Search results

This is a case study of the contribution of independent researchers employed to obtain feedback on performance in home care services for a Best Value exercise in Luton. The authors report their findings and then speculate on how local authorities might enhance the process to achieve more informed consultation with service users.

From the mid‐nineteenth to the early twentieth century universities and colleges were founded throughout Australia and New Zealand in the context of the expanding British Empire. This article provides an analytical framework to understand the engagement between changing ideas of higher education at the centre of Empire and within the settler societies in the Antipodes. Imperial influences remained significant, but so was locality in association with the role of the emerging state, while the idea of the public purpose of higher education helped to widen social access forming and sustaining the basis of middle class professions.

This chapter examines the changes proposed to the current media ethics and regulation regime in Australia following a government inquiry by former Federal Court judge Ray Finkelstein. The inquiry was prompted by The News of the World phone hacking scandal in the United Kingdom, which resulted in that publication being closed down by its publisher, News International, and principal shareholder Rupert Murdoch. While finding no evidence of similar misbehaviour by journalists and proprietors in Australia, Finkelstein recommended the establishment of a statutory News Media Council, and the inclusion of online media outlets in this new regulatory regime. This chapter argues that such a regime is unlikely to come into effect, given that it will be opposed by media proprietors and working journalists alike, as well the Federal Opposition, and the taxpayer funded ABC, and that a government with low levels of political capital is unlikely to risk much of that capital in a fight with the media industries in an election year.

The aim of this small‐scale focus group study is to explore the impact the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccine has on attitudes towards HPV, cervical cancer and sexual risk taking amongst university students in the UK.

Participants were recruited through advertisements placed on notice boards throughout the campus of the University of Leeds. The study sampled purposively to obtain two groups of ten men and two groups of ten women. A total of 34 people attended the sessions. The missing participants gave no reason for the absence. Those who agreed to take part were aged 19‐24 and were from a range of academic courses. Ethical approval was sought and approved by the Medical School Ethics Committee at the University of Leeds.

Participants saw HPV as being distinct from genital warts. This led to a duality in their view of the vaccine, which they saw as a cancer vaccine for schoolgirls and as an STI vaccine in relation to people of their own age, and thus believed it would cause sexual complacency among young adults. There was a fear that the HPV vaccine would reinforce gender bias, reinforcing the idea that females are responsible for sexual health. They maintained that mass media campaigns were more effective than sex education for improving sexual health knowledge and practices.

With the exception of chlamydia screening, this age group tends to be ignored in sexual health promotion campaigns. This small‐scale study provides insights that can inform larger studies and help tailor future health education campaigns on HPV for this audience.

Purpose – This chapter aims to show that attention to nicknaming as a form of language-making and sensemaking can provide a valuable avenue for exploring employees’ assessments of (mis)behavior. It highlights the connection between gender and language-making as central to the way workers assess and respond to (mis)behavior in different workplaces.

Methodology – The chapter uses an historical perspective and concepts drawn from sociology and organizational theory. It identifies nicknames and nicknaming practices from a wide range of documentary sources and oral sources.

Findings – In considering nicknaming in terms of sensemaking and language-making rather than simply as a form of humor, the chapter shows that derogatory names enable employees to address the tensions and conflicts arising from formal organizational practices, rules, and managerial imperatives and workplace relations. It emphasizes commonalities in nicknaming practices that extend beyond the micro-level of specific workplaces and in doing so illustrates that nicknaming is not simply a manifestation of humor but as importantly of inter-subjective processes through which workers construct group identities to enforce co-produced informal rules of behavior.

Social implications – The chapter illustrates the importance of workplace nicknaming and its implications for the way employees try to influence the behavior of others by condoning and/or shaming those who conform to or defy informal rules.

Originality – The chapter's originality lies in its focus on employees’ own assessments of misbehavior and on commonalities in nicknaming practices in different times and in different places.

Previous research has shown that diversity is related to both task and relationship conflict in groups. The purpose of this paper is to posit that leadership is an important factor for maintaining high group performance and morale under conditions of conflict. Specifically, the paper argues that leader conflict management, emotion management, and transformational behaviors determine the impact of conflict on group outcomes.

Data were collected from 585 people in 89 workgroups from eight public service organizations in Australia. The authors used hierarchical regression to test the hypotheses regarding group performance and morale. To test mediation and moderation, the authors followed the procedure outlined by Baron and Kenny. Finally, they used the formulas provided by Preacher, Rucker and Hayes to test for moderated mediation.

Results showed that diversity increased task conflict but was unrelated to relationship conflict. Both task and relationship conflict were negatively associated with group performance and morale, and effective leadership reduced these negative effects to zero. There was also a partial support for the authors’ theoretical model predicting that leadership moderates the indirect effect of diversity on group outcomes occurring through the mediator of conflict.

A greater amount of variation in the diversity of work groups included in the sample would have been useful for overcoming problems of restriction of range, which likely reduced ability to observe an association between diversity and group outcomes. Based on the results, in order to prevent negative emotions from task and relationship conflict from damaging group performance, leaders of diverse groups can act to manage those emotions among their group members. Results from this study implicate conflict management training. While training for conflict management is beyond the scope of this research, further research should examine this issue.

The study extends research in the area of diversity, leadership and group work. In particular, it demonstrates that transformational leadership is an important factor for maintaining high group performance and morale under conditions of conflict. It also offers practical assistance to individuals entrusted with the responsibility of managing culturally diverse workgroups.

This paper is based on a survey of the literature on integrated library management systems published between 1999 and 2003, with a bias towards the academic market in the UK and North America. It describes how new functionality within ILMSs and products complementary to these integrated systems are being offered by software vendors, causing libraries to replace legacy systems with next generation systems and spend more money on add‐on products. Recent trends in integrated library management systems are noted and predictions for their future identified in the literature, are described. Open source software is highlighted as being likely to have a growing impact on the ILMS of the future, after an initial resistance to this from vendors. The paper concludes that the growth of Web services may enable a new approach to the procurement of library management systems.

Current drivers in higher education have led to the questioning of traditional placement support methods. Within many programmes, students undertaking practice-based learning experience structured, one-to-one support from an academic in the placement location. With the financial and environmental implications of this practice, the potential for using video-based communications as a replacement for face-to-face dialogue was explored. The paper aims to discuss the above issues.

Three phases of an action research cycle were undertaken; working with students to explore the logistics of implementation, fitness for purpose of the medium and fundamental differences between video and face-to-face dialogue.

The results from the three phases demonstrated the complexity of video-based communications for placement support. In conclusion, widespread implementation of this medium requires greater consideration and understanding of a wide range of theoretical stand points, and an emphasis on the principles of individualised learning. However, the tensions between individual learning need and mass-delivered curriculum are recognised.

Requests for practical guidance on the implementation of this technology in this context, have directed the development of guidelines underpinned by the findings from this study. Whilst undertaken primarily within physiotherapy, placement-based learning is common to a wide range of subjects. In addition, with increases in international student numbers, support from a distance may necessitate the use of video-based communications. The developed guidelines are not prescriptive, but aim to provide a starting point for both the uninitiated and those moving from personal use of technology to application in academia.