Search results

Highlights some of the things that can be done to ensure that organizations embed diversity and inclusion.

Considers the need for effective engagement, the importance of performance indicators for diversity and inclusion and the key role of sharing stories. Discusses, too, how critical race theory could help to bring about improvements.

Advances the view that a transformational process that supports employees with the knowledge and sustainable skills needed to improve business performance via ethical means will form a significant part of future-proofing organizations.

Argues that, to achieve this organizations have to drive home the message that diversity and inclusion are everyone’s business.

Advances the view that a unified approach to diversity and inclusion, which is embedded in the business ethics of the organization, can have a sustainable positive impact on the health and well-being of individuals, business and society.

Considers diversity and inclusion from diverse perspectives and draws conclusions that can help organizations to perform better in these areas.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of one particular online discussion forum as a potentially authoritative health information source for its users. The concept of cognitive authority is used as a starting point for understanding information evaluation in this context. The focus is placed on the types of information users seek for from this forum, the ways they assess the credibility of information obtained, and their views on the impact of this information.

The empirical data were collected with a questionnaire survey from the users of a Finnish online forum for girls and young women (n=290). The data were analyzed qualitatively with content analytic techniques and quantitatively by using descriptive analysis.

The forum was found to offer girls and young women the possibility to receive health information from peers. It was viewed as an appropriate source for experiential rather than factual health information and used to find information on sexuality, bodily functions and diets, for example. Author-related cues, argumentation and tone, veracity and verification were recognized as means to evaluate information credibility. Credibility evaluation was found to be linked with conceptions of the forum and the type of information sought. A share of the respondents recognized the information obtained to have influence on their thinking or behavior.

Based on the findings, it can be argued that the members of the online forum – individually or collectively – can act as cognitive authorities for other users. The findings cannot be generalized beyond this online forum, to Finnish girls or young women, or even the users of the online forum. However, they provide insights into the ways young people evaluate user-generated information in a particular online setting and domain of knowledge and as such contribute to research on cognitive authority, credibility evaluation and information literacy.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse empirical studies regarding the use of digital talking books (Digital Accessible Information System (DAISY) books) as well as the possibilities and limitations that users with print disabilities encounter when using these books. Upon fulfilment of this purpose, it is also possible to identify research needs in the area of talking books.

An analysis of 12 empirical studies concerning the use of DAISY books is conducted. The concept of affordances is employed in the analysis, which focuses on: users of talking books, talking books as objects, and the social settings in which talking books are used.

First, the reviewed literature indicates that the navigational features of the DAISY talking book appear to provide unprecedented affordances in terms of the users’ approaches to reading. However, the affordances of talking books depend, to some extent, on whether the users have visual impairments or dyslexia/reading and writing difficulties. Second, the reviewed literature illustrates that the affordances provided by talking books depend on the settings in which they are used, both in terms of specific social situations and wider socio-political contexts.

Although the need for assistive reading technologies, such as digital talking books, is large, research in this area is scarce, particularly from a user perspective. This paper describes the results of those studies which have actually been conducted on this topic and highlights areas that require further study.

The aim of the paper is to create a greater understanding of how people who are blind or vision impaired describe their use of audio-based reading technologies, with a particular focus on how they reason about whether the use of these technologies can be understood in terms of reading.

The study is part of the emerging research area Critical Studies of Reading and draws theoretical inspiration from Document Theory, New Literacy Studies and Critical Disability Studies. The article presents a discourse analysis of how 16 university students in Australia who are blind or vision impaired and use audio-based reading technologies describe this use in semi-structured interviews.

The participants relate to a division between ‘real' reading and reading by listening, where the latter is constructed as an exception and is connected to the subject position of being blind or vision impaired. However, resistance is also noticeable, where reading by listening is constructed as something that is normal, and as a right.

The article is a theoretical and empirical contribution to the ongoing discussion on the use of audio-based reading technologies. It presents perspectives from the users of these technologies and argues why a specific understanding of this use is important.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a dialogically based theory of documentary practices and document work as a promising framework for studying activities that are often conceptualised as information behaviour or information practices within Library and Information Science (LIS).

An empirical example – a lesson on how to read railway timetables – is presented. The lesson stems from a research project including 223 Swedish lessons recorded in Swedish primary schools 1967-1969. It is argued that this lesson, as many empirical situations within LIS research, can fruitfully be regarded as documentary practices which include document work such as reading, rather than instances of information behaviour.

It is found that the theoretical perspective of dialogism could contribute to the theory development within LIS, and function as a bridge between different subfields such as reading studies and documentary practices.

The framework is yet to be applied on a larger scale. This would require a willingness to go beyond the entrenched idea of information as the core theoretical concept and empirical object of study within LIS.

The theoretical framework offers a view of the relations between individuals, documents, and social contexts, through which it is possible to explore the social significance of core LIS concerns such as reading, literacy, and document work.

The theoretical framework offers an alternative to the monologist, information-based theories and models of people’s behaviours and practices prevalent in LIS.

This paper aims to discuss what it means to consider the information experience of academic information management from a constructivist grounded theory perspective. Using a doctoral study in progress as a case illustration, the authors demonstrate how information experience research applies a wide lens to achieve a holistic view of information management phenomena. By unifying a range of elements, and understanding information and its management to be inseparable from the totality of human experience, an information experience perspective offers a fresh approach to answering today's research questions.

The case illustration is a constructivist grounded theory study using interactive interviews, an original form of semi-structured qualitative interviews combined with card-sorting exercises (Conrad and Tucker, 2019), to deepen reflections by participants and externalize their information experiences. The constructivist variant of grounded theory offers an inductive, exploratory approach to address the highly contextualized information experiences of student-researchers in managing academic information.

Preliminary results are reported in the form of three interpretative categories that outline the key aspects of the information experience for student-researchers. By presenting these initial results, the study demonstrates how the constructivist grounded theory methodology can illuminate multiple truths and bring a focus on interpretive practices to the understanding of information management experiences.

This new approach offers holistic insights into academic information management phenomena as contextual, fluid and informed by meaning-making and adaptive practices. Limitations include the small sample size customary to qualitative research, within one situated perspective on the academic information management experience.

The study demonstrates the theoretical and methodological contributions of the constructivist information experience research to illuminate information management in an academic setting.

This paper aims to explore the varying ways in which academic archivists in the USA experience archives, how these experiences compare to those of academic librarians and how we can use these findings to improve communication and collaboration.

Using a phenomenographic research approach, academic archivists were interviewed and the transcripts were examined to develop categories reflecting varying experiences.

There are three different ways of experiencing archives: as organizational records, as archival enterprise and as connection. The connection category is a more complex way of experiencing archives as it incorporates the aspects of the other two categories as well as the awareness of archives connecting people to their histories.

This study is limited to academic archivists in the USA.

Understanding that there are different ways of experiencing archives means that information professionals should clarify their definitions of before beginning collaborative projects. Also, by understanding these varying experiences, information professions should be able to communicate and engage more fully with each other and their users in projects and programs that leverage archival collections.

This is the first study to use phenomenography to investigate archivists’ experiences of archives. This understanding of the lived experience of archivists, combined with understanding how librarians experience archives, should enable better communication and ultimately collaboration between the two professions.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how resource recombination (RR) may be conceptualized with special reference to the competitiveness of Higher Education Institutions (HEI).

The paper consists of two main studies. Building on pertinent available literature on the subject area, a qualitative investigation was conducted with the help of a semi-structured interview guide. Findings of study one were systematically analysed against a literature derived template. Study two presents a quantitative survey investigation that follows from the codes and themes derived from study one. In study two, findings were validated and analysed with the help of structural equation modelling.

Study one findings identified a total of 64 individual themes representing resources (21 themes), business processes (29 themes) and complementary factors (14 themes), as elements of RR in HEI competitiveness. In study two, the measurement model for RR was found to contain five main factors, namely, asset, research and affiliation processes, automated technology management, financial support for HR and departmental initiatives mainstream staff rewards and retention and institutional brand image appeal.

A significant contribution is made to theory development in the area of RR. Other implications to HEI competitiveness in contribution to national development were offered.

The area of RR remains largely uncovered in strategic management. Conceptualizing RR in the context of HEI competitiveness is new and in the right direction to jumpstart interest in this area by proposing a validated measurement model of HEI.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of affordable home ownership in the light of the recent global financial crisis.

The paper draws on recent research conducted by the authors and others which included analysis of secondary data and policy documents and interviews with key stakeholders including housing associations and developers. The theoretical scope of the paper is outlined in the first section which looks at the principles behind the two main approaches to providing affordable home ownership: shared equity and shared ownership. Given continuing aspirations on the part of most households in England to become home owners, the key comparison is with the attributes of full ownership.

The paper finds that the main products share many of the attributes of full home ownership while remaining more affordable. The economic situation post‐2007 made both shared ownership and shared equity more difficult. The crisis and its aftermath also suggest that there is a need to develop a more robust and longer term market in equity sharing. This could be of real significance into the longer term, especially if the availability of mortgage finance remains constrained for many years to come. The paper concludes that in the longer term, developing a range of partial tenures which provide most of the benefits of owner‐occupation but which reduce risks to individual households and improve affordability in the early years is a desirable strategy.

There are clear implications for policy makers in other countries, notably the benefits from developing an intermediate tenure market which includes institutional equity and risk taking rather than continued large‐scale reliance on debt finance.

Given stated governmental ambitions to meet housing aspirations, this paper clarifies how it is possible to meet an identified need for affordable home ownership products to fill the growing “gap” between first‐time buyers who can purchase with parental help and those who have no means of achieving home ownership, even though they have the income to support such a choice.

New ways of perpetrating relational aggression have been facilitated by the increased availability and adoption of technology for communication, resulting in growing cyberaggression rates over the past few decades. Few studies have examined whether perpetrators of cyberaggression are more likely to target friends or romantic partners (or both) and whether this differs across the gender of the perpetrator. This is the key focus of the current study.

Participants completed an online survey which assessed three types of cyberaggression (threatened to share secrets, shared secrets and posted embarrassing pictures) against friends and then also against romantic partners. The sample included 678 undergraduate university students who were in a romantic relationship at the time of the survey (72.6% female and 27.4% male, age range 18–50 years, average 21.7 and SD = 4.5).

The results of this study showed that a significantly higher proportion of males than females perpetrated cyberaggression against friends and romantic partners. In addition, a significantly higher proportion of males engaged in “general” cyberaggression (targeting both friends and romantic partners), whilst a higher proportion of females engaged in “selective” cyberaggression (targeting either friends or romantic partners).

Collectively, this study tells us that whilst there has been wide examination of cyberaggression more broadly, very few studies explore who perpetrators target (i.e. the victim–offender relationship), especially across gender of the perpetrator. The current study is original in that it asks perpetrators to report who they target and then examines gender differences in perpetration rates across victim–offender relationships.