself from public life is not an act of freedom. Rather, it is a manifestation of a particular type of unfreedom that reveals underappreciated connections between the two great dangers about which Democracy in America warns: tyrannical majoritarianism and soft despotism. My argument that the girl's choice to withdraw from public life is coerced rather than free thus highlights the nonpolitical sources of oppression that exist within democratic societies. The paper concludes by raising questions about the need for coercion within Tocquevillian democracy and the implications of this for Tocqueville's "new" political science—indeed, for his liberalism more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Alternative Politics / Alternatif Politika is the property of Alternatif Politika and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper explores how infrastructural ideologies function as tools in geopolitical struggles for dependence and independence between world powers. Meese et al. (2020) suggest that controversies around 5G stem from infrastructural anxieties best examined in the framework of geopolitics. We build on this work by analysing the emerging infrastructural ideology and sociotechnical imaginaries (Jasanoff and Kim, 2015) of 5G in light of the changing global division of labour. Sociotechnical imaginaries refer to the vision of technologies themselves, while ideologies refer to the totality of social relations, translating the objective reality of material conditions to subjective lived experience (Bory, 2020). The Western imaginaries around 5G infrastructures reflect, deflect, translate and sublimate the infrastructural anxieties tied to the development and deployment of new network paradigms by China as an emerging hegemon. The controversial nature, contradictory content and fragmented presentation of 5G is a necessary part of living through the trauma of lost historical agency on the part of Western superpowers. We engaged in code ethnography (Rosa, 2022) of GSM, internet and 5G technologies, as well as participant observation in the main standard-development organisations of the internet and 5G. Our methodological assumption, taken from world systems theory (Wallerstein, 2004), is that the character and content of imaginaries and their underpinning ideologies creatively translate the position of actors in the global division of labour. This paper contributes to the understanding of the role of media infrastructures in geopolitical power tussles and straddles the fields of materialist media studies, science and technology studies and international relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the interplay between firms and open and collaborative innovation communities. We develop a formal model where both volunteers (agents setting their agendas freely) and firm's employees (agents whose agenda is mostly set by their employer) participate in the creation of a common artifact. In this framework, we discuss how firms can influence the architecture of the emerging product to assure fast and performant development and a desirable distribution of innovative labor within the project team. We find that closing the project only to employees implies high speed and performance if employees are given autonomy in certain dimensions and are directed in others. In this case, however, we observe a trade-off in terms of ideal core–periphery division of labor on one side and development speed and performance on the other side. At the opposite extreme, creating a volunteer-only project can ease the trade-off but assures positive results only if the firm is able to set up an entry mechanism that "surgically" selects volunteers with specific preferences. A mixture of both employees and volunteers can strike a good balance, relaxing the two constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on Bourdieu's (1979, 1984) habitus theory, this paper analyses the complex relationship between the use of digital technologies in schools and the reproduction of educational inequalities, through research based on two online surveys administered to students and teachers of 20 upper-secondary schools in Rome. Among the main findings of the research is the "complicity" between the habitus and cultural capital of individual agents and the way in which the educational field reproduces organisational principles of social division of labour. In particular, alongside the persistent lack of familiarity with digital technologies seen in women, even among teachers, the results of the surveys pointed towards the tendency of students from middle-class backgrounds and schools to employ a more critical use of digital technologies in class, compared to those of the working-class. However, it is important to note that a number of teachers in vocational institutions, some of whom from a working-class background, are inclined towards a more selective and equally critical use of technologies. The presence of this minority of teachers could partly mitigate the reproduction of educational inequalities due to social origin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contemplates repression as a factor of production in Anti-Oedipus. Repression is part of the division of labour which defines the composition of the labour–capital relation, what Deleuze and Guattari conceive of as a differential relation. In interpreting Deleuze and Guattari's concepts of repression, commentaries have elaborated on the influences of Marx's theories of reification and of the state. However, the influence of Marx's theory of division of labour in capitalism has not been fully examined. This theory, which involves dispossession of intellectual potentialities and suppression of productive drives, is essential to Deleuze and Guattari's Spinozist hypothesis that the masses came to desire fascism under a particular set of historical conditions. Through a reading of Capital, guided by Balibar's reading in particular, and an analysis of schizophrenia in alignment with Foucault's, Deleuze and Guattari develop a theory of repression as immanent to production. Based in this theory, they conceive of fascism as a line of flight from the limits of capital, emerging among several counteracting factors against the tendency for the rate of profit to fall. In assessing how repression operates in Deleuze and Guattari's form of psychoanalysis, this paper references Marx's Capital and Spinoza's Ethics as well as Balibar's contribution to the 1965 book Reading Capital and Foucault's 1962 Mental Illness and Psychology. The paper concludes with remarks on the further development of this theory in Deleuze and Guattari's 1980 A Thousand Plateaus and Deleuze's 1990 'Postscript on Control Societies'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper addresses the problem of distinguishing the leading agents in the group. The problem is considered in the framework of classification problems, where the agents in the group select the items with respect to certain properties. The suggested method of distinguishing the leading agents utilizes the connectivity between the agents and the Rokhlin distance between the subgroups of the agents. The method is illustrated by numerical examples. The method can be useful in considering the division of labor in swarm dynamics and in the analysis of the data fusion in the tasks based on the wisdom of the crowd techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of gender equality is increasingly being raised today and is present at all levels of society. The topicality of the issue on farms is particularly evident, due to the particular inheritance processes on farms, the clear division of labour, and intergenerational cooperation that characterise the agricultural sector. In this research, a multi-criteria model (DEX-SOCIAL) was developed to understand the broader aspect of rural sociology and the issue of women's status on the farm. The paper discusses the status of women on a farm and assesses their social and economic situation. The methodology includes an online questionnaire in which women in the Eastern and Western Cohesion Regions participated, as well as other farm members and owners. Subsequently, the questions were transformed for the requirements of the assessment model, which assessed the life prospects of women on farms in both the Eastern and Western Cohesion Regions who were aged both over and under 40 years (criteria for "young successor"). The results of the study show that there is a clear difference in the qualitative assessment of women's socio-economic position in relation to the East–West cohesion region. The social position of women does not differ according to age structure. The conclusions of the study also present broader applications of the results in the field of rural development and rural sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

William Petty's work has usually been regarded as an epistemic break in the history of statistical and politico-economic thought. In this paper, I argue that Petty's statistical notions stemmed from the natural-historical techniques he originally implemented to manage the Down Survey. Following Bacon, who viewed the description of trades as a paramount branch of natural history, Petty approached the art of surveying itself as an object of natural-historical analysis. He partitioned the surveying work into individual tasks and implemented a meticulous division of labour, employing hundreds of disbanded soldiers as surveyors and using questionnaires to calibrate the responses of his 'instruments', as he called his specialized workers. By borrowing these methods from natural history to organize surveying work, Petty was able to conceptualize Ireland as a political body defined by tables of aggregate data. I then compare the Down Survey with John Graunt's observations on the bills of mortality to show that both are representative of a particular style of natural history, aimed at describing the natural and political state of a circumscribed territory. I close by considering other manifestations of 'territorial natural history', indicating a continuity between this research tradition and the appearance of statistics in the British Isles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely acknowledged in the literature in social epistemology that knowledge has a social dimension: we are epistemically dependent upon one another for most of what we know. Our knowledge can be, and very often is, grounded on the epistemic achievement of somebody else. But what about epistemic aims other than knowledge? What about understanding? Prominent authors argue that understanding is not social in the same way in which knowledge is. Others can put us in the position to understand, but when we understand something, this accomplishment is to be credited mainly if not entirely to us, as it is due to the successful exercise of our own cognitive abilities. In this paper, I show that the social dimension of understanding closely resembles the social dimension of knowledge. I distinguish between three different ways in which a subject can depend upon another subject for (either the acquisition or the possession of) a certain epistemic good. I then argue that all these kinds of epistemic dependence apply to knowledge and understanding alike. If I am right, understanding is not (always) an achievement to be (mainly) credited to the single epistemic agent who understands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work questions AI´s role in bureaucratic decision-making. The Weberian conception of bureaucracy, based around the concept of an ideal bureaucracy in which authority is distributed, delegated, clearly delimited and hierarchical and that enshrines the following of formal rules, task specialization through division of labor, legal certainty and a predilection for efficiency in recordable and accountable decisions can serve as a framework to orient how governments should approach the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) given the many problems associated with its careless deployment. Using theoretical analysis, this work explains Weberian ideas of bureaucracy and contrasts them with real-life cases of implementation of AI in bureaucratic decision-making, often with detrimental results for society. After identifying and framing issues related to AI, e.g., lack of transparency, attempts to shift accountability from humans to technology, the exacerbation of bias and potential for systemic discrimination, the paper proposes Weberian prescriptions that should help public administration make careful decisions about the adoption of AI and the consequences of its implementation. The article also engages with Weber critically, rejecting the notion that public administrators do not engage in politics and asserting that AI decision-making is necessarily political as well, as it entails exercising power over citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green development is a primary path for ports and cities to achieve a low-carbon transition under the Sustainable Development Goals and a powerful driving force to elevate regional port–city relations to a high level of coordination. In this paper, twenty port cities in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) were selected and port environmental efficiency (PEE) was calculated through the window SBM model, while the EW-TOPSIS model was used to evaluate high-quality urban economic development (HED). The coupling coordination degree (CCD) model, the kernel density model, GIS spatial analysis, and the grey prediction model were used to further explore the spatial–temporal dynamic evolution and prediction of the CCD between PEE and HED. The results suggested that: (1) PEE fluctuation in the YRD is increasing, with a trend of seaports achieving higher PEE than river ports; (2) HED in the YRD shows upward trends, and the polarization of individual cities is obvious; (3) Temporally, the CCD in the YRD has risen from 0.438 to 0.518. Shanghai consistently maintains intermediate coordination, and Jiangsu has experienced the most significant increase in CCD. Spatially, CCD is led by Lianyungang, Suzhou, Shanghai, and Ningbo-Zhoushan, displaying a decreasing distribution pattern from east to west. The projection for 2026 suggests that all port cities within the YRD will have transitioned to a phase of orderly development. To enhance the coordination level in the YRD, policymakers should consider the YRD as a whole to position the ports functionally and manage them hierarchically, utilize the ports to break down resource boundaries to promote the synergistic division of labor among cities, and then tilt the resources towards Anhui. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers how the formal and real subsumption of academic labour in UK higher education are exposed and exacerbated by the move towards online teaching, assessment and communication. These processes have been expedited by the COVID‐19 pandemic outbreak and attention is drawn to the technology‐driven organisational and operational innovations that are transforming academic divisions of labour and labour processes. These changes, particularly in relation to the separation of research and teaching, and to the deprofessionalisation, modularisation, and outsourcing of the latter, are the focus of the paper. We argue that the formal subsumption of knowledge production (research) through commercialisation dovetails with a real subsumption of socially reproductive work (teaching) that is undergoing qualitative transformation in an increasingly marketised higher education sector. We show how digitalisation actively contributes to the growing standardisation and flexibilisation of work, deepens long‐standing gendered divisions of labour, and dissolves even further the blurred work/life boundaries for precariously employed workers. These new hallmarks of the contemporary subsumption present new challenges to workers and their collective organisations in Higher Education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper explores how policy-level stakeholders tackle digital inclusion in the context of UK rural communities. Design/methodology/approach: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with stakeholders that operate nationally in government departments, government funded organisations and third sector organisations that provided a policy-level perspective on digital inclusion initiative provision across England, Scotland and Wales. Activity theory (AT) was utilised as a theoretical framework, where a variety of factors–tools, rules, community, division of labour and contradictions–were found to have an influence on digital inclusion initiative provision. Findings: Digital inclusion initiative provision in UK rural communities is organised through the multi-stakeholder involvement of national organisations, and collaboration with intermediary organisations to provide digital skills training and support. The process is fraught with difficulties and contradictions, limited knowledge sharing; reduced or poor-quality connectivity; lack of funding; lack of local resources; assumptions that organisations will indeed collaborate and assumptions that intermediary organisations have staff with the necessary skills and confidence to provide digital skills training and support within the rural context. Research limitations/implications: This study highlights the benefit of using AT as a lens to develop a nuanced understanding of how policy-level stakeholders tackle digital inclusion. Practical implications: This study can inform policy decisions on digital inclusion initiative provision suitable for rural communities. Originality/value: The contribution of this paper provides new insights into the understanding of how policy-level stakeholders tackle digital inclusion and the provision of digital inclusion initiatives; it builds on the use of AT to help unpick the complexity of digital inclusion initiative provision as a phenomenon; it reveals contradictions in relation to trust, and the need for knowledge sharing mechanisms to span and align different interpretations of digital inclusion across the policy-level; and reveals an extension of AT demonstrated through the "granularity of the subject" which enables the multi-actor involvement of the stakeholders involved in digital inclusion at policy-level to emerge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the increasing penetration of interdisciplinary subjects, it is more difficult for researchers to complete a paper individually, showing that the division of labor can improve the level and efficiency of scientific research. Thus, collaboration among multiple scholars has become a trend in academic research. However, because the numbers of scholars and papers are increasing and cooperation between scholars has become more frequent in recent years, it is an increasingly challenging task to discover useful knowledge resources for researchers. Against the background of big data, how to help scholars quickly find interested target collaborators, encourage them to participate more actively in academic communication, and create high-quality achievements in scientific research has become a significant problem. Considering this challenge, this article proposes a framework of coauthorship strength, author contribution, and search (CCS，taking the first letter of the keyword), which is based on the coauthorship feature of Google Academics. In CSS, we combined the search algorithm to select the optimal connection path to help scholars find interested target scholars efficiently and to better solve practical application problems. Finally, our proposal is evaluated by a set of experiments based on a real-world dataset. Experimental results of our approach show better search outcomes compared to other competitive approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To provide evidence at the micro level for cracking the Solow productivity paradox, this paper deeply studies the impact of enterprise digital transformation on green innovation. In terms of theoretical research, three potential mechanisms are excavated for the first time; considering empirical research, a series of strict causal effect identification strategies are carried out. The results show that enterprise digital transformation can significantly promote green innovation, and it passes a series of robustness tests and endogenous tests. According to the theoretical and empirical results, the policy suggestions mainly include five points: helping enterprises to accelerate digital transformation; strengthening the green innovation ability of enterprises; reducing internal and external costs and promoting the professional division of labor; piloting the digital transformation policy; enhancing corporate social responsibility. It provides a reference of experience and a path for other countries to follow in implementing a digital transformation strategy and green sustainable development strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research presents a full picture of the rationale behind China's infrastructure investment under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which was formally initiated in 2013. In this paper, we argue that the main reason for China to conduct infrastructure investment under BRI is to strategically respond to the emergence of the "New Normal," which pushes the country to sustain economic growth through further structural transformation. We come up with three relevant factors for why infrastructure projects under BRI could be conducive to structural transformation in China's economy, as it (1) provides a much better alternative to the existing poor logistic conditions and can create accessibility among regions, (2) enables the smooth flow of factor endowments of production that significantly reduce production costs, and (3) indirectly strengthens the influence of the debt provider's home currency. This paper also provides three theoretical pillars: the comparative advantage following (CAF) and defying (CAD) development strategies, the late development theory with antineoliberalism characteristics, and the new international division of labor, from which these three factors might potentially explain how BRI could enhance the structural transformation of this second‐largest economy in the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a simple model of division of labor under perfect competition. The model shows under that the division of labor is compatible with perfectly competitive markets if coordination costs are increasing with the number of teams. We also show under what conditions interior solutions for the division of labor exist under imperfect competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As Singapore confronts escalating demands for eldercare labour in the face of rapid ageing, families are increasingly resorting to market-based, gender-normative options predicated on the care-chain migration of women to resolve familial care deficits. At the same time, given the prevalence of discourses of Asian familialism, the abdication of eldercare responsibilities to non-familial caregivers whose labour is purchased through market transactions often raises social anxieties decrying the decline of filial piety. This paper explores the way eldercare work is choreographed around gendered performances of intimate labour by different household members as families work through market solutions and moral dilemmas around eldercare. Following conceptualisation of the intimate that configure it along lines of mobility, emotion, materiality, belonging, alienation, we use the term intimate labour to refer to work involving embodied interactions that shape the social reproduction of everyday life. The paper is based on in-depth interviews with 34 elderly persons 'cared for' by foreign domestic workers and 35 foreign domestic workers employed to 'care for' the elderly. First, we examine the way families articulate the care logics behind the everyday division of intimate labour between live-in foreign domestic workers and spatially proximate family caregivers. Second, we show how the daily choreography of intimate labour and exchange among different household members folds into reshaping and relativizing affinal connections between 'carer' and 'cared-for' in the global household. Ultimately, we argue that home-based eldercare serve to rigidify the gendered contours of the 'woman-carer model' of care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Erdkunde is the property of Universitaet Bonn, Geographisches Institut and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In the current economic policy debate, there are often calls to reverse advanced developments in globalisation and the international division of labour. Reasons such as greater business resilience, political independence and, from a climate perspective, less harmful production argue for not abolishing trade, but at least bundling a larger part of the value chain locally. However, such considerations are de facto made from the perspective of a highly developed and globally networked industrialised country. In contrast, this paper argues that trade activities can never be considered from the perspective of only one partner, but must always take into account the needs of all stakeholders, which in turn depend on the respective level of development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientific authorship has been increasingly complemented with contributorship statements. While such statements are said to ensure more equitable credit and responsibility attribution, they also provide an opportunity to examine the roles and functions that authors play in the construction of knowledge and the relationship between these roles and authorship order. Drawing on a comprehensive and multidisciplinary dataset of 87,002 documents in which contributorship statements are found, this article examines the forms that division of labor takes across disciplines, the relationships between various types of contributions, as well as the relationships between the contribution types and various indicators of authors’ seniority. It shows that scientific work is more highly divided in medical disciplines than in mathematics, physics, and disciplines of the social sciences, and that, with the exception of medicine, the writing of the paper is the task most often associated with authorship. The results suggest a clear distinction between contributions that could be labeled as ‘technical’ and those that could be considered ‘conceptual’: While conceptual tasks are typically associated with authors with higher seniority, technical tasks are more often performed by younger scholars. Finally, results provide evidence of a U-shaped relationship between extent of contribution and author order: In all disciplines, first and last authors typically contribute to more tasks than middle authors. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the results for the reward system of science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Special issue of Strategic Organization: "The question of intelligent technology: implications for strategy and organization" Anastasia Sergeeva, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (a.sergeeva@vu.nl) Linda Argote, Carnegie Mellon University (argote@andrew.cmu.edu) Oliver Alexy, Technical University of Munich (o.alexy@tum.de) Paul Leonardi, University of California, Santa Barbara (leonardi@ucsb.edu) Samer Faraj, McGill University (samer.faraj@mcgill.ca) What are the implications of intelligent technology for strategic organization scholarship? Papers in this special issue would ideally address concepts in strategy and organization that are now increasingly challenged by the emergent possibilities associated with new technologies. [Extracted from the article]

Copyright of Transformations in Business & Economics is the property of Vilnius University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Prior research suggests that academic scientists who collaborate with firms may experience lower publication rates in their collaborative lines of work because of industry's insistence on intellectual property protection through patenting or secrecy. In contrast, we posit that university–industry collaboration can sometimes foster specialization and boost academic contribution to open science. Specifically, research lines with both scientific and commercial potential (i.e., in Pasteur's quadrant) provide an opportunity for a productive division of tasks between academic scientists and their industry counterparts, whereby the former focus on exploiting the scientific opportunities and the latter focus on the commercial ones. The main empirical challenge of examining this proposition is that research projects that involve industry collaborators may be qualitatively different from those that do not. To address this issue, we exploit the occurrence of simultaneous discoveries where multiple scientists make roughly the same discovery around the same time. Following a simultaneous discovery, we compare the follow-on research output of academic scientists who collaborated with industry on the discovery with that of academic scientists who did not. We find that academic scientists with industry collaborators produced more follow-on publications and fewer follow-on patents than did academic scientists without industry collaborators. This effect is particularly salient when the research line has important commercial implications and when the industry partner is an established firm. The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2018.1235. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Research Papers of the Wroclaw University of Economics / Prace Naukowe Uniwersytetu Ekonomicznego we Wroclawiu is the property of Uniwersytet Ekonomiczny we Wroclawiu and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper presents a new research agenda on climate change and green growth from the perspective of the division of labor in classical economics. The paper covers three major dimensions of green growth (i.e. carbon emissions, environmental protection and material resources use) and some related important topics, as well as the fresh policy implications of the new research agenda, Typical marginal analysis in a given structure of the division of labor suggests that “green” action is a burden to economic development. Therefore, climate negotiation has become a burden‐sharing game and has reached a stalemate. New thinking is badly needed to rescue these negotiations and to drive a shift to a new “green growth” paradigm. The proposed new research agenda represents an effort to create a new narrative on climate change and green growth. Because the new research agenda can theoretically predict the possibility that a more competitive structure of the division of labor could be triggered by “green” policy, it has promising policy implications for various important challenges facing us in the 21st century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of the digital economy provides an alternative path for global green development. On the basis of analyzing the connotations of green development, digital economy and division of labor, this paper studies the theoretical mechanisms of the digital economy empowering green development; this is based on the division of labor thought of as the new classical economics. From the research results, it can be seen that the digital economy, through technological change, is conducive to the improvement of transaction efficiency and the evolution of the division of labor model. Under the dual role of the government's green system and the market regulation mechanism, it promotes the transaction from the "black division of labor" mode to the "green division of labor" mode, thereby empowering green development. The impact of the digital economy on the level of green development is not single linear. This paper creatively analyzes the theoretical mechanisms of the digital economy empowering green development, from the perspective of the division of labor. These research results have good theoretical value and practical significance for promoting the sustainable development of the global economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]