28579 research outputs found
Sort by
Digitalisation, co-production, and management control: transforming management accounting and accountability in Thailand’s primary healthcare
Full text linkThis thesis investigates how mandated digitalisation transforms budgeting, accountability, and management accounting controls within Thailand’s primary healthcare sector. While datafication is promoted globally to enhance public sector efficiency, a significant gap exists between top-down policy mandates and the complex realities of implementation, particularly in the resource-constrained contexts of emerging economies. Employing an extended six-month ethnographic study based on Actor-Network Theory, this research utilises 50 in-depth interviews, 6 focus groups, and participant observation to explore how digital management accounting practices are translated, negotiated, and adapted by practitioners. The findings reveal that organisational adaptation is an emergent process influenced by the tension between top-down mandates and bottom-up adaptations. Datafication does not replace legacy systems; instead, it creates complex, hybrid budgeting practices that can intensify resource inequalities. This results in a dynamic mix of formal, data-driven demands and informal, community-based relational practices, often mediated by village health volunteers. Organisational intermediaries, such as hybrid IT specialists, play a crucial role in enabling this adaptation. It requires new professional practices, including the development of a hybrid ethos and significant hidden work to sustain the latest control systems. This thesis makes three primary contributions to academic debates. First, it offers a sociomaterial perspective that challenges techno-optimistic narratives by demonstrating how digital budgeting reforms can produce hybrid practices that deepen institutional inequalities. Second, it develops the concept of ‘multiform accountability’ to theorise how formal, data-driven systems become entangled with informal, community-based practices, a process critically mediated by local intermediaries. Finally, it introduces an integrated conceptual model combining diffusion and translation theories to explain organisational adaptation, emphasising that successful implementation depends on the often hidden, essential work of practitioners and organisational intermediaries. These contributions provide policymakers with valuable insights into effectively implementing digital systems in practice
“Like living in a house where somebody's constantly rearranging the furniture”: Narratives of receiving a Functional Neurological Disorder diagnosis
Full text linkBackground: Functional Neurological Disorder (FND) is a debilitating and poorly understood condition encompassing a range of neurological and physiological symptoms. The past century has seen large shifts in FND’s conceptualisation, away from its origins of hysteria and conversion disorder, however these understandings remain prevalent within healthcare. Despite being one of the most common neurological conditions in the UK, it remains mischaracterised in clinical settings and public awareness is minimal. Against this backdrop, the patient’s experience of FND is unclear. Aims: This study aims to explore how receiving a diagnosis of FND shapes patients' meaning-making of their experiences. The study seeks to illuminate the complexities of identity, explanations, and communication in FND, with the goal of informing more effective clinical practice. Methods: Fifteen persons who have been diagnosed with FND participated in semi-structured interviews in which they shared their stories with the researcher. These stories were then transcribed and analysed using both thematic and performative narrative analysis. Results: Four narrative types are identified in the data, Stories of Biographical Disruption, Stories of Inadequate Explanation, Stories of Stigma and Validation and Stories of Embodied Reinterpretation. Discussion: These narratives reveal the impact of diagnostic ambiguity and the resultant challenges to identity. Findings underscore the for greater legitimacy for FND in clinical and social contexts. Implications for clinical practice include the importance of meaningful explanations and the ethical responsibilities of healthcare professionals in supporting FND patients
One‐Sidedness and the Inferior Function in <i>Coriolanus</i> and <i>Timon of Athens</i>
Full text linkAbstract
For both Jung and Shakespeare, one‐sidedness is the fundamental tragic trait. Jung proposed that as an individual develops, they inevitably associate their identity with certain modes of perception and interaction, and that this leads to psychological polarization. The preferred function takes on a dominant role as ontological filter of the individual’s worldview, while the disregarded function remains unhewn and volcanic, left largely outside of conscious control. Jung insists that one‐sidedness, the over‐development of one side of the personality at the expense of the opposite “inferior” function, is a dangerous weakness. Likewise, Bradley (1905, p. 21) observes that in almost all of Shakespeare’s tragic protagonists, “we observe a marked one‐sidedness, … a fatal tendency to identify the whole being with one interest, object, passion, or habit of mind.” This article will outline the clear parallel between the structure of Shakespearean tragedy and the psyche as Jung understood it. It will do so through the juxtaposition of
Coriolanus
and
Timon of Athens,
in which the same functions are attributed opposite value. The contrast of these two plays seen through the lens of Jung’s
Psychological Types
will help us to understand the perils presented by one‐sidedness and the under‐theorized inferior function, and will flesh out the concepts of Introverted Thinking and Extraverted Feeling via amplification.
</jats:p
Disability, work, and aspirations within the Pakistani context: an agency-oriented capability perspective
Full text linkThis thesis investigates the work and broader life aspirations of persons with disabilities (PWDs) in Pakistan and the mediating role of contextual factors, adopting an agency-oriented Capability Approach within a critical realist paradigm. It examines how capabilities, agency, and structural conditions intersect in shaping lives and opportunities, with particular attention to work as a central pathway to dignity and inclusion. The study demonstrates how structural constraints – embedded in personal, contextual, and institutional dynamics – restrict the translation of aspirations, including employment aspirations, into real freedoms, while also highlighting enabling factors that foster resilience and agency. By deepening understanding of the interplay between aspirations, agency, and structural conditions, the research contributes to the Capability Approach. It provides critical insights for disability policy and practice in the Global South, with specific implications for inclusive employment and human resource practices for persons with disabilities, while underscoring the need to address disabling structures and foster agency and collective empowerment
Culturally and Politically Embedded Management Controls in Innovation Transitions of PPPs: Comparative Cases from a Developing Economy
Full text linkPurpose This study aims to explore how culturally and politically embedded management controls influence innovation transitions of public–private partnerships (PPPs) in a developing economy.
Design/methodology/approach The study relies on the cultural political economy perspective of management controls. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with senior executives from three knowledge-based PPPs operating in telecommunications, power and energy and high-tech research industries in Sri Lanka.
Findings The authors demonstrate how cultural political economy factors (e.g. semiotic and cultural; political and institutional; economic and structural) have influenced Western-led, formal management controls across various PPP models (e.g. labour, leadership, innovation, operational, market, neoliberal and bureaucratic controls), both enabling and obstructing the shift towards the state’s professed “knowledge-based economy” discourse. Management controls within telecommunications-based PPPs tend to be receptive to political interference, often supported by powerful, party-based trade unions and primarily focus on innovation to cater to the local market. In contrast to traditional norms, both energy- and high-tech PPPs leverage management controls to resist political interference, promoting a strong, market-oriented approach to knowledge-driven innovation.
Practical implications PPPs with solid professional and managerial backgrounds are more likely to initiate innovation transitions through bottom-up approaches, whereas PPPs with considerable state and political influence tend to be predominantly driven by both top-down and bottom-up approaches. Nevertheless, evidence indicates a dialectical relationship between top-down and bottom-up approaches in all PPPs.
Originality/value Cultural political economy redefines the complex interplay among the state’s knowledge-based economy discourse, the innovation transition in PPPs, management controls and development priorities as a co-evolving, politically negotiated process rather than a linear policy implementation. The findings suggest that the success or failure of implementing a knowledge-based economy state project through PPPs depends not only on political policy priorities but also on the interaction of political power, professional leadership and management controls in practice
Improving clustering quality evaluation in noisy Gaussian mixtures
Full text linkClustering is a well-established technique in machine learning and data analysis, widely used across various domains. Cluster validity indices, such as the Average Silhouette Width, Calinski-Harabasz, and Davies-Bouldin indices, play a crucial role in assessing clustering quality when external ground truth labels are unavailable. However, these measures can be affected by varying degrees of feature relevance, potentially leading to unreliable evaluations in high-dimensional or noisy data sets.
We introduce a theoretically grounded Feature Importance Rescaling (FIR) method that enhances the quality of clustering validation by adjusting feature contributions based on their dispersion. It attenuates noisy features, clarifies clustering compactness and separation, and thereby aligns clustering validation more closely with the ground truth. Through extensive experiments on synthetic data sets under different configurations and a case study on real-world data, we demonstrate that FIR consistently improves the correlation between the values of cluster validity indices and the ground truth, particularly in settings with noisy or irrelevant features.
The results show that FIR increases the robustness of clustering evaluation, reduces variability in performance across different data sets, and remains effective even when clusters exhibit significant overlap. These findings highlight the potential of FIR as a valuable enhancement to clustering validation, making it a practical tool for unsupervised learning tasks where labelled data is unavailable
The Dark Empath's Shadow: creative practice and collaborative screenwriting with AI
Full text linkThis thesis reflects on a two-year creative journey of collaborating with artificial intelligence (AI) on the development of a television pilot script. The study explores the opportunities and challenges of using AI as a creative partner, focusing on the essential role of human oversight and the development of creative guardrails. Through a series of smaller writing tasks, the paper details the process of training the AI, refining its outputs, and overcoming its limitations, such as a tendency towards generic, wholesome content and the occurrence of hallucinations. The research draws on existing scholarship, including Susan Cake's work on AI as a collaborative tool for script development, and evaluates the effectiveness of specific writing concepts including the Dan Harmon Story Circle when used with AI. The paper contrasts AI-generated feedback with the more nuanced and contextually rich insights provided by human academic mentors, highlighting the irreplaceable value of human experience and critical judgment in the creative process. The research further presents the findings of a participant study, which shows a mixed but overall positive reception to AI's utility for brainstorming and efficiency, while also noting its limitations in capturing a unique writer's voice. The thesis concludes that AI serves as a valuable but imperfect assistant, with its successful integration into creative writing depending entirely on the writer's ability to provide clear guidance, critically refine the output, and infuse the work with genuine human creativity. The paper ultimately reinforces the position that the writer, with their unique perspective and emotional depth, remains at the heart of every story
A qualitative exploration of the experiences of adults with physical disabilities in acute mental health services
Full text linkBackground: Disabled people are disproportionately affected by inequalities in engaging mental healthcare, including inaccessibility, ableism, and exclusion. Some research has indicated that this may mean that Disabled people do not receive care until the point of mental health crisis, yet specific barriers with acute mental health services (AMHS) may further exclude those most in need. Despite this, research focused on barriers to and facilitators of disability-affirmative AMH care is relatively sparse. Objective: The present research aimed to explore how Disabled people with physical disabilities (DPPD) experience and navigate AMHS. Methods: Through purposive sampling, eight DPPD with direct experience of AMHS and four disability advocates with indirect experience were recruited. All participants engaged in semi-structured interviews focused on the experiences of DPPD in navigating AMHS. Results: Through Reflexive Thematic Analysis, five themes and six subthemes were generated. The five themes were: Barriers to access, inflexibility and exclusion in acute mental health care; Lack of holistic care: integrating physical and mental health; Silencing and epistemic injustice; Discrimination, intersectionality, and identity; and Disability competence and professional avoidance. Conclusion: AMHS can play a vital role in supporting DPPD experiencing acute mental health (AMH) needs, however interpersonal and structural ableism often means that this care is inadequate, and indeed may cause further harm. Based on these findings, several clinical recommendations can be made for systemic changes within AMHS to improve accessibility, beyond basic service availability, and facilitate more disability-affirmative care for DPPD
20Fox in Mexican criminal news: necro-journalism and symbolic violence in the visual representation of femicides in Mexican nota roja newspapers
Full text linkThis thesis provides a critical analysis of the photographic representation of femicides or feminicides in the Mexican press known as nota roja. This is a journalistic genre that specialises in the sensationalist coverage of crimes, violence, and tragic events, distinguished by a visual and narrative style designed to emotionally shock the reader through striking headlines, the use of the colour red, and graphic photographs of violent scenes and victims. Employing a qualitative approach based on critical visual discourse analysis, the research examines how these images and journalistic narratives diminish the humanity of victims by exposing mutilated and sexualised bodies, thereby reinforcing patriarchal stereotypes, normalising gender-based violence, and reproducing social inequalities. The thesis is grounded in an interdisciplinary theoretical framework that integrates visual, cultural, communication, and feminist studies, applying semiotic tools and encoding/decoding models to unveil the multiple layers of meaning within the analysed photographs and texts. The sample comprises 743 press reports published between 2000 and 2018 in the Mexican newspapers La Prensa and Metro, complemented by 14 interviews with journalists, reporters, and other experts. The results demonstrate that the nota roja contributes to the symbolic re-victimisation of murdered women, perpetuates patriarchal discourses, and constrains the possibilities for the cultural and political transformation required to eradicate violence against women in Mexico. Finally, the thesis expands the field of media and gender-based violence studies and introduces the nota roja to Anglo-Saxon academic literature
Large AI Model for Multimodal Integrated Sensing and Communication
Full text linkMultimodal integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) exploits heterogeneous modalities to enhance perception accuracy, communication robustness, and environmental adaptability, becoming a key enabler of the Internet of Everything (IoE). Nevertheless, existing multimodal ISAC systems remain constrained by heterogeneous data characteristics, dynamic modality availability, and the limited adaptability of current fusion strategies. To overcome these limitations, we propose a LAM-enabled multimodal ISAC (LAM-MSAC) framework. First, modality-specific feature encoders are introduced to provide native compatibility for diverse sensing data. Second, to cope with dynamically changing modality combinations, we design a Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) fusion module in which multiple experts process different modal combinations. Finally, the MoE structure activates only a subset of experts for each inference, substantially reducing computational cost without sacrificing model capacity. A case study shows that LAM-MSAC achieves over 90% beam prediction accuracy while significantly lowering computation compared with maintaining multiple single- or multi-modality models. Potential research directions are further discussed to advance the integration of LAMs into multimodal ISAC