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1 – 10 of 71Sandra Vaiciulyte, Helen Underhill and Elizabeth Reddy
Fires have the potential to destroy, resulting in the loss of property and livelihoods, as well as injury, death and repeated trauma for those who are already vulnerable. However…
Abstract
Purpose
Fires have the potential to destroy, resulting in the loss of property and livelihoods, as well as injury, death and repeated trauma for those who are already vulnerable. However, fire as a hazard has been treated rigidly and un-critically, a model that has influenced how it is perceived by policy makers, first responders, engineers and academics and subsequently approaches to implementing and better understanding fire prevention, mitigation, response and recovery from the impacts of fire.
Design/methodology/approach
This article deals with fire, arguing that its case can help imagine what liberation might mean within and for disaster studies. The study argues against dogmatic, outdated, technological and solution-focused perspectives that have constrained how fire and its effects are understood and discuss what disciplinary liberation could mean for the study of fire and its integration within DRR. The study’s approach is based on the DRR Assemblage Theory, which points to fire as an issue at a societal level.
Findings
The study explores the themes of fire and liberation through contributions and insights that have emerged through the authors' professional experience in research and practice. It offers an original and timely engagement with disaster studies through the lens of fire, an increasingly pertinent phenomenon for disaster scholars and practitioners alike.
Originality/value
By drawing on the example of fire as a socio-technical-environmental phenomenon, this paper contributes a novel perspective on the intellectual and practical possibilities that can emerge from disciplinary liberation.
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Ngxito Bonisile, Kahilu Kajimo-Shakantu and Akintayo Opawole
Anecdotal evidence indicates that there is a backlog in the pre-tertiary school infrastructure in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. The purpose of this paper is to assess…
Abstract
Purpose
Anecdotal evidence indicates that there is a backlog in the pre-tertiary school infrastructure in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. The purpose of this paper is to assess the adoption of alternative building technologies (ABT) for pre-tertiary educational infrastructure delivery with a view to providing empirical evidence that could guide policy responses towards its wider adoption.
Design/methodology/approach
The study adopted a mixed methodology approach. This comprises a triangulation of a questionnaire survey and interviews. In total, 100 participants were randomly selected from 182 built environment professionals namely quantity surveyors, architects and engineers (electrical, mechanical, civil and structural) from the Department of Roads and Public Works (DRPW), who are currently involved in the Eastern Cape School Building Program (ECSBP). The questionnaire survey was supplemented by semi-structured interviews conducted with four top government officials (three from the Department of Education (DoE) and one from DRPW) who were also part of the questionnaire survey. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics and phenomenological interpretation respectively.
Findings
The key findings showed that the level of adoption of ABT for pre-tertiary school infrastructure in the Eastern Cape province is primarily influenced and explained by perceptions that ABT offers inferior quality products compared to the conventional method, and limited awareness of its benefits.
Research limitations/implications
The study provides useful insights into the implications of the limited awareness of ABT as a an alternative technology for educational infrastructure delivery and policy responses towards its wider adoption and environmental sustainability.
Originality/value
Empirical evidence from this study indicates that the main motivation for the adoption of ABT is the limited government’s budget to cope with school infrastructural backlog, while environmental sustainability benefit is only secondary. Nonetheless, the realization that the backlogs in the provision of school infrastructure has resulted from sole reliance on the use of the conventional method is an indication of the potential that the adoption of ABT holds for minimizing of the backlog.
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Helen Frances Harrison, Elizabeth Anne Kinsella, Stephen Loftus, Sandra DeLuca, Gregory McGovern, Isabelle Belanger and Tristan Eugenio
This study aims to investigate student mentors' perceptions of peer mentor relationships in a health professions education program.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate student mentors' perceptions of peer mentor relationships in a health professions education program.
Design/methodology/approach
The design uses embodied hermeneutic phenomenology. The data comprise 10 participant interviews and visual “body maps” produced in response to guided questions.
Findings
The findings about student mentors' perceptions of peer mentor relationships include a core theme of nurturing a trusting learning community and five related themes of attunement to mentees, commonality of experiences, friends with boundaries, reciprocity in learning and varied learning spaces.
Originality/value
The study contributes original insights by highlighting complexity, shifting boundaries, liminality, embodied social understanding and trusting intersubjective relations as key considerations in student peer mentor relationships.
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K. Srinivasa Reddy, Rajat Agrawal and Vinay Kumar Nangia
International business – sell-off and joint venture.
Abstract
Subject area
International business – sell-off and joint venture.
Study level/applicability
This case is suitable for graduation and post graduation (BBA, MBA) and other management programs. The courses include multinational business environment and strategic management
Case overview
A significant increase in the Asian electronics business has created a global platform for international vendors and customers. Indeed, Chinese and Korean firms have become the foremost manufacturing and fabrication nucleus for electronic supplies in the world economy. In fact, it is an example of success from Asian emerging markets. This case presents the strategies of Asian rivals in the electronics business that shows both Bolipps and Canssonic redesigning and restructuring global tactics for long-term sustainable success in the given market. It also discusses the reasons behind their current mode of business and post-deal issues.
Expected learning outcomes
The case describes a way to impart managerial and leadership strategies from regular business operations happening in and around the world. Solely it focuses on designing inorganic choices such as sell-offs, joint ventures, shuffle and merging strategies through theory to application.
Supplementary materials
Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.
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Elizabeth Anne Weigle and Laura McAndrews
The purpose of this paper is to investigate Generation Z's physical expectations of being pregnant and their outlook for maternity wear shopping.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate Generation Z's physical expectations of being pregnant and their outlook for maternity wear shopping.
Design/methodology/approach
Females in this cohort (n = 207) participated in an online survey that included questions about perceptions of pregnancy, physical self-concept and forecasted shopping behaviors.
Findings
Results indicated that this group is concerned with physical changes of pregnancy and expect to treat each area of the body in a different way. Women's expected physical concerns of pregnancy predict how much they anticipate accentuating their pregnant body. Gen Z anticipates wearing loose maternity garments and they envision a thoughtful, in-store shopping experience for styles that are equally fashionable and comfortable, such as dresses.
Research limitations/implications
This study should be extended to future generational cohorts like Generation Alpha, along with Gen Z outside of the United States and women in the United States who are non-white. Further studies should take a longitudinal approach to gauge changes in this cohort's expectations as they progress through pregnancy.
Practical implications
This paper provides maternity wear retail brands and designers a foundation for product development and marketing geared toward this large cohort.
Originality/value
The study is the first to inquire about Gen Z's outlook on pregnancy, specifically their envisioned changes to each body area and the role of maternity garments to fulfill needs and concerns.
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Benjamin Chesluk, Elizabeth Bernabeo, Siddharta Reddy, Lorna Lynn, Brian Hess, Thor Odhner and Eric Holmboe
– The purpose of this paper is to document everyday practices by which hospitalist physicians negotiate barriers to effective teamwork.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to document everyday practices by which hospitalist physicians negotiate barriers to effective teamwork.
Design/methodology/approach
Ethnographic observation with a sample of hospitalists chosen to represent a range of hospital and practice types.
Findings
Hospitals rely on effective, interprofessional teamwork but typically do not support it. Hospitalist physicians must bridge the internal boundaries within their hospitals to coordinate their patients’ care, but they face challenges – scattered patients, fragmented information, uncoordinated teams, and unreliable processes – that can impact the timeliness and safety of care. Hospitalists largely rely on personal presence and memory to deal with these challenges. Some invent low-tech supports for teamwork, but these are typically neither tested nor shared with others. Formal support for teamwork, primarily case management rounds, is applied unevenly and may not be respected by all team members.
Research limitations/implications
The findings are drawn from observation over a limited period of time with a small, purposefully chosen sample of physicians and hospitals.
Practical implications
Hospitals must recognize the issues hospitalists and other providers face, evaluate and disseminate supports for teamwork, and make interprofessional teamwork a core feature of hospital design and evaluation.
Originality/value
The authors show the nuances of how hospitalists struggle to practice teamwork in a challenging context, and how the approaches they take (relying on memory and personal presence) do not address, and may actually contribute to, the system-level problems they face.
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Glenda Ogletree, Dennis W. Sunal, Cynthia Szymanski Sunal and Keith Woodbury
In today’s world, citizens must use scientific information to make choices and knowledgeable decisions in many aspects of civic affairs involving their everyday lives. Issues…
Abstract
In today’s world, citizens must use scientific information to make choices and knowledgeable decisions in many aspects of civic affairs involving their everyday lives. Issues related to energy resources are important to everyone, because energy use and misuse affects people’s lives. Citizens must be scientifically literate, informed, and active participants in their society in order to create fair and equitable energy policies for the present and the future. To begin to establish these policies in a society that is educated and concerned about energy, it is important that teachers link social studies and science issues about energy production and consumption. Social studies and science often are interwoven in education because many social issues relate to science topics.
Bruce R. Klemz, Christo Boshoff and Noxolo‐Eileen Mazibuko
The purpose of this study is to assess differences between the guidance offered by cultural studies in the services literature and the retailing literature for emerging markets…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to assess differences between the guidance offered by cultural studies in the services literature and the retailing literature for emerging markets. To research these differences, the role that the contact person has towards South African township residents' willingness to buy is to be assessed.
Design/methodology/approach
A services quality survey of black (ethnic Xhosa) township residents was performed for two different retail types: new, small, independently owned grocery retailers located within the townships, and established, large, national chains located within the city centres. The influence of these services quality measures on willingness to buy was assessed using the partial least squares method for each of the two retail types. Differences between the model parameters for these two retail types were assessed using ANOVA.
Findings
The results show that, consistent with the retailing literature, the contact people in these new, small, local and independently owned retailers focus extensively on empathy to influence willingness to buy, while the contact people in the large, traditionally white‐owned national retailers jointly focus on assurance and responsiveness to influence willingness to buy, and spend very little effort on empathy.
Research limitations/implications
Research implications are based on the usefulness of supporting theory, namely that the guidance offered by the cultural studies in the retailing literature is more predictive than that in the services literature for the emerging South African retailing market.
Practical implications
It is found that core elements in relationship marketing are well ingrained in collectivist Xhosa cultural norms. The results suggest that these cultural norms can, and should, be leveraged by the new independently owned grocery retailers.
Originality/value
The research addresses a key concern within emerging markets and offers practical help for retail development within this dynamic economic setting.
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Raphael Papa Kweku Andoh, Elizabeth Cornelia Annan-Prah, Emmanuel Afreh Owusu and Paul Mensah Agyei
Training evaluation is an important part of training programs and evaluating the reactions of trainees is of immense value, but there are few studies on this level of evaluation…
Abstract
Purpose
Training evaluation is an important part of training programs and evaluating the reactions of trainees is of immense value, but there are few studies on this level of evaluation, as it is a neglected area of research. More so, when trainee reactions to training are poor, human resource managers together with learning and development professionals are able to improve on training programs. Nonetheless, no study has focussed on the aversions of trainees to training, and so this study aims to investigate the aversions of trainees regarding employee training.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses the exploratory research design and obtains data from trainees in an online survey using an open-ended question. Thematic text analyses of the statements of 118 respondents are performed using a two-level coding process.
Findings
A total of 15 first-level codes are identified from the texts and categorized into five second-level codes. Further analyses culminate in the identification of two broad themes; trainers’ presentation aversions and organization of training aversions.
Practical implications
Attention must be given to the aversions of trainees in the training evaluation literature. This is because of the considerable amount of information that can be generated and based on that, identify the weaknesses inherent in employee training programs and ultimately improve this critical human resource function within organizations. In attending to the trainee aversions, the least and most reported should be resolved holistically for training objectives to be achieved.
Originality/value
Trainee reaction studies are scarce in the training literature. In addition, most of the existing trainee reaction studies focus on satisfaction while using closed-ended questionnaires. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that focuses on the aversions of trainees and which uses an open-ended question.
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Krishna Reddy, Stuart Locke and Fitriya Fauzi
The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the registered charities in New Zealand have adopted the principle‐based corporate governance practices similar to those adopted by…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the registered charities in New Zealand have adopted the principle‐based corporate governance practices similar to those adopted by the publicly‐listed companies and the effect corporate governance practices have on their financial performance measured by technical efficiency, allocative efficiency and quick ratio. The paper addresses four important questions: how registered charities in New Zealand are managed and controlled; whether the funds donated to registered charities are utilised effectively; the nature of the corporate governance practiced by registered charities in New Zealand; and the nature of compliance to the Charities Act 2005.
Design/methodology/approach
Panel data for the registered charities over the period 2008‐2010 are analysed using ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and Tobit model regression. Technical efficiency, allocative efficiency and quick ratio are used as the dependent variables.
Findings
The findings indicate that there is no reporting requirement for the registered charities under the Charities Act 2005 to report detailed information regarding the board make‐up, board committees, board meetings, etc. and therefore, registered charities have not reported such information. The results show also that board gender diversity is an important corporate governance mechanism to mitigate agency problem in charitable organisations in New Zealand. However, large board size and large donors have potential to increase agency costs in charitable organisations in New Zealand.
Research limitations/implications
Caution should be exercised when interpreting and generalising the paper's results, as this study is a case study of registered charities in New Zealand and data comprised only large charities that have revenue over NZ$20 m. It should also be noted that there was a small sample size, which may have had a bearing on the results.
Practical implications
This study offers insights for policy makers and practitioners interested in adopting similar corporate governance practices within their country.
Social implications
Within New Zealand, issues relating to management and control of charitable organisations are better understood and as a consequence, development of sector‐wise standards could be initiated.
Originality/value
This research is novel as it investigates the nature of corporate governance practices relating to the registered charities in New Zealand. The availability of data provided by Charities Commission made this research possible.
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