Hasil untuk "Public relations. Industrial publicity"

Yuri Gabriel Campagnaro

This article investigates how innovationism—the neoliberal paradigm framing technological innovation as a profit-driven imperative—structures the sociotechnical controversy surrounding Vantablack. Through an STS lens, we analyze how Surrey NanoSystems, Anish Kapoor, and Stuart Semple mobilize contradictory narratives that simultaneously critique and reproduce innovationist ideologies. While the material’s development as a nanotechnology-based "superblack" pigment exemplifies technological determinism (treating Vantablack’s emergence as an autonomous scientific breakthrough), its artistic appropriation reveals co-produced tensions between market logics and cultural production. The actors’ practices demonstrate innovationism’s paradoxes: Surrey NanoSystems oscillates between high-tech branding and low-end commercialization; Kapoor leverages exclusivity despite achieving similar aesthetic effects through conventional means; Semple’s democratizing rhetoric relies on the same novelty-seeking mechanisms he condemns. These contradictions emerge from a shared ideological framework that naturalizes innovation as both economically necessary and socially neutral, obscuring its role in reinforcing asymmetries of access and power. We argue that the Vantablack controversy crystallizes broader tensions in technoscientific governance, where innovationism mediates between art, technology, and politics. Rather than resolving these tensions, the case exposes how even competing positions remain constrained by market-centric epistemologies that privilege short-term profitability over collective benefit. The study advances critical perspectives on innovation by unpacking its material, discursive, and ideological dimensions in contested cultural domains.

Carolina Bagattolli, Tiago Brandão, Lucien von Schomberg

In a world increasingly captivated by the allure of technology and rapid innovation, the II NOvation Forum, held at the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR), in September 2024 (4-6th) stands as a critical and inspiring milestone. Under the theme «Reimagining Innovation for the Public Good», students, practitioners, and scholars from across the globe gathered to question the prevailing narratives of innovation and to explore alternative futures grounded in social justice, sustainability, and collective well-being. Building on the foundations laid during the inaugural Forum, the second edition reaffirmed NOvation's mission: to establish an interdisciplinary community around the study of innovation, scholar-led community, a slow-science research endeavour that critically examines innovation as a deeply political phenomenon. It called for a shift beyond the mere deployment of emerging technologies, embracing the social, historical, and ethical dimensions of innovation practices. More fundamentally, it challenged the ideology of "innovation-speak" (according to Vinsel and Russell 2020 book, «The Innovation Delusion») that pervades contemporary policy and academic discourse, inviting us to rethink who innovation serves and how it can truly contribute to the public good.

Alfred Nordmann

It is hard to disagree with the thrust of René von Schomberg’s position paper. It is driven by the worry that current conceptions of “open science” are all too impoverished – that they need to be complemented by the social practice of “mutual responsiveness”. In terms of political theory or notions of democracy, on the one hand, in terms of socially relevant research practice, on the other hand, only an ambitious commitment to open science will be robust enough to make a difference and contribute to the solution of pressing problems. In contrast, it is paying lip service only to the ideal of openness when “open science” becomes reduced to “open access publishing” or data storage rituals. As von Schomberg shows, this might actually deepen disparities and redundancies within dysfunctional science.

POPESCU Ruxandra-Irina, CORBOȘ Răzvan-Andrei, BUNEA Ovidiu-Iulian

In the dynamic realm of public services, the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a transformative force, reshaping various sectors, including governance, urban development, healthcare, education, security infrastructure, decision-making processes, and responses to health crises. This article conducts an exploration spanning the years 1984 to 2023, employing bibliometric analysis to analyse global literature retrieved from the Scopus database. The central investigation revolves around the evolution of AI utilisation in public services during this period. Findings indicate a significant surge in AI-related publications, with notable global contributions from countries like China, India, and the United States, and a prevalence of computer science in AI research. Keyword clusters highlight seven prominent themes, ranging from digital governance to modelling health and social welfare in pandemics. Future research directions underscore ethical implications, AI adoption across government agencies, effectiveness in addressing urban challenges, machine learning applications in healthcare and education, security and privacy implications, application in diverse contexts, and AI's role in predicting and managing public health emergencies. This research contributes some necessary information for both academia and practical implementation in public services, laying the groundwork for future studies.

ODUNCU Fulya, AYDEMİR Muzaffer, YILDIZ İncilay

The aim of this study is to make a holistic review of research on digitalization in local governments. In this Scopus database, 57 studies including the phrases “local purpose” and “digitization” in the title, summary and keywords were examined. The bibliometric analysis of the obtained data was performed using the R Studio program. When the results were evaluated, it was observed that the studies were between the years 2000-2023. While it was determined that there were a total of 21 studies between 2000-2019, it has been observed that the studies in this field have increased gradually in the last 4 years, with 36 studies as of 2020. The most studies were published in 2021 and 2022, with 11 publications each. Local government (27) and digitization (15) are the most used keywords. The countries with the highest number of studies are China (17), England (14) and the USA (8). In addition to these, when the bibliometric analysis results are examined, the most widely published source on this subject is Sustainability (5). The most published authors are Baud, I., Denis, E. Pfeffer, K. Scott, D. and Sydenstricker-Neto, J., with 2 publications each. The most cited journals are Sustainability (24) and Government Information Quarterly (23). The countries of the most cited authors are China (120) and the Netherlands (67). In this study, important information is obtained by examining the conceptual, social and intellectual structure of the literature.

IANCU Alexandra

The present research aims to highlight the importance of implementing the Integrated Management System (IMS) in the General City Hall of Bucharest and, thus, producing positive effects such as: efficient allocation of resources by improving forecasting and planning, increasing the quality of services provided to citizens, improving communication between departments of the institution, reducing the number of complaints made by citizens about the quality of public services, changing the organisational structure by resizing the departments of the institution, increasing the transparency of the decision-making process. The research is based on the combined use of several methods: analysis of official documents (reports, analysis of performance indicators that are established at the level of each department within the City Hall of Municipality of Bucharest (PMB) according to the services they provide to customers/citizens and are reported periodically, being a key tool for the management of the organisation) and opinion survey based on the questionnaire addressed to civil servants within the City Hall. The results prove that the maintenance and improvement of the Integrated Management System in the PMB requires a permanent involvement of the management of the directorates for the implementation of the processes carried out in the institution.

BURCEA Ștefan Gabriel, REID Catriona

This article provides a comprehensive overview of the planning system in Ireland with specific respect to the Planning Acts, the production of development plans, and the different types of planning application including Strategic Infrastructure Developments. Following this, the case of the Rioja Estates retail outlet centre in Carrigtwohill, County Cork, will be examined in light of contemporary issues in Irish planning. The study aims to identify and analyze the particularities regarding strategic planning at the local level, in particular, the way in which the spatial planning process was managed in Irish local communities. The research methodology considered is the case study based on the document analysis (administrative documents and strategic documents of local authorities of Cork County and public statements of officials in the local press) in the context of which the opportunity to build a retail outlet centre in Carrindtwohill was analyzed. Specific attention will be paid throughout the article to the role of the relatively new Office of the Planning Regulator, which was established in 2019 to oversee the correct implementation of planning policy by local authorities, and which played a pivotal role in the Rioja Estates case.

Timothy Curtis

This paper provides empirical research demonstrating that there are clear, consistent and repeatable processes at play in social innovation, calling into question the currently hegemonic postmodernist concept of ‘social bricolage’ in social innovation literature. The paper applies a critical realist & systems analysis approach, utilising Checkland’s (1981/2000) Soft Systems Methodology (SSM). The research project investigated 8 neighbourhood and community policing projects using a handbook called Locally identified Solutions & Practices (LISP). LISP was implemented in a range of different social contexts to construct context-mechanism-outcome (CMO) chains (after Pawson, 2013) in a two-step process to identify which social innovation mechanisms contributed to what outcomes in which contexts. The paper reports on empirically based evidence of social innovation processes that do not rely on the characteristics of the individual social entrepreneur or the serendipity of social bricolage ‘freeplay’ (Derrida, 1970). The paper makes the case that social innovation is more than ‘bricolage’ (Derrida, 1970; Di Domenico et al., 2010), not an eclectic mysterious craft of innovation that relies on the skills and characteristics of the social entrepreneur, but instead a systematic, consistent and repeatable process.

Gabriela Bortz, Hernan Thomas

Innovation Studies (IS) and Science, Technology and Society studies (STS) explored the role of users in socio-technological change: from their role as consumers, adopters or experimenters to maximize profit, to exploring the mutual shaping of users and technologies and the power relations embedded into the process of use. By the turn of the century, amidst broader claims to democratize Science and Technology, scholars and practitioners explored the ways technologies may contribute to overcome social, material, and political restrictions in structural inequality scenarios. While discursively praising user inclusion as a ‘good practice’, ‘technologies for inclusive development’ (TID) ranged from processes of distributed decision-making and empowerment to paternalistic schemes and unwanted effects that reinforce exclusion patterns. This paper aims to revisit user theories through the lens of inclusion/exclusion to explore user engagement in TID initiatives to understand the relation between user involvement and ‘inclusive’ outcomes. We argue that diverse theoretical views on user-centeredness, which we systematize in 5 types, are tied to different normative assumptions about what user-centeredness is for, with implications for technology practice and STS theory. In interaction between literature review and instrumental TID case studies (in water, health, nutrition, and recycling), we examine how these differences lead to differential outcomes in terms of inclusion (e.g., exclusion problem-solving, distribution of benefits, social learning). In turn, we analyze how bringing the inclusiveness/exclusion dimension may help to reveal user literature blind spots that need to be addressed, and how unveiling user theory may contribute to deepen our understanding of inclusion in technology making.

Carolina Bagattolli, Tiago Brandão, Mónica Edwards-Schachter et al.

On September 15th till 17th 2021, scholars from all over the world met digitally to critically discuss various aspects of innovation, innovation research and innovation governance. The online forum was built up around three keynote speeches, a method lab led by Philippe Zittoun, and a paper and a theory lab, in which researchers presented their own research. The overarching theme of the online forum was Governance(s) of Innovation, which was discussed from various angles.

PĂCEȘILĂ Mihaela

The handbook represents an important foray into the world of leadership and management of nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations while describing some of the most recent theories, researches and practices. It is divided into five parts, each containing several chapters where different authors analyze, in a clear and comprehensive way, aspects about board performance and organizational effectiveness, financial sustainability, strategies for attracting and maintaining human resources, etc.

Ivan Balabanić

In the literature, financial literacy and financial awareness are described as knowledge, skills and behaviour that can eliminate undesirable financial risks, as well as encourage entrepreneurial behaviour. Official education of citizens around the world has begun in 2003, but in Croatia such a systematic approach started in 2015. Considering the fact that young people are the bearers of future trends this research focuses on identifying young people's awareness of financial issues as a precondition for financial literacy. This research was conducted using mixed methodology and Sequential Explanatory Design. The first part of the research was conducted using a survey method among 1731 students in Croatia and the second part by using focus groups that included 21 participants.

Vlasta Kučiš

This paper is a first attempt at making an analysis and trying to present a summary of the main characteristics of a newly founded undergraduate program for Translators and Interpreters at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Maribor. The author tried to outline the structure of the program, which is based on the development of competences in the field of translation science, with the aid of theoretical and didactic approaches. The policy of EU-integration, demands qualified translators and interpreters, and the profession of translation aspires to unified educational criteria. Theoretical and scientific postulates confirm the presented strategy of education in the context of harmonization and optimizing European undergraduate programs and curriculums for future translators and interpreters

Lucien von Schomberg, Vincent Blok

The concept of Responsible Innovation (RI) occupies a central place in the discourse on science and technology, especially in the context of the European Union (EU) but also within academia. This concept is guided by the idea of steering science and technology towards societally desirable outcomes, particularly in response to normative objectives such as Sustainable Development Goals. Visions of RI typically propose that to innovate responsibly requires a permanent commitment to be anticipatory, reflective, inclusively deliberative, and responsive. They also emphasize the need for open access, gender equality, science education, ethical standard in conducting experiments, and democratic governance. However, the societal purpose of RI fundamentally conflicts with the imperative of maximizing economic growth inherent in today’s innovation climate. This conflict points to a crisis in which innovation struggles to serve public interests insofar private interests continue to be prioritized. The magnitude of this crisis is also reflected within the RI literature itself, where the political ambition to exceed the privatization wave is summoned to a techno-economic concept of innovation. This issue of NOvation – Critical Studies of Innovation brings into question to what extent innovation necessarily relates to the market, whether it is possible to develop an alternative concept of innovation that is separated from economic ends, and how we can conceptualize, for example, a political understanding of innovation. What really is innovation? While all seven contributions share the aspiration to critically reflect on these questions, they each offer a distinct and original perspective in discussing the relation between innovation, technology, politics, economics, and responsibility.

Raúl Tabarés

Digitalization was supposed to be a transformation force for the academic publishing sector, but it has reinforced the oligopoly of for-profit academic publishers. Open access (OA) was also meant to counterbalance this situation, but after a decade of efforts it seems that it has not achieved their goals. This essay explores how the combination of digitalization and OA have contributed to reinforce the lock-in effects exerted in the sector by digital platforms operated by for-profit academic publishers. I also explore alternative paths for the development of OA with the theoretical lenses that provide responsible innovation, putting social emphasis at the politics and values that lie at the heart of academia. I argue that exploitation, appropriation of labor and quantification metrics widely present in this social domain must be counterbalanced with different actions that do not focus alone in making freely available scientific articles for citizens.

SABIE Oana-Matilda, ANDRONICEANU Armenia , APOSTOL Simona Alexandra

The purpose of this paper is to present how different elements, like: leadership, emotional intelligence and organizational culture influence the performance of people and organizations, and, also, to answer the question “Can these factors be defined as drivers of employee performance?”. The main objective is to bring more clarity to the process of measure employee performance through a better understanding of emotional intelligence and organizational culture, along with the added value of these two concepts. A brief review of literature studies presenting results on this theme is caried out within the paper, in order to demonstrate the utility of the future research directions in the field. The paper reveals specific elements that should be part of the performance measurement at organizational level, in order to improve the actual approach.

PĂCEȘILĂ Mihaela

This paper analyzes motivation of volunteers within a nongovernmental organization. The first part of the paper summarizes the studies related to motivation in general and motivation of volunteers in particular. The second part of the paper consists in a study on the importance of motivating volunteers by nongovernmental organizations. In this regard, the article uses the method of the survey questionnaire administered among volunteers of a nongovernmental organization. Finally, the author concludes that volunteer motivation is often a difficult but necessary process, and NGOs should constantly motivate volunteers.

Rick Hölsgens

In his book “Innovation, Ethics and Our Common Futures: A Collaborative Philosophy,” Rafael Ziegler sets out to critically assess the notion of innovation as a driving force in modern-day (Western) economies. He asserts that ‘innovation as technological novelty for commercial use is driving us deeper in unsustainability’ (p. v), and embarks on a philosophical journey to scrutinize the concept of innovation and its role in modern economies. In doing so, Ziegler aims to develop a sufficientarian notion of innovation, calling to embrace a broad, collaborative understanding of innovation based on pluralistic modes of provision focusing not only on markets and increasing financial welfare, but instead on nature-respecting sufficientarian principles of enough is enough – ‘within justice of a minimum threshold and of respect for upper limits to resource use’ (p. 18).

Hannot Rodríguez, Sergio Urueña, Andoni Ibarra

The call for the development of more responsible research and innovation has increasingly permeated European Union research and development policies. Specifically, under the auspices of approaches such as “Responsible Research and Innovation” (RRI) and “Open Science”, these policies conceive of the need to make innovation dynamics radically open and debatable, even with regard to the underlying preferences and expectations shaping them. Responsibility has thus been conceived in eminently anticipatory terms, that is, in terms of collectively taking care in the present of the futures enabled through innovation practices. This normative conception, which emphasises the politicisation of the ways futures are constructed through innovation and goals they are oriented towards, is nonetheless realised within a context where the prevailing way of approaching the future with regard to innovation systems is highly committed to a capitalist imperative of technological progress and economic growth. This article argues that while anticipation – understood as an interventive practice – can deploy valuable responsibilisation heuristics, their degree of disruptiveness, or openness, may depend on how such interventive practice engaging with futures deals with this techno-economic commitment, or imperative.

MINA-RAIU Laura, NEGREANU Viorela

Public administration services in Romania have serious quality problems, which in order to be properly addressed require a series of investments in quality systems and instruments for improving quality. A good starting point in this respect is the ServQual tool, which measures services quality as a gap between citizens expectations and citizens perceptions, using two alternative questionnaire formats, one for expectations and one for the actual experience with the service. The paper is an exploratory case-study research aimed at measuring citizens’ satisfaction with public administration services using the ServQual instrument, within the Taxes and Fees Department from Roșiorii de Vede municipality, in Romania. Research findings indicate an overall low level of satisfaction among users, in particular related to the empathy and responsiveness dimensions, combined ith citizens reluctance in using online services.