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1

Pessôa Filho, Dalton M., Leandro O. C. Siqueira, Astor R. Simionato, Mário A. C. Espada, Daniel S. Pestana, and Fred J. DiMenna. "A Rapidly-Incremented Tethered-Swimming Test for Defining Domain-Specific Training Zones." Journal of Human Kinetics 57, no. 1 (2017): 117–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/hukin-2017-0053.

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AbstractThe purpose of this study was to investigate whether a tethered-swimming incremental test comprising small increases in resistive force applied every 60 seconds could delineate the isocapnic region during rapidly-incremented exercise. Sixteen competitive swimmers (male, n = 11; female, n = 5) performed: (a) a test to determine highest force during 30 seconds of all-out tethered swimming (Favg) and the ΔF, which represented the difference between Favg and the force required to maintain body alignment (Fbase), and (b) an incremental test beginning with 60 seconds of tethered swimming against a load that exceeded Fbase by 30% of ΔF followed by increments of 5% of ΔF every 60 seconds. This incremental test was continued until the limit of tolerance with pulmonary gas exchange (rates of oxygen uptake and carbon dioxide production) and ventilatory (rate of minute ventilation) data collected breath by breath. These data were subsequently analyzed to determine whether two breakpoints defining the isocapnic region (i.e., gas exchange threshold and respiratory compensation point) were present. We also determined the peak rate of O2 uptake and exercise economy during the incremental test. The gas exchange threshold and respiratory compensation point were observed for each test such that the associated metabolic rates, which bound the heavy-intensity domain during constant-work-rate exercise, could be determined. Significant correlations (Spearman’s) were observed for exercise economy along with (a) peak rate of oxygen uptake (ρ = .562; p < 0.025), and (b) metabolic rate at gas exchange threshold (ρ = −.759; p < 0.005). A rapidly-incremented tethered-swimming test allows for determination of the metabolic rates that define zones for domain-specific constant-work-rate training.
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Axelrod, Robert, and D. Scott Bennett. "A Landscape Theory of Aggregation." British Journal of Political Science 23, no. 2 (1993): 211–33. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s000712340000973x.

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Aggregation means the organization of elements of a system into patterns that tend to put highly compatible elements together and less compatible elements apart. Landscape theory Predicts how aggregation will lead to alignments among actors (such as nations), whose leaders are myopic in their assessments and incremental in their actions. The predicted configurations are based upon the attempts of actors to minimize their frustration based upon their pairwise Propensities to align with some actors and oppose others. These attempts lead to a local minimum in the energy landscape of the entire system. The theory is supported by the results of two cases: the alignment of seventeen European nations in the Second World War and membership in competing alliances of nine computer companies to set standards for Unix computer operating systems. The theory has potential for application to coalitions of political Parties in parliaments, social networks, social cleavages in democracies and organizational structures.
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O'Donnell, Mark, Lisa A. Ruth-Sahd, and Clifton O. Mayfield. "An expanded holistic model of healthy workplace practices." International Journal of Organizational Analysis 27, no. 5 (2019): 1542–61. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/ijoa-02-2019-1647.

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to test whether supportive workspace design, cultivation of high-quality leader–member relationships and vision alignment explain incremental variance in job satisfaction, work engagement and overall life satisfaction beyond antecedents identified in an earlier model of healthy workplace practices. Design/methodology/approach This paper reports the results of a survey study with a diverse sample of 214 employees. Findings In a series of regression analyses, the findings revealed that supportive workspace design, cultivation of high-quality leader–member relationships and vision alignment each explain incremental variance in one or more outcome variables (job satisfaction, work engagement and overall life satisfaction) beyond that of antecedents identified in an earlier model of healthy workplace practices. Research limitations/implications The present study identifies additional important variables to consider when conducting future research on healthy workplace practices. Future research could use longitudinal or experimental designs to further investigate the causal direction of the relationships identified in the present paper. Practical implications Managers can implement the practices identified in this paper to improve employees’ work engagement, job satisfaction and overall life satisfaction. Social implications This paper offers insights about how to improve employees’ lives, and thus, the potential impact is far-reaching and meaningful. Originality/value This paper empirically assesses workplace variables that were not included in tests of the prior healthy workplace practices model.
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Tarrow, Sidney. "The Dualities of Transnational Contention: "Two Activist Solitudes" or A New World Altogether?" Mobilization: An International Quarterly 10, no. 1 (2005): 53–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.17813/maiq.10.1.c52868218x473202.

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International protests against global capitalism have focused scholars' attention on the highly visible activities of transnational activists and advocates; but the tough, incremental, and deeply embedded work of grassroots social movements has too often been sublimated under the slogan: "Think globally; act locally!" Are transnational activists isolated from domestic social movements, extensions of domestic contention, or bridges between the local and the global? Three problems in particular will be examined: First, the difficulty of establishing durable transnational coalitions; Second, the problem of bridging the gap between movement protesters and NGO advocates; and, third, that of escaping movement structuration by national cleavages, alignments, and opportunities.
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Ozturk, Salih Baris, Omer Cihan Kivanc, Ahmet Aksoz, and Omar Hegazy. "Rotor Position Alignment of FSTPI Based PMSM Drive Using Low Frequency Signal Injection." Applied Sciences 10, no. 21 (2020): 7397. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/app10217397.

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A PMSM drive with an incremental encoder or using sensorless control requires alignment to a predetermined rotor position (initial position) or initial rotor position detection at start-up. It is desired to lock the rotor to a known state (usually zero angle) at start-up if the initial rotor position detection is not available or difficult to obtain. In this work, a simple and proper zero angle initial rotor position alignment of four-switch three-phase (FSTP) inverter-based PMSM drive is proposed. Low-frequency voltage signal is applied to the d-axis voltage reference of the open-loop FSTPI based PMSM drive scheme without requiring complex trigonometric calculations, PI current regulators and current sensing. Therefore, fluctuated capacitor voltages at the DC-link are obtained allowing current flown through phase a locking the rotor with zero angle, properly. The proposed method has been implemented using a low-cost FSTP voltage source inverter (VSI) for PMSM drive with a floating-point TMS320F28335 DSP. The effectiveness and the feasibility of the proposed zero angle initial rotor position alignment method for PMSM driven by FSTP inverter have been demonstrated through experimental results.
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FORTUIN, FRANCES T. J. M., and S. W. F. (ONNO) OMTA. "ALIGNING R&D TO BUSINESS — A LONGITUDINAL STUDY OF BU CUSTOMER VALUE IN R&D." International Journal of Innovation and Technology Management 04, no. 04 (2007): 393–413. http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/s0219877007001156.

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In large technology-based firms, especially in long life cycle industries, often a tension exists between corporate R&D and the business unit (BU) customers. The long term R&D orientation needed to come to the more radical (even disruptive) innovations for the long term survival of the prospector firm being at odds with the need of the BUs for more incremental "sustaining" innovations for their day-to-day activities. This paper takes a new approach to this problem by analyzing the corporate R&D to business relationship from a customer value perspective by identifying R&D flexibility, R&D communication, strategic alignment and R&D performance as the main attributes of the value map of the BU customers of corporate R&D. We then present the Cusvalin instrument (Customer Value Learning in INnovation) that was constructed to overcome the R&D to business incongruence by providing feedback on the gaps between the value maps of R&D and their BU customers. This instrument has been tested in a longitudinal survey from 1997 through 2002 (696 respondents) in a large technology-based supplier company (±30 000 employees world wide). It is concluded that the Cusvalin model is an effective instrument to monitor the strategic alignment of R&D and the BUs, and ultimately leads to better R&D performance, as perceived by the BU customers. From the longitudinal analysis it is concluded that a system that balances radical innovation (via Technology Board-funding, in which R&D management, headquarters, and BU directors jointly decide on long-term radical R&D projects) and incremental innovation (via BU unit-funding) is effective in providing strategic alignment between R&D and business.
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Badr, Ghada, Isra Al-Turaiki, Marcel Turcotte, and Hassan Mathkour. "IncMD: Incremental trie-based structural motif discovery algorithm." Journal of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology 12, no. 05 (2014): 1450027. http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/s0219720014500279.

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The discovery of common RNA secondary structure motifs is an important problem in bioinformatics. The presence of such motifs is usually associated with key biological functions. However, the identification of structural motifs is far from easy. Unlike motifs in sequences, which have conserved bases, structural motifs have common structure arrangements even if the underlying sequences are different. Over the past few years, hundreds of algorithms have been published for the discovery of sequential motifs, while less work has been done for the structural motifs case. Current structural motif discovery algorithms are limited in terms of accuracy and scalability. In this paper, we present an incremental and scalable algorithm for discovering RNA secondary structure motifs, namely IncMD. We consider the structural motif discovery as a frequent pattern mining problem and tackle it using a modified a priori algorithm. IncMD uses data structures, trie-based linked lists of prefixes (LLP), to accelerate the search and retrieval of patterns, support counting, and candidate generation. We modify the candidate generation step in order to adapt it to the RNA secondary structure representation. IncMD constructs the frequent patterns incrementally from RNA secondary structure basic elements, using nesting and joining operations. The notion of a motif group is introduced in order to simulate an alignment of motifs that only differ in the number of unpaired bases. In addition, we use a cluster beam approach to select motifs that will survive to the next iterations of the search. Results indicate that IncMD can perform better than some of the available structural motif discovery algorithms in terms of sensitivity (Sn), positive predictive value (PPV), and specificity (Sp). The empirical results also show that the algorithm is scalable and runs faster than all of the compared algorithms.
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8

Lord, Jerry D., David Penn, and P. Whitehead. "The Application of Digital Image Correlation for Measuring Residual Stress by Incremental Hole Drilling." Applied Mechanics and Materials 13-14 (July 2008): 65–73. http://dx.doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/amm.13-14.65.

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The measurement of residual stress using the incremental hole drilling is well established, but the main limitations with the conventional strain gauge approach are the requirements for surface preparation, the need for accurate alignment and drilling, the restricted range of hole geometries commensurate with the specific gauge designs, and the limited range of strain data averaged over the footprint of the strain gauge grid. Recent attempts to extend the method have seen the application of full field optical techniques such as electronic speckle pattern interferometry and holographic interferometry for measuring the strain fields around the hole, but these methods are sensitive to vibration and this limits their practical use to controlled laboratory environments. There are significant potential benefits therefore of using a more robust technique based on Digital Image Correlation (DIC), and work is presented in this study on the development of the method for measuring surface displacements and strain fields generated during incremental hole drilling. Some of the practical issues associated with the technique development, including the optimization of applied patterns, the development of the optical system and integration with current hole drilling equipment are discussed, and although measurements are only presented for a single load case - the equi-biaxial stress state introduced during shot peening - the novel aspect of this work is the integration of DIC measurements with incremental drilling and an application of the Integral Method analysis to measure the variation of residual stress with depth. Validation data comparing results from conventional strain gauge data and FE models is also presented.
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Liedtka, Jeanne, and Saul Kaplan. "How design thinking opens new frontiers for strategy development." Strategy & Leadership 47, no. 2 (2019): 3–10. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/sl-01-2019-0007.

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Purpose This article explains how design thinking and practices can identify unexplored opportunities for strategic growth. Increasingly practitioners are learning about powerful ways they can work together, with design mindsets and practices improving the strategy development process in multiple ways. Design/methodology/approach By integrating design practices into strategy development, practitioners can produce both incremental improvement in the performance of today’s business model and open opportunities to completely transform it. Findings Using design thinking, to understand the job customers are trying to do and the problem they have doing it allows strategists to craft a new potential offering and shape a value proposition that creates greater value than existing alternatives.” Practical implications The first design practice worth integrating into strategy development is human-centered design (HCD), with its tools that explore multiple pathways for growth through the experience of customers, the perspectives of “uncommon” partners, and the untapped local intelligence of employees. Originality/value The capability set design thinking offers – the focus on customers’ job-to-be-done, the ability to prototype and experiment, to manage a portfolio of bets, and to foster engagement and alignment – can provide what successful growth, whether incremental or disruptive, demands.
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Mention, Anne-Laure, João José Pinto Ferreira, and Marko Torkkeli. "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: Technological Convergence?" Journal of Innovation Management 6, no. 3 (2018): 1–7. http://dx.doi.org/10.24840/2183-0606_006-003_0001.

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Wisdom of the crowds, Technological capabilities and Functional alignment, which when recognised and utilised in innovation processes, can unlock the ability to source, develop and commercialise ideas at rapid pace. The phenomenon is known as technological convergence. By definition, technological convergence is described as the process by which Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) converge towards new and more unified markets. This convergence often leverages the three dimensions of innovation – economic, technical and functional. On the economic side, the focus of a focal firm is on maximising profits with minimal costs under resource constraints brought about in-part by liberalisation of markets. In this regard, open innovation which involves harnessing wisdom of the crowds at the fuzzy front-end of the innovation process has increasingly been promoted as a pragmatic mechanism for accessing widely distributed knowledge (Thanasopon, Papdopoulos & Vidgen, 2016), in large firms (Brunswicker & Chesbrough, 2018) and SMEs (Vanhaverbeke, Frattini, Roijakkers & Usman, 2018). On the technical side, the main driver has been the rise of enabling technologies, at times revolutioning social behaviour but mostly brought about through incremental shifts in technical abilities. Finally, convergence is realised through functional alignment, characterised by integration of computational, behaviour and communication factors in a unique value-proposition delivered through new product or new service (Canals, Torres & Borés, 2001). The growing prominence of technological convergence means firms can no longer afford to work in silos or rely on proprietory waterfall solutions to achieve competitive advantage and influence societal progress. Here, we build on our July 2018 editorial which emphasised the cumulative importance of management research and management practice working together for societal progress. W-T-F is offered here as the fundamental trilogy that both managers and researchers need to address to survive and thrive in an increasingly digitised and globally-connected world. (...)
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Mention, Anne-Laure, João José Pinto Ferreira, and Marko Torkkeli. "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: Technological Convergence?" Journal of Innovation Management 6, no. 3 (2018): 1. http://dx.doi.org/10.24840/2183-0606_006.003_0001.

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Wisdom of the crowds, Technological capabilities and Functional alignment, which when recognised and utilised in innovation processes, can unlock the ability to source, develop and commercialise ideas at rapid pace. The phenomenon is known as technological convergence. By definition, technological convergence is described as the process by which Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) converge towards new and more unified markets. This convergence often leverages the three dimensions of innovation – economic, technical and functional. On the economic side, the focus of a focal firm is on maximising profits with minimal costs under resource constraints brought about in-part by liberalisation of markets. In this regard, open innovation which involves harnessing wisdom of the crowds at the fuzzy front-end of the innovation process has increasingly been promoted as a pragmatic mechanism for accessing widely distributed knowledge (Thanasopon, Papdopoulos & Vidgen, 2016), in large firms (Brunswicker & Chesbrough, 2018) and SMEs (Vanhaverbeke, Frattini, Roijakkers & Usman, 2018). On the technical side, the main driver has been the rise of enabling technologies, at times revolutioning social behaviour but mostly brought about through incremental shifts in technical abilities. Finally, convergence is realised through functional alignment, characterised by integration of computational, behaviour and communication factors in a unique value-proposition delivered through new product or new service (Canals, Torres & Borés, 2001). The growing prominence of technological convergence means firms can no longer afford to work in silos or rely on proprietory waterfall solutions to achieve competitive advantage and influence societal progress. Here, we build on our July 2018 editorial which emphasised the cumulative importance of management research and management practice working together for societal progress. W-T-F is offered here as the fundamental trilogy that both managers and researchers need to address to survive and thrive in an increasingly digitised and globally-connected world. (...)
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12

Wivel, Anders, and T. V. Paul. "Soft Balancing, Institutions, and Peaceful Change." Ethics & International Affairs 34, no. 4 (2020): 473–85. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s089267942000057x.

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AbstractAs part of the roundtable “International Institutions and Peaceful Change,” this essay examines the role of institutional soft balancing in bringing forth peaceful change in international relations. Soft balancing is understood as attempts at restraining a threatening power through institutional delegitimization, as opposed to hard balancing, which relies on arms buildup and formal alignments. We argue that soft balancing through international institutions can be an effective means to peaceful change, spanning minimalist goals, which aim at incremental change without the use of military force and war, and maximalist goals, which seek more profound change and transformation in the form of continuous interstate cooperation aimed at a more peaceful and just world order. However, the success of soft-balancing strategies in fostering peaceful change varies widely, even in today's globalized and institutionalized international environment. We explore these variations and identify three conditions for success that can inform both academic analysis and political practice: inclusion, commitment, and status recognition. We draw lessons from two historical examples: the Concert of Europe in the early nineteenth century and the League of Nations in the early twentieth century, and discuss how current threats to the liberal international order challenge soft balancing for peaceful change.
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Holbrook, Reece, Lucas Higuera, Kael Wherry, et al. "Implantable cardioverter defibrillator therapy is cost effective for primary prevention patients in Taiwan: An analysis from the Improve SCA trial." PLOS ONE 15, no. 11 (2020): e0241697. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0241697.

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Objective Implantable cardiac defibrillators (ICDs) for primary prevention (PP) of sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) are well-established but underutilized globally. The Improve SCA study has identified a cohort of patients called 1.5 primary prevention (1.5PP) based on PP patients with the presence of certain risk factors. We evaluated the cost-effectiveness of ICD therapy compared to no ICD among the PP population and the subset of 1.5PP patients in Taiwan. Methods A Markov model was run over a lifetime time horizon from the Taiwan payer perspective. Mortality and utility estimates were obtained from the literature (PP) and the IMPROVE SCA trial (1.5PP). Cost inputs were obtained from the Taiwan National Health Insurance Administration (NHIA), Ministry of Health and Welfare. We used a willingness-to-pay (WTP) threshold of NT$2,100,000, as established through standard WTP research methods and in alignment with World Health Organization recommendations. Results The total discounted costs for ICD therapy and no ICD therapy were NT$1,664,259 and NT$646,396 respectively for PP, while they were NT$2,410,603 and NT$905,881 respectively for 1.5PP. Total discounted QALYs for ICD therapy and no ICD therapy were 6.48 and 4.98 respectively for PP, while they were 10.78 and 7.71 respectively for 1.5PP. The incremental cost effectiveness ratio was NT$708,711 for PP and NT$441,153 for 1.5PP, therefore ICD therapy should be considered cost effective for PP and highly cost effective for 1.5PP. Conclusions ICD therapy compared to no ICD therapy is cost-effective in the whole PP population and highly cost-effective in the subset 1.5PP population in Taiwan.
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Sangil Martínez, Jordi A. "CRM ¿filosofía o tecnología? : mitos y realidades de la orientación al cliente." Pecvnia : Revista de la Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales, Universidad de León, no. 5 (December 1, 2007): 209. http://dx.doi.org/10.18002/pec.v0i5.716.

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Actualmente en el mundo empresarial existe la necesidad prioritaria de cuidar a los clientes. Las organizaciones invierten mucho, a veces demasiado, en este propósito. Esa inversión no siempre está correctamente fundamentada y analizada, muchas veces prima más la copia a los competidores, que un cuidadoso análisis de las necesidades internas de la propia organización. La orientación de las organizaciones hacia el cliente, no es más que el buen trato y el conocimiento exhaustivo del cliente, con el fin de incrementar su rentabilidad a lo largo del tiempo.Una de las modas que proliferan es la inversión (muchas veces gasto) en tecnologías CRM (Acrónimo en inglés de Customer Relationship Management). CRM se percibe continuamente en el mundo empresarial como 'Tecnología" no como "Filosofía" empresarial. La cifra de negocio mundial por la venta de este tipo de aplicaciones (es decir "tecnología") es creciente, lo que sorprende si pensamos que, al mismo tiempo, más de la mitad de los proyectos de implantación fracasan, o si se quiere, no alcanzan el éxito deseado. El principal motivo de fracaso suele ser por la falta de concordancia o alineamiento entre la tecnología y la estrategia global corporativa. Esta alineación debe aplicarse y verse reflejada en la estructura, cultura y los procesos de la organización, así como en las políticas en cuanto a sistemas y tecnologías de la información.<br /><br />At the moment, in the business world, customer care is one of the most important organizational priorities. Organizations invest a lot, sometimes too much, in this purpose. That kind of investments are not always properly supported and analyzed by organizations, and often they are based on competitors' benchmark, instead of a careful analysis of the organizational internal needs. Customer orientation is just being kind with the client and trying to get as much information as possible out of the client, in order to increase its lifetime profitability.One of the trends that proliferate is the investment (most of the time, expenditure) in CRM (Customer Relationship Management) technologies. CRM is continuously perceived in the business world as "Technology" rather than "Corporate Philosophy". The world-wide business turnover of this type of applications (i.e. 'Technology") is increasing, which is surprising, given the fact that, at the same time, more than a half of the implementation projects are likely to fait, or simply do not meet the expectations. The main reason for this failure is usually the lack of concordance or alignment between technology and global corporate strategy. This alignment must be applied within the structure, culture and the organizational processes as well as in the Information systems practices.
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Domínguez, Gisela, and Albert Fornells Herrera. "Learning framework for the development of key skills in the hospitality industry." International Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Studies 1, no. 2 (2020): 127–39. http://dx.doi.org/10.31559/ijhts2020.1.2.6.

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The hospitality sector is one of the most competitive industries and it is one of the leading engines of the world economy. The current crisis in the sector due to the COVID-19 makes organizations to consider more than ever the unique and the alignment of their services for becoming different from their competitors. In this sense, the hospitality skills have been identified as one of the crucial elements in the strategy by the companies because of the wide and diverse offer of tourism services and, at the same time, the new customer expectations which are pushing the organizations to create customized, unique and memorable experiences. Thus, this change of paradigm leads to a constant reflection on the quality that services should offer in line with customer expectations. The aim of this research is twofold. On the one hand, the article identifies service orientation, empathy and teamwork as key competences in the development of the hospitality skills. On the other hand, the paper presents a learning framework of those skills within the University studies. This framework proposes an incremental learning process organized in three phases -Discover, Reflection and Experience- through the period of the academic program. First, the identification of their hospitality profile based on the three skills is done through a discovered process. Next, students reflect about the contents and best practices related to strategical and operational aspects linked to the sector. Finally, students experience all the previous concepts through an internship. One of the main benefits of this learning framework is that allows academic supervisors to define goals and monitoring the achievement of these competences of the students along the different academic years.
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Huang, Fleur, Bronwen LeGuerrier, Diane Severin, et al. "Beyond the pilot: Navigating through 8 years of palliative radiotherapy integrated symptom management (PRISM)." Journal of Clinical Oncology 33, no. 29_suppl (2015): 156. http://dx.doi.org/10.1200/jco.2015.33.29_suppl.156.

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156 Background: Patients with incurable cancer often have problematic symptoms and functional impairment despite active cancer care. Opportunities to assess and address these unmet needs exist at every care point. Methods: In 2007, we piloted a holistic model of care in an outpatient Palliative Radiation Oncology clinic. Twin goals (timely access to radiotherapy (RT) and multidisciplinary (MDT) symptom assessment/management) were met: a one-stop-shop to see a radiation oncologist (RO), nurse (RN), radiation therapist (MRT(T)) and pharmacist, with Social Work, Nutrition and Rehabilitation as needed. The model has since evolved, adapting to shifting system-level barriers, with continued attention to patient-reported outcomes. We discuss our team’s 8-year effort to integrate symptom management and palliative RT in a tertiary cancer center. Results: Despite challenges (patient-, provider-, facility-, service- or logistics-related), our target RT population grew from initially only those with bone metastases (served by 1 RO once weekly), to include brain or chest disease (seeing any local RO, any day). Priorities were complex, even at odds, to cater to broadly defined stakeholders: access to RT, systematic basic supportive care (BSC), operational efficiency, care transitions. From strong interdisciplinary focus and task-shifting emerged a critical patient navigation piece. Informal, then formal quality improvement work recast key functions by person/time/place, recently streamlining (e.g. intake/triage/referral pathways) and upgrading (e.g. shared RN/MRT(T) navigator role). Interfaces are layered, broad now between BSC (e.g. horizontal pre-/post-visit telephone symptom screening and goal-setting) and RT processes (e.g. more consistently vertical, less disruptive to technical workflows), enabling scale-up and alignment by design with quality dimensions. Operational and patient outcome metrics remain under periodic review. Conclusions: Integrating MDT BSC with outpatient palliative RT is feasible and scalable, when incrementally tailored to context. Further work, to formally assess patient satisfaction and downstream care needs, will inform PRISM as our local standard.
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Ferdowsian, Mehran C. "Total business excellence – a new management model for operationalizing excellence." International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management 33, no. 7 (2016): 942–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/ijqrm-08-2014-0109.

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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify and address the underlying causes of costly quality/ethical problems that have prevented companies to achieve and sustain excellence. More broadly, the study has leveraged data from multiple sources to determine root-cause issues and propose a new management model that enables leadership to prevent and effectively address quality/ethical problems by operationalizing excellence. For the purpose of this research, operationalization is defined in terms of developing a sustained culture of excellence and enabling a firm to systematically prevent, detect, and address costly problems in their daily operations. Design/methodology/approach – The study has defined the concept of excellence in terms of measurable results based on ten critical success factors: products, financials, stakeholders, employees, leadership, societal, operational, innovation, alignment, and ethical excellence. To identify and address the underlying causes, this study has used a spiral research model to develop and improve an assessment process for the consistent examination of three types of firms: national quality award recipients, successful and responsible Fortune-500 companies, and landmark ethical violators. Findings from case studies were then substantiated using results from current research studies and conclusions from over 20 years of international field work/experience. Findings – To operationalize excellence, this study found that organizations need to develop a foundation for two tightly coupled and inseparable variables: ethics, excellence. Case studies show when these two variables are inadequately planned, integrated, checked, and enforced across business operations, they cause serious and costly problems. This foundation enables a firm to maximize performance, the return on investment, and to sustain performance in each of these critical success factors (CSFs) using the following interconnected building blocks of excellence: grander purpose, measurable results, effective collaboration, leadership development, individual development, continuous alignment, continuous innovation, ethics management, and ethics foundation. Research limitations/implications – The application of the assessment instrument proved to be complex due to the difficulties of transforming conjecture into certainty using existing online corporate records (e.g. understanding true leadership intention). Findings of this study are applicable to any industry and type and size company. The building blocks of this new management model should not be developed and implemented in an isolated, standalone, or piecemeal manner; nor should they be forced onto an organization as a new program. For best results, each building block needs to be implemented as an interconnected component of a complete and total system of management and infused into the fabric of the culture as a normal part of the daily operations. Originality/value – Total business excellence is a proposed new management model for operationalizing excellence. This new model serves three major purposes. First, it enables an enterprise to responsibly deliver a continuous flow of innovative and competitive products as defined and measured by ten CSFs. Second, it enables management to prevent costly quality/ethical problems by developing a unified and responsible strategy for planning, execution, and quality. Most importantly, it provides a missing platform of opportunity where individuals can incrementally grow and develop as they add meaningful personal, professional, and societal value.
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Khan, Imtiaz, and Ali Shahaab. "A Peer-To-Peer Publication Model on Blockchain." Frontiers in Blockchain 4 (February 2, 2021). http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fbloc.2021.615726.

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In the past few decades, there has been a sharp rise of research irreproducibility and retraction, to a point that now is deemed as a crisis. Addressing this crisis, we present a peer-to-peer (P2P) publication model that utilizes blockchain and smart contract technologies. Focusing primarily on researchers and reviewers, the conceptual P2P publication model addresses the sociocultural and incentivization aspects of the irreproducibility crisis. In the P2P publication model, instead of a complete publication, a preapproved experimental design will be published on an incremental basis (unit-by-unit) and authorship will be shared with reviewers. The concept of the P2P publication model was inspired by the transformational journey the music publishing industry has undertaken as it traverses through vinyl age (complete albums) to the Spotify age (single-by-single), where there is a growing inclination among artists toward building an incremental album, taking account of feedback from fans and utilizing automated revenue collection and sharing systems. The ability to publish incrementally through the P2P publication model will relieve researchers from the burden of publishing complete and “good results” while simultaneously incentivizing reviewers to undertake rigorous review work to gain authorship credit in the research. The proposed P2P publication model aims to transform the century-old publication model and incentivization structure in alignment with open access publication ethos of the 21st century.
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Gupta, Lovleen, and Akash Agarwal. "Awareness and Understanding of GST among Indian Consumers: An Empirical Study." VISION : Journal of Indian Taxation 4, no. 02 (2018). http://dx.doi.org/10.17492/vision.v4i02.11777.

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The Goods and Services Tax (GST), India's biggest tax reform since Independence emerged as a game changer and seems to be the masterstroke for economic alignment. The 122nd Constitutional amendment made it possible to introduce new tax regime to fix the gaps in the existing system which is estimated to make an incremental growth of 2% in GDP. In order to investigate the success and effectiveness of the GST, the present research work explores the level of understanding, awareness and acceptance of GST among Indian consumer. Furthermore, the article also investigates the GST effect on spending behaviour of public at large. The primary data was collected from 312 respondents using random sampling from different parts of the country but only 200 responses were found fit for the study. The result shows that consumers, by and large, are acquainted with the GST structure. Moreover, study also reveals that no significant correlation exists between GST tax structure and spending behaviour of respondents.
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Plata, Maria, Jonathan Bryan, and Apostolos Kantzas. "Experimental Study of Heavy Oil Recovery Mechanisms during Cyclic Solvent Injection Processes." SPE Journal, September 1, 2020, 1–16. http://dx.doi.org/10.2118/194034-pa.

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Summary The cyclic solvent injection (CSI) process has recently shown to be a promising method for enhanced heavy oil recovery in Canada. Laboratory testing is often run before development of field pilots to assess the effect of parameters, such as solvent choice and process conditions, on the CSI response. However, differences between laboratory results vs. field applications have been observed. CSI laboratory studies work for only two to three cycles due to low incremental oil in subsequent cycles, whereas field pilots continue for years over multiple cycles. This experimental study is intended to capture the production mechanisms responsible for heavy oil production in CSI. Primary production and CSI tests were conducted using sandpack models saturated with live heavy oil of 9530 mPa·s viscosity. The experiments were conducted in horizontal and vertical mode injection at high- and low-pressure depletion rates using two solvent mixtures of CH4 and C3H8. The sandpacks were scanned after every cycle to analyze the evolution of gas and oil saturations using computed tomography (CT). Three cores were used to study the effect of several parameters: gravity forces, pressure depletion rate, solvent composition, and initial oil saturation on the performance of CSI processes. CSI cycles run after primary production in horizontal systems produced negligible incremental oil for both slow and fast drawdown rates due to the large void space and high free gas saturation inhibiting the pressure buildup to push the solvent-diluted oil. These CSI experiments were only initially successful in dead oil systems, in which the initial oil saturation was higher and appropriate pressure gradient was generated through fast depletion rates. During the vertical alignment, CSI cycles exhibited higher incremental oil recovery per cycle. Slow depletion cycles were more efficient in terms of pressure and incremental recovery per cycle; however, faster depletion cycles performed better as a function of time. These results are more in line with the repeated recoveries measured over multiple cycles in field CSI pilot studies. More volume of diluted oil was drained out of the core when the solvent mixture with higher propane (C3H8) content was injected. These results demonstrate the importance of gravity drainage in the CSI process and its significance on successful oil recovery rates. This study illustrates the limitations of previous horizontal laboratory tests and shows an improved test configuration for modeling and prediction of the improved response observed in CSI pilots.
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Wilkoff, Bruce L., Giuseppe Boriani, Suneet Mittal, et al. "Cost-Effectiveness of an Antibacterial Envelope for Cardiac Implantable Electronic Device Infection Prevention in the US Healthcare System From the WRAP-IT Trial." Circulation: Arrhythmia and Electrophysiology 13, no. 10 (2020). http://dx.doi.org/10.1161/circep.120.008503.

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Background: In the WRAP-IT trial (Worldwide Randomized Antibiotic Envelope Infection Prevention), adjunctive use of an absorbable antibacterial envelope resulted in a 40% reduction of major cardiac implantable electronic device infection without increased risk of complication in 6983 patients undergoing cardiac implantable electronic device revision, replacement, upgrade, or initial cardiac resynchronization therapy defibrillator implant. There is limited information on the cost-effectiveness of this strategy. As a prespecified objective, we evaluated antibacterial envelope cost-effectiveness compared with standard-of-care infection prevention strategies in the US healthcare system. Methods: A decision tree model was used to compare costs and outcomes of antibacterial envelope (TYRX) use adjunctive to standard-of-care infection prevention versus standard-of-care alone over a lifelong time horizon. The analysis was performed from an integrated payer-provider network perspective. Infection rates, antibacterial envelope effectiveness, infection treatment costs and patterns, infection-related mortality, and utility estimates were obtained from the WRAP-IT trial. Life expectancy and long-term costs associated with device replacement, follow-up, and healthcare utilization were sourced from the literature. Costs and quality-adjusted life years were discounted at 3%. An upper willingness-to-pay threshold of $150 000 per quality-adjusted life year was used to determine cost-effectiveness, in alignment with the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association practice guidelines and as supported by the World Health Organization and contemporary literature. Results: The base case incremental cost-effectiveness ratio of the antibacterial envelope compared with standard-of-care was $112 603/quality-adjusted life year. The incremental cost-effectiveness ratio remained lower than the willingness-to-pay threshold in 74% of iterations in the probabilistic sensitivity analysis and was most sensitive to the following model inputs: infection-related mortality, life expectancy, and infection cost. Conclusions: The absorbable antibacterial envelope was associated with a cost-effectiveness ratio below contemporary benchmarks in the WRAP-IT patient population, suggesting that the envelope provides value for the US healthcare system by reducing the incidence of cardiac implantable electronic device infection. Registration: URL: https://www.clinicaltrials.gov . Unique identifier: NCT02277990.
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Struckmann, V., W. Looman, E. van Ginneken, R. Bal, R. Busse, and M. Rutten-van Mölken. "Implementing integrated care for multi-morbidity: analysis of experiences in 17 European programmes." European Journal of Public Health 29, Supplement_4 (2019). http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/eurpub/ckz185.119.

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Abstract Background Many countries are experimenting with new models of care provision and numerous integrated care programmes have been established internationally. However, little information is available on how to implement integrated care. The aim is to provide more in-depth insights in the implementation of integrated care for developers and managers of integrated care programmes, policy makers, health insurers, and researchers. Methods 17 integrated care programmes addressing multi-morbidity were selected and studied in 8 European countries as part of the Horizon 2020-funded project SELFIE (Sustainable intEgrated care modeLs for multi-morbidity: delivery, FInancing and performancE). An overarching analysis with data extraction forms of the Thick Descriptions completed for all 17 programmes in combination with previous insights from the literature was applied. Information about the implementation of integrated care was extracted and coded according to the six components of the SELFIE framework: service delivery, leadership & governance, workforce, financing, technologies & medical products, and, information & research and sub-elements of each component at the micro, meso and macro level. Results The results show the interrelatedness of the six SELFIE framework components and that alignment work between them, different elements and levels is important. The meso-level seems to be the driving force of implementation and that a stepwise approach to change by building upon what is already there (e.g. existing collaborative networks) and gradually expand and broaden the scope of the integrated care programmes was supportive. Conclusions Implementation activities should simultaneously focus at the micro, meso and macro-levels at which integration occurs as they strongly influence each other. Alignment of the integrated care programme and the active influence of the macro-level context by creating an enabling environment facilitates successful implementation. Key messages Integrated care should be implemented with an incremental growth model rather than from a disruptive innovation approach. Integrated care should involve bottom-up and top-down implementation at different levels of the programme.
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Brown, Adalsteinn D., Andrew S. Boozary, David Henry, Greg Marchildon, and Michael Schull. "Political and Policy Arguments for Integrated Data." International Journal of Population Data Science 1, no. 1 (2017). http://dx.doi.org/10.23889/ijpds.v1i1.404.

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ABSTRACT
 IntroductionThere is little argument that integrated data can provide a valuable resource for improved health system management, planning, and accountability as well as discovery and commercial use, but policies to enable and support integrated data fall short of the potential represented by integrated data. To understand the current level of progress on policy for integrated data, we looked at two successful and two unsuccessful efforts to support the creation and use of integrated data in health systems.
 Methods/ApproachWe used document and literature analysis to develop descriptions of the Icelandic Health Sector Database Act, the creation of the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences in Ontario (Canada), the care.data initiative in the United Kingdom, and the Health Datapalooza initiative in the US and used an Ideas, Institutions and Actors framework to compare the experience with integrated data policy and politics.
 Results and discussionOur analysis suggests that institutions around integrated data remain under-developed and largely focused on specific aspects of integrated data policy or use. There are at least two sets of dominant ideas around integrated data – data as a tool for economic development and health system performance and data as a threat to privacy and liberty – that are often diametrically opposed in different jurisdictions. To a great extent, powerful actors remain disengaged from integrated data discussions and leadership engaged in integrated data policy and politics remains isolated from larger policy and political discussions. The medical profession along with civil society groups can mount effective opposition to integrated data initiatives, although potentially for different reasons (accountability and privacy concerns respectively).
 ConclusionsOur analysis suggests several key issues around successful integrated data policy and politics that support the importance of strong leadership, an incremental approach to institution building that focuses on public benefits, strongly alignment to missions that are congruent with societal values, and stronger attention to effective and rapid implementation of policy. In addition to the cases studied here, the success of smaller sub-national (e.g. state or provincial) efforts suggests that smaller efforts tend to work better although their success may not receive the attention that could support larger efforts to integrate data on the national level. Further work should focus chiefly on the extension of these arguments to non-health sectors to realize the full value of integrated data.
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Brabazon, Tara. "Freedom from Choice." M/C Journal 7, no. 6 (2005). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.2461.

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 On May 18, 2003, the Australian Minister for Education, Brendon Nelson, appeared on the Channel Nine Sunday programme. The Yoda of political journalism, Laurie Oakes, attacked him personally and professionally. He disclosed to viewers that the Minister for Education, Science and Training had suffered a false start in his education, enrolling in one semester of an economics degree that was never completed. The following year, he commenced a medical qualification and went on to become a practicing doctor. He did not pay fees for any of his University courses. When reminded of these events, Dr Nelson became agitated, and revealed information not included in the public presentation of the budget of that year, including a ‘cap’ on HECS-funded places of five years for each student. He justified such a decision with the cliché that Australia’s taxpayers do not want “professional students completing degree after degree.” The Minister confirmed that the primary – and perhaps the only – task for university academics was to ‘train’ young people for the workforce. The fact that nearly 50% of students in some Australian Universities are over the age of twenty five has not entered his vision. He wanted young people to complete a rapid degree and enter the workforce, to commence paying taxes and the debt or loan required to fund a full fee-paying place. Now – nearly two years after this interview and with the Howard government blessed with a new mandate – it is time to ask how this administration will order education and value teaching and learning. The curbing of the time available to complete undergraduate courses during their last term in office makes plain the Australian Liberal Government’s stance on formal, publicly-funded lifelong learning. The notion that a student/worker can attain all required competencies, skills, attributes, motivations and ambitions from a single degree is an assumption of the new funding model. It is also significant to note that while attention is placed on the changing sources of income for universities, there have also been major shifts in the pattern of expenditure within universities, focusing on branding, marketing, recruitment, ‘regional’ campuses and off-shore courses. Similarly, the short-term funding goals of university research agendas encourage projects required by industry, rather than socially inflected concerns. There is little inevitable about teaching, research and education in Australia, except that the Federal Government will not create a fully-funded model for lifelong learning. The task for those of us involved in – and committed to – education in this environment is to probe the form and rationale for a (post) publicly funded University. This short paper for the ‘order’ issue of M/C explores learning and teaching within our current political and economic order. Particularly, I place attention on the synergies to such an order via phrases like the knowledge economy and the creative industries. To move beyond the empty promises of just-in-time learning, on-the-job training, graduate attributes and generic skills, we must reorder our assumptions and ask difficult questions of those who frame the context in which education takes place. For the term of your natural life Learning is a big business. Whether discussing the University of the Third Age, personal development courses, self help bestsellers or hard-edged vocational qualifications, definitions of learning – let alone education – are expanding. Concurrent with this growth, governments are reducing centralized funding and promoting alternative revenue streams. The diversity of student interests – or to use the language of the time, client’s learning goals – is transforming higher education into more than the provision of undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. The expansion of the student body beyond the 18-25 age group and the desire to ‘service industry’ has reordered the form and purpose of formal education. The number of potential students has expanded extraordinarily. As Lee Bash realized Today, some estimates suggest that as many as 47 percent of all students enrolled in higher education are over 25 years old. In the future, as lifelong learning becomes more integrated into the fabric of our culture, the proportion of adult students is expected to increase. And while we may not yet realize it, the academy is already being transformed as a result. (35) Lifelong learning is the major phrase and trope that initiates and justifies these changes. Such expansive economic opportunities trigger the entrepreneurial directives within universities. If lifelong learning is taken seriously, then the goals, entry standards, curriculum, information management policies and assessments need to be challenged and changed. Attention must be placed on words and phrases like ‘access’ and ‘alternative entry.’ Even more consideration must be placed on ‘outcomes’ and ‘accountability.’ Lifelong learning is a catchphrase for a change in purpose and agenda. Courses are developed from a wide range of education providers so that citizens can function in, or at least survive, the agitation of the post-work world. Both neo-liberal and third way models of capitalism require the labeling and development of an aspirational class, a group who desires to move ‘above’ their current context. Such an ambiguous economic and social goal always involves more than the vocational education and training sector or universities, with the aim being to seamlessly slot education into a ‘lifestyle.’ The difficulties with this discourse are two-fold. Firstly, how effectively can these aspirational notions be applied and translated into a real family and a real workplace? Secondly, does this scheme increase the information divide between rich and poor? There are many characteristics of an effective lifelong learner including great personal motivation, self esteem, confidence and intellectual curiosity. In a double shifting, change-fatigued population, the enthusiasm for perpetual learning may be difficult to summon. With the casualization of the post-Fordist workplace, it is no surprise that policy makers and employers are placing the economic and personal responsibility for retraining on individual workers. Instead of funding a training scheme in the workplace, there has been a devolving of skill acquisition and personal development. Through the twentieth century, and particularly after 1945, education was the track to social mobility. The difficulty now – with degree inflation and the loss of stable, secure, long-term employment – is that new modes of exclusion and disempowerment are being perpetuated through the education system. Field recognized that “the new adult education has been embraced most enthusiastically by those who are already relatively well qualified.” (105) This is a significant realization. Motivation, meta-learning skills and curiosity are increasingly being rewarded when found in the already credentialed, empowered workforce. Those already in work undertake lifelong learning. Adult education operates well for members of the middle class who are doing well and wish to do better. If success is individualized, then failure is also cast on the self, not the social system or policy. The disempowered are blamed for their own conditions and ‘failures.’ The concern, through the internationalization of the workforce, technological change and privatization of national assets, is that failure in formal education results in social exclusion and immobility. Besides being forced into classrooms, there are few options for those who do not wish to learn, in a learning society. Those who ‘choose’ not be a part of the national project of individual improvement, increased market share, company competitiveness and international standards are not relevant to the economy. But there is a personal benefit – that may have long term political consequences – from being ‘outside’ society. Perhaps the best theorist of the excluded is not sourced from a University, but from the realm of fictional writing. Irvine Welsh, author of the landmark Trainspotting, has stated that What we really need is freedom from choice … People who are in work have no time for anything else but work. They have no mental space to accommodate anything else but work. Whereas people who are outside the system will always find ways of amusing themselves. Even if they are materially disadvantaged they’ll still find ways of coping, getting by and making their own entertainment. (145-6) A blurring of work and learning, and work and leisure, may seem to create a borderless education, a learning framework uninhibited by curriculum, assessment or power structures. But lifelong learning aims to place as many (national) citizens as possible in ‘the system,’ striving for success or at least a pay increase which will facilitate the purchase of more consumer goods. Through any discussion of work-place training and vocationalism, it is important to remember those who choose not to choose life, who choose something else, who will not follow orders. Everybody wants to work The great imponderable for complex economic systems is how to manage fluctuations in labour and the market. The unstable relationship between need and supply necessitates flexibility in staffing solutions, and short-term supplementary labour options. When productivity and profit are the primary variables through which to judge successful management, then the alignments of education and employment are viewed and skewed through specific ideological imperatives. The library profession is an obvious occupation that has confronted these contradictions. It is ironic that the occupation that orders knowledge is experiencing a volatile and disordered workplace. In the past, it had been assumed that librarians hold a degree while technicians do not, and that technicians would not be asked to perform – unsupervised – the same duties as librarians. Obviously, such distinctions are increasingly redundant. Training packages, structured through competency-based training principles, have ensured technicians and librarians share knowledge systems which are taught through incremental stages. Mary Carroll recognized the primary questions raised through this change. If it is now the case that these distinctions have disappeared do we need to continue to draw them between professional and para-professional education? Does this mean that all sectors of the education community are in fact learning/teaching the same skills but at different levels so that no unique set of skills exist? (122) With education reduced to skills, thereby discrediting generalist degrees, the needs of industry have corroded the professional standards and stature of librarians. Certainly, the abilities of library technicians are finally being valued, but it is too convenient that one of the few professions dominated by women has suffered a demeaning of knowledge into competency. Lifelong learning, in this context, has collapsed high level abilities in information management into bite sized chunks of ‘skills.’ The ideology of lifelong learning – which is rarely discussed – is that it serves to devalue prior abilities and knowledges into an ever-expanding imperative for ‘new’ skills and software competencies. For example, ponder the consequences of Hitendra Pillay and Robert Elliott’s words: The expectations inherent in new roles, confounded by uncertainty of the environment and the explosion of information technology, now challenge us to reconceptualise human cognition and develop education and training in a way that resonates with current knowledge and skills. (95) Neophilliacal urges jut from their prose. The stress on ‘new roles,’ and ‘uncertain environments,’ the ‘explosion of information technology,’ ‘challenges,’ ‘reconceptualisations,’ and ‘current knowledge’ all affirms the present, the contemporary, and the now. Knowledge and expertise that have taken years to develop, nurture and apply are not validated through this educational brief. The demands of family, work, leisure, lifestyle, class and sexuality stretch the skin taut over economic and social contradictions. To ease these paradoxes, lifelong learning should stress pedagogy rather than applications, and context rather than content. Put another way, instead of stressing the link between (gee wizz) technological change and (inevitable) workplace restructuring and redundancies, emphasis needs to be placed on the relationship between professional development and verifiable technological outcomes, rather than spruiks and promises. Short term vocationalism in educational policy speaks to the ordering of our public culture, requiring immediate profits and a tight dialogue between education and work. Furthering this logic, if education ‘creates’ employment, then it also ‘creates’ unemployment. Ironically, in an environment that focuses on the multiple identities and roles of citizens, students are reduced to one label – ‘future workers.’ Obviously education has always been marinated in the political directives of the day. The industrial revolution introduced a range of technical complexities to the workforce. Fordism necessitated that a worker complete a task with precision and speed, requiring a high tolerance of stress and boredom. Now, more skills are ‘assumed’ by employers at the time that workplaces are off-loading their training expectations to the post-compulsory education sector. Therefore ‘lifelong learning’ is a political mask to empower the already empowered and create a low-level skill base for low paid workers, with the promise of competency-based training. Such ideologies never need to be stated overtly. A celebration of ‘the new’ masks this task. Not surprisingly therefore, lifelong learning has a rich new life in ordering creative industries strategies and frameworks. Codifying the creative The last twenty years have witnessed an expanding jurisdiction and justification of the market. As part of Tony Blair’s third way, the creative industries and the knowledge economy became catchwords to demonstrate that cultural concerns are not only economically viable but a necessity in the digital, post-Fordist, information age. Concerns with intellectual property rights, copyright, patents, and ownership of creative productions predominate in such a discourse. Described by Charles Leadbeater as Living on Thin Air, this new economy is “driven by new actors of production and sources of competitive advantage – innovation, design, branding, know-how – which are at work on all industries.” (10) Such market imperatives offer both challenges and opportunity for educationalists and students. Lifelong learning is a necessary accoutrement to the creative industries project. Learning cities and communities are the foundations for design, music, architecture and journalism. In British policy, and increasingly in Queensland, attention is placed on industry-based research funding to address this changing environment. In 2000, Stuart Cunningham and others listed the eight trends that order education, teaching and learning in this new environment. The Changes to the Provision of Education Globalization The arrival of new information and communication technologies The development of a knowledge economy, shortening the time between the development of new ideas and their application. The formation of learning organizations User-pays education The distribution of knowledge through interactive communication technologies (ICT) Increasing demand for education and training Scarcity of an experienced and trained workforce Source: S. Cunningham, Y. Ryan, L. Stedman, S. Tapsall, K. Bagdon, T. Flew and P. Coaldrake. The Business of Borderless Education. Canberra: DETYA Evaluation and Investigations Program [EIP], 2000. This table reverberates with the current challenges confronting education. Mobilizing such changes requires the lubrication of lifelong learning tropes in university mission statements and the promotion of a learning culture, while also acknowledging the limited financial conditions in which the educational sector is placed. For university scholars facilitating the creative industries approach, education is “supplying high value-added inputs to other enterprises,” (Hartley and Cunningham 5) rather than having value or purpose beyond the immediately and applicably economic. The assumption behind this table is that the areas of expansion in the workforce are the creative and service industries. In fact, the creative industries are the new service sector. This new economy makes specific demands of education. Education in the ‘old economy’ and the ‘new economy’ Old Economy New Economy Four-year degree Forty-year degree Training as a cost Training as a source of competitive advantage Learner mobility Content mobility Distance education Distributed learning Correspondence materials with video Multimedia centre Fordist training – one size fits all Tailored programmes Geographically fixed institutions Brand named universities and celebrity professors Just-in-case Just-in-time Isolated learners Virtual learning communities Source: T. Flew. “Educational Media in Transition: Broadcasting, Digital Media and Lifelong Learning in the Knowledge Economy.” International Journal of Instructional Media 29.1 (2002): 20. There are myriad assumptions lurking in Flew’s fascinating table. The imperative is short courses on the web, servicing the needs of industry. He described the product of this system as a “learner-earner.” (50) This ‘forty year degree’ is based on lifelong learning ideologies. However Flew’s ideas are undermined by the current government higher education agenda, through the capping – through time – of courses. The effect on the ‘learner-earner’ in having to earn more to privately fund a continuance of learning – to ensure that they keep on earning – needs to be addressed. There will be consequences to the housing market, family structures and leisure time. The costs of education will impact on other sectors of the economy and private lives. Also, there is little attention to the groups who are outside this taken-for-granted commitment to learning. Flew noted that barriers to greater participation in education and training at all levels, which is a fundamental requirement of lifelong learning in the knowledge economy, arise in part out of the lack of provision of quality technology-mediated learning, and also from inequalities of access to ICTs, or the ‘digital divide.’ (51) In such a statement, there is a misreading of teaching and learning. Such confusion is fuelled by the untheorised gap between ‘student’ and ‘consumer.’ The notion that technology (which in this context too often means computer-mediated platforms) is a barrier to education does not explain why conventional distance education courses, utilizing paper, ink and postage, were also unable to welcome or encourage groups disengaged from formal learning. Flew and others do not confront the issue of motivation, or the reason why citizens choose to add or remove the label of ‘student’ from their bag of identity labels. The stress on technology as both a panacea and problem for lifelong learning may justify theories of convergence and the integration of financial, retail, community, health and education provision into a services sector, but does not explain why students desire to learn, beyond economic necessity and employer expectations. Based on these assumptions of expanding creative industries and lifelong learning, the shape of education is warping. An ageing population requires educational expenditure to be reallocated from primary and secondary schooling and towards post-compulsory learning and training. This cost will also be privatized. When coupled with immigration flows, technological changes and alterations to market and labour structures, lifelong learning presents a profound and personal cost. An instrument for economic and social progress has been individualized, customized and privatized. The consequence of the ageing population in many nations including Australia is that there will be fewer young people in schools or employment. Such a shift will have consequences for the workplace and the taxation system. Similarly, those young workers who remain will be far more entrepreneurial and less loyal to their employers. Public education is now publically-assisted education. Jane Jenson and Denis Saint-Martin realized the impact of this change. The 1980s ideological shift in economic and social policy thinking towards policies and programmes inspired by neo-liberalism provoked serious social strains, especially income polarization and persistent poverty. An increasing reliance on market forces and the family for generating life-chances, a discourse of ‘responsibility,’ an enthusiasm for off-loading to the voluntary sector and other altered visions of the welfare architecture inspired by neo-liberalism have prompted a reaction. There has been a wide-ranging conversation in the 1990s and the first years of the new century in policy communities in Europe as in Canada, among policy makers who fear the high political, social and economic costs of failing to tend to social cohesion. (78) There are dense social reorderings initiated by neo-liberalism and changing the notions of learning, teaching and education. There are yet to be tracked costs to citizenship. The legacy of the 1980s and 1990s is that all organizations must behave like businesses. In such an environment, there are problems establishing social cohesion, let alone social justice. To stress the product – and not the process – of education contradicts the point of lifelong learning. Compliance and complicity replace critique. (Post) learning The Cold War has ended. The great ideological battle between communism and Western liberal democracy is over. Most countries believe both in markets and in a necessary role for Government. There will be thunderous debates inside nations about the balance, but the struggle for world hegemony by political ideology is gone. What preoccupies decision-makers now is a different danger. It is extremism driven by fanaticism, personified either in terrorist groups or rogue states. Tony Blair (http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page6535.asp) Tony Blair, summoning his best Francis Fukuyama impersonation, signaled the triumph of liberal democracy over other political and economic systems. His third way is unrecognizable from the Labour party ideals of Clement Attlee. Probably his policies need to be. Yet in his second term, he is not focused on probing the specificities of the market-orientation of education, health and social welfare. Instead, decision makers are preoccupied with a war on terror. Such a conflict seemingly justifies large defense budgets which must be at the expense of social programmes. There is no recognition by Prime Ministers Blair or Howard that ‘high-tech’ armory and warfare is generally impotent to the terrorist’s weaponry of cars, bodies and bombs. This obvious lesson is present for them to see. After the rapid and successful ‘shock and awe’ tactics of Iraq War II, terrorism was neither annihilated nor slowed by the Coalition’s victory. Instead, suicide bombers in Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Indonesia and Israel snuck have through defenses, requiring little more than a car and explosives. More Americans have been killed since the war ended than during the conflict. Wars are useful when establishing a political order. They sort out good and evil, the just and the unjust. Education policy will never provide the ‘big win’ or the visible success of toppling Saddam Hussein’s statue. The victories of retraining, literacy, competency and knowledge can never succeed on this scale. As Blair offered, “these are new times. New threats need new measures.” (ht tp://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page6535.asp) These new measures include – by default – a user pays education system. In such an environment, lifelong learning cannot succeed. It requires a dense financial commitment in the long term. A learning society requires a new sort of war, using ideas not bullets. References Bash, Lee. “What Serving Adult Learners Can Teach Us: The Entrepreneurial Response.” Change January/February 2003: 32-7. Blair, Tony. “Full Text of the Prime Minister’s Speech at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet.” November 12, 2002. http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page6535.asp. Carroll, Mary. “The Well-Worn Path.” The Australian Library Journal May 2002: 117-22. Field, J. Lifelong Learning and the New Educational Order. Stoke on Trent: Trentham Books, 2000. Flew, Terry. “Educational Media in Transition: Broadcasting, Digital Media and Lifelong Learning in the Knowledge Economy.” International Journal of Instructional Media 29.1 (2002): 47-60. Hartley, John, and Cunningham, Stuart. “Creative Industries – from Blue Poles to Fat Pipes.” Department of Education, Science and Training, Commonwealth of Australia (2002). Jenson, Jane, and Saint-Martin, Denis. “New Routes to Social Cohesion? Citizenship and the Social Investment State.” Canadian Journal of Sociology 28.1 (2003): 77-99. Leadbeater, Charles. Living on Thin Air. London: Viking, 1999. Pillay, Hitendra, and Elliott, Robert. “Distributed Learning: Understanding the Emerging Workplace Knowledge.” Journal of Interactive Learning Research 13.1-2 (2002): 93-107. Welsh, Irvine, from Redhead, Steve. “Post-Punk Junk.” Repetitive Beat Generation. Glasgow: Rebel Inc, 2000: 138-50. 
 
 
 
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