Results by title

How underwater mediation has transformed deep-sea spaces into resource-rich frontiers
 

Green energy technologies such as windmills, solar panels, and electric vehicles may soon depend on material found at the seabed. How did a space once imagined to be empty and unfathomable come to be thought of as a treasure trove of resources? Lisa Yin Han traces how contemporary developments in underwater sensing and imaging materially and imaginatively transmogrify the ocean bottom into a resource frontier capable of sustaining a digitally connected global future.

 

Set against the backdrop of climate change, energy transition, and the expansion of industrial offshore extractions, Deepwater Alchemy looks at oceanic media and its representation of the seabed in terms of valuable resources. From high-tech simulations to laboratories and archives that collect and analyze sediments, Han explores the media technologies that survey, visualize, and condition the possibility for industrial resource extraction, introducing the concept of extractive mediation to describe the conflations between resource prospecting and undersea knowledge production. Moving away from anthropocentric frameworks, she argues that we must equalize access to deep ocean mediation and include the submerged perspectives of multispecies communities.

 

From the proliferation of petroleum seismology to environmental-impact research on seabed mining to the development of internet-enabled seafloor observatories, Deepwater Alchemy shows us that deepwater mediation is entangled in existential hopes and fears for our planetary future. As the ocean bottom becomes increasingly accessible to people, Han prompts us to ask not whether we can tame the seafloor, but, rather, why and for whom are we taming it?

Democracy’s Hidden Heroes tells the story of the local public managers and nonprofit directors who work where bureaucratic hierarchies and community networks meet and often collide. These “hidden heroes” struggle to align universal rules and compliance demands with the unique circumstances facing their organizations and communities.

David Campbell recounts compelling stories of the workarounds, sidesteps, informal agreements, and grantor–grantee negotiations that help policy initiatives succeed as intended. The settings include schools, human services departments, workforce development agencies, and community-based organizations. He explains why it is difficult, though necessary, to translate locally attuned implementation dynamics into accountability metrics for distant funders.

Drawing on 2,000 interviews, Democracy’s Hidden Heroes is the culmination of decades spent talking to people who must reconcile bureaucratic and community cultures. Campbell’s grounded approach and balanced perspective bring fresh insights to the analysis of policy implementation, public management, and results accountability, while offering both cautionary advice and a hopeful prognosis.

Engineers and other technical professionals are increasingly presented with the opportunity of running their own businesses as entrepreneurs. In other circumstances, particularly in times of great change in industry, they may be considered 'corporate entrepreneurs', leading divisions of larger organisations in an entrepreneurial fashion.

Engineering companies and other organizations face many serious challenges in the 21st Century. One that is now becoming widely recognized is the loss of corporate knowledge through staff turnover, whether it is natural or forced through downsizing or delayering. A company's store of knowledge and expertise is an asset built up through the learning and experience of its employees.

As an in-depth explanation of the entire digital curation lifecycle, from creation to appraisal to preservation to organization/access to transformation, the first edition of this text set a benchmark for both thoroughness and clarity. Boasting the expert guidance of international authorities Oliver and Harvey, this revamped and expanded edition widens the scope to address continuing developments in the strategies, technological approaches, and activities that are part of this rapidly changing field. In addition to current practitioners, those pursuing a career as librarian, archivist, or records manager will find this definitive survey invaluable. Filled with up-to-date best practices, it covers such important topics as

• the scope and incentives of digital curation, detailing Digital Curation Centre's (DCC) lifecycle model as well as the Data Curation Continuum;   
• key requirements for digital curation, from description and representation to planning and collaboration;
• the value and utility of metadata;
• considering the needs of producers and consumers when creating an appraisal and selection policy for digital objects;
• the paradigm shift by institutions towards cloud computing and its impact on costs, storage, and other key aspects of digital curation;
• the quality and security of data;
• new and emerging data curation resources, including innovative digital repository software and digital forensics tools;
• mechanisms for sharing and reusing data, with expanded sections on open access, open data, and open standards initiatives; and
• processes to ensure that data are preserved and remain usable over time.

Useful as both a teaching text and day-to-day working guide, this book outlines the essential concepts and techniques that are crucial to preserving the longevity of digital resources.

Digital Preservation Essentials is part of the series Trends in Archives Practice. It includes two modules by Erin O'Meara and Kate Stratton: Module 12: Preserving Digital Objects Explores concepts of digital preservation in the archival context, focusing on standards and metadata required to make digital objects accessible and understandable over time. Module 13: Digital Preservation Storage Provides an introduction to digital storage best practices for long-term preservation, including terminology, hardware, and configurations. As University of Illinois Preservation Librarian Kyle R. Rimkus notes in the introduction, "The successful archivist needs a grounding in the fundamental concepts of digital preservation, a command of its key terminology and practices, and an ability to build effective programs and practices. These modules provide an excellent point of entry."

A practical guide to more fully achieving a meritocratic society.
 
As America’s most vaunted cultural value, meritocracy is celebrated by some as an institution and derided by others as a myth—or even a trap. Thomas A. Cole argues in Doing Meritocracy Right that if meritocracy is to persist as an institution—and it must—it requires structural support in the private sector. For America to achieve a version of meritocracy that more closely matches our aspirations, our business leaders must first offer equity of opportunity for individuals to demonstrate and develop their talents on equal terms.
 
Drawing on his decades of experience in advising CEOs and corporate boards, personally serving on the boards of major not-for-profits, and leading a large global law firm, Cole cites elite professional-service institutions—consultancies and law firms especially—as improbable laboratories for equity of opportunity. These workplaces, out of self-interest, are laser-focused on the quality of their professionals, seeking out talent and representation and then judging these individuals on (ideally) equal terms once they’re in place. Here, Cole sees an opportunity that no public initiative or platitudes can deliver: if workplaces seek out representational diversity by applying, with thought and care, a single standard of merit—one that emphasizes character—and by providing training and mentoring on an equitable basis, then they will offer a ladder to social and economic mobility that serves both individuals and society.
 
Cole argues that a meritocratic society is achieved in two interrelated stages: access to education; and post-education promotion to membership in the elite. The latter, he says, is the domain of business. Cole argues that the private sector is better positioned to effect reform and he encourages leaders in the private sector to pursue reform both in their organizations, in government, and in the universities and communities where they have influence.
 
Meritocracy in the private sector can’t control the many American inequities that exist on the ground of American society. But it can do social good by serving as a reliable, merit-determined path to the highest echelons of business and industry. Cole sets the stage for the discussion of reforms with a “brief history of our imperfect meritocracy,” and rounds out the book with a to-do list for business leaders.
 

This innovative volume offers a step-by-step planning strategy and a set of self-assessment tools for CEOs and managers of established firms to help them refocus away from crisis management and toward more effective, planned profitable growth in this age of global competition. Derived from open systems theory, empirical research, and practical experience, the Dynamic Systems Planning Model, the core of the book, aids strategists and scholars in identifying and analyzing a comprehensive set of core competencies of the organization to assure growth and profitability, providing a much broader perspective than the marketing and financial focus of strategy in the 1980s. The Dynamic Systems Planning Model is a tool to help the entrepreneur simplify the often chaotic changes that small and mid-sized companies experience as they grow. The model identifies seven enduring system issues that must be strategically, operationally, and dynamically managed on an ongoing basis as the company and its environment change over time. The authors link the strategic significance of the seven elements of the model—market strategy, resource acquisition, resource allocation, work flow, human relations, public relations, and technical mastery—to the creation of a stronger company. Many of the research results presented here come from one of the largest and most comprehensive studies ever done on strategy and growth in small to mid-sized firms. All concepts are illustrated with a case history of J. P. Industries, a former Fortune 500 company. It will be a valuable book for practitioners—owners, CEOs, presidents, board members, managers of small and medium-sized firms—and researchers and students focusing on entrepreneurship, organization theory, and business strategy.