Change Factors

For over fifty years, successive waves of critique have underscored that the apolitical character of much of Political Science research betrays the founding mission of the discipline to have science serve democracy. The Caucus for a New Political Science was originally based on such a critique, and the Perestroika movement in the discipline included a call for more problem-driven as opposed to theory- or method-driven work that would better connect Political Science research to ongoing political struggles. In recent years, movements for a public Sociology and public Anthropology as well as dissonant movements in Economics and related fields have added to the insistence that social science research was too often disconnected from the real world. Phronetic Social Science has emerged out of the ferment for change in the social sciences, starting with the much-debated book by Bent Flyvbjerg, Making Social Science Matter (Cambridge 2001). Flyvbjerg critiqued the social sciences for mimicking the natural sciences while proposing an alternative approach that focuses research on helping people address the problems they are facing in the context they are facing them. Today, Phronetic Social Science goes beyond the call for an alternative approach to social inquiry and its growing adherents are providing evidence that this alternative approach to doing research can enrich the social sciences by more effectively connecting research to efforts to address real world problems as people experience them. This essay provides a genealogy of efforts to connect Political Science to politics, a review of the major critiques of mainstream research, an explication of the rationale for more problem-driven, mixed methods research, a specification of the key principles of the phronetic approach, and examples of its application in the public realm. The essay concludes with implications for realizing a more political Political Science by way of taking a phronetic approach.

"In this paper, following the long-term objective of providing a complete e-Learning environment for students and aiming for the more general goal of information customization, we present MASACAD, a multi-agent system that advises students by adopting a supervised learning approach based on the back-propagation algorithm. The technologies used described and experimental results are presented.

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On Monday, June 17, around 6pm, Taksim became the stage for Erdem Gündüz, a “performance-based artist” and a dancer from Izmir, who without prior notice or deliberation just decided to make a stand against the recent police crack-down on the protests at Taksim and the “Occupy” movement in Gezi Park. He stood still in front of the Atatürk Culture Center for nearly eight hours on Taksim Square and despite the constant risk of arrest, as any protest gathering on Taksim was deemed as a 'provocation' those days, a lifestream on social media was quickly established right in front of the silent vigilante. He was quickly dubbed 'duran adam', the Standing Man, although a more accurate translation from Turkish might be the “stopping” man. After his standing act, we have seen hundreds of pictures of people replicating this form of civil disobedience as it gave way to a very much-needed phase of reflection after Gezi Park and Taksim Square were retaken, emptied and occupied by the riot police. Despite the Standing Man of the first hour being noticed by the media and his image spreading like a meme all over the world, little has been written about the meaning of his non-violent action to the Gezi Park protests and the civil uprising in Turkey, particularly there where performance and the political arena meet. Now that some time has passed and standing has become a well-accepted practice of protest after Gezi Park has been closed off from the public, let’s try to read more prudently the different aspects of how the performative act of standing has written itself into the political and the social imagination, opening new windows towards acts of resistance, protest and mass communication where the Turkish government has currently closed doors.

In this paper, we examine organizational actors’ responses to a new partnership work space, specifically looking at manifestations of resistance in the language of interviewees. We explore the effects of these responses on the construction of the partnership organization’s socio-cultural space, in which all organizational actors play a part. Resistance is not characterized within a negative paradigm; rather, it is part of the normal range of responses as organizational actors negotiate their work place practice. We conclude that construction of the organization’s socio-cultural space is constituted by organizational actors’ past and present lived experiences which coexist and compete to negotiate, through a lens of resistance, the new partnership context.

External Adaptability is an outcomes measure of organizational effectiveness reflecting proficiency levels in responding to external change. Many higher education institutions are interested in reshaping their goals to better meet the needs of a growing global market. To analyze external adaptability, 52 higher education faculty and administrators from institutions in more than 16 countries were surveyed using the Human Synergistics International Organizational Effectiveness Inventory® (OEI®) Survey. Results revealed that external adaptability scores fell below both the Historical Average (50th percentile) and the Constructive Benchmark. Subgroup analysis revealed that scores were below the Historical Average for faculty, administrators, males, females, and private- and public not-for-profits. By contrast, scores approached the Historical Average (50th percentile) in private for-profits, and exceeded the Constructive Benchmark in public for-profits. Trends for slightly higher scores were noted for administrators and males as compared to faculty and females respectively. To improve agility in higher education institutions, further diagnostic analysis of organizational decision making is warranted. The Performance Triangle diagnostic model is discussed and the use of the AgilityINsights Diagnostic™ Survey from Sphere Advisors AG is recommended. Attaining high external adaptability is critical for the future of higher education.

Medical and graduate students around the world are subjected to humiliation and workplace aggression including belittlement, bullying and abusive supervision practices which reflect defensive organizational cultures. We and others have previously shown that higher education institutions, including medical teaching centers, have detrimentally high levels of aggressive/defensive and passive/defensive cultural styles as measured by the Human Synergistics International Organizational Culture Inventory® (OCI® & OCI-Ideal®) Surveys. Central to effective pre-clinical and clinical training are supervisory/managerial leadership skills which are negatively impacted by the current higher education operating cultures. In this paper, we analyze Consideration, which assumes empathy in supportive/participative leadership communications. Faculty and administrators at public and private higher education institutions were surveyed using the Human Synergistics International Organizational Effectiveness Inventory® (OEI®) Survey. Results revealed Consideration scores undesirably below both the Historical Average and the Constructive Benchmark in for-profit and not-for-profit higher education institutions. Recommendations are discussed for overcoming resistance to change in academic centers, replacing defensive norms with constructive cultural styles, and incorporating considerate leadership practices into the supervisor-trainee relationship in higher education.

In healthcare, translating evidence into changed practice remains challenging. Novel interventions are being used to address these challenges, including the use of ‘knowledge brokers’. But how sustainable these roles might be, and the consequences for the individual of enacting such roles, are unknown. We explore these questions by drawing on qualitative data from case studies of full-time roles in a research-practice collaboration. We suggest that structural issues around professional boundaries, organisational norms and career pathways may make such roles difficult to sustain in the long-term, but highlight interventions that might improve their feasibility.

Niccolò Machiavelli, the founder of modern political and administrative thought, made clear that an understanding of politics requires distinguishing between formal politics and what later, with Ludwig von Rochau, would become known as Realpolitik. No such distinction has been employed in the study of rationality. Yet I will argue that distinguishing between formal rationality and real rationality is as important for the understanding of rationality and planning as the distinction between formal politics and Realpolitik has been for understanding politics.

This article presents results from the first statistically significant study of cost escalation in transportation infrastructure projects. Based on a sample of 258 transportation infrastructure projects worth US$90 billion and representing different project types, geographical regions, and historical periods, it is found with overwhelming statistical significance that the cost estimates used to decide whether such projects should be built are highly and systematically misleading. Underestimation cannot be explained by error and is best explained by strategic misrepresentation, that is, lying. The policy implications are clear: legislators, administrators, investors, media representatives, and members of the public who value honest numbers should not trust cost estimates and cost-benefit analyses produced by project promoters and their analysts.

During World War I, the US Congress made it unlawful to speak against the war. The executive prosecuted many for doing so and when tried at the Supreme Court it upheld the sentences. During the Iraq War it was not a crime to speak against the war, but it was almost impossible to be heard if you had anything critical to say. Mass media practiced a self-imposed censorship. The op-ed below was written a few days after the invasion of Iraq and sent to main media in the US, but none wanted to print it on the grounds that critique of the war was considered untimely.

Dan Lovallo and Daniel Kahneman must be commended for their clear identification of causes and cures to the planning fallacy in “Delusions of Success: How Optimism Undermines Executives’ Decisions” (July 2003). Their look at overoptimism, anchoring, competitor neglect, and the outside view in forecasting is highly useful to executives and forecasters. However, Lovallo and Kahneman underrate one source of bias in forecasting—the deliberate “cooking” of forecasts to get ventures started. My colleagues and I call this the Machiavelli factor.