Center for Organizational Research (COR)

Dear COR community,

Please join us for a discussion on collaboration, governance and uncertainty.

COR Faculty Paper Development Workshop with Prof. Nicola Ulibarri (Social Ecology)

“Managing Scientific, Administrative, and Physical Uncertainties with Collaborative Governance” (abstract below)

Discussants: Martha Feldman (Social Ecology) and TBC Maritza Salazar (Merage)

Friday, April 13
SBSG 1321
12:00-1:30pm

RSVP by April 8 to cor@uci.edu
Lunch will be provided

Once you RSVP you will receive Prof. Ulibarri’s paper to read ahead of the workshop.

We look forward to seeing you for our first Spring Quarter event!

Best wishes,

Nina Bandelj
Melissa Mazmanian
COR Co-Directors

“Managing Scientific, Administrative, and Physical Uncertainties with Collaborative Governance”

Abstract

While uncertainty is a fundamental feature and challenge of environmental governance, the literature on how policy makers and resource managers can act effectively under that uncertainty is scarce. The focus is on managing scientific uncertainty—a lack of knowledge about the causes or consequences of an environmental decision—when many other types of uncertainty can have drastic effects on decision-makers’ ability to make timely, rational, or even satisficing decisions. Moreover, while suggestions on how to manage these uncertainties often revolve around collaborative governance—engaging scientists, decision-makers, communities, and other stakeholders in joint decision-making—collaboration is often framed as one-size-fits-all approach. This paper aims to broaden the conversation about collaboration as a tool for managing uncertainty, using a four-year ethnographic study of a collaborative process to develop the operating license for a hydropower dam in California. By exploring the many types of uncertainty that arose during negotiations, whether and how collaboration served to address these varieties of uncertainty, and how uncertainty affected the collaborative process, I aim to add nuance to our understanding of when and where collaboration is a helpful tool for environmental decision- makers.

Biography

Nicola Ulibarri is an interdisciplinary scholar who uses political, social, and technical perspectives to evaluate the sustainability of environmental planning and decision-making practices. As an Assistant Professor in the Department of Urban Planning and Public Policy at the University of California, Irvine, she investigates the interaction between people, infrastructure, and the environment, with a focus on redesigning planning, permitting, and operations to meet more diverse social and environmental needs. Prof. Ulibarri earned her PhD through the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment & Resources at Stanford University, and spent a year as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University. Her professional life has spanned the public and non-profit sectors, including work with the US Department of the Interior (Region IX), the World Bank, and Amigos Bravos, a grassroots river-protection nonprofit in New Mexico.

“Social Studies of Finance: Present and Future”

Panelists:

Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra, Sociology, UC San Diego
Simone Polillo, Sociology, University of Virginia
Erin Lockwood, Political Science, UC Irvine
Taylor C. Nelms, Anthropology, UC Irvine

Discussant: Hannah Appel, Anthropology, UCLA
Conveners: Nina Bandelj, Sociology, UC Irvine & Bill Maurer, Anthropology, UC Irvine

Friday, March 23, 2018
2-4pm panel
4pm reception

SBSG 1321

You are invited to a thought-provoking discussion on sociological, anthropological, and political science perspectives on finance and the
future of the social studies of finance.

_Co-sponsored by the Center for Organizational Research and the Journal of Cultural Economy_

Workshop co-sponsored by the Center for Organizational Research and the Urban Planning and Public Policy Department

“Writing and Reflexivity: A way Forward to Better and More Productive Writing in Academia”

Led by Professor Charlotte Cloutier, HEC Montreal, COR/UPPP visiting professor

Friday, March 16
10:00-11:30am
Social Ecology SEI 112

Coffee and pastries provided. Please RSVP to cor@uci.edu by March 13.

“Writing and Reflexivity: A way Forward to Better and More Productive Writing in Academia”

As academics, writing is integral to the work that we do. Our writing journeys begin with the writing of our doctoral dissertations, and continue as we later write research articles and conferences papers, books, and funding applications. Our identities and reputations as academics are largely formed on the basis of what and how we write. Many would argue that the fate of our careers rests more on our ability to write than on our ability to teach. And yet despite this, we spend very little time thinking about how we write. Most of us have received little, if any, formal instruction in academic or other forms of writing— probably because it is generally assumed that anyone undertaking graduate studies already “knows” how to write.
For these reasons and others, writing is something that most of us just “do.” This doing might come easily if we are blessed with a natural ability to write, or it might be difficult, if we are not. Most likely, our experience lies somewhere in between: moments when writing flows almost effortlessly punctuated by bouts of writing paralysis. Although we may be prompted to think about our writing at such times, the reality is that most of the time, we do not.
In this workshop, I offer students the opportunity to become more reflexive about their writing practice, by making their own writing habits and practices explicit and by contrasting these with the writing practices of known scholars in our field. We will consider the multi-faceted aspects of academic writing, and how each contributes to both writing quality and productivity and by so doing, expand our personal repertoire of practices and approaches for producing meaningful texts.

Charlotte Cloutier is currently Associate Professor of Strategy at HEC Montreal. Her main research focus is on understanding strategy processes as they unfold in pluralistic organizations (NGOs, trade associations, hospitals, universities, large and decentralized multi-national corporations, government ministries or agencies, etc.), notably from a strategy-as-practice perspective.  As a side hobby, she is also passionate about writing. She is the host of a blog on academic writing:  www.projectscrib.org ; has hosted and organized various workshops on academic writing and publishing and has written various articles on the topic.