Qualitative Interviewing: The Art of Hearing Data

What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. We describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative—leading to this outcome. We then specify hypotheses about the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty, and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest implications for theories of organizations and social change.

The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)

Freshwater habitats occupy ,1% of the Earth's surface, yet are hotspots that support ,10% of all known species, and ,M of vertebrate species. Fresh waters also are hotspots for human activities that have led to widespread habitat degradation, pollution, flow regulation and water extraction, fisheries overexploitation, and alien species introductions. These impacts have caused severe declines in the range and abundance of many freshwater species, so that they are now far more imperiled than their marine or terrestrial counterparts. Here, we review progress in conservation of freshwater biodiversity, with a focus on the period since 1986, and outline key challenges for the future. Driven by rising conservation concerns, freshwater ecologists have conducted a great deal of research over the past 25 y on the status, trends, autecology, and propagation of imperiled species, threats to these species, the consequences of biodiversity loss for ecosystem functioning, metapopulation dynamics, biodiversity hotspots, reserve design, habitat restoration, communication with stakeholders, and weaknesses of protective legislation. Nevertheless, existing efforts might be insufficient to stem the ongoing and coming multitude of freshwater extinctions. We briefly discuss 4 important challenges for freshwater conservation. First, climate change will imperil both freshwater species and human uses of fresh water, driving engineering responses that will further threaten the freshwater biota. We need to anticipate both ecological and human responses to climate change, and to encourage rational and deliberate planning of engineering responses to climate change before disasters strike. Second, because freshwater extinctions are already well underway, freshwater conservationists must be prepared to act now to prevent further losses, even if our knowledge is incomplete, and engage more effectively with other stakeholders. Third, we need to bridge the gap between freshwater ecology and conservation biology. Fourth, we suggest that scientific societies and scholarly journals concerned with limnology or freshwater sciences need to improve their historically poor record in publishing important papers and influencing practice in conservation ecology. Failure to meet these challenges will lead to the extinction or impoverishment of the very subjects of our research.

https://www.caryinstitute.org/sites/default/files/public/reprints/Strayer_JNABS_conservation_2010.pdf

Freshwater biodiversity conservation: recent progress and future challenges

There is increasing policy and research interest in disaster resilience, yet the extant literature is still mired in definitional debates, epistemological orientations of researchers, and differences in basic approaches to measurement. As a consequence, there is little integration across domains and disciplines on community resilience assessment, its driving forces, and geographic variability. Using US counties as the study unit, this paper creates an empirically-based resilience metric called the Baseline Resilience Indicators for Communities (BRIC) that is both conceptually and theoretically sound, yet, easy enough to compute for use in a policy context. A common set of variables were used to measure the inherent resilience of counties in the United States according to six different domains or capitals as identified in the extant literature – social, economic, housing and infrastructure, institutional, community, and environmental. Data were from public and freely accessible data sources. Counties in the US Midwest and Great Plains states have the most inherent resilience, while counties in the west, along the US-Mexico border, and along the Appalachian ridge in the east contain the least resilience. Further, it was found that inherent resilience is not the opposite of social vulnerability, but a distinctly different construct both conceptually and empirically. While understanding the overall variability in resilience, the BRIC is easily deconstructed to its component parts to provide guidance to policy makers on where investments in intervention strategies may make a difference in the improvement of scores. Such evidence-based research has an opportunity to influence public policy focused on disaster risk.

The geographies of community disaster resilience

Adsorption of dyes by nanomaterials: Recent developments and adsorption mechanisms

In recent years, crises have become increasingly transboundary in nature. This exploratory paper investigates whether and how the transboundary dimensions of crises such as pandemics, cyber attacks and prolonged critical infrastructure failure accentuate the challenges that public and private authorities confront in the face of urgent threats. We explore the transboundary dimensions of crises and disasters, discuss how an increase in ‘transboundedness’ affects traditional crisis management challenges and investigate what administrative mechanisms are needed to deal with these compounded challenges. Building on lessons learned from past crises and disasters, our goal is to stimulate a discussion among crisis management scholars about the political-administrative capabilities required to deal with ‘transboundary’ crises.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/jccm_620.pdf?abstractid=1708305&mirid=1

Managing Transboundary Crises: Identifying the Building Blocks of an Effective Response System

An analysis of the role and influence of scientists at the agenda-setting, legislative, and implementation stages of environmental policy making. Scientists often bring issues to the policy agenda, translating scientific questions into everyday language and political terms. When Roger Revelle characterized Earth as a spaceship in testimony to Congress in 1957, his evocative language framed the issue of our planet's climate vulnerability in a way that technical discourse could not. In this book, Ann Campbell Keller examines the influence of scientists on environmental policymaking and makes the novel argument that scientists' adherence to the role of neutral advisor varies over the course of the policymaking process. Keller divides the policy process into three stages-agenda setting, legislation, and implementation-and compares scientists' influence on acid rain and climate change policy at these different stages over the course of several decades. She finds that scientists face more pressure to uphold the ideal of objectivity as policy-making processes advance and become more formalized, and thus are more likely to engage in advocacy and persuasion in the earlier, less formal, agenda-setting stage of the process. In the later, more structured legislative and implementation phases, scientists-working hard to give the appearance of neutral expertise-cede the role of persuader to others. Keller draws on theoretical work in political science and science studies and on empirical evidence from scientific reports, news coverage, congressional hearings, and interviews. Focusing on comparable cases and considering scientists' participation in them over time, she offers unique insights into how the context of decision making affects scientists' policy influence and emphasizes the multiple pathways by which scientific meaning is constructed in public settings.

Science in Environmental Policy: The Politics of Objective Advice

Organizations that provide scientific information to policy makers face the difficult challenge of maintaining scientific credibility while establishing their political relevance. A growing body of research examines how assessment organizations meet the potentially competing expectations of science and policy communities. However, existing research has failed to produce generalizable findings. This study draws together theoretical approaches in science studies and organization theory to develop a framework that allows for a comparative analysis of multiple cases. The study compares the organizational strategies of the National Research Council, the National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Comparisons among the organizations are made using independent measures of credibility and political relevance. The evidence suggests that organizational strategies do impact assessment effectiveness and that it is possible for organizations to simultaneously achieve scientific credibility and political relevance.

Credibility and Relevance in Environmental Policy: Measuring Strategies and Performance among Science Assessment Organizations

What role do demands for constancy play in the operations of public agencies? Institutional constancy of agencies and firms is discussed as a concept and an increasingly important political requirement for the operation of hazardous systems in the United States. Situations that increase demands for it are outlined and a basis for analysis and improving constancy is proposed. Managing large organizational systems poses extraordinary challenges for public institutions when those systems promise substantial benefits but are also so technically or financially hazardous in their design that grievous harm could befall producers and citizens.(1) Not only are such institutions subject to the expected demands for effective performance, they are also pressed to operate at nearly failure-free levels--well beyond those expected for most organizations operating systems of lessor hazard.(2) When these systems are capable of large-scale and/or widely distributed harm that may not be detected for several generations, familiar processes of accountability may falter, and the public is rightly concerned that operating and regulating organizations be worthy of the public's trust.(3) Two characteristics of hazardous, large technical systems undermine more typical means of accountability: high demands for knowledge necessary to evaluate performance; and the long time period involved in determining success or failure.(4) In consequence, apprehensive publics seek assurances that these institutions will be uncompromising in the pursuit of the highest quality operations through the relevant lifetimes of the systems in question. This means that the quality of both external relations and internal operations should reassure interested communities and stakeholders that their views will be taken seriously and that organizational processes will result in immediate adjustment to potential error. When harmful effects may be visited upon future generations, the concern for assurances of continuity or institutional constancy takes on increasing importance. We refer mainly to public organizations although the argument applies with nearly as much force to the private sector in the United States, especially those firms responding to the strong economic incentives for short-term gains and deferral of costs. Indeed, institutional constancy--faithful, unswerving adherence to commitments and effective actions over many work generations--competes with institutional flexibility as an important public value in some policy domains. Certainly current leaders of some institutions are pressed to assure the public (especially opinion leaders) that, as a condition of winning approval and resources to initiate or continue programs, their agencies and corporate contractors can credibly be expected to keep agreements and commitments with potentially affected communities far into the future. The policy domains, for example, of radioactive waste management, the control of nuclear weapons, the management of water and biological resources, and the extraction of mineral resources present this situation in extreme forms. These hazards are likely to require active attention for hundreds of years. In some cases, mine closures are now designed assuming the need for "perpetual monitoring." And radioactive wastes may be highly dangerous for over 200,000 years, while some forms of dangerous chemicals never lose their capacity for harm. In such policy domains, there are often a number of quite contentious issues. Institutional constancy is likely to be among them. Assuring constancy would be a necessary but not a sufficient condition for arriving at commitments and agreements in the first instance.(5) Without such assurances, intense conflict is likely and the many legal means available to paralyze threatening programs could be employed. That is, the U.S. adversarial political culture and formal legal structure make it possible for groups with intensely held views to delay, often substantially modify, or halt programs they fear or with which they disagree (see gray box for examples). …

/pdf/assuring-institutional-constancy-requisite-for-managing-long-4ulgelxy7r.pdf

Assuring institutional constancy : requisite for managing long-lived hazards

Behavior change communication (BCC) interventions, while still a necessary component of HIV prevention, have not on their own been shown to be sufficient to stem the tide of the epidemic The shortcomings of BCC interventions are partly due to barriers arising from structural or economic constraints Arguments are being made for combination prevention packages that include behavior change, biomedical, and structural interventions to address the complex set of risk factors that may lead to HIV infection In 2009/2010 we conducted 216 in-depth interviews with a subset of study participants enrolled in the RESPECT study - an HIV prevention trial in Tanzania that used cash awards to incentivize safer sexual behaviors We analyzed community diaries to understand how the study was perceived in the community We drew on these data to enhance our understanding of how the intervention influenced strategies for risk reduction We found that certain situations provide increased leverage for sexual negotiation, and these situations facilitated opportunistic implementation of risk reduction strategies Opportunities enabled by the RESPECT intervention included leveraging conditional cash awards, but participants also emphasized the importance of exploiting new health status knowledge from regular STI testing Risk reduction strategies included condom use within partnerships and/or with other partners, and an unexpected emphasis on temporary abstinence Our results highlight the importance of increasing opportunities for implementing risk reduction strategies We found that an incentive-based intervention could be effective in part by creating such opportunities, particularly among groups such as women with limited sexual agency The results provide new evidence that expanding regular testing of STIs is another important mechanism for providing opportunities for negotiating behavior change, beyond the direct benefits of testing Exploiting the latent demand for STI testing should receive renewed attention as part of innovative new combination interventions for HIV prevention

https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/23209/journal.pone.0044058.pdf;sequence=1

Ann C. Keller

Papers

Managing Transboundary Crises: Identifying the Building Blocks of an Effective Response System

Science in Environmental Policy: The Politics of Objective Advice

Credibility and Relevance in Environmental Policy: Measuring Strategies and Performance among Science Assessment Organizations

Assuring institutional constancy : requisite for managing long-lived hazards

Evolving strategies, opportunistic implementation: HIV risk reduction in Tanzania in the context of an incentive-based HIV prevention intervention.