Redesigning Social Inquiry Fuzzy Sets And Beyond

Much effort goes into building markets as a tool for economic and social development, often overlooking that in too many places social exclusion and poverty prevent many, especially women, from participating in and accessing markets. Building on data from rural Bangladesh and analyzing the work of a prominent intermediary organization, we uncover institutional voids as the source of market exclusion and identify two sets of activities – redefining market architecture and legitimating new actors – as critical for building ‘inclusive' markets. We expose voids as ‘analytical spaces' and illustrate how they result from conflict and contradiction among institutional ‘bits and pieces' from local political, community, and religious spheres. Our findings put forward a perspective on market building that highlights the ‘on the ground' dynamics and attends to the ‘institutions at play', to their consequences, and to a more diverse set of ‘inhabitants' of institutions.

Building Inclusive Markets in Rural Bangladesh : How Intermediaries Work Institutional Voids

Since 1995, more than 150,000 students and researchers have turned to "The Craft of Research" for clear and helpful guidance on how to conduct research and report it effectively. Now, master teachers Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb and Joseph M. Williams present a completely revised and updated version of their classic handbook. Like its predecessor, this new edition reflects the way researchers actually work: in a complex circuit of thinking, writing, revising and rethinking. It shows how each part of this process influences the others and how a successful research report is an orchestrated conversation between a researcher and a reader. Along with many other topics, "The Craft of Research" explains how to build an argument that motivates readers to accept a claim; how to anticipate the reservations of thoughtful yet critical readers and to respond to them appropriately; and how to create introductions and conclusions that answer that most demanding question, "So what?" This popular book retains its five-part structure. Part 1 provides an orientation to the research process and begins the discussion of what motivates researchers and their readers. Part 2 focuses on finding a topic, planning the project and locating appropriate sources. This section is brought up to date with new information on the role of the Internet in research, including how to find and evaluate sources, avoid their misuse and test their reliability. Part 3 explains the art of making an argument and supporting it. The authors have extensively revised this section to present the structure of an argument in clearer and more accessible terms than in the first edition. New distinctions are made among "reasons", "evidence", and "reports of evidence". The concepts of "qualifications and rebuttals" are recast as "acknowledgement and response". Part 4 covers drafting and revising, and offers new information on the visual representation of data. Part 5 concludes the book with an updated discussion of the ethics of research, as well as an expanded bibliography that includes many electronic sources. The new edition retains the accessibility, insights and directness that have made "The Craft of Research" a useful guide for anyone doing research, from students in high school through advanced graduate study to business people and government employees. The authors demonstrate convincingly that researching and reporting skills can be learned and used by all who undertake research projects.

The craft of research

textFor nearly two decades, scholars in international business and management have explored the implications of institutional voids for firm strategy and structure. Although institutional voids offer both opportunities and challenges, they have largely been associated with firms' efforts to avoid or mitigate institutional deficiencies and reduce the transaction costs associated with operating in settings subject to those institutional shortcomings. The goal of this special issue is to advance scholarship on this topic by (a) exploring institutional voids that are new to the literature, (b) providing a deeper assessment of the different ways in which firms respond to these voids, and (c) utilizing diverse disciplines and theoretical approaches to do so. In this introduction, we first review and synthesize extant research on institutional voids, tracking the evolution of institutional void scholarship since the inception of the concept (Khanna & Palepu, Journal of Economic Literature, 45(2):331-372, 1997) and providing our perspective on its contributions and limitations. We then summarize the contributions of the articles included in this special issue. In addition to identifying an array of institutional voids - economic and social - the articles highlight four different strategies for responding to them: internalization, substitution, borrowing and signaling. Drawing on these, we develop new insights on the implications of institutional voids for firm behavior. We conclude with suggestions for future research.

International business responses to institutional voids

This chapter contains sections titled: Importance of Innovation by Users, Why Many Users Want Custom Products, Users' Innovate-or-Buy Decisions, Users' Low-Cost Innovation Niches, Why Users Often Freely Reveal Their Innovations, Innovation Communities, Adapting Policy to User Innovation, Diffusion of User-Developed Innovations, Democratizing Innovation, Note, References

Democratizing Innovation: The Evolving Phenomenon of User Innovation

In recent years, there has been growing demand by patients for access to their own health information via tools like Personal Health Records [1]. The Markle Foundation [2] defines the Personal Health Record (PHR) as an electronic application through which individuals can access, manage and share their health information in a secure and confidential environment. PHRs are emerging and consolidating as an effective tool for patients to maintain their own health-related information. Healthcare Organizations (HCOs) and e-health services covered by HIPAA face the problem of implementing effective and cost-efficient security and privacy policies, while constantly demonstrating compliance with HIPAA regulations. To this end, HCOs must implement system-wide policies, standards, guidelines and procedures for safeguarding the organization's information including Electronic Medical Records (EMR) and Electronic Health Records (EHR), in conjunction with HIPAA mandates [3]. Similar security and privacy issues also apply to PHRs, as patient information must be protected under HIPAA regulatory requirements. PHR applications were initially provided by single vendors as a module (with limited functionality) within a Hospital Information System (HIS). But with growing use of Web 2.0 technologies, PHRs have also evolved as web-based solutions provided by business parties, leveraging "anywhere anytime" accessibility made possible by the internet. Although business third parties providing PHR solutions are not subject to HIPAA regulations, nonetheless security and privacy for PHRs are critical issues - both for the patients using the PHR and for the providers themselves. In this context, this paper focuses on existing PHR applications and functions, classification of PHRs based on their business and technical environments, privacy features, privacy policies and coverage, and privacy policy notification issues. Furthermore, in order to verify privacy policy coverage and notifications offered by web-based PHRs, an evaluation of such privacy policies against already established and well-researched evaluation criteria was conducted. The two main PHR platforms used for evaluation in this research include Microsoft HealthVault and GoogleHealth. The objective is to highlight existing vulnerabilities in PHR privacy policy coverage and gaps in privacy policy notification mechanisms, while investigating the lack of availability of tools that enable patients to adequately protect their personal health information.

Privacy policies of personal health records: an evaluation of their effectiveness in protecting patient information

In this conceptual paper, we examine IT-enabled frugal innovation from the lens of absorptive capacity theory (ACAP). The practice of frugal innovation in emerging economies is rooted in low cost approaches, constrained resources, and flexible improvisation. As frugal innovation is an emergent phenomenon, there is little theoretical development and empirical investigation with respect to the enabling role of IT. We address this gap by examining the conceptual underpinnings of frugal innovation and its antecedents, such as IT leveraging capability, dynamic knowledge capabilities, and organizational learning. We develop a research model and provide testable propositions. This paper contributes to ACAP literature by providing a look inside the “black box” of the relationships between three different types of learning (according to ACAP) and their effects on the underlying dimensions of frugal innovation. Furthermore, based on our findings, implications for theory and practice are provided along with guidance for future empirical research.

The Enabling Role of IT in Frugal Innovation

Innovation programs in developed economies are centered on resource richness and abundance. As firms seek newer innovation paradigms to sustain competitive advantage, we suggest the use of “frugal innovation”, which originates in emerging economies and is rooted in low cost approaches, constrained resources, and flexible improvisation. Frugal innovation principles when viewed from the theoretical lens of IT capability, RBV, and other related literature, can provide a rich foundation for frugal IT innovation research. In this exploratory paper, we explain the concept of frugal innovation and its position within a number of existing innovation paradigms. This is a significant contribution considering the number of emerging innovation concepts. We also demonstrate the potential integration of frugal innovation principles with traditional IT-enabled innovation approaches – a concept we call “frugal IT innovation”. We then explore potential “frugal IT capabilities” that may enable frugal IT innovation and finally provide propositions to guide future research.

Suchit Ahuja

Papers

Privacy policies of personal health records: an evaluation of their effectiveness in protecting patient information

The Enabling Role of IT in Frugal Innovation

Beyond Traditional IT-enabled Innovation: Exploring Frugal IT Capabilities Research-in-Progress

Integration of COBIT, Balanced Scorecard and SSE-CMM as an Organizational & Strategic Information Security Management (ISM) Framework

Beyond Traditional IT-enabled Innovation: Exploring Frugal IT Capabilities