Search results

This paper reports on the key findings of a study into the outcomes and costs of community care for a large cohort of people with learning disabilities, supported in 12 study sites across England, who left various long‐stay hospital 12 years ago as part of a centrally monitored and evaluated government policy initiative on deinstitutionalisation. It represents the last follow‐up of a raft of linked longitudinal evaluations, conducted at four time points over a twelve‐year period. The paper identifies the findings from the last follow‐up and interprets and presents them as summary observations and trends in relation to the findings in learning disability, briefly reviewing them in relation to wider evidence on deinstitutionalisation and community care in England.

All accountants make extensive use of information technology (IT) in their working lives, and IT skills have long been part of the Accounting and Finance undergraduate degree programme at the University of Glamorgan. This degree scheme was redesigned on a linear basis with effect from September 2002; one of the major changes being to integrate the teaching of management accounting and IT at the introductory level. The teaching of management accounting lends itself well to the use of IT. This paper describes both the rationale behind, and the design and development of, a case study which aims to integrate the use of IT with the development and application of management accounting techniques. The case study attempts to emulate a “ive” work‐based environment as closely as possible. Completion of tasks at intervals throughout the year form part of the assessment of the module. These are based on data from a variety of sources which students manipulate, using various software packages, in order to produce useful management accounting information. In this way, students learn both management accounting and IT skills, and how to apply these skills to provide management accounting information. The experiences of both students and staff in using the case study over a six‐year period are reported, together with a description of how the case study and its use have evolved in light of the experience.

In addition to the obvious problems of precision and recall in relation to information retrieval via the Worldwide Web, the data retrieved may be inaccurate or out of date, even if the sites or resources located initially seem relevant. In response, a number of services have been developed over the lnternet which attempt to assist Web searchers in locating relevant, quality resources. Different approaches have been adopted, including the development of gateway services, reviewing resources and the allocation of numerical ratings. However, the effectiveness of the approach, and the quality of the ‘annotations’ used by these sites, can vary enormously. Using a specific medical Web resource, a number of services are compared to illustrate some of these issues, to introduce readers to the need to evaluate Web resources, and to provide some guidelines for evaluating the evaluative services. This article forms part of the work by the Advisory Group on Evaluation Criteria for Organising Medical Networked Information (OMNI), the eLib‐funded subject gateway for biomedicine. An earlier article compares and contrasts the facilities offered by a wider range of evaluative services.

Function libraries, and indeed the majority of organisations, especially those operating on a commercial basis or utilising public funds, consist of material and human structures. The leaders of the human structure utilise personnel and materials in the pursuit of certain goals. Brech itemises four main elements in this process of planning and regulating enterprise activities. They comprise:

The purpose of this paper is to explore leadership for diversity informed by intersectionality and radical politics. Surfacing the political character of intersectionality, the authors suggest that a leadership for diversity imbued with a commitment to political action is essential for the progress towards equality.

Drawing lessons from the grassroots, political organizing of the black and Indigenous activist groups Combahee River Collective and Idle No More, the authors explore how these groups relied on feminist alliances to address social justice issues. Learning from their focus on intersectionality, the authors consider the role of politically engaged leadership in advancing diversity and equality in organizations.

The paper finds that leadership for diversity can be developed by shifting towards a more radical and transversal politics that challenges social and political structures that enable intersectionality or interlocking oppressions. This challenge relies on critical alliances negotiated across multiple intellectual, social and political positions and enacted through flexible solidarity to foster a collective ethical responsibility and social change. These forms of alliance-based praxis are important for advancing leadership for diversity.

This paper contributes to studies of leadership and critical diversity studies by articulating an alliance-based praxis for leadership underpinned by intersectionality, radical democracy and transversal politics.

In this chapter, we explore the use of participatory and community-based research (CBR) strategies within institutional ethnography. Reflecting on our current, past, and future projects, we discuss the utility of community-based and participatory methods for grounding one’s research in the actualities of participants’ lives. At the same time, we note ontological and practical differences between most community-based participatory action research (PAR) methodologies and institutional ethnography. While participants’ lives and experiences ground both approaches, people’s perspectives are not considered as research findings for institutional ethnographers. In an institutional ethnography, the objects of analysis are the institutional relations, which background and give shape to people’s actualities. The idea is to discover something through the research process that is useful to participants. As such, the use of community-based and participatory methods during analysis suggests the greatest utility of this sociological approach for people.

This paper explores the massive growth in New World Wines and in particular more recently in Chilean Wines over recent years. It analyses a number of factors influencing this trend, including price, taste, distribution and so on, yet highlights one important aspect is the on‐shelf impact of New World, and in particular, Chilean Wines. This evaluation of the on‐the‐shelf impact of Chilean wines would appear to support the hypothesis that at least part of the current success of Chilean wines is concerned with image, particularly on‐the‐shelf image in an era of the global brand. As Old World Wine producers copy the modern dynamic image of the New World Wines and in particular Chilean Wines, will the Chilean Wines be identifiable on the shelf or will on‐the‐shelf image reflect price rather than country?

THE Reference Department of Paisley Central Library today occupies the room which was the original Public Library built in 1870 and opened to the public in April 1871. Since that date two extensions to the building have taken place. The first, in 1882, provided a separate room for both Reference and Lending libraries; the second, opened in 1938, provided a new Children's Department. Together with the original cost of the building, these extensions were entirely financed by Sir Peter Coats, James Coats of Auchendrane and Daniel Coats respectively. The people of Paisley indeed owe much to this one family, whose generosity was great. They not only provided the capital required but continued to donate many useful and often extremely valuable works of reference over the many years that followed. In 1975 Paisley Library was incorporated in the new Renfrew District library service.

This study aims to explore the ways in which young people and prison staff (Prison Officers) within a youth custodial establishment experience empathy. Previous research tends to view empathy as a stable trait and one which people can develop through individual-centred therapy. There has been little consideration of the impact of relationship factors and context in relation to empathy experience and expression. The current study aims to address this by exploring the role of the custodial context in shaping empathy, including the potential impact of relationships, environmental factors and culture.

A qualitative approach was used to enable breadth and depth in the exploration of this area. Individual, semi-structured interviews were carried out with a purposive sample of three young people and three Prison Officers. Data was analysed using inductive thematic analysis informed by the guidelines of Braun and Clarke (2006) and King and Horrocks (2010).

Constructed themes included “constructions of empathy”, “recipe for empathy”, “institutional investment”, “the value of empathy” and “doing empathy”. Together, they provide detailed insight into the interplay of personal and wider contextual factors influencing the experience of empathy in a custodial setting. The findings suggest that the way in which young people and staff experience empathy in the custodial environment is unique. The findings suggest that empathy takes place within the context of relationships and is influenced by the nature of those relationships, along with the wider social context within which it occurs.

The findings of the current study support a move away from understanding empathy as an individual personality trait and instead viewing it as a dynamic experience that is changeable based upon the relationship and the context within which it occurs. The findings suggest that interventions aiming to develop empathy should look beyond the level of the individual and the relationship and focus upon developing environments that are supportive of empathy.

This study provides unique insights into the subjective experience of empathy in a custodial setting, presenting as one of the first to take a more holistic approach to understand this phenomenon.

In this chapter, we explore classed and gendered identities through feminist duoethnography and memory work. In so doing, we write of and for a place where we no longer live, but which part of us will always inhabit and be inhabited by. Beyond geographical parameters, this place is deeply embedded in us and resides in the past. Being women academics of working-class backgrounds, we have gradually learnt to navigate the once foreign world of academia. Adapting to it has included not always being candid about our background, but in this text we foreground our histories, which ultimately have a bearing on our identities, our politics and our writing. We argue for the value of remembering past events as a source of knowledge which is personal yet social, as we present autobiographical reflections and excerpts of dialogue in which we explore our life and career trajectories. Our experiences, although felt to be subjective and private, are not entirely unique nor disconnected from historical, cultural and political circumstances. The chapter shows a way to explore past and present experiences, and to exercise a way of writing that seeks to capture the richness, contradictions and intersubjective nature of ongoing interpretations of those experiences. We also reflect on how our approach might enrich our understanding of class and gender in academia, and what kind of knowledge it might furnish us with. Above all, we want to acknowledge the value of the knowledge of those, who in various ways, come from ‘other places’.