Download or read book Future Studies and Counterfactual Analysis written by Theodore J. Gordon and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-06-14 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume, the authors contribute to futures research by placing the counterfactual question in the future tense. They explore the possible outcomes of future, and consider how future decisions are turning points that may produce different global outcomes. This book focuses on a dozen or so intractable issues that span politics, religion, and technology, each addressed in individual chapters. Until now, most scenarios written by futurists have been built on cause and effect narratives or depended on numerical models derived from historical relationships. In contrast, many of the scenarios written for this book are point descriptions of future discontinuities, a form allows more thought-provoking presentations. Ultimately, this book demonstrates that counterfactual thinking and point scenarios of discontinuities are new, groundbreaking tools for futurists.
Download or read book Foundations of Futures Studies Volume 1 written by Wendell Bell and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Futures studies is a new field of inquiry involving systematic and explicit thinking about alternative futures. It aims to demystify the future, make possibilities for the future more known to us, and increase human control over the future. Author Wendell Bell brings together futurist intellectual tools, describing and explaining not only the methods, but also the nature, concepts, theories, and exemplars of the field. Now available in paperback with a new preface from the author, Foundations of Future Studies is the fundamental work on the subject. Bell illustrates how this sphere of intellectual activity offers hope for the future of humanity and concrete ways of realizing that hope in the real world of everyday life. His book will appeal to all interested in futures studies, sociology, economics, political science, and history.
Download or read book Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics written by Philip E. Tetlock and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-30 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political scientists often ask themselves what might have been if history had unfolded differently: if Stalin had been ousted as General Party Secretary or if the United States had not dropped the bomb on Japan. Although scholars sometimes scoff at applying hypothetical reasoning to world politics, the contributors to this volume--including James Fearon, Richard Lebow, Margaret Levi, Bruce Russett, and Barry Weingast--find such counterfactual conjectures not only useful, but necessary for drawing causal inferences from historical data. Given the importance of counterfactuals, it is perhaps surprising that we lack standards for evaluating them. To fill this gap, Philip Tetlock and Aaron Belkin propose a set of criteria for distinguishing plausible from implausible counterfactual conjectures across a wide range of applications. The contributors to this volume make use of these and other criteria to evaluate counterfactuals that emerge in diverse methodological contexts including comparative case studies, game theory, and statistical analysis. Taken together, these essays go a long way toward establishing a more nuanced and rigorous framework for assessing counterfactual arguments about world politics in particular and about the social sciences more broadly.
Download or read book Reimagining Capitalism Applying Negative Dialectics for a Better Future written by David Atkinson and published by Vernon Press. This book was released on 2023-05-09 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Covid-19 pandemic reinforced the perception that capitalism is in crisis, that the future is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous, and that, increasingly, our thinking about it and ability to manage and organize ourselves within it, are challenges we are ill-equipped for. Despite the efforts of many writers, and a surfeit of manuscripts concerning the need to rethink capitalism, questions concerning the struggle for social and economic justice remain unanswered. While some suggest that with corrective action, businesses can save the world, there is an acceptance that they cannot do so alone. However, while governments might strengthen their institutions, enacting more effective policies, the challenge is simply laid bare at the feet of industry and commerce. Is the challenge to confront the establishment just too big to face? Government institutions and the barons of industry and commerce are but interrelated, interconnected, interplaying components in one socio-economic system. This book offers readers a progressive, radical and academic provocation of that system; it also proposes a field of Applied Negative Dialectics. In 'Reimagining Capitalism', Atkinson confronts the need to rethink capitalism and presents an integrated range of thinking through a lens of applied negative dialectics, questioning how and why things might have occurred, and where and how we might begin to improve them.
Download or read book Rational Techniques in Policy Analysis written by Michael Carley and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2013-10-22 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rational Techniques in Policy Analysis covers the role of rational techniques in policy making process. This book is organized into two parts encompassing 12 chapters that consider the relationship of policy making and other approaches to rational analysis. Part I deals with the "disintegration" of rational policy analysis to find out what the pieces are, how they work, how the parts interact and how they relate to the wider policy making environment. Part II considers the types of rational analysis in more detail, and serves not only as a survey of rational techniques but as an introduction to the important literature in each field. This part specifically looks into the cost-utility techniques, social forecasting, and evaluation and social indicator research. This book is intended primarily for analysts, researchers, and students of the policy making process in university and government.
Download or read book Counterfactual Reasoning written by Ph D. Noel Hendrickson and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2011-09-16 with total page 87 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Counterfactual reasoning evaluates conditional claims about alternate possibilities and their consequences (i.e., ?What If? statements). Counterfactuals are essential to intelligence analysis. The process of counterfactual reasoning has three stages. First, one must establish the particular way in which the alternate possibility comes to be (i.e., develop its ?back-story?). Second, one must evaluate the events that occur between the time of the alternate possibility and the time for which one is considering its consequences. And third, one must examine the possible consequences of the alternate possibility's back-story and the events that follow it. In doing so, an analyst must connect conclusions to speci
Download or read book The Learning Driven Business written by Alaa Garad and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-05-13 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive guide to developing a culture of learning and education within your business. In any kind of organization, learning has become a vital part of the growth and development process, but it only produces effective results if it is pursued strategically and embedded deeply into the culture of the workplace. In recent years, there has been a growing consensus that, for many organizations, learning is their only sustainable competitive advantage – ensuring a committed and engaged workforce that is positioned to identify and exploit business opportunities in an increasingly volatile and uncertain world. This makes it essential for leaders and senior managers to investigate the full range of learning processes and to understand exactly how individual, group, machine and organization-wide learning can produce long-lasting results for individuals as well as for the company itself. Backed by new academic theory, yet designed to be completely accessible to a business readership, The Learning-Driven Business highlights the importance of Organizational Learning (OL) for organizations which wish to remain competitive and profitable, before clarifying the various pathways and frameworks that can lead to success. With the onset of automation and artificial intelligence, as well as the proliferation of redundancies and the economic instability of modern times, organizations and their employees must prioritise effective OL in order to overcome these challenges and remain competitive and relevant in the 21st century. This book is a guide for all business leaders and academics looking to adapt to the changing world through OL, using Garand & Golds' unique and original academic model.
Download or read book Handbook of Research on Strategy and Foresight written by Laura Anna Costanzo and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2009-03-31 with total page 569 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This important Handbook explores and evaluates dynamic environments and the appropriate strategic responses to them in the 21st century. Drawing together a collection of 29 original chapters, the Handbook makes an invaluable contribution to theory and practice by stimulating disciplined, rigorous and imaginative enquiry into the relationship between strategy and foresight. Leading scholars in the field of strategic management are brought together to offer innovative and multi-disciplinary perspectives on the past, present and future of strategy formation and foresight. In so doing, they challenge research in four key areas: strategy and foresight processes; strategy innovation for the future; understanding the future; and strategically responding to the future. The Handbook of Research on Strategy and Foresight is a comprehensive resource that will be invaluable for academics, students and practitioners interested in this important phenomenon.
Download or read book Critical Terms in Futures Studies written by Heike Paul and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-12-02 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume provides the essential vocabulary currently employed in discourses on the future in 50 contributions by renowned scholars in their respective fields, which examine future imaginaries across cultures and time. Not situated in the field of “futurology” proper, it comes at future studies ‘sideways’ and offers a multidisciplinary treatment of a critical futures’ vocabulary. The contributors have their disciplinary homes in a wide range of subjects – history, cultural studies, literary studies, sociology, media studies, American studies, Japanese studies, Chinese studies, and philosophy – and critically illuminate numerous discourses about the future (or futures), past and present. In compiling such a critical vocabulary, this book seeks to foster conversations about futures in study programs and research forums and offers a toolbox for discussing them with an adequate degree of complexity.
Download or read book Possible Worlds Theory and Counterfactual Historical Fiction written by Riyukta Raghunath and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-09-10 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a comprehensive Possible Worlds framework with which to analyse counterfactual historical fiction. Counterfactual historical fiction is a literary genre that comprises narratives set in worlds whose histories run contrary to the history of our world, usually speculating on what would have happened had a significant historical event (such as a war) turned out differently. The author develops a systematic critical approach based on a customised model of Possible Worlds Theory supplemented by cognitive concepts that account for the different processes that readers go through when they read counterfactual historical fiction, a genre which relies heavily on pre-existing knowledge about history and culture. This book will be of interest to anyone working with Possible Worlds, including within the fields of philosophy, literary studies, stylistics, cognitive poetics, and narratology.
Download or read book Making Sense of the Future written by Rick Szostak and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-09-02 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Making Sense of the Future integrates the latest thinking in Future Studies with the author’s expertise in world history, economics, interdisciplinary studies, knowledge organization, and political activism. The book takes a systems approach that recognizes the complexity of our world. It begins by suggesting a set of goals for human societies and identifying innovative strategies for achieving these goals that could gain broad support. Each chapter begins with a “How to” section that discusses how we can identify goals, strategies, trends, surprises, or implementation strategies and concludes with an integrative analysis that draws connections across the preceding discussions. Taking a cross-disciplinary approach, Szostak explores key trends and how these interact so that he can develop strategies to guide trends towards desirable futures. He discusses the ways in which we can best prepare for surprises such as epidemics and natural disasters, enabling us to react to them in beneficial ways. Supported by a list of guiding questions and suggestions for class projects, this is an accessible textbook for students of Future Studies and Future Studies courses. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution- Non Commercial- No Derivatives 4.0 license.
Download or read book Luck written by Chengwei Liu and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-11-27 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Case studies of business and management success tend to focus on factors such as leadership, innovation, competition, and geography, but what about good fortune? This book highlights luck as a key idea for business and society. The author provides insights from economics, sociology, political science, philosophy, and psychology to create a brief intellectual history of luck. In positioning luck as a key idea in management, the book analyzes various facets of fortune such as randomness, serendipity, and opportunity. Often overlooked given psychological bias toward meritocratic explanations, this book quantifies luck to establish the idea in a more central role in understanding variations in business performance. In bringing the concept of luck in from the periphery, this concise book is a readable overview of management which will help students, scholars, and reflective practitioners see the subject in a new light.
Download or read book The Global Factory written by Peter J. Buckley and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2018 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This key new book synthesises Peter Buckley's work on ‘the global factory’ – the modern networked multinational enterprise. The role of interfirm networks, entrepreneurship and cooperation in the creation and management of global factories leads to a discussion of their governance, internal knowledge transfer strategies and performance, including their role in potentially combating societal failures. Emerging country multinationals are examined as a special case of global factories with a focus on Indian and Chinese multinationals, their involvement in tax havens and offshore financial centres, the performance and processes of their acquisition strategies – all seen as key aspects of globalisation.
Download or read book Foundations of Futures Studies written by Jose Valciukas and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 507 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Futures studies is a new field of inquiry involving systematic and explicit thinking about alternative futures. It aims to demystify the future, make possibilities for the future more known to us, and increase human control over the future. This book summarizes and expands contributions of futurists to the envisioning power and well-being of humanity. Bell brings together futurist intellectual tools, describing and explaining not only the methods, but also the nature, concepts, theories, and exemplars of the field.Foundations of Futures Studies fulfills Bell's five main purposes for writing this two-volume effort: (1) to show that futures studies, like other fields from anthropology to zoology, exists as an identifiable sphere of intellectual activity; (2) to create a teaching instrument that can be used as a basic text for core courses in futures studies; (3) to futurize the thinking of specialists in other disciplines; (4) to contribute to the further development and improvement of futures studies; and (5) to provide tools to empower both ordinary people and leaders to act in ways that create better futures for themselves and their societies. Bell maintains that despite its sometimes doomsday rhetorical style and widespread use by special interests, futures studies offers hope for the future of humanity and concrete ways of realizing that hope in the real world of our everyday lives. It will appeal to all interested in futures studies, as well as sociologists, economists, political scientists, and historians.
Download or read book Paradoxes of Time Travel written by Ryan Wasserman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ryan Wasserman explores a range of fascinating puzzles raised by the possibility of time travel, with entertaining examples from physics, science fiction, and popular culture, and he draws out their implications for our understanding of time, tense, freedom, fatalism, causation, counterfactuals, laws of nature, persistence, change, and mereology.
Download or read book Statistics for Data Science and Policy Analysis written by Azizur Rahman and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-03-31 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together the best contributions of the Applied Statistics and Policy Analysis Conference 2019. Written by leading international experts in the field of statistics, data science and policy evaluation. This book explores the theme of effective policy methods through the use of big data, accurate estimates and modern computing tools and statistical modelling.
Download or read book Case Based Reasoning Research and Development written by Mark T. Keane and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-08-13 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book constitutes the proceedings of the 30th International Conference on Case-Based Reasoning, ICCBR 2022, which took place in Nancy, France, during September 12-15, 2022. The theme of ICCBR 2022 was Global Challenges for CBR aiming to consider how CBR can and might contribute to challenges in sustainability, climate change, and global health. The 26 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 68 submissions. They deal with AI and related research focusing on comparison and integration of CBR with other AI methods such as deep learning architectures, reinforcement learning, lifelong learning, and eXplainable AI (XAI).
