Suchergebnisse

AbstractAn emergent research literature is starting to cohere on simulation as a sociological process within organizations. This paper shines a spotlight on this scholarship, and offers new ways to think about the dizzying array of simulation we encounter in our organizational, institutional, and everyday lives. I define simulation as an empirical social process and show how they vary in consequence by their experiential modality, their referential frame, and their perceived realism. I then document three conceptual trends in the literature: (i) treating simulation as an organizational technique for risk management; (ii) a focus on virtual reality, video games, and moral ambiguity; and (iii) studies of the impact of computer simulation on scientific knowledge production and the reorganization of some technical fields, such as weapons research, artificial intelligence, and meteorology. Organizational uncertainty tends to coalesce around disputes about the appropriate qualities and functions of a given simulation technique or technology. I conclude the paper by identifying how the sociology of simulation can connect with more established areas of contemporary research within organizations, work and occupations, and institutional sociology.

The emergence of crack occurred during a period of intensifying social disorganization in urban areas that disrupted the informal controls that taught initiates how to use drugs and what amounts to use to achieve specific effects. Accordingly, differences in initiation into crack and other drugs were expected. Reports from initiates into crack and other drugs showed that the social processes of initiation did not differ. However, crack initiates differed from other initiates in their prior involvement with drug use and drug selling. Although informal controls continue to influence processes of initiation, the changing social ecology of urban areas suggests that these controls will be less influential in maintaining conventions and norms to regulate the use of crack

Intends to assemble a set of essays that invent, develop, and/or demonstrate strategies for theorizing one or several dynamic processes, so as to identify, illustrate by example, and analyze specific problems as well as connect theorizations of process across different disciplines of inquiry.

A model of the role acquisition process is proposed based on data from 310 first‐person written narratives of a single role entrance. Content analysis of data set II (N= 110) of narratives, which included forty‐seven different roles, provides support for the model. The model conceptualizes role acquisition as involving a sequence of four stages, characterized as (1) ambivalence, (2) absorption, (3) commitment, and (4) confidence, in which each stage involves a qualitatively different interaction between the person and the role: a different affective orientation on the part of the person toward the role, and a qualitatively different relationship between the person and role partners. Common features and heterogeneous effects of role type, social context, cognitive processes, and other factors at each stage are discussed.

I Discovery Accounts -- The Interaction between Theory and Data in Science -- The Scientist as an Analogical Reasoner: A Critique of the Metaphor Theory of Innovation -- Is it Possible to Reconstruct the Research Process? Sociology of a Brain Peptide -- II Discovery Acceptance -- Theoreticians and the Production of Experimental Anomaly: The Case of Solar Neutrinos -- The Role of Interests in High-Energy Physics: The Choice between Charm and Colour -- The Effects of Social Context on the Process of Scientific Investigation: Experimental Tests of Quantum Mechanics -- On the Construction of Creativity: The 'Memory Transfer' Phenomenon and the Importance of Being Earnest -- III The Research Process -- Struggles and Negotiations to Define What is Problematic and What is Not: The Sociologic Translation -- The Development of an Interdisciplinary Project -- IV Writing Public Accounts -- Discovery: Logic and Sequence in a Scientific Text -- Contexts of Scientific Discourse: Social Accounting in Experimental Papers -- V The Context of Scientific Investigation -- The Context of Scientific Investigation.