Changing Times (Asynchronous Session)
Awareness and Innovation: How to Unleash the Innovation Potential of Individuals and Organisations View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Fabio Salvadori
There is no doubt that the world we live in today is the outcome of a long stream of innovations which started with the first humans. However, the speed at which our world is changing today is unlike any other. In only the last fifty years of our history, the impact of innovation has been nothing short than radical. Unfortunately, in parallel with the remarkable improvements in our lives, many modern innovations have also created new types of challenges for humankind. Even worst, more and more signs are suggesting that challenges are growing faster than our ability to innovate. From anecdotal evidence, it seems like even the forerunners of innovation are struggling to keep up with the speed of change in the world. It is clear then that we must innovate innovation itself. From where should we start? All insights point to culture and mindset as the areas where all organizations should invest to unlock new levels of innovation; in short, shifting the focus from doing innovation to being innovators. How does one go from "doing" innovation (processes and outcomes) to "being" innovators? We believe that only by raising the individual and collective awareness through a process of subtraction, we can create the "space" to unleash new waves of innovation. Sourcing from the wisdom of ancient Veda sages, and combining with the best of modern scientific thinking, we lay down a simple and holistic map to awaken and align all human intelligences driving individual and collective innovation potential.
Mapping the Institutionalization of Evaluation in the U.S. Federal Government: Toward Understanding the Diffusion of Value and Trust in Evidence View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Esther Nolton
Despite marked growth in evaluation use and capacity in the U.S. Federal Government over the last 50 years, the levers that have driven institutional change have not previously been identified. Knowledge of effective and ineffective mechanisms guides efficient approaches to complex organizational change. This study adopts a novel mapping method to investigate the process and factors that have led to the diffusion of value in evaluation in the U.S. Federal Government. It is an ethnographic study, grounded in social anthropological techniques, that combines interview data from 15 evaluation experts with content and discourse analyses of the U.S. President’s Budget Analytical Perspectives from fiscal years 1996-2020 to capture shifts in the prioritization of evidence over time—and the role evaluation has played in brokering knowledge. Thematic analyses of interview data revealed several actors, events, and policies of note that influenced the (de)institutionalization of evaluation. A content and discourse analysis of the Analytical Perspectives demonstrates a progression toward institutionalization by analyzing the prevalence of related key terms and shifts in language. It was discovered that beliefs and actions toward institutionalization are manifested through a progression from cognitive, motivational, behavioral, and structural influences, and that the types of factors at play can impact processes across any level of a nested ecosystem. This study offers unique insight to the trajectory of evaluation in the U.S. Federal Government. Findings may be instrumental to policymakers and organizational leaders who continue to work toward institutionalizing evaluation in the federal government or other complex organizations.
The EU’s Common Agricultural Policy and Bulgaria: Critiquing The New York Times 2019 Expose of Corruption View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Benedict Edward DeDominicis
This paper critiques the portrayal of the utilization of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) funds as forms of entrenched corruption in eastern Europe. This study analyzes the CAP from the perspective of its role in supporting European integration as a strategy for peace promotion focusing on post-Communist Europe. This New York Times investigative report illustrates certain biases regarding US politically prevailing normative assumptions regarding political economy. Despite the Trump phenomenon, they underestimate the significance of intense and increasingly salient post-Communist political polarization in Bulgaria and Eastern Europe in general. EU regional and sectoral economic cohesion policies including the CAP are vehicles to incentivize political elite network creation and cooptation to undercut potentials for militant nationalism. The rise of conservative populist nationalism in Europe and globally illustrates the intensified political challenges to peaceful integration and globalization. A consequence includes greater cultural diversification regarding the definition of private versus public interest, i.e., the nature of the state. Analysis of the challenge of corruption in Bulgaria from the CAP point of view provides an opportunity to explore deeply the conceptualization of the state as a control system. The concept of the rule of law and what it means in Bulgaria is explored from this EU CAP perspective.
