Understanding and optimizing multisource feedback

This article integrates the most recent research results on the topic of multisource feedback with what researchers have learned over the years about performance feedback in general. We believe that this review and set of recommendations represent the state of the art at this time. We provide practitioners with new ideas about how to continue to improve the multisource feedback process in their organizations. We also suggest ideas for feedback providers and facilitators about how to maximize the success of the feedback process. Additionally, we provide “food for thought” for researchers concerning ideas for future research. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

When Paradigms Meet: Interacting Perspectives on Evaluation in the Non‐Profit Sector

This study examines a public debate in Australia, arising from a national government report, around how social contribution in the nonprofit sector should be assessed. Guided by several meta‐perspectives on evaluation, we identify connections between foundational assumptions and normative positions on evaluation espoused by non‐profit organizations (NPOs), and examine the ways in which the inter‐paradigmatic context of the non‐profit sector contributes to the emergence of NPOs’ different normative positions on evaluation. We conclude that particular paradigmatic orientations of NPOs (positivism, interpretivism, constructivism) lead to particular perspectives on how NPOs should engage with alternative paradigms (monism, impartial pluralism, radical pluralism).     

Conceptual and Procedural Knowledge

The ideas that underlie the title of this chapter have been part of a familiar debate in education, namely that of the contrast of content and process. In both science and mathematics similar arguments have taken place, and these debates represent a healthy examination of, not only the aims of science and mathematics education, but the teaching and learning issues, and as such they reflect the relative maturity of these subject areas. Even in technology education, which is still in its infancy as a subject, echoes of these debates exist and there are contrasts of approaches to the balance of process and content across the world. The 'debate' in technology is evangelical in nature, with for example, proponents making claims for problem-solving approaches as a basis for teaching with few accounts and almost no empirical research of what actually happens in classrooms. There is insufficient consideration of the learning issues behind this, or other proposals, and it is timely to turn our attention to student learning. This article examines the nature of technological knowledge and what we know about learning related to it. The article argues that learning procedural and conceptual knowledge associated with technological activity poses challenges for both technology educators and those concerned with research on learning.     

Labour Market Flexibility and Immigrant Adjustment

A comparative analysis of adult male immigrant earnings and unemployment in the US and Australia using a measure of expected earnings shows that immigrants in the US perform relatively well, and the pattern of the differences between immigrant adjustment in the US and Australia appears to have links to differences in methods of pay determination. The results suggest an advantage to a more flexible labour market. A simulation exercise demonstrates the sensitivity of the findings to cohort effects.     

Who are Advisory Services Leaving Out? A Critical Reflection on ‘Hard to Reach’ Farmers

Although the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union has broadened its objectives to integrate social issues, several hard-to-reach groups of farmers and workers continue to be ignored by advisory services and associated policies. Connecting with these groups has a strong potential to increase the economic and social cohesion of European agricultures. We interviewed over 1,000 farmers across Europe and identified features of these groups that are often overlooked by advisory services. We critically reflected on the social cohorts omitted from advisory services and how they could be better reached; they include farm labourers, new entrants or ‘career changers’, and later adopters. We clarify the different types of advisors in the advisory landscape, distinguishing between those who are linked to or independent from sales of inputs or technologies. We make concrete recommendations about how to engage advisors with hard-to-reach groups, with approaches suited to different national contexts of Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Systems (AKIS); thus contributing to the ‘AKIS dimension of National Strategic Plans of the next Common Agricultural Policy, 2023–2027. We argue for the more effective use of advances in the social sciences through a better understanding of advice as social interaction which can bolster the inclusiveness of public policies.     

What Can We Learn from Droppers and Non-adopters About the Role of Advice in Agricultural Innovation?

In this article we assess the diversity of sources of advice identified by 678 adopters, 295 non-adopters and 107 droppers (or dis-adopters, who have ceased or reduced the use) of agricultural innovations across 13 European countries. For most innovations, the volume and composition of advisory supports (e.g. public advisory services, farm business organisations, NGOs, research and development sector, other farmers), at the whole farm level were similar between adopters, non-adopters and droppers. However, there were significant differences in relation to specific innovations. Farmers adopting digital technologies, soil-improving cropping systems, and common management of natural resources identified more diverse sources when assessing innovations, suggesting that more diverse advisory support supported successful implementation. For new on-farm activities, non-adopters had more varied sources of advice than adopters. This demonstrates that non-adoption can be a well-informed decision. Droppers typically identified fewer sources of advice on an innovation than adopters, particularly in the later stages of the innovation process, suggesting that lack of advice impeded successful implementation. The findings suggest that public funding for advisory services could usefully target emergent gaps: to support the provision of up-to-date advice on topics to farmers who have difficulty accessing advice, and to prevent unnecessary dropping by supporting the implementation of innovations.     

Too dynamic to fail: empirical support for an autocatalytic model of Minsky’s financial instability hypothesis

Solomon and Golo (Account Econ Law 3(3):167–260, 2013) have recently proposed an autocatalytic (self-reinforcing) feedback model which couples a macroscopic system parameter (the interest rate), a microscopic parameter that measures the distribution of the states of the individual agents (the number of firms in financial difficulty) and a peer-to-peer network effect (contagion across supply chain financing). In this model, each financial agent is characterized by its resilience to the interest rate. Above a certain rate the interest due on the firm’s financial costs exceeds its earnings and the firm becomes susceptible to failure (ponzi). For the interest rate levels under a certain threshold level, the firm loans are smaller then its earnings and the firm becomes ‘hedge.’ In this paper, we fit the historical data (2002–2009) on interest rate data into our model, in order to predict the number of the ponzi firms. We compare the prediction with the data taken from a large panel of Italian firms over a period of 9 years. We then use trade credit linkages to discuss the connection between the ponzi density and the network percolation. We find that the ‘top-down’–‘bottom-up’ positive feedback loop accounts for most of the Minsky crisis accelerator dynamics. The peer-to-peer ponzi companies contagion becomes significant only in the last stage of the crisis when the ponzi density is above a critical value. Moreover the ponzi contagion is limited only to the companies that were not dynamic enough to substitute their distressed clients with new ones. In this respect the data support a view in which the success of the economy depends on substituting the static ‘supply-network’ picture with an interacting dynamic agents one.     

Collaboration: The Challenge of ICT

Information and communications technology (ICT) brings many potential benefits to technology education, though the evidence of improved performance on traditional tasks is not yet proven. Areas such as computer-aided design and manufacture are now becoming standard elements of any student's technology education. These applications of ICT require changes to the arrangements of the teaching and the learning, but teachers may see few implications for what is learned. Network technologies, on the other hand, offer a new dimension of ICT for tasks such as designing. These dimensions may require a transformation in some aspects of technology education. This article will outline what such networking could do for collaborative learning in technology education, drawing on recent findings from research on learning. It will explore an example of collaborative designing, to see how its potential can be exploited and how it may transform learning in a way that ICT has probably not done so far. Such an exploration will look at both 'learning to collaborate' and 'collaborating to learn', two inter-related themes that are important in, and for, modern design practice in the world outside schools, as well as in research on learning. Although the technologies may yet have to reach maturity to become reliable and easy enough to use in schools, technology educators must be prepared to exploit the learning potential, and this paper is intended to encourage that preparation. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Career paths, technological obsolescence and skill formation: R&D staff in Britain and Japan

This paper examines how scientists and engineers working in industrial R&D cope with the pressures of business and technological change and develop their careers. The data is drawn from a survey of nearly 1000 R&D staff working in large industrial corporations in Britain and Japan. Cross national comparisons are used to explore similarities and differences in coping strategies and in the human resource management challenges for companies. Particular attention is given to the problems of potential mismatch between RBD staff career orientations and available career opportunities.