1,720,974 research outputs found
Art of Visual Thinking for Smart Business Education
No full textPurpose – Visual Thinking Techniques (VTT) form a significant part of any course of critical thinking. But wider understanding of their role for smarter education is underestimated [Barab & Plucker, 2002; Knight, Gašević & Richards, 2006]. We argue that the current palette of visual thinking strategies and techniques and their aesthetic impact may heavy influence the cognitive effectiveness of teaching and learning in business education. VTT may help to develop a holistic conceptual enterprise model, strategic marketing plan, project feasibility conception and other complicated multi-faceted business models [Clarke, Flaherty & Yankey, 2006]. In this paper we aim to overcome the limitations of traditional forms of teaching and learning (as case studies, lectures and seminars) and to enrich the repertoire of teaching methods that can be used in the class to broad the understanding of the sophisticated business knowledge issues.
Design/methodology/approach – The aim of this study is to show how the repertoire of VTT (mind maps, concept maps and ontologies) can be used in business education to represent, to structure and to codify knowledge (both tacit and explicit). We do this by using the knowledge engineering (KE) methods (such as knowledge elicitation [Gavrilova & Andreeva, 2012] and visual knowledge mapping) for training and teaching. Such approach merges the cognitive ergonomics issues with didactics. The point is that aesthetic perception helps to clarify and to shape the understanding [Schiuma, 2011]. In this paper we aim to bridge that gap and introduce visual elements and styles from the artistic point of view. Our approach is based on the principles of good shape coined by Max Wertheimer in his Gestalt Learning Theory of Productive Thinking [Wertheimer, 1958].
Originality/value – the paper proposes a new approach to VTT based on wide survey and practical experience of the authors. The paper contributes to a wider use of visual knowledge engineering methodologies and technologies in business education.
Practical implications – The paper contributes to business educational practice by describing a systemic variety of VTT with direct recommendation to their design and feasibility
A Fuzzy Cognitive Map based approach to disclose value creation dynamics of ABIs
No full textPurpose - In today’s business landscape, organisations are struggling to face difficult management challenges, increase value embedded in their products/services, create new competencies capable of driving business growth and new business solutions, and spur resilience and innovativeness.
The planned managerial use of art forms to address management uncertainties and business problems (i.e. Arts-based Initiatives) can sustain organisations in their efforts to face today’s competitive challenges and improve their value creation capability.
Arts based Initiatives (ABIs), indeed, are a catalyst, a lever, and a trigger to support and drive organisational changes and develop its capacity to compete.
But how do ABIs contribute to improve value creation capacity of an organisation?
The answer relies on transformational power of art forms.
Art forms can improve both knowledge domains grounding how employees work in organisations, making their working activities engaging, fulfilling and joyful, and the knowledge dimensions characterising an organisation’s infrastructural components, particularly developing their incorporated intangible value dimensions.
The adoption of ABIs within organisations seems fruitful, however how to plan and evaluate comprehensively the impacts of these initiatives still remains a challenge. More generally a better understanding of the dynamics linking ABIs to business performance is required.
This study proposes the use of Fuzzy Cognitive Map (FCM) to model, understand and dynamically analyse the integration of ABIs in the operation and strategy of an organisation.
Referring to the “Arts Value Map” framework (Schiuma, 2011), the paper suggests the use of FCM as a dynamic modelling tool to analyze, test the reciprocal influence, simulate and predict the behaviour of factors involved in value creation dynamics.
Design/methodology/approach – FCM is a well-established artificial intelligence technique, incorporating ideas from artificial neural network and fuzzy logic, which can be effectively applied in the domain of management science. This paper proposes the use of FCM as a tool for detecting and interpreting relations between the entities involved in the value creation activated by ABIs as well as for understanding its structural properties and dynamics.
Originality/value –This paper offers a fresh approach based on fuzzy cognitive mapping technique to help align business strategy and the design and implementation of ABIs within organisations. An ABI can have a relevant impact on organisational performance only if it is integrated in the organisational strategy and/or responds to the achievement of operational objectives that are consistent with the strategic intents. The FCM, as powerful tool for analysing and simulating complex systems, elucidates how ABIs can drive business performance improvements.
Practical implications – The proposed approach can help managers to better understand how ABIs create organizational value by developing organisational knowledge domains. Using the fuzzy cognitive mapping technique managers can improve their capacity to plan and assess ABIs in the light of business performance
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
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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