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1 – 10 of over 1000This essay focuses on the Chinese-Japanese Library of the Harvard-Yenching Institute and examines how the Library collected and transported Chinese rare books to the United States…
Abstract
Purpose
This essay focuses on the Chinese-Japanese Library of the Harvard-Yenching Institute and examines how the Library collected and transported Chinese rare books to the United States during the 1930 and 1940s. It considers Harvard's rationale for its collection of Chinese books and tensions between Chinese scholars and the Harvard-Yenching Institute leaders and librarians over the purchase and “export” of Chinese books.
Design/methodology/approach
This research is a historical study based on archival research at Harvard-Yenching Institute and the Harvard-Yenching Library, as well as careful readings of published primary and secondary sources.
Findings
By examining the debates that surrounded the ownership of Chinese books, and the historical circumstances that enabled or hindered the cross-national movement of books, this essay uncovers a complex and interwoven historical discourse of academic nationalism, internationalism and imperialism.
Originality/value
Drawing upon the unexamined primary sources and published second sources, this essay uncovers a complex and interwoven historical discourse of academic nationalism, internationalism and imperialism.
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Felix Maringe and Jennifer Jenkins
This paper examines the experiences of engaging with academic writing of international doctoral students in the schools of humanities and education at a UK university. The purpose…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper examines the experiences of engaging with academic writing of international doctoral students in the schools of humanities and education at a UK university. The purpose of this paper is to uncover the real accounts of international students whose cultural and language backgrounds are often marginalised and considered, not as facilitators, but as barriers to academic writing in the western context of universities.
Design/methodology/approach
Developed broadly within an interpretive post-positivistic paradigm, the study utilised Harré and van Lagenhove, 1999 Positioning theory and Goffman’s theory of Stigma to interrogate accounts of 12 students from the two schools in a year-long project involving three focus group discussions, questionnaire responses and personal reflective summaries by the students.
Findings
The paper highlights the notions of stigma associated with their foreign writing conventions and how students experience tensions and apprehensions about their ability as they painfully negotiate the new academic writing conventions of the institution. International students position themselves as vulnerable outsiders working within an ill-defined but highly valued language environment.
Research limitations/implications
The research is limited to the extent that it utilises a very small number of students as its key source of evidence. However, the study was not aimed at providing generalisation as much as it sought to explore issues associated with the use of language by international studying in UK universities.
Practical implications
The study has practical implications for the professionals in HE to develop clear guidelines about what constitutes good English and to provide greater support to international students who see themselves as vulnerable outsiders in an environment which marginalises their linguistic and cultural identities.
Social implications
The study has implications for the social, cultural, and academic integration of international students in HE institutions.
Originality/value
The paper signals a need for diverse writing frameworks which seek to promote rather than silence and marginalise potentially rich sources of knowledge and understanding in an increasingly globalising world.
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Simon Shurville, Tom Browne and Marian Whitaker
Educational technologists make significant contributions to the development, organisational embedding and service provision of technology‐enhanced learning (TEL) environments…
Abstract
Purpose
Educational technologists make significant contributions to the development, organisational embedding and service provision of technology‐enhanced learning (TEL) environments, which are key enablers for mass access to flexible higher education (HE). Given the increasing centrality of this role, it is advocated that institutions investigate sustainable career structures for educational technologists. This paper aims to address these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
The arguments are evidence‐driven by the small body of research literature describing the role of educational technologists and contextualized by the experiences as academics and leaders of TEL projects in HE, including managing educational technologists.
Findings
The roles of educational technologists are very diverse, requiring competencies in educational leadership, both management and technical. Their career paths, backgrounds, legitimate powers and organisational locations exhibit considerable variation.
Research limitations/implications
University leaders require evidence to formulate appropriate human resource strategies and performance management strategies for educational technologists. Further empirical research to analyze current issues and future trajectories relating to their aspirations, career structures, legitimate power, management and organisational contexts is proposed.
Originality/value
Given the strategic importance of educational technologists to information and communications technology‐driven transformation, university leaders will require evidence to formulate appropriate human resource and performance management strategies for these key academic‐related/professional staff. This paper brings together relevant literature for the first time, generates recommendations for further research and policy discussion.
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This paper aims to examine and compare a set of key characteristics of ethnocentricity that influence the policy of academic marketing journals, and hence the provenance…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine and compare a set of key characteristics of ethnocentricity that influence the policy of academic marketing journals, and hence the provenance, authorship and nature of articles in academic marketing journals.
Design/methodology/approach
The “fundamental” characteristics of three major marketing journals, published in the USA, the UK and New Zealand, were examined for the six‐year period from the start of 2000 to the end of 2006. Data were collected from editorials and web homepages. Analysis was conducted of 811 articles, 1,676 authors, three editorial teams and three sets of reviewers.
Findings
There is a challenging academic ethnocentricity in the management and implied policy of the three journals. The extent varies, but the inescapable conclusion is that the world‐wide research community in marketing is not properly represented by leading journals.
Research limitations/implications
The sample was intentionally small, and unrepresentative of any category except “leading quality”. The findings are intended to add momentum to a debate and point ways forward, not to provide generalisable answers.
Practical implications
The findings suggest that: the editorial boards and reviewing teams should be made more representative geographically; editorships should be organized around the concept of a team of geographically differentiated editors; editorial and review teams should be ethnographically representative of individuals who do research and wish to publish it, particularly beyond the English‐speaking world. In general, the world‐wide research community in marketing would benefit from less ethnocentricity in academic journals, and these leading examples should strive to reduce it.
Originality/value
The impact of ethnocentricity is underestimated in this context. The issue needs to be discussed, because of paradigmatic influences that it can have on a journal and the profile of its authors, and hence on journal ranking and perceptions of journal quality.
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Global participation in higher education has expanded greatly since the late twentieth century. The implications for the cultural, social, and economic fabric of societies have…
Abstract
Purpose
Global participation in higher education has expanded greatly since the late twentieth century. The implications for the cultural, social, and economic fabric of societies have been substantial. To explain transitions from elite to mass higher education systems, theoretical insights from Technical-functionalism, Neo-institutionalism, World Academic System, and Credentialism perspectives have been put forward. It is the contention of this paper that there are emerging and complementary factors driving steadily growing participation in “high-income” universal higher education systems. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
With reference to Ulrich Beck’s concept of the “risk society”, it is discussed how higher education participation is increasingly a response by young people (and their families) seeking to mitigate heightened instability in work and employment under a “risk regime”. Publicly available data from national and supra-national organisations are used to evidence trends and support the arguments put forward by this paper.
Findings
Participation is perceived as quasi-compulsory to “survive” amid concern that those without higher education attainment are being “left behind” in modern labour markets. This environment has contributed to more students from more diverse backgrounds viewing higher education as the only viable option to secure a livelihood regardless of rising private costs of participation and rising uncertainty over graduate employment outcomes. The expansion of higher education has therefore potentially developed a self-perpetuating dynamic as the perceived cost of non-participation escalates.
Originality/value
It is shown that to better understand higher education participation in “high-income” countries with universal higher education systems, one needs to consider the conceptual idea of “survivalism”, that underlines risk and the vulnerabilities of modern societies.
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Linde Moriau, Jo Tondeur, Julie Bertone, Minne Huysmans, Martina Temmerman and Pieter Meurs
Community engaged research and learning strategies are considered meaningful methods for universities to demonstrate their critical importance to today’s societies. At the same…
Abstract
Purpose
Community engaged research and learning strategies are considered meaningful methods for universities to demonstrate their critical importance to today’s societies. At the same time, it is stressed that not all approaches are equally beneficial, highlighting the need for well-considered design and delivery. This paper aims to outline a helpful tool in this regard: the engagement CUBE.
Design/methodology/approach
The engagement CUBE was developed by a learning community set-up at a Belgian university to explore the potential of engaged practices for meeting both needs and assets of its urban surroundings. A series of learning circles was organized for discussing recent research findings, experiences and ambitions with engaged campus-community initiatives and support targeted (re)design.
Findings
The CUBE is a helpful instrument for navigating the complex fabric of engaged practices. It is to be used as a dialogic tool, facilitating collaborative meaning negotiation and decision-making among participants in engagement strategies. Its purpose is both to help design a supportive environment for establishing partnerships that build on shared ownership and mutual learning, as to stimulate capacity-building for taking responsible change-oriented action.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to the existing literature on engaged teaching and research by emphasizing the need of acknowledging conflict as an important condition for fostering insightful learning and genuine transformation. The authors will argue that adopting a conflict perspective also allows for a more critical examination of the emerging concept of university social responsibility.
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Ronald Barnett and Carolina Guzmán-Valenzuela
This paper aims to propose a thesis about the historical evolution of the relationship of the European University in relation to the idea of social responsibility.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to propose a thesis about the historical evolution of the relationship of the European University in relation to the idea of social responsibility.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper is philosophical, conceptual and theoretical and in proffering a bold thesis, has an argumentative character appropriate to that style.
Findings
Three stages can be identified over the past 200 years in the relationship between the university and the matter of social responsibility, being successively tacit, weak and now hybrid. In the present stage, new spaces are opening for the university to transcend social responsibility, moving to a worldly and earthly responsibility. However, this new stage is having to contend against the university in an age of cognitive capitalism. As such, a large but hitherto unnoticed culture war is present, the outcome of which is unclear.
Research limitations/implications
The scholarship informing this paper is wide-ranging and multi-disciplinary (history, social theory, philosophy, critical higher education studies, literature on the idea of the university, comparative higher education, ethics and sociology of knowledge), as it has to be in sustaining the large thesis being contended for, and it has broad hinterlands, which can only lightly be intimated.
Practical implications
The key implication is that the idea of social responsibility is currently being construed too narrowly and that, therefore, universities – in developing their corporate strategies and missions – should be more ambitious and set their responsibility goals against horizons that go well beyond the social realm.
Originality/value
The thesis developed here is original in offering a three-stage theory of a 200-year evolution of the socially responsible European university. A new stage of an Earthly responsibility is glimpsed but it is having to contend with a continuing performative university, so leading to a hidden culture war and such that the future of university social responsibility is in doubt.
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Suggests that international marketing has forgone its pretensions to colonise vast areas of intellectual space in favour of concentration on micro‐issues. Analyses of research in…
Abstract
Suggests that international marketing has forgone its pretensions to colonise vast areas of intellectual space in favour of concentration on micro‐issues. Analyses of research in international marketing suggest that it has become fragmented. Suggests that wider macro theoretical restructuring is necessary for international marketing researchers to discover their former imperial arrogance.
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Russell Craig and Joselito Diga
This paper proposes a framework to facilitate description of national financial accounting systems. Its first element, broad aims, identifies the fundamental purpose of national…
Abstract
This paper proposes a framework to facilitate description of national financial accounting systems. Its first element, broad aims, identifies the fundamental purpose of national financial accounting systems as being to effect a macro‐user or micro‐user orientation. From this emerges the second element, institutional environment, which describes the nature of regimes put in place to effect regulation. This influences the third element, the specific accounting rules and practices adopted. Aspects of international practice relating to each of these three elements are illustrated. The pedagogical benefits of the framework are demonstrated. The standard vocabulary and the structured format of the framework is used to describe, in capsule form, the national financial accounting systems of Korea and Indonesia. The framework seems likely to enhance understanding of the similarities and differences in national financial accounting systems and to contribute useful insights to international accounting matters.