Search results

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the growing body of research into virtual teams by using empirical data to validate existing theory. It analyses a project in the travel and tourism industry to determine the key elements that contributed to a successful outcome.

An ethnographic approach is used in this case of a multi‐national, multi‐organisational virtual project tasked with market validation of an ontology management system. Participant observation is supported by a range of primary and secondary data.

The importance of key factors changes over the time of the project. The early emphasis on constructs relating to technology and purpose moves towards those related to people as the project matured. The caretaker/gatekeeper role of the project leader made a significant contribution to overcoming problems of complexity. A lack of commitment to a range of information technologies heightened the reliance on periodic face‐to‐face meetings to support team interactions.

Cultural diversity is common in the travel sector and related issues may play a more significant role in other industries. Further research is needed to fully assess the impact of context on virtual team outcomes.

Recommendations for practitioners include the need to establish a framework of rules and identify training needs. A socialising period, virtual or face‐to‐face, is an essential requirement for successful virtual teamwork.

A conceptual framework, drawn from previous studies, adds clarity to the importance and relevance of the constructs of people, purpose and technology in virtual teamwork.

Examines the meanings of television programs for actor/police officers who acted in “reality TV” programs. Police engage in “legitimation work” to enhance public relations and achieve favorable publicity. The media is increasingly prominent in areas where previously it was unseen. Presents results of a questionnaire in which police actors give mixed reactions to the usefulness of infotainment. Concludes that police participation in the production of infotainment subverts the goal of promoting “realistic” public expectations of police work.

The mechanical properties of carbon and graphite as structural materials have been improved considerably since the 1940s, and graphite equipment is widely used in chemical and other plant. Here is part of a talk given at the recent British industrial exhibition in Moscow by Dennis Hills, sales director of Powell Duffryn Chemical Engineering Ltd., who have specialised in carbon/graphite equipment under the trade name Delanium.

Although a large amount of literature about the levels, aims, and relevance of integrated care is present, to realise change in practice knowledge about the implementation and development process of integrated care is also crucial. Instruments such as quality management models can facilitate improvement, but are not frequently used in integrated care practice. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to present further insight into these models and into the related literature about network and organisational development.

An overview of the recent literature is presented.

The improvement of integrated care is complex and there is no consensus about a set of relevant elements for integrated care. Available quality management models vary in their underlying evidence and do not have integrated care as their central focus or are aimed at specific patient groups such as the chronically ill. The lack of a consistent set of elements and the need for a generic, evidence‐based quality management model for integrated care is important for integrated care improvement. It can be assumed that, as described in the literature about networks and organisations, dynamic stages or phases could be relevant for integrated care. These issues raise important next questions for further research and for facilitating organisational change.

The paper presents a current overview of the available literature about the concept of integrated care, with a special focus on integrated care improvement and its dynamics. It raises the relevant questions and challenges for the further expansion of knowledge about these topics, which will be addressed in a second article in a later issue of Journal of Integrated Care.

This paper aims to provide an account of learning and change in the redesign of a primary health-care initiative in a large metropolitan city in Australia.

The paper is based on research exploring the place and role of learning in the re-making of health professional practices in a major New South Wales Government health reform called HealthOne. The analysis and findings presented here make reference to data drawn from a longitudinal ethnographic study (2011-2014) conducted by an inter-disciplinary team of researchers from the University of Technology Sydney. Socio-material and practice-based approaches for understanding learning are used in working with the data.

There were substantial changes in professional practice, especially in the role of the General Practice Liaison Nurse. Changes, and the learning connected to the changes, were dynamically influenced by the macro-context. HealthOne was a reform initiative with a strong focus on achieving health service redesign and a consistent focus on staff developing new ways of thinking and operating. Although learning was often discussed, it was, for the most part, expressed in general terms, and there was a lack of a formal and well-developed approach to learning collectively and individually.

This research paper will inform future attempts at service redesign in community and primary health contexts and provides a site-specific examination of workplace learning in a context of rapid change.

While family firms constitute a highly important component of most countries' economies, and in many countries a sizable portion of these family businesses are owned and managed by women, there has been minimal study of gender issues in family business ownership and management. The purpose of this paper is to fill this gap.

The research design was self‐reported survey research, which is the most commonly used methodology in family business research and for small business and entrepreneurship quantitative research.

In contrast to early (pre‐1980) gender comparisons in management and entrepreneurship, and in support of the majority of more recent studies, this investigation found no significant relationships between the gender of family business owner‐managers and ten management characteristic variables in a sample of 593 family businesses in six countries.

These findings add to the limited and currently inconclusive body of knowledge regarding gender issues specifically in family business, and more generally in entrepreneurship and management.

Social procurement policies are an emerging policy instrument being used by governments around the world to leverage infrastructure and construction spending to address intractable social problems in the communities they represent. The relational nature of social procurement policies requires construction firms to develop new collaborative partnerships with organisations from the government, not-for-profit and community sectors. The aim of this paper is to address the paucity of research into the risks and opportunities of entering into these new cross-sector partnerships from the perspectives of the stakeholders involved and how this affects collaborative potential and social value outcomes for intended beneficiaries.

This case study research is based on a unique collaborative intermediary called Connectivity Centre created by an international contractor to coordinate its social procurement strategies. The findings draw on a thematic analysis of qualitative data from focus groups with 35 stakeholders from the construction, government, not-for-profit, social enterprise, education and employment sectors.

Findings indicate that potentially enormous opportunities which social procurement offers are being undermined by stakeholder nervousness about policy design, stability and implementation, poor risk management, information asymmetries, perverse incentives, candidate supply constraints, scepticism, traditional recruitment practices and industry capacity constraints. While these risks can be mitigated through collaborative initiatives like Connectivity Centres, this depends on new “relational” skills, knowledge and competencies which do not currently exist in construction. In conclusion, when social procurement policy requirements are excessive and imposed top-down, with little understanding of the construction industry's compliance capacity, intended social outcomes of these policies are unlikely to be achieved.

This research draws on theories of cross-sector collaboration developed in the realm of public sector management to address the lack of research into how the new cross-sector partnerships encouraged by emerging social procurement policies work in the construction industry. Contributing to the emerging literature on cross-sector collaboration, the findings expose the many challenges of working in cross-sector partnerships in highly transitionary project-based environments like construction.

This paper aims to make sense of the social enterprise in a frame of social procurement and conceptualise it as a provider of public welfare based on bibliometric material. Comprehensively, it contributes to developments in social procurement, which has received limited attention.

Scoping literature from Web of Science and using bibliometric methods, the paper identifies and qualitatively explores the literary intersections between social enterprise and social procurement.

Of the 183 articles, four literary clusters are revealed illustrating scholarly intersections and a detailed exploration of social enterprise as a public provider. The alignment and themes of the clusters further indicate the application of, and role played by, social enterprise in social procurement. Collectively, they reveal the dominance of social enterprise in this dyadic relationship and a minor undertaking of research in social procurement.

This “sense-making” groundwork forms a foundational step in developing our understanding of procurements through social enterprises. Furthermore, a positioning and conceptualisation of social enterprise accredits their utility and applicability in delivering public benefits. In this way, the paper informs and supports scholarly and practice-based interest into social enterprises for the delivery of public services.

The paper presents the first bibliometric conceptualisation of social enterprise in relation to social procurement and offers detailed insights through the bibliometric clusters. Furthermore, the paper contributes to the underdeveloped social dimension of procurement and bridges the gap between two distinct fields of scholarship: public management and administration and social entrepreneurship.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the potential influence of virtual team size on team performance by examining group processes in the context of information technology (IT) service provisioning. This paper proposes a theoretical model of the relationships and presents an empirical study to verify the model.

Utilizing a survey questionnaire as the data collection instrument, this study focuses on IT service provisioning professionals who are actively engaged in virtual work contexts to test the relationships proposed by the theoretical model. A consistent version of the partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) approach is used to assess the proposed hypotheses.

Although the statistical analyses did not provide support for the hypothesized effects of team size on virtual team performance, the results provide novel insights that may help teams overcome the functioning challenges that they face, as reported in the previous literature on virtual team size. In addition, the results highlight the importance of specific group processes for obtaining superior team performance.

Currently, virtual teams are a reality in several organizations, especially in the IT service provisioning industry. However, despite its importance, the literature suggests that virtual team size has not yet been fully explored as a possible means of enhancing group collaboration in such contexts. This paper attempts to provide an empirical contribution to this field using the latest developments in PLS-SEM.

Governments worldwide seek to optimize value in public project bids. Social procurement (SP) has become a global tool for achieving project goals. The purpose of this study is to assess the understanding of SP among contractors and identify its drivers to optimize the value associated with public projects.

A total of 15 major contractors were interviewed to obtain their views on SP, appreciate their current practices and identify the main drivers of SP in projects. A semistructured interview was used to gather relevant data. Neo-institutional theory is the lens of the study used to provide the focus of the research. The collected data were analyzed using the thematic data analysis technique.

The study found that SP is understood as corporate social responsibility and is not handled in a structured manner guided by policies or clearly defined procedures. Additionally, research has shown that compliance requirements, rather than value and goodwill, are the main inspiration for SP practices.

The study’s limitation is the fact that it was conducted in the context of Botswana and only used the interview technique as the solo data collection method. The other limitation is the lack of empirical literature on SP concerning the lack of SP policy in Botswana.

This study raises awareness of the concept of SP among contractors in Botswana and eases its implementation within the industry.