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The purpose of this chapter is to examine voice as an empowerment practice in a manufacturing company. The case study follows a qualitative approach to analyse employee voice and types of empowerment from a structural perspective. Findings suggest a variety of voice arrangements to empowering employees such as voice surveys, meetings, e-suggestions, opinion boxes and informal means such as casual meetings and walkarounds. In addition, employee voice is linked to types of empowerment such as information sharing, upward problem solving, task autonomy and attitudinal shaping. Further research would benefit from an exploration of employees’ feelings regarding voice mechanisms to examine the psychological perspective of empowerment.

Companies inevitably interact and entrench in complex organic systems of business relationships with other. These business networks are not objectively defined, instead they are shaped by the subjective perception of actors. This inherent subjectivity is associated with the notion of network pictures, that is, a research tool that researchers or managers can use to grasp practitioner theories. In this chapter, we discuss how the importance of identifying these theories results mainly from underlying principles of sense-making theory, as well as from the idea around performativity. Drawing on these theoretical groundings, this chapter has two objectives: to explore how practitioners actually perceive their business surroundings and to assess the extent of overlapping between (IMP Group) academic theories and practitioner theories. To achieve these objectives, the researchers use a dimensional network pictures model previously developed in the literature to analyze the network pictures of 49 top-level managers across 17 companies from two very distinct contexts or networks: a product-based network and a project-based network. Among other practices, findings illustrate how practitioners tend to simplify what is going on in their complex surroundings, to personalize their relationships with those surroundings, and to think in a stereotyped way. Moreover, the juxtaposition between the captured practitioner theories and academic (IMP Group) theories show that these are not always overlapping, and are in some cases quite the opposite. This research contributes to the ongoing discussion of the importance of grasping actors’ views of the world, arguing that sense-making theory and the notion of performativity are the two main conceptual drivers justifying the urgency in making those views more visible. This research also adds to the research on the impact and suitability of IMP Group theories on managerial thinking and practice. Finally, this research reinforces the current call for further practice-based research in business network contexts.

This chapter introduces Building Back Better Libraries (BBBL) as a critical concept for improved library planning both prior to and following a disaster or other emergency. Building Back Better, an idea widely discussed in the disaster recovery literature, seeks to use the difficulty of a disaster as an opportunity to go beyond the status quo and to promote changes that result in stronger, more resilient communities. The authors will define BBB elements and frameworks, building upon those to create a model for library disaster planning and recovery, and applying it to cases involving space and facilities, collections, services, and people.

Literature on the Building Back Better concept and frameworks, as well as library emergency response, was reviewed. This source material was used to develop a modified framework for improved library disaster planning and recovery. The Building Back Better Libraries framework is discussed and applied to cases involving library facilities and spaces, collections, and services, and its implementation through a disaster planning team is reviewed.

Though all libraries hope to avoid disaster, few succeed. One survey found that as many as 75% of academic library respondents had experienced a disaster or emergency. Evidence also suggests that few libraries are prepared, with as many as 66–80% of libraries reporting that they have no emergency plan with staff trained to carry it out. Even when plans are in place, the rush to respond to immediate needs following a disaster can overwhelm the ability to pursue effective long-term planning. Building Back Better, when framed for libraries, provides a planning tool to balance short-term response with long-term recovery and resilience. The Building Back Better Libraries framework focuses on the areas of risk assessment for library collections and spaces; recovery and rejuvenation for facilities, collections, and services; and implementation and monitoring, with particular discussion of the human element and the role of a library disaster planning team.

The proposed framework, Building Back Better Libraries (BBBL), can be used to strengthen disaster planning in a manner that balances meeting immediate needs with implementing longer term plans to create stronger and more resilient libraries.

Although aspects of BBB ideas are present in existing library literature, the concept is not formally defined for the library context.

This paper engages multidisciplinary perspectives on truth, authority, expertise and belief to unpack and better understand the underlying epistemology and implications of the ACRL Frame “authority is constructed and contextual.”

Following an overview of the issues confronting us in a “post-truth world,” the paper reviews critiques of the ACRL Frame “authority is constructed and contextual” and examines the related concepts of truth, authority, expertise and belief from multidisciplinary perspectives.

While the Frame acknowledges the limitations and biases of current scholarly publishing and implicitly supports social justice, it runs the danger of promoting relativism and is ambiguous regarding the relationships between expertise and authority. The critical concepts of truth and belief are conspicuously absent. Engaging a critical discussion and understanding of these concepts is a valuable contribution to information literacy.

This paper offers an important and accessible analysis of the frame “authority is constructed and contextual” and its underlying concepts. It moves beyond the library literature to include multidisciplinary perspectives and will require the engagement of the wider library community to promote discussion of the underlying epistemology and links between the construction of authority and truth, expertise and belief. In particular, the discussion of the construction of belief and the difference between judgments of fact and judgments of value offers important additions to the library literature.

Now that the new Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education has replaced the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, this document will play an increasingly important role. This paper aims to show that in spite of the Framework seeking to provide a deep understanding of information and knowledge, it still falls short – particularly because the statement that “Authority is Constructed and Contextual”, with its failure to acknowledge the significance of truth’s relation to authority, is untenable.

A philosophical overview dealing with matters of librarianship, knowledge and truth is provided in Section 2. The paper then attempts to demonstrate that the idea of truth is inextricably connected with issues of authority.

The paper attempts to persuade the reader that the Framework cannot: circumvent the issue of truth (Section 3); avoid attempting to make ethical claims which are true (Section 4); reduce all truth claims to “power-plays” (Section 5); and escape “traditional notions of granting authority” (Section 6).

The Framework should acknowledge the importance of truth, which would, at the very least, necessarily involve revising the frame “Authority is Constructed and Contextual”. Librarians are also encouraged to reflect on the nature of both truth claims and ethical claims.

The assumption of a “social constructionist” frame for truth has serious implications for matters going well beyond libraries and their “information resources”.

This paper attempts to offer an important and accessible philosophical analysis of the Framework that will require the engagement of the wider library community.

Climate change presents potential increased threats to the comfort and health of urban populations as a result of higher summer temperatures. This paper reviews recent research on the climate change adaptation potential of urban environments and focuses on a major conurbation, London. Recent work relating to the impact of exposure to heat on population health is also noted. Data obtained from a pilot monitoring study carried out in a subset of 36 dwellings (from a total of 110 dwellings in the overall study) across London during the summer of 2009 is then discussed. Preliminary results illustrate the need to quantify the net impacts of individual building characteristics and the location of each dwelling within the London heat island. During a hot period, more than 40% of the monitored bedrooms failed the recommended overheating criteria during the night time. There was some indication of purpose built flats being more prone to overheating. The potential use of such data as the basis of a heat-related health risk epidemiological model for London is discussed. Such a tool would help health policy makers to target the most vulnerable building types and areas.

The paper explores the historical evolution of employee voice in Namibia from an employment relations (ER) perspective and in the context of institutional factors such as labour legislation, trade union strategies, company policies and governmental regulations. The first part of the paper provides a brief outline of ER conceptions of voice that are manifest in the recent resurgence of interest in the topic. The next part traces the historical evolution of labour regulation and employee voice in Namibia. It is shown that, in the absence of collective voice and statutory protections, informal voice and occupational solidarity were the primary means of defence available to black workers against oppressive conditions. In the final part, an outline of some key features of employee voice in contemporary Namibia is provided. The analysis shows that systems of employee voice are fundamentally a manifestation of the balance of powers at a particular time and place. It is therefore crucial to link voice preferences and behaviours in the workplace to specific preconditions and to highlight the limiting factors that serve to constrain choice.

Supermaxes across the United States detain thousands in long-term solitary confinement, under conditions of extreme sensory deprivation. Almost every state built a supermax between the late 1980s and the late 1990s. This chapter examines the role of federal prisoners’ rights litigation in the 1960s and 1970s in shaping the prisons, especially supermaxes, built in the 1980s and 1990s in the United States. This chapter uses a systematic analysis of federal court case law, as well as archival research and oral history interviews with key informants, including lawyers, experts, and correctional administrators, to explore the relationship between federal court litigation and prison building and designing. This chapter argues that federal conditions of confinement litigation in the 1960s and 1970s (1) had a direct role in shaping the supermax institutions built in the subsequent decades and (2) contributed to the resistance of these institutions to constitutional challenges. The history of litigation around supermaxes is an important and as-yet-unexplored aspect of the development of Eighth Amendment jurisprudence in the United States over the last half century.

The aim of this chapter is to investigate the meaning of terrorism, with a view to highlighting the main hurdles in the way of creating a working definition, as well as the necessity of developing definitions and classifications of this phenomenon.

This chapter provides an overview of the literature on terrorism as a social/political phenomenon. It is therefore based on secondary sources.

While most literature on the topic finds it pointless or impossible to define terrorism, here we argue just the opposite. Common critiques of current definitions may be overcome by using multiple definitions and classifications.

The chapter provides the methodological foundations for a comprehensive theoretical analysis of terrorism.

The chapter applies insights from methodology of social sciences to the problem of defining terrorism.