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This paper aims to discuss the role of communication in relieving tensions that can arise from organizational practices enacted during structural change. Practices, according to Whittington (2006, p. 619), constitute shared routines of behaviour, including traditions, norms and procedures for thinking and acting.

Employees’ reflections regarding what, how and why certain circumstances occurred during the structural reform of an Estonian State Institution with approximately 300 employees, comprised the study data. Reflections were collected during 27 interviews conducted after recent change to the structure of this organization. After aggregating different actions, associations and emotions into practices, these practices were assigned to elements offered by Schatzki (2005), and tensions between the elements sought and analysed.

Analysis of the three practices extracted as forming part of the structural reform – management decision-making, recruitment and physical relocation – showed that in organizational settings, the constitutional role of communication within practices needs conscious attention at different levels of the practice. Tensions that arose between practice elements, e.g. rules or reasons for doing something not complying with ways of doing it, revealed the need for metacommunication regarding those elements.

Communication during organizational changes needs to be more than crafted messages via well-organized channels from the communications department; it needs to penetrate to all different levels before, during and after a change. All that to create as many opportunities for employees at all levels to collectively make sense of what is happening and for the management to make necessary changes based on that. It should be created consciously by for example inviting employees together in discussion circles during the planning phase of the change and outlining the key processes of the change in question with them involved.

The value of this study is in investigating what goes on in an organization by distancing oneself from the immediate behaviour of an individual to focus on patterns of action, which gives another understanding as to why even when people wish for the best, things often still do not turn out as hoped. This approach refers to the theory that there are tensions or mistakes coded into practices, thus allowing one to look at inter-personal communication as part of other actions, not as a separate line of actions.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how employees make sense of a structural change in a public organisation, in order to understand which practices form this change and how individual elements (rules, understandings etc.) may shape the process of such changes.

The research is based on: a two-wave interview method, where the same individuals from different levels of the organisation were questioned in both 2012 and 2014; and an analysis of the formal documents created during the decision-making process. Schatzki’s (1996) approach is used as the basis to identify teleo-affective structures, practical understandings and rules as constitutive elements of the practices that comprised the structural change in the organisation.

The analysis revealed two main practices – structural reorganisation and the sharing of information and involving employees – that shaped the process of structural change within the organisation. These practices are formed of positive and negative ways of doing, some of which have become in-house habits and a few which have become rules of the organisation. There were competing understandings and enactments of named elements in the organisation, indicating that organisational practices exist beyond individuals and that it takes a collective effort to change them.

The retrospective interview technique and use of employees’ subjective sense-making did not allow us to fully grasp how practices unfolded during the process of a change to the everyday workings of the organisation, which could only be accomplished by direct observations.

The research highlighted those processes that influence one of the potentially most important changes to any organisation, that of organisation structure – both extensive and compact – which has thus far seldom been studied. The authors empirically tested Schatzki’s (1996) approach to practices and provided a set of categories for analysing practices during such changes.

This study aims to examine the relationship between aging anxiety, self-esteem, physical symptomology and quality of life in early and middle adults as well as to explore the mediating role of self-esteem.

A cross-sectional study was designed, and a sample of N= 700 educated men and women aged between 35 and 65 years were taken through purposive sampling. Anxiety about Aging Scale, Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale, The World Health Organization Quality of Life – BREF and Somatic Symptom Scale-8 were used for assessment.

Research suggests that an increase in aging anxiety leads to poor quality of life and lower self-esteem. Additionally, a negative relationship was observed between aging anxiety and physical symptomology. Self-esteem plays a mediating role significantly in these relationships.

The study highlighted the adverse effects of aging anxiety on the basis of which strategies can be devised to cope with it as well as to improve the self-esteem and quality of life in transition age. These findings can also aid in providing health care and public services in later adulthood. This study also emphasizes on aging as a human right rather than merely a process such as the human right for physical health and mental health.

This study provides a new outlook and perspective toward how the phenomenon of aging impacts the lives of adults who are about to enter older adulthood in a few years. The fears related to aging influence physical and mental health, due to which it is necessary to investigate the effect of aging anxiety.

Older adults who are or have been incarcerated constitute a growing population in the USA. The complex health needs of this group are often inadequately addressed during incarceration and equally so when transitioning back to the community. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the literature on challenges older adults (age 50 and over) face in maintaining health and accessing social services to support health after an incarceration and to outline recommendations to address the most urgent of these needs.

This study conducted a narrative literature review to identify the complex health conditions and health services needs of incarcerated older adults in the USA and outline three primary barriers they face in accessing health care and social services during reentry.

Challenges to healthy reentry of older adults include continuity of health care; housing availability; and access to health insurance, disability and other support. The authors recommend policy changes to improve uniformity of care, development of support networks and increased funding to ensure that older adults reentering communities have access to resources necessary to safeguard their health and safety.

This review presents a broad perspective of the current literature on barriers to healthy reentry for older adults in the USA and offers valuable system, program and policy recommendations to address those barriers.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the policy Implications of aging prison populations.

An examination of the worldwide aging trend in prison and its implications for correctional policy, including an examination of population aging in California prisons as a case example of needed reform.

Prison populations worldwide are aging at an unprecedented rate, and age-related medical costs have had serious consequences for jurisdictions struggling to respond to the changes. These trends are accompanied by a growing body of evidence that old age is strongly correlated with desistance from criminal behavior, suggesting an opportunity to at least partially address the challenges of an aging prison population through early release from prison for appropriate persons.

Some policies do exist that aim to reduce the number of older, chronically ill or disabled and dying people in prison, but they have not achieved that goal on a sufficient scale. An examination of the situation in California shows that recognizing how the healthcare needs of incarcerated people change as they age – and how aging and aging-related health changes often decrease an older person’s likelihood of repeat offense – is critical to achieving effective and efficient policies and practices aimed at adequately caring for this population and reducing their numbers in prisons when appropriate.

This study aims to examine the phenomenon of self-perceived age (SPA) identity for Generation X (GenX) women in the UK. Squeezed between the more ubiquitous “boomer” and “millennial” cohorts, and now with both gender and age stigma-related challenges, this study looks to provide insights for understanding this group for marketing.

This study adopts an existential phenomenological approach using a hybrid structured/hermeneutic research design. Data is collected using solicited diary research (SDR) that elicits autoethnographic insights into the lived experiences of GenX women, these in the context of SPA.

For this group, the authors find age a gendered phenomenon represented via seven “age frames”, collectively an “organisation of experience”. Age identity appears not to have unified meaning but is contingent upon individuals and their experiences. These frames then provide further insights into how diarists react to the stigma of gendered ageism.

SDR appeals to participants who like completing diaries and are motivated by the research topic. This limits both diversity of response and sample size, but coincidentally enhances elicitation potential – outweighing, the authors believe, these constraints. The sample comprises UK women only.

This study acknowledges GenX women as socially real, but from an SPA perspective they are heterogeneous, and consequently distributed across many segments. Here, age is a psychographic, not demographic, variable – a subjective rather than chronological condition requiring a nuanced response from marketers.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first formal study into how SPA identity is manifested for GenX women. Methodologically, this study uses e-journals/diaries, an approach not yet fully exploited in marketing research.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the level of perceived health and quality of life of elderly prisoners in France, and to see whether there is a link between aging, time spent in prison and level of education and scores for perceived health and quality of life.

The authors’ recruited 138 male prisoners aged 50 and over in seven French prisons. The research protocol comprised a semi-structured interview and two scales.

The results revealed low levels of perceived health and quality of life among the elderly inmates. They also showed that age was not statistically associated with most of the dimensions of perceived health on the Nottingham Health Profile (NHP), with the exception of poor mobility. By contrast, age was statistically associated with most of the dimensions of quality of life on the WHOQOL-Bref. Time spent in prison was only associated negatively with the “sleep” dimension of the NHP. Emotional reactions were perceived most positively by the inmates with the highest level of education.

It seems particularly important to assess the perceived health and quality of life of elderly prisoners in order to ensure their appropriate treatment and management.

Very few studies have examined the perceived health and quality of life of prisoners, even though this population is particularly vulnerable in terms of physical and mental health.

Several epidemiological studies have reported an age-related increase in the prevalence of sleep disturbances. This study aims to investigate the relationship between sleep and sarcopenia/frailty in older adults and clarify issues that remain to be addressed in future studies.

PubMed was searched for relevant studies with the following keywords in the title: “sleep” and “sarcopenia” or “sleep” and “frailty.” A total of 15 studies published in English between 1998 and 2018 were reviewed.

Among the four studies that examined the relationship between sarcopenia and sleep, two reported that long or short sleep duration increased the risk of sarcopenia and this association was more pronounced in women than men. Among the seven studies examining the relationship between frailty and sleep, four reported that higher Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) scores were associated with an increased risk of frailty.

Most previous studies have focused on interventions targeting a single area such as muscle strength or exercise habits, in older adults at risk for frailty. The results suggest that interventions targeting improved sleep may positively impact the maintenance of muscle strength.

The literature review revealed that too much or too little sleep increases the risk of sarcopenia in older adults. Further, sleep deprivation, greater night-time wakefulness and reduced sleep quality increase the risk of frailty. Interestingly, the risk of mortality is increased in individuals with daytime functional disorders such as excessive drowsiness or napping habits.

Scepticism about organizations has become an integral part of the field organizational theory. This article aspires to develop through historical analysis a taxonomy of organizational scepticism. Though scepticism of all types have generic traits, there are three distinct types of scepticism: premodern, modern and postmodern scepticism. Premodern scepticism attacks the modern organizational by stressing concepts grounded in nature and tradition. Modern sceptics attack the optimism of managerialism about organizations. Postmodern sceptics stress that technological developments, economic self interest, and irrationality will be the eventual undoing of modern organization. Organizational scepticism is now so pervasive that it should be treated as an integral part of the field.

This study presents an innovative approach to analyzing user behavior when performing digital tasks by integrating eye-tracking technology. Through the measurement of user scan patterns, gaze and attention during task completion, the authors gain valuable insights into users' approaches and execution of these tasks.

In this research, the authors conducted an observational study that centered on assessing the digital skills of individuals with limited proficiency who enrolled in a computer introductory course. A group of 19 participants were tasked with completing various online assignments both before and after completing the course.

The study findings indicate a significant improvement in participants' skills, particularly in basic and straightforward applications. However, advancements in more sophisticated utilization, such as mastering efficient search techniques or harnessing the Internet for enhanced situational awareness, demonstrate only marginal enhancement.

In recent decades, extensive research has been conducted on the issue of digital inequality, given its significant societal implications. This paper introduces a novel tool designed to analyze digital inequalities and subsequently employs it to evaluate the effectiveness of “LEHAVA,” the largest government-sponsored program aimed at mitigating these disparities in Israel.