Search results
1 – 10 of over 1000Cosette M. Joyner Armstrong, Gwendolyn Hustvedt, Melody L.A. LeHew, Barbara G. Anderson and Kim Y. Hiller Connell
The purpose of this project is to provide an account of the student experience at a higher education institution known for its holistic approach to sustainability education.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this project is to provide an account of the student experience at a higher education institution known for its holistic approach to sustainability education.
Design/methodology/approach
A qualitative study was conducted at Green Mountain College (GMC), an environmental liberal arts school in Poultney, VT; 55 students participated in focus group interviews.
Findings
Students articulate that the most valuable gains that manifest at GMA are a variety of new capacities for science literacy, anthropological appreciation, the triple bottom line, a sense of place, systems, empathic decision-making and reasoning, interdisciplinary collaboration, and practical techniques supporting self-sufficiency. Prompting these emergent outcomes was a philosophy of practice at Green Mountain College, which included place-based techniques, empowerment, personalization, community ecology and charting polarity. Many students described their seeming metamorphosis as uncomfortable, and some felt isolated from the outside paradigm.
Research limitations/implications
A key implication of the study’s findings is that in a holistic setting, the line between the informal and formal curriculum are significantly blurred and what is implicitly communicated through university practices and values is what most transforms the students’ explicit understanding of sustainability.
Practical implications
Sustainability education is far more than technique, far more than what a lone instructor can manifest in students. While the persistence of individual faculty members is important, this evidence suggests that the fertile conditions for transformation may be more fruitful when faculty members work together with a collective sense of responsibility and a well-articulated paradigm.
Originality/value
The advantage of the present study is that it examines the perceived impact of a focus on sustainability across curricula and school by considering the educational environment as a whole. The experiences of students from many different majors who are involved in a holistic, sustainability-infused curriculum at a university with a history of successful post-graduation job placements in the sustainability field are explored here.
Details
Keywords
This study provides a comprehensive framework of adaptation in triadic business relationship settings in the service sector. The framework is based on the industrial network…
Abstract
This study provides a comprehensive framework of adaptation in triadic business relationship settings in the service sector. The framework is based on the industrial network approach (see, e.g., Axelsson & Easton, 1992; Håkansson & Snehota, 1995a). The study describes how adaptations initiate, how they progress, and what the outcomes of these adaptations are. Furthermore, the framework takes into account how adaptations spread in triadic relationship settings. The empirical context is corporate travel management, which is a chain of activities where an industrial enterprise, and its preferred travel agency and service supplier partners combine their resources. The scientific philosophy, on which the knowledge creation is based, is realist ontology. Epistemologically, the study relies on constructionist processes and interpretation. Case studies with in-depth interviews are the main source of data.
Details
Keywords
Matthew Egan and Barbara de Lima Voss
Big 4 professional services firms increasingly lay claim to recruiting and including staff of diverse genders, cultures, ages and sexualities. Drawing on Foucauldian insights…
Abstract
Purpose
Big 4 professional services firms increasingly lay claim to recruiting and including staff of diverse genders, cultures, ages and sexualities. Drawing on Foucauldian insights, this study explores how LGBTIQ+ staff navigated shifting technologies of client power, at the time marriage equality was legislated in Australia.
Design/methodology/approach
This article explores changing experiences of LGBTIQ+ staff and allies, through 56 semi-structured interviews undertaken through 2018–2019.
Findings
Technologies of client power were central to shaping workplace experiences for LGBTIQ+ staff. However, each firm was also keen to carve unique and bold responses to changing societal attitudes regarding sexuality and gender. These progressive moves did not sit comfortably with all clients, and so this article provides insight into the limitations of client privilege within professional services firms. For staff, this increasing complexity of sometimes opaque, contradictory and shifting technologies of client and firm power, enabled agency to explore a sense of self for some, but continued to exclude others.
Originality/value
Little attention has been directed to exploring challenges for staff of sexual and gendered diversity within professional services firms, or to exploring how staff navigate changing perceptions of client power.
Details
Keywords
Barrie O. Pettman and Richard Dobbins
This issue is a selected bibliography covering the subject of leadership.
Abstract
This issue is a selected bibliography covering the subject of leadership.
Details
Keywords
The purpose of this paper is to explore four women principals’ experiences with power in the course of their daily leadership. The data used in this exploration was collected…
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to explore four women principals’ experiences with power in the course of their daily leadership. The data used in this exploration was collected through in‐depth interviews, conducted from a phenomenological perspective, during the second and third years of a three‐year study on the leadership experiences of the four principals. The thematic findings which emerged from this data included empowerment, positive power, traditional power and negative power, and are discussed in relation to three lenses of power: dominance or “power over”, facilitation or “power through”, and as energy and competence or “power with”. The four principals’ experiences were remarkable in that they were extensively engaged in interpreting, experiencing and using power as “power through” and “power with” rather than as “power over”. The findings from this research serve as examples of ways in which power is enacted by women leaders within traditional organizational settings, and the potential of their actions to positively transform school organizations and the experiences of those who work within them.
Details
Keywords
Anthony Osuna, Daina Tagavi, Katie Sabini and Ty Vernon
The purpose of this paper is to describe the development and pilot of a novel program to support autistic adults with social media use. Social media use among autistic adults has…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to describe the development and pilot of a novel program to support autistic adults with social media use. Social media use among autistic adults has been associated with increased happiness and closer friendships. However, autistic adults are at risk of social media challenges such as cyber-victimization. To date, no programs exist that specifically support autistic adults with safe and effective social media use. The primary aim of this study was to develop and pilot test a novel social media skills program for feasibility and acceptability. A secondary aim was to explore changes in Facebook activity as a proxy for online social engagement.
Design/methodology/approach
The socialization, education and learning for the internet (SELFI) program was developed by identifying relevant target skills, goals, considerations and evidence-based strategies to help autistic adults with online social communication. The developed SELFI program was then pilot tested with six autistic male young adults to explore initial feasibility (fidelity of delivery, attendance) and acceptability (attrition, enjoyment and programmatic feedback). Facebook data were collected to explore differences in the frequency of likes/reactions, comments and posts after completion of the program.
Findings
Each participant completed all procedures and attended every session. There was no attrition from the program. The average fidelity score for recorded sessions was 85.1%. Most participants endorsed agreement with program enjoyment and that it helped them maintain current relationships. Participant feedback provided valuable information regarding areas of strength and areas that needed improvement. Each participant who completed the study demonstrated increased Facebook engagement across likes/reactions, comments and posts.
Research limitations/implications
Limitations include a small all-male sample, exclusion of adults with intellectual disabilities and adolescents and dependence on Facebook data. Additionally, the developed program did not incorporate feedback from relevant stakeholders, including autistic adults.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first studies to explore support for autistic adults specifically related to social media use.
Details
Keywords
Tiziana Laureti, Michela Piccarozzi and Barbara Aquilani
The purpose of this paper is to study the real role of historical satisfaction (HSat), i.e., satisfaction only deriving from past experiences, excluding the most recent, in B2C…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to study the real role of historical satisfaction (HSat), i.e., satisfaction only deriving from past experiences, excluding the most recent, in B2C service contexts when services are experienced offline, while the actual services are purchased online through the service providers’ website.
Design/methodology/approach
The proposed conceptual framework was tested by focusing on a particular travel industry firm which is responsible for providing travel services as well as managing the website where these services are purchased. The study population included customers who had purchased at least two travel tickets during the last 12 months online. In order to reduce possible self-selection bias and to improve the generalizability of the web survey findings, post-stratification was applied. The measurement model was evaluated by using confirmatory factor analyses. The direct and indirect effects of HSat on encounter overall satisfaction (EOS) were analyzed using structural equation modeling.
Findings
The direct effect of HSat on EOS was observed to be higher than its indirect effect through offline service dimensions and website dimensions. It was also observed that offline service dimensions have a direct impact on EOS, while they do not have an indirect impact since the website dimensions do not have a direct effect on EOS.
Research limitations/implications
Historical satisfaction is really important in building EOS for services purchased previously online but experienced offline.
Practical implications
The results could provide managers with useful tools for allocating resources and also build an even higher level of EOS. They also shed light on how HSat molds offline service perception for services sold online.
Originality/value
To the authors’s knowledge, only one empirical paper focused on “historical satisfaction,” while no studies have taken into consideration the fact that service offline dimensions and e-customer satisfaction could be indirectly linked by website quality dimensions, the issue studied in this paper.
Details
Keywords
Girma T. Kassie, Rahel Solomon Wubie, Simla Tokgoz, Fahd Majeed, Mulugeta Yitayih and Barbara Rischkowsky
The purpose of this paper is to identify sources and quantifying distortions to agricultural incentives to produce along the small ruminant value chains in Ethiopia.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to identify sources and quantifying distortions to agricultural incentives to produce along the small ruminant value chains in Ethiopia.
Design/methodology/approach
National and district level average nominal rate of protection (NRPs) were computed for a five-year period (2010–2015). The authors developed four scenarios based on combinations of the different data generation processes employed in relation to each of the key variables.
Findings
The NRPs at farm gate and retail market for both sheep and goats are negative indicating a strong deviation of producer and retailer prices from the comparable export prices over the five-year period. Policy induced distortions were separated from market inefficiencies through use of data on access costs throughout the value chain. These access costs are positive and significant in value. It is clear that market inefficiencies are also due to government policy to a certain extent.
Research limitations/implications
This study focuses only on sheep and goat value chains and covers only five-year period. This certainly limits the extrapolability of the results.
Originality/value
This study presents the extent to which smallholder livestock keepers are discouraged through disincentives in a unique context. This is the first study done on small ruminant value chains in the developing world.
Details