Engelska

Why in the late 1980s and early ’90s did Los Angeles become the bank robbery capital of the world? What is the Magic Third and what does it have to do with racial equity? What do big cats and clusters of teen suicides have in common? These are just some of the questions Malcolm Gladwell addresses in this new work, which revisits the phenomenon of epidemics and examines the ways in which we have learned to tinker with and shape the spread of ideas, viruses, and trends-sometimes with great success, sometimes with disastrous consequences. Gladwell shows that-whether in neighbourhoods, schools, zoos, or conference rooms-today’s epidemics are no longer singular occurrences, but turbocharged versions of their earlier counterparts and we are more tempted than ever to try and manipulate tipping points for their own ends. Yet these efforts often come at a cost, creating difficult tradeoffs and unexpected dilemmas . Above all we must recognise our responsibility – as individuals and as a society – to take tipping points seriously if we want to change the world for the better . With this thought-provoking new book , his most personal yet, Gladwell gives us the insights we need to meet these challenges in innovative ways .

You know him as the founder of Microsoft; the philanthropic, kind-hearted billionaire who has donated endless funds to good causes around the world. But there's another side to Bill Gates.<br/><br/>We might like to think of the Gates Foundation as an innocent charity giving away money, collaborating with stakeholders, and listening to the desires of the populations it hopes to help, but is that how it works in practice?<br/><br/>Combining rich storytelling and ground-breaking reporting, <i>The Bill Gates Problem </i>offers readers a provocative and timely counter-narrative about one of the world's most widely recognized individuals - a true global celebrity with international reach. But more than that, this book speaks to a vital political question around economic inequality and the erosion of democratic institutions - why should the super-rich be able to transform their wealth into political power, and just how far can they go?

Transcending Business Intelligence [Bok / Häftad]

On 28 May 2009, at a closed meeting in Brussels, ministers and state secretaries of education and science from several EU countries decided to build the European Spallation Source (ESS) in Lund, Sweden. Or did they? It is common for big European science projects to be surrounded by secrecy and political deceit, but the ESS is extraordinary in its elusiveness. There is a remarkable lack of concrete economic, political, technical and scientific underpinnings to the project but a boasting certainty in the promises of future paybacks. The ESS is an accelerator-based neutron spallation facility that will cost billions of Euros to build and run. It is expected to bring new knowledge in several fields including materials science, energy research, and the life sciences. But its financing is not yet certain, and future returns hard to predict. How then could the decision to build ESS occur? Why was there so little organized resistance? This book places the ESS project in its political and scientific context. It links the decisions taken to the history of Big Science in Europe and in Sweden. It looks at the dynamic political processes of establishing this megaproject in a small town in the south of Sweden. The eight chapters start from a paradoxical state of affairs: The ESS is not funded, and not formally decided in any binding agreements yet it is treated as a future reality, locally and nationally, loaded with promises of scientific, economic and social returns. The book makes a much-needed first contribution to the analysis of the ESS project and its political, environmental, and social ramifications. It should be read by scholars of science and technology studies, politicians and the interested general public. Contents: Introduction. In pursuit of a promise Olof Hallonsten 1. Timeline of major events Karl-Fredrik Berggren & Olof Hallonsten 2. Science at the ESS: a brief outline Karl-Fredrik Berggren & Aleksandar Matic 3. Tensions and change in the framing of science policy: the value of academic values in an era of globalization Aant Elzinga 4. Contextualizing the European Spallation Source: what we can learn from the history, politics, and sociology of Big Science Olof Hallonsten 5. The ESS project as a generator of conflict and collaboration: an assessment of the official picture of costs and benefits and the research-community response Anders Granberg 6. Big Science in a small country: constraints and possibilities of research policy Mats Benner 7. Organized local resistance: investigating a local environmental movements activities against the ESS Emelie Stenborg & Mikael Klintman 8. Selling Big Science: perceptions of prospects and risk in the public case for the ESS in Lund Wilhelm Agrell Afterword. Clues to the continuing story of an open-ended case Thomas Kaiserfeld

The family has been a fundamental social institution throughout the history of mankind. But in recent decades it seemed to be eroding on virtually all fronts: fewer marriages and children and also far greater instability. But quite unexpectedly, the family seems now to be on the rebound. In some societies, the reversal is very clear: the number of children citizens have is approaching the number that they actually desire, the propensity to marry is rising, and partnerships are becoming more stable. The return-to-family trend is very much driven by the well-educated, and less stable partnerships are increasingly concentrated among the less educated. There are indeed strong indications that the world of families is becoming ever more polarized. How can we explain the (uneven) turnaround? This book presents a new theoretical framework for understanding the dynamics of contemporary family life. The key lies in how and to what extent both partnerships and society at large manage to adapt successfully to the altered economic role of women. The analyses which follow demonstrate that the more successful is the adaptation, the more we shall see a return to stronger and more stable families. And this will in turn have positive effects for childrens life chances and social mobility prospects. GØSTA ESPING-ANDERSEN is Professor of Sociology at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona.

Sveriges kvinno- och genushistoriker, SKOGH, inleder med denna nordiska konferensvolym sin nya skriftserie. Bidragen på svenska, danska och engelska handlar bland annat om hembiträden och häxor, lumparminnen och Finlandsaktivism, feministisk metod och berättelser om kvinnoforskningens framväxt.

Not understanding is a form of insight. This being the case, we have a great many deep insights into the question of how organisations are constructed and how they work. The question of management, in other words. We have a good grasp, and yet there is much that we do not understand. We do not believe that this is because we are stupid or ignorant, rather that it is due to the deficiencies of the explanations offered.<br/>This book is emancipatory in its purpose. The aim is to provide release from the repression of inadequate explanations. The idea is that we should get a better picture of how organisations work by trying out various methods for reading them better. Our attempt to reveal or render intelligible1 what happens is based on the fact that what happens within organisations, as in their construction, is so often expressed using suggestive descriptions or images. In short, metaphors.<br/>Metaphors make description more comprehensible and easier to sell. But when it comes to organisations, metaphors also suppress our reasoning and our feelings. They control what we are able to see, and how we interpret what we see. It is from this tyranny of metaphors that we will try to liberate ourselves. Often, metaphors themselves will be the tools we will use for revelation. Our liberation will therefore be only partial.<br/>This book is aimed at all those active professionals who are not yet able to vote through solutions without first knowing what the problem might be. Those who have grown tired of simply relying on their gut feeling and who want to understand before saying "No, I don't agree with that" or "ok, I'll go along with that". These members of organisations who are more critical in their thinking cannot be few in number.<br/>At the same time, we also address colleagues carrying out research and higher education students. We believe that the time has come to throw out much of what has been written about organisation and the process of organising. The field is bogged down by a great many theories and models that have lost the explanatory power they once held or may have held. This book aims to be one of the new voices after the clean-up.