An examination of why NGOs often experience difficulty creating lasting change, with case studies of transnational conservation organizations in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Why do nongovernmental organizations face difficulty creating lasting change? How can they be more effective? In this book, Cristina Balboa examines NGO authority, capacity, and accountability to propose that a “paradox of scale” is a primary barrier to NGO effectiveness. This paradox—when what gives an NGO authority on one scale also weakens its authority on another scale—helps explain how NGOs can be seen as an authority on particular causes on a global scale, but then fail to effect change at the local level. Drawing on case studies of transnational conservation organizations in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, The Paradox of Scale explores how NGOs build, maintain, and lose authority over time. Balboa sets a new research agenda for the study of governance, offering practical concepts and analysis to help NGO practitioners. She introduces the concept of authority as a form of legitimated power, explaining why it is necessary for NGOs to build authority at multiple scales when they create, implement, or enforce rules. Examining the experiences of Conservation International in Papua New Guinea, International Marinelife Alliance in the Philippines, and the Community Conservation Network in Palau, Balboa explains how a paradox of scale can develop even for those NGOs that seem powerful and effective. Interdisciplinary in its approach, The Paradox of Scaleoffers guidance for interpreting the actions and pressures accompanying work with NGOs, showing why even the most authoritative NGOs often struggle to make a lasting impact.

Building the Agile Business through Digital Transformation is an in-depth look at transforming businesses so they are fit for purpose in a digitally enabled world. It is a guide for all those needing to better understand, implement and lead digital transformation in the workplace. It sets aside traditional thinking and outdated strategies to explain what steps need to be taken for an organization to become truly agile. It addresses how to build organizational velocity and establish iterative working, remove unnecessary process, embed innovation, map strategy to motivation and develop talent to succeed. Building the Agile Business through Digital Transformation provides guidance on how to set the pace and frequency for change and shows how to break old habits and reform the behaviours of a workforce to embed digital transformation, achieve organizational agility and ensure high performance. Full of practical advice, examples and real-life insights from organizational development professionals at the leading edge of digital transformation, this book is an essential guide to building an agile business.

Whether we're buying a pair of jeans, ordering a cup of coffee, selecting a long-distance carrier, applying to college, choosing a doctor, or setting up a 401(k), everyday decisions—both big and small—have become increasingly complex due to the overwhelming abundance of choice with which we are presented. As Americans, we assume that more choice means better options and greater satisfaction. But beware of excessive choice: choice overload can make you question the decisions you make before you even make them, it can set you up for unrealistically high expectations, and it can make you blame yourself for any and all failures. In the long run, this can lead to decision-making paralysis, anxiety, and perpetual stress. And, in a culture that tells us that there is no excuse for falling short of perfection when your options are limitless, too much choice can lead to clinical depression. In The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz explains at what point choice—the hallmark of individual freedom and self-determination that we so cherish—becomes detrimental to our psychological and emotional well-being. In accessible, engaging, and anecdotal prose, Schwartz shows how the dramatic explosion in choice—from the mundane to the profound challenges of balancing career, family, and individual needs—has paradoxically become a problem instead of a solution. Schwartz also shows how our obsession with choice encourages us to seek that which makes us feel worse. By synthesizing current research in the social sciences, Schwartz makes the counter intuitive case that eliminating choices can greatly reduce the stress, anxiety, and busyness of our lives. He offers eleven practical steps on how to limit choices to a manageable number, have the discipline to focus on those that are important and ignore the rest, and ultimately derive greater satisfaction from the choices you have to make.

This book examines the paradox of intention, the simple idea that we may reach a goal by giving up the attempt to reach it or, conversely, that we may be prevented from reaching a goal by our intentional efforts to achieve it. The nature of this paradox is explored through an examination oftexts from ancient and existential philosophy, psychotherapy, and the sacred texts of Buddhism, Christianity, and Taoism. Shaw then subjects the paradox to systematic study by pursuing a series of questions arising from it. A clearly written and accessible study, The Paradox of Intention adds an intriguing chapter to both comparative ethics and the cross-cultural study of the philosophy of religion.

Beginning with the Age of We in the 1950s and moving to the Age of Me to todaythe Age of Ithis book examines how polarization and anger has changed how companies must manage their brands. Larry Light and Joan Kiddon, the leaders of Arcature LLC, consultants in brand management, examine societal changes and global, local, and personal forces through the lens of marketers. They explain how to: leverage paradox promises into brand-focused strategies and actions that create a pathway to profitability; create extraordinary brand experiences for individuals and communities; and build strong brands in a world of contradictory needs and benefits. In todays world, people want their individuality to be recognized, but they also want to belong to a group that shares their distinctiveness. People want to be independent and interconnected, which is the underlying paradox affecting how we make decisions today. Navigate how to satisfy conflicting needs, and look beyond single-minded solutions with the insights and guidance in The Paradox Planet.

First published in 1999, this volume re-examines Bertrand Russell’s views on modal logic and logical relevance, arguing that Russell does in fact accommodate modality and modal logic. The author, Jan Dejnožka, draws together Russell’s comments and perspectives from throughout his canon in order to demonstrate a coherent view on logical modality and logical relevance. To achieve this, Dejnožka explores questions including whether Russell has a possible worlds logic, Rescher’s case against Russell, Russell’s three levels of modality and the motives and origins of Russell’s theory of modality.

Assessing the influence of scientific advice in societies that increasingly question scientific authority and expertise. Today, scientific advice is asked for (and given) on questions ranging from stem-cell research to genetically modified food. And yet it often seems that the more urgently scientific advice is solicited, the more vigorously scientific authority is questioned by policy makers, stakeholders, and citizens. This book examines a paradox: how scientific advice can be influential in society even when the status of science and scientists seems to be at a low ebb. The authors do this by means of an ethnographic study of the creation of scientific authority at one of the key sites for the interaction of science, policy, and society: the scientific advisory committee. The Paradox of Scientific Authority offers a detailed analysis of the inner workings of the influential Health Council of the Netherlands (the equivalent of the National Academy of Science in the United States), examining its societal role as well as its internal functioning, and using the findings to build a theory of scientific advising. The question of scientific authority has political as well as scholarly relevance. Democratic political institutions, largely developed in the nineteenth century, lack the institutional means to address the twenty-first century's pervasively scientific and technological culture; and science and technology studies (STS) grapples with the central question of how to understand the authority of science while recognizing its socially constructed nature.

When people speak, their words never fully encode what they mean, and the context is always compatible with a variety of interpretations. How can comprehension ever be achieved? Wilson and Sperber argue that comprehension is a process of inference guided by precise expectations of relevance. What are the relations between the linguistically encoded meanings studied in semantics and the thoughts that humans are capable of entertaining and conveying? How should we analyse literal meaning, approximations, metaphors and ironies? Is the ability to understand speakers' meanings rooted in a more general human ability to understand other minds? How do these abilities interact in evolution and in cognitive development? Meaning and Relevance sets out to answer these and other questions, enriching and updating relevance theory and exploring its implications for linguistics, philosophy, cognitive science and literary studies.

The Paradox of a Global USA describes the vexed relationship between the United States and globalization. On the one hand, the U.S. has vociferously promoted modernization and open markets, both central components of the process of globalization. On the other hand, it appears to be resolutely determined not to live within an institutional framework of globalized authority. As the world's only superpower, the United States is often perceived as championing its own narrow national sovereignty—for example, by opposing the Kyoto Protocol and the International Criminal Court, and by taking action in Iraq outside the auspices of the UN. The book treats the paradox of American exceptionalism and globalization as a "local" happening within the broader process of globalization. These essays analyze the ways in which the USA has both played a role in, and reacted against, emerging present-day globalization. Examples are drawn from the fields of history, political science, cultural studies, and economics, making this collection one of the very few to link together so diverse a group of authors and approaches to the subject of global USA.