Publishing,patenting, and standardization: Motives and barriers of scientists

In this paper, we analyze the motives and barriers of researchers to engage in standardization in comparison with publishing and patenting. We conduct a survey on 129 researchers at the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing, one of Germany’s largest federal research institutes. The resultant dataset enables us to study not only the researchers’ motives and barriers but also the effect of those motives and barriers on the extent to which the respective activities are undertaken. We find that publishing constitutes a baseline activity. By contrast, patenting is driven by commercialization motives, and standardization is mainly fostered by intrinsic motivation. With respect to the barriers, we find that they are mostly inherent to the activity itself or the system in which it is performed. Finally, we discuss several options to develop a more integrative incentive system to exploit the possible synergies between standardization and publishing and patenting.     

Boundaries,breaches, and bridges: The case of Climategate

We examine the incident known as “Climategate” in which emails and other documents relating to climate scientists and their work were illegitimately accessed and posted to the Internet. The contents of the files prompted questions about the credibility of climate science and the legitimacy of some of the climate scientists’ practices. Multiple investigations unfolded to repair the boundary that had been breached. While exonerating the scientists of wrongdoing and endorsing the legitimacy of the consensus opinion, the investigating committees suggested revisions to some scientific practices. Despite this boundary repair work, the credibility and legitimacy of the scientific enterprise were not fully restored in the eyes of several stakeholders. We explore why this is the case, identify boundary bridging approaches to address these issues, and highlight policy implications.     

Fragments of your communication: Email,vmail, and fax

Abstract

How are new media, such as electronic mail, voice mail, and fax, used when people have access to several of them simultaneously? This paper reports findings from a field study of media use in four sizable subunits within two large organizations where most employees had access to email, vmail, and fax. Respondents tended to use multiple electronic media rather than relying on one. However, they also showed a tendency to prefer one medium for asynchronous communication and to use the others for occasional, specialized purposes. Further, there were considerable differences across subunits in typical media use patterns. Although respondents expressed strong desires for multimedia integration, this study suggests that technological integration may not necessarily result in seamless, collaborative work.     

Computer efficacy: Determinants,consequences, and malleability

This paper presents a model of the determinants and consequences of computer efficacy with particular attention devoted to the mediating processes through which users form efficacy judgements, including their analysis of task requirements, assessments of situational and personal resources/constraints, and attributional analysis of experience. Of particular interest to this paper are the attributional processes affecting computer efficacy. Recommendations for computer and attributional training are advanced.     

Geeks, meta-Geeks, and gender trouble: activism, identity, and low-power FM radio

In this paper, I consider the activities of a group of individuals who tinker with and build radio hardware in an informal setting called 'Geek Group'. They conceive of Geek Group as a radical pedagogical activity, which constitutes an aspect of activism surrounding citizen access to low-power FM radio. They are also concerned with combating the gendered nature of hardware skills, yet in spite of their efforts men tend to have more skill and familiarity with radio hardware than women. Radio tinkering has a long history as a masculine undertaking and a site of masculine identity construction. I argue that this case represents an interplay between geek, activist, and gendered identities, all of which are salient for this group, but which do not occur together without some tension.     

Studying transitions: Past,present, and future

The domain of transition studies has been drawing more and more scholarly attention and, as a result, its body of knowledge is rapidly growing. This raises new challenges as well as opportunities, not the least regarding the methodological and philosophical underpinnings of research in this domain. In this respect, transition research, as a relatively young field of inquiry, has been little concerned with methodological investigation and reflection. We propose a framework that enables this reflection: the so-called ‘transition research onion’. Subsequently, we utilize this framework to systematically assess 217 peer-reviewed papers in the field of transition studies, to distill key methodological patterns and trends of the field. The findings suggest that the methodology of transition studies, in terms of depth and diversity, is underdeveloped. These insights serve to guide future research on transition processes.     

合成生物学的发展、挑战及应对

通过操作DNA进而操控特定生物过程和生命性状一直是生物研究的热点问题。针对如何理性设计与深度改造生物系统这一难题,合成生物学这一综合了传统生物学、工程学与计算机科学的交叉学科应运而生,进而显现出举世瞩目的巨大潜力。然而,合成生物学的发展也面临着诸多挑战和风险。本文着眼于合成生物学的思想理念,对其理论与技术体系的发展现状、技术扩散所带来的安全问题以及将来合成生物学可能的发展趋势加以深入探讨。     

平台型领导：概念、维度与测量

互联网背景下的平台经济时代重构了人与组织之间的关系,需要创新性地建立一种基于平台隐喻的领导范式和实践途径。本文在文献内容分析基础上对6位管理学领域专家和21位企业管理者进行结构化访谈,经过质性研究过程归纳38个题项,进行606份有效问卷的实证分析并通过信度和效度检验,开发出平台型领导量表的22个测量题项以及分享利他、交互协作、孵化创客、度己化人、赋能平等5个构成维度,并给出五个构成维度的内涵释义。该研究较为完备地刻画了平台型领导的行为特征,弥补了平台型领导研究缺乏测量量表和维度界定的理论缺口,所确定的5维度22题项具有系统性、涵盖性和内在区别性,具与有互联网、大数据背景下企业平台化经营和平台化升级的契合性,为践行平台型领导提供了理论依据和行为导向,对推动平台领导力的进一步研究具有积极作用。     

Electronic Commerce: Definition, Theory, and Context

Electronic commerce is a relatively new concept that crept into the business vocabulary during the 1970s. A picture of electronic commerce is emerging in which the Internet will become the essential dial-tone for conducting business by the year 2000. This contribution addresses definitional, theoretical and contextual issues including the nature, drivers, enablers, and the magnitude of electronic commerce. The author discusses the role of electronic markets, the effects of information technology on electronic commerce, interactivity, and the evolution of disintermediation to reintermediation. A definition and typology of electronic commerce are offered. Theoretical and conceptual approaches to electronic commerce are advanced in terms of (1) transaction cost theory, (2) marketing, (3) diffusion, (4) information retrieval, and (5) strategic networking. Lastly, the author poses the question of how electronic commerce adds value.     

教学与科研:关系、融合、分析及展望

教学与科研的关系是现代大学的基本问题,更是近年来高等教育领域内学者们研究的重要课题之一。以教学与科研的关系为线索,对其研究现状加以系统综述。从教学与科研的关系入手,归纳提炼出其关系、连接和冲突等,进而详细探讨教学与科研的影响因素,随后介绍教学与科研融合的渊源、实践和措施。虽然现有研究已取得了一定程度的进展,但教学与科研的相关度、教师管理制度、教师评价制度以及教学与科研关系测度方法等问题需要解决。预计未来的研究重点将是深入探究如何加强教学与科研融合,从而分类引导的深入探讨国内教学与科研关系的实证研究及教师管理措施的研究等。     

Places and Spaces: The Historical Interaction of Technology, Home, and Privacy

While recent developments in information and communication technologies have produced heightened concern over privacy issues, technology and privacy have a long history of interaction. The home has served as a key locus for this interaction. By distinguishing inside from outside, the home supports the allocation of particular behaviors and information to different areas, both physical and virtual. This article explores how different technologies, including structural elements, have affected and reflected over time the boundary represented by the home and how that boundary has helped shape the construction of privacy in the West. This illustrates how privacy might be conceptualized as a social condition arising from the interaction of various boundaries, including the principal one separating the public and the private.     

Crowdstorm: the future of innovation,ideas, and problem solving

This paper considers the scope for beneficial scientific co-operation and technology transfer among ASEAN countries, Australia and New Zealand in the light of differences in the development status of these countries, their proximity to one another, their resource endowments and other factors. Australian official science and technology aid in the ASEAN region (which of necessity involves some co-operation between the donor and aid recipients) is considered as well as recent initiatives of the Australian Department of Science to promote fully co-operative (‘non-aided’) R&;D in the region. Two examples of regional co-operation in R &; D are considered briefly, namely the development of a malaria vaccine and giant clam farming.     

Making knowledge: history, literature, and the poetics of science

As a field of study, literature and science has gradually expanded to encompass both the impact of science on literary culture and the literary-linguistic practices intrinsic to the production of scientific knowledge. Such transformations both reinforce and fundamentally recalibrate the detailed attention focused on scientific practice by historians of science since the 1980s. As a result, this essay and the Focus section it introduces suggest that history of science and literature and science are, in fact, interdependent fields. Attention to their convergences will yield better understanding of the performative dimensions of scientific practices and thence of science itself as a form of making of knowledge of things and events in the world of nature. Science as a form of making involves the convergence of things, material practices, and a panoply of meaningful artifacts-instruments of thought and action-that refuse any simple dichotomy between "text" and "action."