An Arts Organization Policy Brief on Indigenous Knowledges

This policy brief provides an overview of Indigenous knowledges for an arts organization on the Pacific West Coast in Canada. To orient readers, the brief is contextualized within the broader arc of the organizations' history of commitments to, departures from, and re-engagement with commitments to decolonization and decolonial practice. It provides a list of additional resources.

Policy Persistence and Drift in Organizations

This paper models the evolution of organizations that allow free entry and exit of members, such as cities and trade unions. In each period, current members choose a policy for the organization. Policy changes attract newcomers and drive away dissatisfied members, altering the set of future policymakers. The resulting feedback effects take the organization down a “slippery slope” that converges to a myopically stable policy, even if the agents are forward‐looking, but convergence becomes slower the more patient they are. The model yields a tractable characterization of the steady state and the transition dynamics. The analysis is also extended to situations in which the organization can exclude members, such as enfranchisement and immigration.

Escaping the Ellipsis of Diversity: Insider Activists’ Use of Implementation Resources to Influence Organization Policy

Researchers have explored in depth how social movement actors strive to pass laws to change organizations exogenously or to demand that they make commitments or policy changes. But ensuring that organizations implement such commitments or policies is challenging. Insider activists may be influential for implementation processes, and I explore how they can increase that influence. I contend that insider activists influence such processes by offering their organizations implementation resources, such as free and ready-to-use content and model programs that reflect changes the activists want to see. To develop this argument, I explore how, starting in the mid-2000s, LGBT activists developed resources to ensure that diversity policies were increasingly relevant for sexual minorities in France. Many diversity policies at the time expressed commitment to “gender, disability, age . . .” Activists contended that nothing was done for the minorities who were not named—those left in the ellipsis (. . .) of diversity. Using web archives and interviews, I show that LGBT rights activists increased their influence on French organizations by developing implementation resources that corporations could readily use to flesh out their diversity commitments and implement diversity programs to promote the inclusion of LGBT employees. I demonstrate how insider activists used these implementation resources to denounce organizations’ superficial commitments or employees’ homophobic practices, thereby compelling organizations to change.

Design and Validation of a Questionnaire to Measure the Acceptance of Telemedicine by Healthcare Professionals in Germany

Background: Telemedicine allows healthcare professionals to manage patient treatments remotely and to benefit from the interaction of telemedicine centers. Even though telemedicine responds to the current burdens in healthcare systems, these complex infrastructures depend on technology, financing, organization, policy, legislation, and, not least, on their corresponding acceptance by the user. Little is known in this context about the drivers for this acceptance by healthcare professionals giving treatment. Germany, with the highest healthcare spending in the world, is particularly lagging here. As there is less focus on guidance for building acceptance constructs, and, in particular, little research on the acceptance of interactive telemedicine by healthcare professionals in Germany, the objective was the collection of the relevant factors influencing German healthcare professionals in the implementation of telemedicine service programs (TSSs). Acceptance constructs were built and operationalized in a questionnaire, taking into consideration the gold standard technology acceptance model of Davis.Methods: A literature review was conducted to identify the acceptance factors that had already been detected and frequently confirmed. These factors were evaluated according to the coverage of the interactive infrastructures with telemedicine centers and how accurately they fitted Germany. The identified factors were adapted, and missing factors were designed, via an idea collection for items. The reliability of the developed constructs was tested using a field test to check the constructs using item revision analysis.Results: Frequently supported external variables, taken from 17 filtered studies covering the technical, organizational, social, legal, and individual context, were identified. However, the review showed that there was less focus on the German setting and the interactive aspect, so the market-related variables were adapted and new constructs of “trust in the telemedicine center” and “relationship to patient” were added. Ten variables were proven to have a reliability, measured with Cronbach’s Alpha, of more than 0.7.Conclusion: This paper enhances the already existing technology acceptance studies in healthcare by covering German specifications and the interactive character of TSSs. A corresponding questionnaire has been developed ready for future research.

Design and Validation of a Questionnaire to Measure the Acceptance of Telemedicine by Healthcare Professionals in Germany

Background: Telemedicine allows healthcare professionals to manage patient treatments remotely and to benefit from the interaction of telemedicine centers. Even though telemedicine responds to the current burdens in healthcare systems, these complex infrastructures depend on technology, financing, organization, policy, legislation, and, not least, on their corresponding acceptance by the user. Little is known in this context about the drivers for this acceptance by healthcare professionals giving treatment. Germany, with the highest healthcare spending in the world, is particularly lagging here. As there is less focus on guidance for building acceptance constructs, and, in particular, little research on the acceptance of interactive telemedicine by healthcare professionals in Germany, the objective was the collection of the relevant factors influencing German healthcare professionals in the implementation of telemedicine service programs (TSSs). Acceptance constructs were built and operationalized in a questionnaire, taking into consideration the gold standard technology acceptance model of Davis.Methods: A literature review was conducted to identify the acceptance factors that had already been detected and frequently confirmed. These factors were evaluated according to the coverage of the interactive infrastructures with telemedicine centers and how accurately they fitted Germany. The identified factors were adapted, and missing factors were designed, via an idea collection for items. The reliability of the developed constructs was tested using a field test to check the constructs using item revision analysis.Results: Frequently supported external variables, taken from 17 filtered studies covering the technical, organizational, social, legal, and individual context, were identified. However, the review showed that there was less focus on the German setting and the interactive aspect, so the market-related variables were adapted and new constructs of “trust in the telemedicine center” and “relationship to patient” were added. Ten variables were proven to have a reliability, measured with Cronbach’s Alpha, of more than 0.7.Conclusion: This paper enhances the already existing technology acceptance studies in healthcare by covering German specifications and the interactive character of TSSs. A corresponding questionnaire has been developed ready for future research.

Factors Causing the Poor Management of Village-Owned Enterprises (BUMDes) in Garut Regency

The management of BUMDes in Garut Regency is still not in accordance with the mandate of the laws and regulations that its establishment is intended to create and to improve the prosperity of rural community life better through mobilization and management of village potential. This study aims to discover the factors that cause the low management of BUMDes in Garut Regency. Using a quantitative approach, the survey was conducted toward BUMDes management who are in the categories of semi-active and not yet active. A total of 161 respondents were selected by a simple random sampling method which was further analyzed using exploratory factor analysis with 32 indicators. The results showed that of the 32 indicators tested, 8 new factors are formed as factors that lead to poor management of BUMDes in Garut Regency. These factors include management, human resources, environmental conditions, personality, organization, policy, professionalism and communication. Keywords: Management, Exploratory Factor Analysis, BUMDes, Rural Community