The Unbounded Gatherer: Possibilities for posthuman writing-reading

This article develops a posthuman approach to authorship to challenge implied distinctions and superiorities between the social and material worlds, which can detach academics and their writing from societies and ecosystems. By reimagining academic texts that are open for richer interpretation and accessible to diverse audiences, this article offers two main contributions. Firstly, I develop a conceptualisation of the posthuman author as an 'unbounded gatherer', adding to others' attempts to destabilise predominant humanistic ways of writing about managing and organizing that view authors as autonomous agents. Secondly, by developing the idea of 'mediators' as a means to explore how the sociomaterial is implicated in writing, debates about materiality in writing are extended. Through an illustration of posthuman writing, five emergent categories of mediators are analysed, and three textual practices are performed and examined.     

Quantification of the high level of endogeneity and of structural regime shifts in commodity markets

We propose a “reflexivity” index that quantifies the relative importance of short-term endogeneity for several commodity futures markets (corn, oil, soybean, sugar, and wheat) and a benchmark equity futures market (E-mini S&P 500), from mid-2000s to October 2012. Our reflexivity index is defined as the average ratio of the number of price moves that are due to endogenous interactions to the total number of all price changes, which also include exogenous events. It is obtained by calibrating the Hawkes self-excited conditional Poisson model on time series of price changes. The Hawkes model accounts simultaneously for the co-existence and interplay between the exogenous impact of news and the endogenous mechanism by which past price changes may influence future price changes. Our robustness tests show that our index provides a ‘pure’ measure of endogeneity that is independent of the rate of activity, order size, volume or volatility. We find an overall increase of the reflexivity index since the mid-2000s to October 2012, which implies that at least 60–70 percent of commodity price changes are now due to self-generated activities rather than novel information, compared to 20–30 percent earlier. While our reflexivity index is defined on short-time windows (10–30 min) and thus does not capture long-term memory, we discover striking coincidence between its dynamics and that of the price hikes and abrupt falls that developed since 2006 and culminated in early 2009.     

Entrepreneurship through a qualitative lens: Insights on the construction and/or discovery of entrepreneurial opportunity

This article applies inductive analytic techniques to identify and elaborate on two recurring themes that underpin the core puzzle of entrepreneurship research — where entrepreneurial opportunities come from. The first theme is the unique role of imprinting, or the profound influence of social and historical context in constraining the perceptual apparatus of entrepreneurs and delimiting the range of opportunities for innovation available to them. Second, our analysis offers insight into the counterbalancing role of reflexivity, operating at both individual and collective levels of analysis, in generating the ability of entrepreneurs to overcome the constraints of imprinting. These insights are based on a thematic review of the nine studies that comprise this special issue on qualitative research. The nine studies, individually and each in their own way, offer key insights into how we might better understand the emergence of entrepreneurial opportunity.     

群体心理资本对员工创造力的跨层次影响

员工创造力是团队/组织创新的重要推动力,从多个层次综合考察员工创造力的影响因素具有重要意义。基于创造力成分模型、社会感染理论与组织管理领域的多层次理论,构建了群体心理资本影响员工创造力的关系模型,以103个工作团队（103名团队主管,365名成员）为样本,对研究假设及影响路径进行了实证检验。研究结果表明：①群体心理资本对员工创造力具有显著的正向预测效果;②群体心理资本对团队反思具有显著的正向预测效果,且团队反思在群体心理资本与员工创造力关系间起到了跨层次中介作用;③团队心理安全跨层次调节团队反思与员工创造力之间的正向关系,即团队心理安全越高,团队反思与员工创造力之间的正向关系越强。     

Multi-level driving forces of biological invasions

Biological invasions are human-induced processes affecting biodiversity. Information on biological invasions can be organized following the categories of the DPSIR model. This paper examines the state of the art in the application of this model to the study and management of biological invasions.The paper focuses on driving forces and pressures, clarifying the different levels at which drivers operate and promote invasion processes. Identifying driving forces is necessary not only to understand the processes behind biological invasions but also to generate policy initiatives that address threats to biodiversity at different levels of governance. Thus driving forces and pressures on biological invasions are identified taking into account the multi-level character of such processes. The final section reviews the role that different stakeholders play in biological invasion management and finally elaborates a list of indicators derived from the analysis that can be used in decision making concerning invasion processes.     

Performing culture at indigenous culture parks in Taiwan: Using Q method to identify the performers' subjectivities

Performance of indigenous culture at culture parks for tourism is traditionally viewed from a modernist ontological perspective as exploitative and from a managerial perspective as the provision of a service. These views might fail to accommodate the performers' subjectivities. In this Q method study the views of the performers are identified based on a sample of 30 respondents and 42 Q sort items. Respondents were performers employed at the Indigenous Peoples Culture Park in Taiwan. The replicability of a previous Q study was tested using the same design in a different research setting. In both studies two clusters of subjectivity were found: the ‘Performers’ View’ and the ‘Instructors’ View’. Neither view conforms to the modernist or managerial perspective identified in tourism research. Instead, the reflexivity of Q suggests that in the performance of indigenous culture, these fixed ontological categories are porous and situational.     

Emotional entanglements in tourism research

A scarcity of emotional reflexive research accounts exists within the field of tourism studies, whereby the embodied and emotional researcher is epistemologically accepted as intersecting with the entire research process. This paper seeks to address this gap by exploring one researcher’s emotional entanglements with her research project, within the context of return from long term travel. These entanglements are discussed in terms of their effect on the researcher personally (including her ‘unravelling’ of the entanglements through poetry) and their effect on the research process itself, particularly regarding issues of representation, authority, power and balance of voice. A call for putting emotion at the centre of reflexivity follows, with suggestions of potentially relevant emotionally reflexive research questions.     

Tourism problemology: Reflexivity of knowledge making

Although problems are a fundamental dynamics of tourism knowledge production, a systematic, exclusive, and in-depth study of tourism problems or tourism problemology has been overlooked. This study, which represents the first time to examine the nature of tourism problemology, aims to fill this gap. A theoretical model is developed and partially tested through a survey of 212 Chinese tourism researchers. Results show that researchers generally consider problems as difficulties or contradictions that require resolution. Moreover, personal/environmental factors influence the researchers’ understanding of problems, and such understanding further affects their evaluation and selection of problems at the early stage of research. The study highlights the significance of problems as an important, yet overlooked reflexivity of tourism knowledge production.     

Post-normal institutional identities: Quality assurance,reflexivity and ethos of care

This paper suggests adopting a ‘post-normal science’ (PNS) style and practice in scientific advice, and motivate the urgency of this methodological stance with the increasing complexity, and polarisation affecting the use of science-based evidence for policy. We reflect on challenges and opportunities faced by a ‘boundary organisation’ that interfaces between science and policy, taking as example the European Commission’s Directorate General Joint Research Centre, whose mission is stated as that to be the “in-house science service”. We suggest that such an institution can be exemplary as to what could be changed to improve the quality of evidence feeding into the policy processes in the European Union. This paper suggests how an in-house culture of reflexivity and humility could trigger changes in the existing styles and methods of scientific governance; at the JRC, taken as example, this would mean opening up to the existing plurality of norms and styles of scientific inquiry, and adopting more participatory approaches of knowledge production, assessment and governance. We submit that the institutional changes advocated here are desirable and urgent in order to confront the ongoing erosion of trust in ‘evidence based policy’, anticipating controversies before they become evident in the institutional setting in which institutions operate.     

Constructionism and culture in research: Understandings of the fourth Buddhist Festival,Wutaishan, China

This paper offers an interpretation of competing legitimacies at the 2007 4th Annual Wutaishan Buddhist Festival in Taihua, Shanxi Province. It suggests how spectacle, entertainment and performance spaces are condoned arenas of challenge and usage by mainstream and peripheral groups. The paper also discusses the methods employed in the framing and nature of interpretation, and possesses its own tension as the different cultural perspectives and voices are heeded. It concludes that the festival exists as a multi-layered event involving economics, politics, faith, entertainment and prestige – each of which creates its own set of interpretations contextualised in the evolving state of Chinese tourism. The paper is partially a response to the work of Hollinshead, Phillimore & Goodson and O'Dell that claim a need for a more reflexive voice in the tourism literature as a means of understanding the tourist experience. Its premises are based on thinking derived from multiple sources including symbolic interaction and Buddhist thought.