Suchergebnisse

Recent advancement in technology is breaking the barriers to societal change. From crowdfunding for the underserved community to mobilization for political injustice, the rise of social media has opened up unprecedented opportunities to address a wide range of complex societal challenges. This dissertation aims to illuminate and contribute rich, empirically informed insights into the phenomenon of social media enablement for societal challenges. Specifically, this dissertation comprises three related but standalone essays that discuss the use and implications of social media in addressing three different societal challenges. The essays are preceded by a background review on the phenomenon of interest, a discussion on the research significance and an overview of the dissertation structure, followed by an overview on the research methodology. The first essay explores the use of social media for disaster response; the second essay explores the use of social media for environmental sustainability; and the third essay explores the use of social media for civic engagement. Collectively, this dissertation makes two contributions: (1) to shed light on the enabling power of social media in addressing complex societal challenges and (2) to advance future studies on the under-researched phenomenon of social media enablement for societal challenges

"The casebook aims at providing the latest case materials for researchers and students who are keen to learn about the consumerization and transformation effects of digital technology. It is one of the first books covering the best practices of digital enablement in China, which has been the focus many observers among the practitioners as well as academics. The 22 projects analyzed include Zhongguancun InnoWay, OFO Bicycle, Esheke, Taobao, and more."--

Decentralisation to local governments has acquired new dimensions. These dimensions refer to delivery of basic services as well as to public or collective demands and goals. Enablement is central to new decentralisation in which the role of government is to facilitate and regulate the overall framework within which other actors can make their most effective contribution. After situating decentralisation, I explore the notion of enablement. Subsequently the concept of local-government enablement of communities is operationalised. Criteria are formulated and applied to a (nonrepresentative) sample of local governments in seven countries. It is concluded that introducing enablement in local planning is comparatively easy. However, changing regulatory, administrative and financial public decisionmaking processes is much more difficult. In the final part of the paper I examine a number of issues in the local-governance debate. Decentralisation to local government takes place in the context of decentralisation to market and to communities. Issues are identified on the supply and demand sides of governance, and on the question of embedding of government. New decentralisation raises a new class of problems, for which, as yet, few answers are available.

Living with Hearing Difficulties is a source-book for professionals who encounter and support individuals with hearing difficulties. It will also be of interest to people with hearing difficulties themselves and those close to them. The book highlights the concept of audiological enablement as being an interactive process requiring the active involvement of both clinician and patient. The thirteen chapters encompass four sections which broadly follow the categories of the World Health Organization's ICF (2001):Section 1 addresses types of hearing disorders, the impairments they cause and also

PurposeInformation technology (IT) is increasingly being used towards the effectiveness of supply chains. There are, however, some barriers in this process. These barriers influence one another and also adversely affect the IT‐enablement of a supply chain. The aim of this paper is to understand these mutual influences so that those barriers which are at the root of few more barriers (called driving barriers) and those which are most influenced by the others (called dependent barriers) are identified.Design/methodology/approachA questionnaire‐based survey was conducted to rank the barriers.FindingsThe results of the survey and the interpretive structural modeling (ISM) methodology have been used to evolve the mutual relationships among these barriers.Originality/valueIt is observed that there are some barriers, which have both high driving power and dependency and therefore need more attention.

In searching for conceptualizations that offer an alternative perspective to ``entrepreneurial opportunities'', the notion of external enablers has recently been suggested for capturing the influence on entrepreneurial action and outcomes exerted by external conditions like new technologies, regulatory or demographic shifts, and changes to the socio-cultural, economic, political, or natural environments. We take the external enabler perspective several steps further. We develop a new framework that conceptualizes external enablers in terms of their characteristics, roles, and mechanisms and detail their implications for entrepreneurial action and outcomes. We argue that this framework provides a more productive perspective for theorizing about the influence of external, actor-independent factors on venture creation processes than Discovery Theory's notion of objective, pre-existing opportunities. At the same time, it is compatible with the dynamic-agentic view of new venture creation proposed by varieties of Creation Theory. For researchers who are interested in instances of societal change from a sociological or historical vantage point, the framework facilitates theorizing across such instances and about the microfoundations of aggregate-level changes. Additional domains that can benefit from our new framework include design- and strategy-oriented research and practice.