Search results

The article reports on a study which aimed to examine to what extent students’ academic performance is affected by their part‐time, term‐time employment and to explore individual perceptions of the phenomenon using both qualitative and quantitative research methods. The study was conducted during the academic year 1999/2000 and involved full‐time undergraduates from the BA in Business Studies programme at the University of Brighton. A total of 12 semi‐structured individual interviews were conducted and a quantitative dimension was included to provide a more objective picture to the student perceptions. The key findings are discussed under the following headings: issues for the students; issues for the academic staff; issues for employers; issues for the institution.

Increasing numbers of full‐time undergraduates are supplementing their income by seeking paid employment during term‐time. This article presents some preliminary findings from a research project which explores to what extent academic progress is affected by the part‐time, term‐time paid employment of full‐time undergraduates. It begins by considering changes made to the student funding mechanism over the past few decades and briefly contextualises the study in relation to other relevant studies. It then presents the initial findings of the study and discusses these in the light of the implications raised for: students; the institution; academic staff; employers.

A revolutionary computer system using a system of colour coding to give information about production in a garment factory is described. Colour‐backing of items indicates: late, becoming late, on time and progress, materials not yet available. These relate to customer, product, promised delivery date, quantity ordered and completed. It is efficient in use.

There is a paradox in the normative foundations for chronic and intertemporal poverty measurement. Measures that reflect particular aversion to chronicity of poverty cannot also reflect particular aversion to fluctuations in the level of poverty when poverty is intense, yet good arguments are made in favour of each of these properties. I argue that the paradox may be explained if the poverty analyst implicitly predicts that an individual observed to experience persistent poverty will continue to experience poverty when unobserved. The paradox may then be resolved by separating the normative exercise of evaluation, applying a measure that reflects particular aversion to fluctuations, from a positive exercise of modelling and prediction. This proposal is illustrated by application to panel data from rural Ethiopia, covering the period 1994–2004. Several dynamic models are estimated, and a simple model with household-specific trends is found to give the best predictions of future wellbeing levels. Appropriately normalised measures of intertemporal poverty are applied to the predicted and observed trajectories of wellbeing, and results are found to differ substantially from naïve application of the measures to observed periods only. While similar results are obtained by naïve application of the measures that embody particular aversion to chronicity, separation of the normative and positive exercises maintains conceptual clarity.

This paper aims to explore how the lived experience of online communities’ participants makes these communities evolve into online communities of practice (CoPs).

A quantitative research design was used among backpackers. Data on backpackers’ lived experience and interactions were collected.

The results suggest a process of how online communities can become genuine online CoPs, thanks to participants’ lived experience. Their activities (information search, perceived benefits and electronic word-of-mouth) result in knowledge sharing and creation. The findings also emphasize the roles of expertise and offline interactions as process moderators.

This study focuses on one specific practice to conduct the research (i.e. backpacking), which limits the generalizability of the results.

This study offers several implications for companies and stakeholders. First, it describes how the lived experience transforms online communities into CoPs and helps stakeholders obtain knowledge for customers to innovate. Second, it analyzes the processes of participation, interaction and promotion to share and create knowledge for customers to increase stakeholders’ competitiveness. Third, this study integrates members’ offline interactions by highlighting their potential effects on tacit knowledge loss in online CoPs.

The literature posits that online communities may evolve into online CoPs through a three-stage hierarchical path, but the underlying mechanisms and members’ contributions to the process have been largely neglected in the literature.

This paper is based on research into the conduct of PhD vivas, whose aim was to investigate how this examination is experienced by successful candidates, and specifically to address a question raised by previous researchers: Why does a successful viva outcome nevertheless leave some candidates feeling negative about their experience? The focus in this paper is on the language – particularly the figurative language – which successful candidates use to describe their oral examination. It explores the fact that those who reported feeling a sense of achievement were found to employ metaphors and similes of sporting competitions or debate, while candidates who report feeling negative, despite their success, employ imagery relating to imprisonment and interrogation. It goes on to argue that neither of these conceptual models is appropriate for the examination of higher degrees, and that such discrepancy may arise from the way some examiners interpret their role.