Contact Tracing: A Forgotten Tool?

Contact tracing is done to interrupt the spread or transmission of the causative agent to others who are in close contact with the index case and are vulnerable by not being immune. Public health experts have relied on contact tracing to reduce the spread of infections throughout history. Now the same method is being used for COVID 19. The healthcare systems in developing countries are ill-equipped to respond to pandemics of this kind. Our healthcare facility effectively employed the traditional contact tracing tool that formed the basis of a strong support system for all those employees who contracted Corona virus infection.

Decouplin & Re-Coupling Institutional Logics Through Institutional Work: the Case Study the Pakistani Judiciarys Struggle for Independence.

This doctoral dissertation comprises a qualitative work based empirical case study that is interpreted through and embedded in the academic discipline of sociology of organizations, and in it the institutional theory. I use the vast and rich literature from that theory to study an event quite unprecedented in the modern history of the Global South. The event being about how the judiciary in Pakistan shook off its historical subservience to the executive, confronted a military dictator (General Musharraf), and successfully mobilized a social movement (2007‐2009) for its own independence, and won with the dictator imprisoned and a democratic rule restored in the country. Interviews (average interview length being 2.2 hours) were conducted with about 80 key national actors coming from the military, judicial, legal, media, and civil society sectors of Pakistan together with assuming extensive coverage of secondary data to investigate the following unexplored questions in institutional theory: 1) What are the forms of institutional work involved in decoupling an institutional logic (e.g., the logic of independence of judiciary) whereby the symbolism and material practices of the logic no more remain aligned or consistent with one another?; and 2) What is the process through which decoupled institutional logics becomes successfully recoupled? A rigorous analysis of the primary and secondary data reveals the presence of distinct institutional work forms and associated activities for decoupling and recoupling of institutional logics. For instance, the various forms of institutional work through which decoupling of judicial independence logic was achieved in Pakistan included use of force and violence, misuse of formal authority, emotional exploitation, managing crime partnerships, and identity work ‐ each manifested through different activities. Likewise, institutional work forms involved in recoupling process of judicial independence logic, which came to eventually involve a full blown social movement in Pakistan, have also been delineated in my doctoral work.Moreover, an entire process is delineated that shows how a decoupled institutional logic becomes recoupled. All of these discoveries (i.e., the institutional work forms involved in decoupling an institutional logic and the recoupling process of a decoupled institutional logic) are claimed as the main contributions of this thesis. This is because they extend the existing conversations on institutional theory, particularly in its hitherto overlooked and hence under‐theorized area of institutional work forms relating to coupling dynamics in institutional logics. In doing so, this doctoral dissertation also sheds light on the relatively under‐researched areas of institutional coupling, how couplings reverse from tight‐to‐loose, or vice‐versa, and by extension how macro‐institutional environments and local activities are linked together (Binder 2007; Hallet, 2010).