Academic Freedom,Innovation, and Responsibility: Towards an ‘Ethical GPS’ in Higher Education and Science

In lieu of the usual ‘From the Editors’ piece, Jan Sadlak, Director of UNESCO‐CEPES, and Henryk Ratajczak, Vice‐President of the European Academy of Arts, Sciences and Humanities (EAASH), describe below the scope and highlights of the International Conference on Ethical and Moral Dimensions for Higher Education and Science in Europe, held in Bucharest on 2–5 September 2004. The articles in this issue, some of which are drawn from Conference presentations, are also introduced here.

The Conference was organized by the above two organizations, in collaboration with the United Nations University (UNU) in Tokyo and the Division of Basic and Engineering Sciences of UNESCO in Paris. It took place under the joint high patronage of Mr. Jacques Chirac, President of the French Republic, and Mr. Ion Iliescu, President of Romania, and received further distinction in the form of special messages from Pope John Paul II, HRH Prince El Hassan bin Talal, and Mr. Koïchiro Matsuura, Director‐General of UNESCO. All Conference documents can be accessed on the UNESCO‐CEPES website, ?www.cepes.ro?.     

Teacher education pedagogy: disrupting the apprenticeship of observation

Teacher educators are challenged to enact a pedagogy that helps facilitate conceptual transitions in preservice teachers away from the naïve notions formed during their long apprenticeships of observation. This study examines one ‘educative experience purposefully embedded in meaningful pedagogical experiences’ using the three-level model of teacher learning. Findings indicate preservice teachers derived a range of learning from the educative experience, and most were found to be surfacing, confronting, and beginning to replace naïve notions of teaching, learning, and assessment. Findings also suggest several characteristics of teacher education pedagogy that disrupt the apprenticeship of observation, including the presentation of dramatically new ideas to elicit the awareness of unexamined assumptions about teaching and learning; the usefulness of affect in awakening that awareness; and opportunities to develop metacognition and process reactions through writing that surfaces prior ideas and articulates new understandings.     

Learning About Baby: What New Mothers Would Like to Know

As part of a larger research project to evaluate a new model of care for first-time mothers in a community health-care setting, this study aimed to identify the preparation and information needs of first-time mothers. All first-time mothers attending a selection of community child health centers in Brisbane, Australia, who presented with no overt risk factors and with a thriving child, were invited to participate in the study. Three months after mothers entered the service, data were collected via telephone survey (N = 151). In addition, focus group interviews were conducted 7–9 months following entry to the service (n = 8). Participants reported seeking information from a variety of sources during pregnancy. Few participants felt well prepared for managing either the physical or emotional experience of early mothering or the essential maternal and child health issues and common problems in the early months. Findings suggest that current approaches to care and education may not meet the needs of first-time mothers. Different approaches are suggested to enhance women's maternal competence during the first few months of becoming a new mother.     

Predicting online grocery buying intention: a comparison of the theory of reasoned action and the theory of planned behavior

This paper tests the ability of two consumer theories—the theory of reasoned action and the theory of planned behavior—in predicting consumer online grocery buying intention. In addition, a comparison of the two theories is conducted. Data were collected from two web-based surveys of Danish (n=1222) and Swedish (n=1038) consumers using self-administered questionnaires. These results suggest that the theory of planned behavior (with the inclusion of a path from subjective norm to attitude) provides the best fit to the data and explains the highest proportion of variation in online grocery buying intention.     

Building tribal communities in the collaborative economy: an innovation framework

In recent years, there has been a groundswell of initiatives aimed at providing platforms to share resources among people. Collaborative consumption provides a model for a ‘sharing economy’ where the dominant logic of consumers is resource access rather than ownership. This study examines the nature and development of a variety of collaborative consumption businesses; in particular, we explore how start-up entrepreneurs see the problems of creating a tribal community among customers and users. Interviews were carried out with founders and co-founders of collaborative consumption ventures during 2014–15. The results suggest that these organisations face many common issues. We develop and apply a framework to understand some of these. We find that collaborative consumption entrepreneurs strive to build a tribal community by matching, in an innovative way, supply and demand. This is typically done by co-creating shared commonality, developing scalable electronic platforms, and building trust into platforms using social media to develop proxy social capital. Consequently, by using existing ecosystems of social media, tribal communities can be formed and scaled much more quickly than via traditional marketing approaches.     

Multitasking during Web search sessions

A user’s single session with a Web search engine or information retrieval (IR) system may consist of seeking information on single or multiple topics, and switch between tasks or multitasking information behavior. Most Web search sessions consist of two queries of approximately two words. However, some Web search sessions consist of three or more queries. We present findings from two studies. First, a study of two-query search sessions on the AltaVista Web search engine, and second, a study of three or more query search sessions on the AltaVista Web search engine. We examine the degree of multitasking search and information task switching during these two sets of AltaVista Web search sessions. A sample of two-query and three or more query sessions were filtered from AltaVista transaction logs from 2002 and qualitatively analyzed. Sessions ranged in duration from less than a minute to a few hours. Findings include: (1) 81% of two-query sessions included multiple topics, (2) 91.3% of three or more query sessions included multiple topics, (3) there are a broad variety of topics in multitasking search sessions, and (4) three or more query sessions sometimes contained frequent topic changes. Multitasking is found to be a growing element in Web searching. This paper proposes an approach to interactive information retrieval (IR) contextually within a multitasking framework. The implications of our findings for Web design and further research are discussed.     

Modes of governance of new service development for mobile networks: A life cycle perspective

This paper focuses on governance modes for service development of mobile telephone networks (GSM, Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), GPRS, UMTS). ‘Services’ refer to services containing information. The paper shows that the phase of the life cycle of the network and the service affects the choice of governance mode of new service development projects. Governance modes include internal development by the telecom operator, several forms of collaboration between telecom operator and service firm, and only providing a network by the telecom operator to the service firm, which then develops and provides its services (external). In this paper a model is developed for the governance mode of service development in different phases of the life cycles of the mobile network and service, based on the degrees of uncertainty and urgency involved in the network and service development processes. Four cases are presented of service development projects for mobile telecom networks. These cases indicate that the number of redesigns and the level of communication costs in collaboration projects indeed depend on the degree of urgency and uncertainty involved in these projects, which are in turn affected by the life cycle of the network and service.     

The Digital Divide as a Complex and Dynamic Phenomenon

The purpose of this article is to propose a fruitful analytical framework for data supposedly related to the concept of the so-called "digital divide." The extent and the nature of this divide depend on the kind of access defined. Considering the possession of hardware, growing divides among different categories of income, employment, education, age, and ethnicity can be proved to have existed in the 1980s and 1990s according to official American and Dutch statistics. If only by effects of saturation, these gaps will more or less close. However, it is shown that differential access of skills and usage is likely to increase. The growth of a usage gap is projected. Multivariate analyses of Dutch official statistics reveal the striking effect of age and gender as compared to education. The usage gap is related to the evolution of the information and network society. Finally, policy perspectives are discussed.     

Cold hard cash: commercialization,politics, and amateurism in United States track and field

This article explores the decline of amateurism in the sport of track-and-field between the years 1968 and 1982. In doing so, it pays particular attention to Cold War politics as well as the role played by shoe companies such as Nike, in facilitating that transformation.     

Mobilizing innovation for sustainability transitions: A comment on transformative innovation policy

The topics addressed in this paper concern the (much-needed) transition to sustainability and what role (innovation) policy can play in speeding up such changes. In their Discussion Paper Schot and Steinmueller (2018) argue that the existing theorizing and knowledge bases within the field of innovation studies are “unfit” for this task and that a totally new approach is required. This paper takes issue with this claim. Policy advice, it is argued, needs to be anchored in the accumulated research on the issue at hand, in this case, innovation. The paper therefore starts by distilling some important insights on innovation from the accumulated research on this topic and, with this in mind, considers various policy approaches that have been suggested for influencing innovation and sustainability transitions. Finally, the lessons for the development and implementation of transformative innovation policy are considered. It is concluded that the existing theorizing and knowledge base in innovation studies may be of great relevance when designing policies for dealing with climate change and sustainability transitions.