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The purpose of this paper is to subject the short lived “Policy Analysis Market” (PAM) – “a Pentagon betting market on terror attacks” – and media and academic reactions to it, to some critical analysis.

The paper engages sustained invocation of the relationship between simulation and representation, for the story of the Policy Analysis Market (PAM) and its demise is replete with the tension between the two. It interrogates a range of accounts of the (un)timely demise of PAM, from the fearful senators and the moralistic media who subsumed and buttressed their position to the market evangelists for whom the failure of this particular market was merely proof of the veracity of markets elsewhere.

It is found that, inter alia, PAM was not really market‐like enough and, indeed, that it duplicated in impoverished form already existing markets that pertain to its objects of interest; that it was too much a market, given that its “goods” are seemingly inappropriate for market trade; and that it exposed too much of the truth of the actual operation of existing markets via the difficulties it confronted with regard to the possibility of insider dealing.

By contextualising PAM within the so‐called war on terror of which it was part, we see in the tension between representation and simulation, tension between a singular and a manifold reality; a set of tensions which make clear the extent of the gap that must exist between cause and effect, truth and prediction. The paper concludes by joining the celebration of PAM's demise whilst yearning for a similar fate to befall the other monologues that brought it to silence.

Libraries can be seen as the collective identity of its employees engaged in providing a myriad of services to a community of patrons. Libraries can also exist in virtual settings, defined with descriptive parameters, described by a wider user group external to the library environment. The diverse nature of what constitutes libraries is illustrated by researchers, such as Marino and Lapintie (2015), who use the term “meta-meeting place” when describing its environs. Whatever model is used to describe contemporary libraries, the library environment usually has numerous needs and demands coming from a variety of stakeholders, from administrators to patrons. This chapter examines how we, as librarians, with users, co-construct library as both space and place.

We used a theoretical framework (social constructionism) to show how library identity is established by its users in the space planning process to address their needs and expectations and provided a case study of the main library at the University of South Florida.

We found that libraries are reflective of the vision and values of a diverse community and the social-political milieu in which they are housed. Librarians used a number of innovative methods and frames to create best/evidence-based practice approaches in space planning, re-envisioning library functions, and conducting outcomes/programmatic assessment. For librarians to create that sense of place and space for our users requires effective and open conversations and examination of our own inherent (and often unacknowledged) contradictions as to what libraries are or should be as enduring structures with evolving uses and changing users. For example, only a few of the studies focused on the spatial use and feel of libraries using new technologies or methodologies, such as social network analysis, discourse analysis, or GPS, to map the use of physical and virtual space.

First, new ways of working and engaging require reexamination of assessment and evaluation procedures and processes. To accomplish this, we must develop a more effective culture of assessment and to use innovative evaluation measures to determine use, user paths, and formal and informal groupings. Changes that affect patron and staff perceptions of library as place/third space may be difficult to assess using quantitative surveys, such as LibQual, that may not provide an opportunity for respondents to provide specifics of what “place” means to them. Second, it is important to have effective communication among all members of the library (patrons, library staff, and university administration) so that we design spaces/places that enhance the relationships among users, technology, pedagogy, and learning spaces, not just the latest “thing” in the literature.

This value of this review is to provide a social constructionist perspective (frame) on how we plan library space. This approach provides opportunities to truly engage our patrons and administration in the co-construction of what “our library” should be since it provides insight to group, place, and social dynamics.

The concept of risk is often approached as if it is self-defining. Yet placing an event or activity in the category of “risk” is a categorization with consequences. Framing normatively complex problems like immigration, terrorism, or monetary crisis as risks that require regulating suggests that certain cognitive tools are best suited for analyzing them. It suggests that the problems are measurable or quantifiable, that they lend themselves to utilitarian calculus, and that they have ascertainably correct solutions that require no value judgments. This article employs emotion theory to illustrate the difficulties with approaching normatively complex areas of governmental policy through the framework of risk regulation. It argues that interdisciplinary inquiry into the role of emotion in human behavior sheds light on how risks are assessed, prioritized, and ameliorated, on how the category of risk is constructed, and on how that categorization affects the cognitive tools and approaches we bring to normatively complex problems. The article begins with a brief discussion of behavioral law and economics, which styles itself a corrective to law and economics, but which replicates its fatal flaw: its unrealistic view of human behavior. Next it turns to two more specific problems with the standard notion of risk formulation. First, the standard notion reads out the essential role of emotion in deliberation about risk regulation and overvalues top-down expert knowledge. Second, it reads out the heuristics that erase patterns and maintain the status quo. Finally, the article will focus on two illustrative case studies, the Chicago heat wave of 1995, and Hurricane Katrina.

The purpose of this paper is to briefly explore some recent curious interlocking of the ideology of markets and the practice of policy.

This particular discursive combine has most visibly been apparent in the concatenated birth and death of the US Defense Department's so‐called “Policy Analysis Market” (PAM). Yet PAM is but the most notorious example of a more sustained and pervasive attempt to use the technologies and disciplines of markets to render policy both better informed and more amenable to control through robust and seemingly incontestable systems of accountability. Given its prominence, our way in is through a brief description of PAM's origins and demise.

It is found that PAM and its similar brethren of markets for use in policy formation and judgement are less concerned with the capture of reality and more with the disciplining power of a curious “objectivity”.

Projects such as PAM are thus not easily challengeable on grounds of their veracity. Rather research that seeks to interrogate the use of market technologies in policy must look to their context and effects.

Whilst Hong Kong is suffering from a limited supply of developable land in its major urban areas, some open spaces are frequently criticized as inconvenient for users, consequently leading to an ineffective use pattern. How to enhance the performance of open space is therefore a critical issue faced by city planners. As the conventional accessibility model, which is mainly described with respect to maximum walking distance or service radius, is inadequate to give an account of the issue, this paper accordingly indicates an alternative approach and seeks an explanation from the urban configuration and the way it conditions pedestrian movement pattern. Through investigating the relationship between urban configuration, pedestrian movement and accessibility and use of open spaces based on the Wanchai District of Hong Kong, which particularly epitomizes various urban grids that may have different consequences on the utilization of open space, this study aims to examine whether there is a consistent relationship existing in different spatial grids or whether the relationship varies from different layout patterns. It is hoped that the findings can be employed to improve the performance of open spaces in the urban areas of Hong Kong, in addition to other similar urban environment.

To understand the use of metrics to attain alignment between the needs of the customer, strategic objectives, and the execution system. This paper examines the process by which metrics at the various levels are developed and the factors affecting this process.

The paper draws on a series of “deep” case studies and 45 interviews of key managers at various levels within three related businesses. Open and axial coding on the data was performed and themes reported.

The findings show how metrics can generate two types of synergy, financial, and strategic and that numerous factors affect metrics deployment and alignment. There also exists a tension between those metrics that encourage sales growth through innovation and market development (i.e. the so‐called top line metrics) and those metrics that reduce costs or asset investments (i.e. bottom line metrics).

Selective coding of the data to develop theoretical insight has yet to be performed.

Alignment is affected by both the goals used and the processes used in developing and implementing metrics. Furthermore, the study shows that those actions that foster cost reduction (e.g. through lean systems) may unintentionally hinder and limit those actions aimed at encouraging innovation.

The metrics alignment process is vital to effective management, yet the mechanisms of this process leading from understanding of the customer goals appropriate metrics for the execution system is effectively unexplored – a shortcoming that this paper begins to rectify.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an operational definition of alignment within the context of a performance measurement and management system in order to create a measurement model that can be used in survey‐based research, particularly under conditions of dramatic strategic change.

Data are collected using an in‐depth case study and analyzed using the methods of grounded theory development. Particular attention is given to multi‐level analysis within an organisation.

Alignment must be assessed with a multi‐dimensional model that looks beyond goals and performance. Distinctions must be made between goals and processes and between intrinsic definitions of alignment and their cultural context.

The research was conducted within one major organisation that was undergoing a strategic shift from process efficiency to product innovation. Work by other researchers suggests that the findings may be more broadly generalisable, but further investigation remains to be done.

The ability to maintain alignment through a period of transition is a basis of dynamic capabilities. It is found that certain aspects of performance measurement and management must be de‐emphasised during these transitions.

By using grounded theory development, this study results in a criterion‐free measurement model of alignment that represents an operational definition of the construct.