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1 – 10 of over 43000Susan Rayment-McHugh, Dimity Adams and Nadine McKillop
Intervention for young people engaging in harmful sexual behaviour has been largely based on individual-level conceptualisations and assessment. Prevention efforts reflect this…
Abstract
Purpose
Intervention for young people engaging in harmful sexual behaviour has been largely based on individual-level conceptualisations and assessment. Prevention efforts reflect this individual-focus, relying primarily on offender management and justice responses. Risk of sexual abuse, however, is often situated outside the individual, within the broader social and physical systems in which young people are embedded. Lack of recognition for how contextual factors contribute to sexual abuse narrows the focus of prevention and intervention, overlooking the very contexts and circumstances in which this behaviour occurs. This paper aims to demonstrate the utility of contextual practice with young people who sexually harm, and implications for prevention.
Design/methodology/approach
An Australian case study is used to showcase the “why”, “what” and “how” of a contextual approach to assessment and treatment of young people who sexually harm.
Findings
Contextual approaches extend the focus of clinical practice beyond the individual to include the physical and social contexts that may contribute to risk. Adding a contextual lens broadens the approach to assessment, affording new opportunities to tailor the intervention to local contextual dynamics, and identifying new targets for primary and secondary prevention.
Originality/value
This is the first known attempt to extend understanding of contextual approaches to clinical assessment and intervention for young people who sexually harm, using a case study method. The case study showcases contextual assessment and intervention processes that challenge traditional thinking and practice in this field. Importantly, the case study also reveals new opportunities for primary and secondary prevention that emerge through this contextual clinical practice.
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Peter Hosie and Alan Nankervis
The purpose of this paper it to report the findings of an empirical study into managers’ job performance. A new measure was developed from the literature to test and establish the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper it to report the findings of an empirical study into managers’ job performance. A new measure was developed from the literature to test and establish the multidimensional structure of managers’ contextual and task performance.
Design/methodology/approach
Field ratings by executives explicitly and simultaneously measured both managers’ contextual and task performance. A cross-sectional questionnaire was administered to a variety of public and third sector managers from a range of private, public and third sector occupations residing in (Western) Australia. A purposive sample yielded a response rate of 32 percent. Factor analysis was used to determine the items that constitute executives’ perceptions of managers’ performance using downward appraisal (i.e. by the person to whom a manager reports).
Findings
The construct “managers’ job performance” was found to be multidimensional; consisting of four distinct contextual factors (Following, Persisting, Helping, Endorsing) and a further four distinct task factors (Delegating, Monitoring, Technical, Influencing).
Originality/value
Performance appraisals of managers represent new items and factors that more accurately reflect the nature of the broader roles undertaken by managers, including transformative and ethical leadership. Findings from this study assist in establishing the structure for the subsequent appraisal of managers’ contextual and task performance. Future researchers could test the applicability and replicability of this new instrument in more diverse industry contexts using confirmatory statistical analysis.
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This paper aims to serve two main purposes. In the first instance it aims to it provide an overview addressing the state‐of‐the‐art in the area of activity recognition, in…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to serve two main purposes. In the first instance it aims to it provide an overview addressing the state‐of‐the‐art in the area of activity recognition, in particular, in the area of object‐based activity recognition. This will provide the necessary material to inform relevant research communities of the latest developments in this area in addition to providing a reference for researchers and system developers who ware working towards the design and development of activity‐based context aware applications. In the second instance this paper introduces a novel approach to activity recognition based on the use of ontological modeling, representation and reasoning, aiming to consolidate and improve existing approaches in terms of scalability, applicability and easy‐of‐use.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper initially reviews the existing approaches and algorithms, which have been used for activity recognition in a number of related areas. From each of these, their strengths and weaknesses are discussed with particular emphasis being placed on the application domain of sensor enabled intelligent pervasive environments. Based on an analysis of existing solutions, the paper then proposes an integrated ontology‐based approach to activity recognition. The proposed approach adopts ontologies for modeling sensors, objects and activities, and exploits logical semantic reasoning for the purposes of activity recognition. This enables incremental progressive activity recognition at both coarse‐grained and fine‐grained levels. The approach has been considered within the realms of a real world activity recognition scenario in the context of assisted living within Smart Home environments.
Findings
Existing activity recognition methods are mainly based on probabilistic reasoning, which inherently suffer from a number of limitations such as ad hoc static models, data scarcity and scalability. Analysis of the state‐of‐the‐art has helped to identify a major gap between existing approaches and the need for novel recognition approaches posed by the emerging multimodal sensor technologies and context‐aware personalised activity‐based applications in intelligent pervasive environments. The proposed ontology based approach to activity recognition is believed to be the first of its kind, which provides an integrated framework‐based on the unified conceptual backbone, i.e. activity ontologies, addressing the lifecycle of activity recognition. The approach allows easy incorporation of domain knowledge and machine understandability, which facilitates interoperability, reusability and intelligent processing at a higher level of automation.
Originality/value
The comprehensive overview and critiques on existing work on activity recognition provide a valuable reference for researchers and system developers in related research communities. The proposed ontology‐based approach to activity recognition, in particular the recognition algorithm has been built on description logic based semantic reasoning and offers a promising alternative to traditional probabilistic methods. In addition, activities of daily living (ADL) activity ontologies in the context of smart homes have not been, to the best of one's knowledge, been produced elsewhere.
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Nima Herman Shidende, Margunn Aanestad and Faraja Igira
This paper presents a work-centred study of how information systems practices and tools become shaped by their context. The purpose of this paper is to increase the understanding…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper presents a work-centred study of how information systems practices and tools become shaped by their context. The purpose of this paper is to increase the understanding of how practices and tools co-evolve, with a specific focus on the role of context, and based on this to offer relevant design implications. The empirical motivation comes from attempts to utilize information and communication technologies (ICT) in resource-constrained settings.
Design/methodology/approach
Empirical work was conducted in primary healthcare facilities in Tanzania that offer Prevention of Mother-To-Child Transmission services. Four health facilities with different organizational and socio-economic characteristics were studied using ethnographic methods (participant observation, interviews and document analysis). The authors have employed activity theory as the theoretical framework, since it explicitly places human activity within a cultural, social and temporal (developmental) context. Specifically, the concept of mediation breakdown was used for data analysis at activity, action and operation levels.
Findings
By focussing analytically on situations of mediation breakdown in the situation of use, at both an activity, action and operation level, the authors have achieved an understanding of how information tools are being adapted to both their contextual conditions and the information needs of the community of users.
Research limitations/implications
The study illustrates the decisive role that context may play in shaping the actual usage of information technology. While the detailed findings were specific to the concrete domain, time and place, in general, an increased awareness of the role of context may lead to more robust approaches to the introduction of ICT solutions.
Originality/value
While activity theory literature offers insight on how to analyse context, the discussion is limited to the understanding of how context can be modelled into artefacts. The paper suggests that the contradiction concept is useful for studying the role of context and its impact in co-evolution of work and information tools. The study also contributes to the discourse in health information systems in developing countries by emphasizing the crucial role of the front line health workers’ own problem solving, invention and adaptation of information tools.
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Kuo-Liang Huang, Kuo-Hsiang Chen and Chun-Heng Ho
Tablets are becoming mainstream devices for digital reading. Through user experience (UX), the purpose of this paper is to identify significant differences between tablet reading…
Abstract
Purpose
Tablets are becoming mainstream devices for digital reading. Through user experience (UX), the purpose of this paper is to identify significant differences between tablet reading systems and other digital reading systems, explore potential requirements for the interactive interface, and propose design solutions so that user’ behavioral intention (BI) may be further enhanced.
Design/methodology/approach
First, the authors extracted the context of use and behavior patterns by conducting contextual inquiries; then, potential requirements were identified and design solutions were developed; last, the technology acceptance model was employed to verify research findings.
Findings
The outcome shows that the improved version of the interactive interface is significantly (p<0.05) superior to the original version in various aspects, including perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, user attitude, and BI.
Originality/value
So far, there has been no relevant research on UX concerning tablet reading systems. Therefore, this study first tried to investigate the primary difference between tablet reading systems and other digital reading systems in context of use and behavior patterns. Then, based on the foregoing discoveries, users’ motivations and perception of tablet readers were probed, and the problems with BI could be solved.
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This study assess how governments can nurture innovation activities by supporting the research of individual companies, establishing new networks for innovation activities, and by…
Abstract
Purpose
This study assess how governments can nurture innovation activities by supporting the research of individual companies, establishing new networks for innovation activities, and by contributing to the general contextual factors supporting innovative behavior.
Methodology/approach
This chapter analyzes alternative possibilities for the governance of innovation support and develops a framework to evaluate the governance of innovation support activities provided by a national innovation agency.
The framework is developed by analyzing how the governance principles in various national innovation systems have emerged when the countries have pursued low-carbon innovation strategies.
Findings
This chapter empirically shows a need to broaden the perspective on what can be expected from an adaptive innovation system, as well as the new types of arrangements facing public-private innovation collaboration.
Originality/value
This chapter explores new opportunities for the research community to further the understanding of how to apply various governance mechanisms in different contexts of innovation support especially relating to multi-level governance and co-governing.
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Abaid Ullah Zafar, Jiangnan Qiu, Mohsin Shahzad, Jie Shen, Tahseen Ahmed Bhutto and Muhammad Irfan
Considering the rapid adoption of social media among consumers and organizations, this study intends to examine the impact of online bundle promotions and contextual interactions…
Abstract
Purpose
Considering the rapid adoption of social media among consumers and organizations, this study intends to examine the impact of online bundle promotions and contextual interactions on impulse buying as consumers encounter them synchronously. Hence, a research model is proposed with the integration of perceived transaction value, perceived acquisition values, top reviews information, impulse buying tendency and emotional intelligence following the stimulus-organism-response framework, promotional framing effect, and theory of selective attention.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected from the active social media members of organization pages and selling groups by utilizing the self-administered questionnaire. This study employed the partial least squares structural equation modeling to evaluate the data of 358 individuals.
Findings
Results reveal the positive impact of targeted constructs on the urge to buy impulsively with complementary partial mediation of impulse buying tendency. Besides, emotional intelligence dissuades users' impulse buying tendencies, but unexpectedly, its moderating effect is insignificant. Further, importance-performance map analysis highlights the highest importance of impulse buying tendency and better performance of perceived transaction value for the urge to buy impulsively.
Originality/value
This research is one of the early studies to explore the influence of social media advertising and contextual social factors (e.g. bundle offers and top reviews information) on impulse buying with the moderation of emotional intelligence and mediation of impulse buying tendency. This research is imperative for scholars and managers with pertinent suggestions to arouse impulse buying.
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Considering the perceived significance of librarians and information experts as professional information seekers and information seeking educators and of the institutional setting…
Abstract
Purpose
Considering the perceived significance of librarians and information experts as professional information seekers and information seeking educators and of the institutional setting of information work, very little is known about the information practices of librarians and information professionals, their contexts and implications for libraries and their users. The aim of this study is to explore the information interactions of library professionals within and in relation to the context of the setting of the library.
Design/methodology/approach
The analysis is based on a qualitative case study of a large North European city library. Material was collected using information seeking diaries, interviews and ethnographic observation in the library space.
Findings
The information practices of librarians are contextual to the setting of the library within which the meeting of the assumptions of library users, of the use of that particular system plays a significant role. The systemic interplay of librarians, library users and other parts of the system constrains the breadth of the available information at libraries, but at the same time, keeping to a particular set of shared norms and practices of library use also facilitates the use of the system.
Research limitations/implications
The generalisability of the findings is limited by the fact that they are based on an individual case study.
Practical implications
The systemic nature of library and its reproduction in a process of structuration underlines the need to develop information services in libraries from a holistic perspective that takes into account the practical implications of the shared norms and assumptions of how a library should work.
Originality/value
There is little earlier research on the information practices of library and information professionals, particularly with specific reference to its implications for libraries and their users.
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Martina Čaić, Gaby Odekerken-Schröder and Dominik Mahr
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the potential roles for service robots (i.e. socially assistive robots) in value networks of elderly care. Taking an elderly person’s…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the potential roles for service robots (i.e. socially assistive robots) in value networks of elderly care. Taking an elderly person’s perspective, it defines robot roles according to their value co-creating/destroying potential for the elderly user (i.e. focal actor), while acknowledging consequences for a network of users around the elderly (i.e. network actors).
Design/methodology/approach
This qualitative, interpretative study employs in-depth phenomenographic interviews, supported by generative cards activities (i.e. Contextual Value Network Mapping), to elicit an elderly person’s tacit knowledge and anticipate the effects of introducing an automated actor on institutionalized value co-creation practices.
Findings
The proposed typology identifies six roles of socially assistive robots in an elderly person’s value network (enabler, intruder, ally, replacement, extended self, and deactivator) and links them to three health-supporting functions by robots: safeguarding, social contact, and cognitive support.
Research limitations/implications
Elderly people have notable expectations about the inclusion of a socially assistive robot as a new actor in their value networks. The identified robot roles inform service scholars and managers about both the value co-destruction potential that needs to be avoided through careful designs and the value co-creation potential that should be leveraged.
Originality/value
Using network-conscious phenomenographic interviews before the introduction of a novel value proposition sheds new light on the shifting value co-creation interplay among value network actors (i.e. elderly people, formal and informal caregivers). The value co-creation/destruction potential of socially assistive robots and their corresponding roles in care-based value networks offer insights for the design of meaningful robotic technology and its introduction into the existing service networks.
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