1,721,446 research outputs found
Knowledge Management in Complex Environments: the UN Peacekeeping
No full textPurpose – This paper aims to illustrate the peculiar knowledge management (KM) issues in UN peacekeeping, the practices adopted, their practicability and problematic aspects.
Design/methodology/approach – This case study deals with a “frontier” experience that summarizes many elements of complexity of public decision making, such as: uncertainty, multiplicity of goals and tasks, participation of different and often conflicting stakeholders, different levels of authority, etc.
Findings – The case study shows that transposing today's lessons into the future – which is a major goal of KM – is intrinsically difficult in the case of global and multidimensional decision making. KM systems must evolve and adapt continuously. Closing the nexus between KM and policy making could make policies more responsive to the evolvement of internal and external conditions, but turning knowledge into policy means that knowledge should not be disconnected from its sources, in terms of people and places.
Practical implications – The analysis of the UN experience provides food for thought for all the professionals and organizations alike involved in KM processes of comparable complexity.
Originality/value – From a conceptual viewpoint, the study addresses the important issue of KM applied to complex policy-making processes. The study of the KM solutions adopted to face this complexity provides insights for both scholars and practitioners
In vitro selection of alfalfa plants resistant to Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. medicaginis.
No full textIn vitro selection of alfalfa plants resistant to Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. medicaginis
Measuring Women’s Digital Inclusion. A poset-based approach to the Women in Digital Scoreboard
Full text linkWomen’s participation in digital society is integral to achieving Agenda 2030 and an essential component in the EU strategy for digital transition. This article applies a poset-based approach to the European Women in Digital (WiD) Scoreboard, to examine women’s digital inclusion in European countries. The poset methodology allows us to identify the most significant indicators for each of the dimensions that compose the WiD, considering the whole EU-28 as well as different clusters of countries, and to construct a new ranking that avoids the shortcomings of the aggregative approaches and the pre-treatment of data. Our results show that two indicators, STEM graduates and the unadjusted pay gap, are the most relevant ones in attaining women’s digital inclusion. Our research contributes to better understand the dynamics and the underlying causes of women’s digital inclusion in the EU-28 countries, providing a clustering of EU countries into four performance groups depending on their women’s digital inclusion and contributes to the design of more targeted and effective policies for integrating gender equality in the EU digital transition strategy
Alias types for “environment-aware” computations
No full textAbstractIn previous work with Bono we introduced a calculus for modelling “environment-aware” computations, that is computations that adapt their behavior according to the capabilities of the environment. The calculus is an imperative, object-based language (with extensible objects and primitives for discriminating the presence or absence of attributes of objects) equipped with a small-step operational semantics.In this paper we define a type and effect system for the calculus. The typing judgements specify, via constraints, the shape of environments which guarantees the correct execution of expressions and the typing rules track the effect of expression evaluation on the environment. The type and effect system is sound w.r.t. the operational semantics of the language
Knowledge Management Approaches for Peace: the Experience of the UN Peacekeeping
No full textPurpose – The paper deals with the role of knowledge in UN peacekeeping operations, and the modalities of its management. In detail, the study: a) illustrates the peculiar Knowledge Management issues arising from the context considered; b) describes the Knowledge Management practices adopted; c) makes some remarks about the practicability and problematic aspects of these practices.
Design/methodology/approach – We propose an approach based on case-study research. The originality of the case-study proposed rests on the fact that this is a “frontier” experience that summarises and incorporates many elements of complexity of public decision-making, such as: uncertainty, multiplicity of goals and tasks, participation of different and often conflicting stakeholders, different levels of authority, etc.
Originality/value – The analysis shows important elements of interest. From a conceptual viewpoint, the study addresses the more general issue of KM programmes applied to complex decision-making processes in public environments, involving multidimensional problems, different goals, and various independent organisations interacting in a non-hierarchical way. These aspects reflect on the complexity of the KM solution adopted in peacekeeping, whose study therefore provides interesting insights for both scholars and practitioners.
Practical implications – From a practical viewpoint, peacekeeping is a recognised ingredient of the global stability, favouring the political, social and economic development of the countries coming out of conflicts. Considering that the UN is the major player, and this represents the most important example of programmes of peacekeeping and socio-economic promotion, the analysis of the UN experience provides food for thoughts for all the professionals and organisations alike involved in these processes
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
On Polymorphic Recursion, Type Systems, and Abstract Interpretation
No full textThe problem of typing polymorphic recursion (i.e. recursive function definitions rec{x = e} where different occurrences of x in e are used with different types) has been investigated both by people working on type systems and by people working on abstract interpretation.
Recently, Gori and Levi have developed a family of abstract interpreters that are able to type all the ML typable recursive definitions and interesting examples of polymorphic recursion. The problem of finding type systems corresponding to their abstract interpreters was open (such systems would lie between the let-free fragments of the ML and of the Milner-Mycroft systems).
In this paper we exploit the notion of principal typing to: (i) provide a complete stratification of (let-free) Milner-Mycroft typability, and (ii) solve the problem of finding type systems corresponding to the type abstract interpreters proposed by Gori and Levi
- …
