Search results

The purpose of this study is to investigate the needs of potential end-users of a database dedicated to Swedish lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI) literature (e.g. prose, poetry, drama, graphic novels/comics, and illustrated books), in order to inform the development of a database, search interface functionalities, and an LGBTQI thesaurus for fiction.

A web questionnaire was distributed in autumn 2021 to potential end-users. The questions covered people's reasons for reading LGBTQI fiction, ways of finding LGBTQI fiction, experience of searching for LGBTQI fiction, usual search elements applied, latest search for LGBTQI fiction, desired subjects to search for, and ideal search functionalities.

The 101 completed questionnaires showed that most respondents found relevant literature through social media or friends and that most obtained copies of literature from a library. Regarding desirable search functionalities, most respondents would like to see suggestions for related terms to support broader search results (i.e. higher recall). Many also wanted search support that would enable retrieving more specific results based on narrower terms when too many results are retrieved (i.e. higher precision). Over half would also appreciate the option to browse by hierarchically arranged subjects.

This study is the first to show how readers of LGBTQI fiction in Sweden search for and obtain relevant literature. The authors have identified end-user needs that can inform the development of a new database and a thesaurus dedicated to LGBTQI fiction.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and describe the perspectives and reasoning of senior development leaders in healthcare organizations, when reflecting on design as theory and practice in relation to more traditional methods and tools for improving quality and support innovation.

The paper is based on a qualitative interview design with five development and innovation leaders from separate healthcare regions in Sweden. They have, to varying degrees, applied design theory and practice for quality improvement and innovation in their organizations. The interview transcript was analysed using a content analysis together with an interpretive approach.

The major findings are to be found in the balancing act for leadership and organizations in healthcare when it comes to introducing and combining different theories and practices for improving quality and support innovation. The balance is between the change in power dynamics and pushing traditional boundaries in a complex healthcare world.

The narratives from the leaders' experience of applying design theory and practice for improving healthcare quality can help us create readiness and knowledge about how we prevent and/or facilitate planning and implementing design theories, practices, methods and tools in a healthcare context.

The study provides a unique insight when it captures and illustrates five different organizations' experiences when applying design for developing healthcare quality.

Neither visitors of visiting friends and relatives (VFR) travel nor hosts are homogeneous segments (Griffin & Guttenberg, 2020). For this reason, this study aims to address students as hosts of VFR travel and analyzes differences in the visitor and the host segment. As a result, marketing implications for destination marketing organizations that seek to realize the potential of the student VFR segment arise.

This research project adopts a multi-method approach to derive a deeper empirical understanding of visitors’ behaviors and the role of students hosting friends and relatives (SHFR). The quantitative study aims to reveal the relevance and differences between visits to friends (VF) and visits to relatives (VR), whereas the qualitative study elaborates on the findings of the quantitative study and seeks to understand the role and experiences of students as hosts.

The findings reveal that VR and VF travelers vary in terms of their expenditure. Hosts’ spending depends on visitors’ budgets; in general, both their direct and indirect (when relatives pay) spending increases when they have visitors. Furthermore, the data identify two distinct hosting styles: functional hosting is concerned with providing outstanding hospitality based on a more traditional, guest-oriented understanding of the role, whereas integrative hosting blurs the lines between hospitality and lifestyle based on a more modern, host-oriented understanding of the role.

Regarding limitations, this study did not differentiate between students who were simultaneously locals and students who resided in the city only for study purposes. In a similar vein, the cultural background of the students was not considered in the research. Finally, the differences between VF and VR could further be explored in a quantitative follow-up study and in testing for significant differences in SHFR spending behaviors. Further research could examine whether domestic travelers, travelers with cultural proximity and/or short-distance VFR travelers are more likely to visit after COVID-19 as suggested by Backer and Ritchie (2017) in the case of crises and disaster.

Students as hosts differ from other hosts in VFR travel in their reluctance to embrace conventional tourism products. This study found that place attachment makes hosts of VFR travelers passionate ambassadors and advertisers for the destinations; destination marketing organizations (DMOs) could support this already positive image by providing and supporting students with more detailed information about their cities and the opportunities they offer. Results are of particular relevance because the COVID-19 pandemic is forcing DMOs to develop destination strategies that incorporate social-distancing and avoid crowded places.

When students take their friends out to events and nightclubs, they contribute significantly to experiences that go beyond typical tourism activities such as sightseeing and shopping. By offering special discounts to visitors who come with their hosts, DMOs could help visitors delve more deeply into city life and thereby reduce the likeliness of crowded city centers. Considering the findings relating to the social and emotional qualities of VFR travel, DMO marketing to VFR travelers could benefit from promoting socio-cultural spaces and offerings that value groups’ social ties (e.g. family prices for families with adult children) or alumni status.

According to the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first which analyzes both, visitors and hosts of VFR travel using a two methods approach. Very recently, Griffin and Guttenberg (2020) miss VFR research focusing on the heterogeneity of the segment, and Backer et al. (2020) claim for more VFR research on the role of hosts carried out outside of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the UK and the USA. To the authors’ best knowledge, this study is the first which delivers empirical insights on SHFR in Central Europe.

This study aims to examine the phenomenon of climate variability and its implications for pastoralists and agro-pastoralists food security in Amibara and Awash Fentale districts of the Afar region, Ethiopia.

The study relied on meteorological records of temperature and rainfall in the study area between 1988 and 2018. Besides, literature on the topic was reviewed to make caveats on the literal picture that comes from quantitative data, and that is the contribution of this study to the existing debate on climate change and variability. The spatiotemporal trend was determined using the Mann–Kendall test and Sen’s slope estimator, while variability was analyzed using the coefficient of variation and standardized anomaly index, and standardized precipitation index/standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index were applied to determine the drought frequency and severity.

The result reveals that the mean seasonal rainfall varies from 111.34 mm to 518.74 mm. Although the maximum and minimum rainfall occurred in the summer and winter seasons, respectively, there has been a decrease in seasonal and annual at the rate of 2.51 mm per season and 4.12 mm per year, respectively. The study sites have been experiencing highly seasonal rainfall variability. The drought analysis result confirms that a total of nine agricultural droughts ranging from moderate to extreme years were observed. Overall, the seasonal and annual rainfall of the Amibara and Awash Fentale districts showed a decreasing trend with highly temporal variations of rainfall and ever-rising temperatures, and frequent drought events means the climate situation of the area could adversely affect pastoral and agro-pastoral households’ food security. However, analysis of data from secondary sources reveals that analyzing precipitation just based on the meteorological records of the study area would be misleading. That explains why flooding, rather than drought, is becoming the main source of catastrophe to pastoral and agro-pastoral livelihoods.

The analysis of temperature and rainfall dynamics in the Afar region, hence the inception of all development interventions, must take the hydrological impact of the neighboring regions which appears to be useful direction to future researchers.

The research is originally conducted using meteorological and existing literature, and hence, it is original. In this research, we utilized a standardized and appropriate methodology, resulting in insights that augment the existing body of knowledge within the field. These insights serve to advance scholarly discourse on the subject matter.

This study argues that in order to address the problems associated with the modern market economy at their core, such as persistent poverty, growing inequality and environmental degradation, it is imperative to re-assess the well-being and moral philosophy underpinning economic thinking. The author attempts to offer a preliminary way forward with reference to the Islamic intellectual tradition.

This study employs content analysis of classical and contemporary Islamic texts on human well-being and economic ethics to derive a conceptual well-being model. The paper is structured in four sections: section one provides an overview of relevant secondary literature on moral economic approaches; section two outlines the main well-being frameworks; section three discusses the concept of human well-being in Islam informed by the Islamic worldview of tawḥīd, the Islamic philosophy of saʿādah, and the higher objectives of Islamic Law (maqās_.id al-Sharīʿah); and finally, section four discusses policy implications and next steps forward.

A conceptual model of human well-being from an Islamic perspective is developed by integrating philosophical insights of happiness (saʿādah) with an objective list of five essential goods: religion (Dīn), self (Nafs), intellect ('Aql), progeny (Nasl) and wealth (Māl) that correspond to spiritual, physical and psychological, intellectual, familial and social, and material well-being, respectively.

Further research is needed to translate this conceptual model into a composite well-being index to inform policy and practice.

This model can be used to review the performance of the Islamic finance sector, not solely in terms of growth and profitability, but in terms of realising human necessities, needs and refinements. It can also provide the basis for the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation (OIC) countries to jointly develop a well-being index to guide national and regional co-operation. More generally, this study highlights the need for research in Islamic economics to be more firmly rooted within Islamic ontology and epistemology, while simultaneously engaging in productive dialogue with other moral schools of economic thought to offer practical solutions to contemporary challenges.

This study offers three aspects of originality. First, by outlining well-being frameworks, it highlights key differences between the utilitarian understanding of well-being underpinning modern economic theory and virtue-based understandings, such as the Aristotelian, Christian and Islamic approaches. Second, it provides a well-being model from an Islamic perspective by integrating the Islamic worldview of tawḥīd, the Islamic philosophy of saʿādah, and the higher objectives of Islamic Law (maqāṣid al-Sharīʿah). Third, it proposes an ethical framework for informing economic policy and practice.

In this paper the authors argue that organizational climate and workplace bullying are connected, intertwined and affect each other. More precisely, the focus of the present study is how a hostile climate at work is related to workplace bullying. A hostile work climate is defined as an affective organizational climate permeated by distrust, suspicion and antagonism. The authors tested four hypotheses about the reciprocal effects and possible gender differences.

The study is based on a longitudinal probability sample of the Swedish workforce (n = 1,095). Controlling for age, the authors used structural equation modelling and cross-lagged structural regression models to assess the reciprocal effects of a hostile work climate on workplace bullying. Gender was added as a moderator to test two of the hypotheses.

The results showed a strong reciprocal effect, meaning there were significant associations between a hostile work climate and subsequent bullying, β = 0.12, p = 0.007, and between baseline bullying and a subsequent hostile work climate, β = 0.15, p = 0.002. The forward association between a hostile work climate and bullying depended on gender, β = −0.23, p < 0.001.

The findings point to a possible vicious circle where a hostile work climate increases the risk of bullying, which in turn risks creating an even more hostile work climate. Furthermore, the findings point to gender differences in bullying, showing that the effect of a hostile work climate on workplace bullying was stronger for men.

This paper aims to inform the discussion on why and how non-profit organizations can experience a hybridization process to address the criticism that would assume hybridity as an intrinsic characteristic of all organizations. Specifically, by referring to the academies of intellectuals as the non-profit setting in which investigating the emergence of hybridity takes place, this paper aims at exploring, first, to what extent this emergence could be induced by institutional conditions, and, second, which structural innovations could sustain the academies’ “motion” towards hybridity.

This paper relies on the institutional logics perspective and adopts the case study method applied to a historical context. The case under analysis is the Academy of “the Immobili”, which, in spite of its name, experienced a hybridization process in 1720 because of the decision to involve an impresario in the management of its theatre.

The findings highlight the significant role played by institutional conditions in inducing the emergence of hybridity, even in presence of internal resistance to any “motion” from the non-profit setting. Moreover, the analysis of the innovations associated with this emergence detects the intertwined action of the different decision makers involved in the hybridization process, in spite of their formal separation. These findings strengthen the conceptualization of hybridity within non-profit organizations.

Besides referring to a historical period that is still little explored in terms of hybridity within organizations, the paper focuses on an original context, i.e. academies, representing an ancient typology of cultural organizations. Therefore, the paper also provides the first insights into the hybridization process of cultural organizations from a historical perspective.

In this study the authors aim to explore the factors that contribute to the formation of locavorism as a form of consumer ideology.

In this study, the authors adopt an inductive approach by preselecting locavore consumers and conducting 43 semi-structured interviews, following the prescriptions of narrative-enquiry research.

The authors reveal that individual-level (i.e. values, beliefs and experiences) and social-level (i.e. groups, local communities and society) influences and exogenous factors can affect the formation of locavorism. Furthermore, the authors’ findings corroborate the concept advanced by prior studies that reinforcing loops exist among the three belief dimensions of locavorism.

Food producers can use these findings to shape their marketing strategies more effectively to target locavore consumers and/or stimulate the consumption of local food.

Identifying the influences of social- and individual-level factors on the formation of locavorism can contribute to the understanding of demand shifts towards local food consumption. Additionally, by revealing the modes of thought that formulate the ideologies of locavore consumers, the authors offer guidance in the development of policies that can safeguard local economies and traditions and reduce transport pollution and food waste in favour of sustainable local consumption.

In the present article the authors explore the psychological and contextual mechanisms that contribute to the formation of locavorism.