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1 – 10 of 399
Article
Publication date: 2 August 2011

Katharina Pernkopf‐Konhäusner and Julia Brandl

While it is acknowledged that societal context matters for employee expectations on training and development, the complexity of this relationship is still little explored. This…

2682

Abstract

Purpose

While it is acknowledged that societal context matters for employee expectations on training and development, the complexity of this relationship is still little explored. This paper aims to study which higher‐order principles employees of a German and Russian company use to justify their views on beneficial training and development in order to identify how evaluative repertoires differ between the two settings.

Design/methodology/approach

Building on interviews conducted in two professional services firms in Germany and Russia, the paper identifies patterns in the repertoire that employees use for evaluating training and development activities at each research site.

Findings

The findings reveal that employees working for the German company predominantly use the industrial principle for justifying their views on training and development. In contrast, employees in the Russian company apply market, industrial and domestic principles with a tendency for long‐term employees more often to justify their views using the market principle.

Research limitations/implications

The case comparison points to variations in the evaluative repertoire that the paper explains with the societal context of Germany and Russia. By examining evaluative repertoires, companies learn what employees expect from training and development.

Originality/value

Applying convention theory, the paper introduces a promising, but so far neglected approach for linking employee expectations with societal context and for comparing boundaries between people across different settings.

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 23 July 2019

Anna Schneider and Corinna Treisch

This paper aims to examine employees’ evaluative repertoires of tourism and hospitality jobs and segments them based on a set of job attribute preferences. Understanding the…

4890

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to examine employees’ evaluative repertoires of tourism and hospitality jobs and segments them based on a set of job attribute preferences. Understanding the social–cultural underpinnings of employees’ job preferences is vital if employers are to overcome the challenging task of finding and retaining talented employees in the tourism and hospitality industry.

Design/methodology/approach

A discrete-choice experiment with waiters, barkeepers, cooks and front-desk employees working in the Tyrolean tourism industry was conducted. Employees were categorized into distinct segments using a hierarchical Bayesian analysis and a cluster analysis.

Findings

Results show that flexible working hours and the ability to balance professional and private aspirations are the most important job attributes for employees. Overall, the evaluative repertoires of the “green” and “domestic (family)” conventions are most prevalent.

Research limitations/implications

This study contributes to literature on talent management by providing insights into employees’ evaluations of jobs and their evaluative repertoires embedded in the broader social–cultural context.

Practical implications

Industry representatives and employers can adapt their recruiting and retention strategies based on employees’ job preferences.

Social implications

Adapting job attributes according to employees’ evaluative repertoires helps to ensure the long-term sustainability of the industry workforce.

Originality/value

Applying the Economics of Convention (EC) perspective, combining organizational job attributes and socially embedded evaluative repertoires provides a new approach to analysing and understanding employees’ job preferences.

Content available
Article
Publication date: 2 August 2011

Dorien Kooij, Jaap Paauwe and Karin Sanders

1484

Abstract

Details

Personnel Review, vol. 40 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0048-3486

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 22 December 2020

Jitse Jonne Schuurmans, Nienke van Pijkeren, Roland Bal and Iris Wallenburg

The purpose of this paper is to explore the formation and composition of “regions” as places of care, both empirically and conceptually.

1107

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore the formation and composition of “regions” as places of care, both empirically and conceptually.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper draws on action-oriented research involving experiments aimed at designing, implementing and evaluating promising solutions to the entwined problems of a burgeoning elderly population and an increasing shortage of medical staff. It draws on ethnographic research conducted in 14 administrative areas in the Netherlands, a total of 273 in-depth interviews and over 1,000 h of observations.

Findings

This research challenges the understanding of a healthcare region as a clearly bounded topological area. It shows that organizations and professionals collaborate in a variety of different networks, some conterminous with the administrative region established by policymakers and others not. These networks are by nature unstable and dynamic. Attempts to form new regional collaborations with neighbouring organizations are complicated by existing healthcare governance and accountability structures that position organizations as competitors.

Practical implications

Policymakers should take the pre-established partnerships of healthcare organizations into account before delineating the area in which regionalization is meant to take place. A better alignment of governance and accountability structures is also needed for regionalization to occur in healthcare.

Originality/value

This paper combines insights from valuation studies with sociogeographical literature and provides a framework for understanding the assembling and disassembling of “regions”.

Details

Journal of Health Organization and Management, vol. 35 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1477-7266

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 31 December 2021

Andreas Mölk, Manfred Auer and Mike Peters

Tourism employment is very diverse ranging from precarious, exploitative study to high-quality workplaces. However, poor employment images dominate the tourism industry, which…

1460

Abstract

Purpose

Tourism employment is very diverse ranging from precarious, exploitative study to high-quality workplaces. However, poor employment images dominate the tourism industry, which makes attracting employees difficult. This study aims to examine the processes that lead to such image construction.

Design/methodology/approach

Using a qualitative methodology, the study develops a multilevel framing cycle comprising a media analysis of newspapers and magazines (macro-level), a conversation analysis of peer communication/negotiations (meso-level) and a content analysis of single employee/manager interviews (micro-level); and a comparative analysis of the macro-, meso- and micro-level findings.

Findings

The multilevel frame cycle identifies image-construction processes that pass through working conditions, payment, seasonality and human resource problems. These processes are shaped by the two cross-level dynamics of radicalization and attenuation. The latter consists of rationalized and repressed framings of tourism employment images (TEI) and the former consists of ideological and emotional framings.

Practical implications

Tourism stakeholders should support and participate in a pragmatic and open dialog to overcome the radicalization and attenuation of tourism employment. The key players require a new deal to end the “information warfare” on tourism employment, inaugurating a new era of collaborative and constructive employment relations.

Originality/value

This study develops a holistic and dynamic understanding of TEI by exploring how media products, peer groups and employees/managers jointly construct these images. It demonstrates how attenuation and radicalization shape poor employment images in tourism. It argues that these dynamics “lock in” the status-quo, create mutual recrimination between employers and employees and counteract common strategies that could otherwise improve employment structures and the image of tourism.

Details

International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, vol. 34 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0959-6119

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 18 September 2017

Sharon Mcculloch

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of research evaluation policies and their interpretation on academics’ writing practices in three different higher education…

2326

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of research evaluation policies and their interpretation on academics’ writing practices in three different higher education institutions and across three different disciplines. Specifically, the paper discusses how England’s national research excellence framework (REF) and institutional responses to it shape the decisions academics make about their writing.

Design/methodology/approach

In total, 49 academics at three English universities were interviewed. The academics were from one Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics discipline (mathematics), one humanities discipline (history) and one applied discipline (marketing). Repeated semi-structured interviews focussed on different aspects of academics’ writing practices. Heads of departments and administrative staff were also interviewed. Data were coded using the qualitative data analysis software, ATLAS.ti.

Findings

Academics’ ability to succeed in their career was closely tied to their ability to meet quantitative and qualitative targets driven by research evaluation systems, but these were predicated on an unrealistic understanding of knowledge creation. Research evaluation systems limited the epistemic choices available to academics, partly because they pushed academics’ writing towards genres and publication venues that conflicted with disciplinary traditions and partly because they were evenly distributed across institutions and age groups.

Originality/value

This work fills a gap in the literature by offering empirical and qualitative findings on the effects of research evaluation systems in context. It is also one of the only papers to focus on the ways in which individuals’ academic writing practices in particular are shaped by such systems.

Details

Aslib Journal of Information Management, vol. 69 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2050-3806

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 11 April 2021

Roman Kislov, Gill Harvey and Lorelei Jones

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a special issue on boundary organising in healthcare bringing together a selection of six leading papers accepted for presentation at the…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a special issue on boundary organising in healthcare bringing together a selection of six leading papers accepted for presentation at the 12th Organisational Behaviour in Health Care (OBHC 2020) Conference.

Design/methodology/approach

In this introductory paper, the guest editors position the special issue papers in relation to the theoretical literature on boundaries and boundary organising and highlight how these contributions advance our understanding of boundary phenomena in healthcare.

Findings

Three strands of thinking – practice-based, systems theory and place-based approaches – are briefly described, followed by an analytical summary of the six papers included in the special issue. The papers illustrate how the dynamic processes of boundary organising, stemming from the dual nature of boundaries and boundary objects, can be constrained and enabled by the complexity of broader multi-layered boundary landscapes, in which local clinical and managerial practices are embedded.

Originality/value

The authors set the scene for the papers included in the special issue, summarise their contributions and implications, and suggest directions for future research.

Research implications/limitations

The authors call for interdisciplinary and multi-theoretical investigations of boundary phenomena in health organisation and management, with a particular attention to (1) the interplay between multiple types of boundaries, actors and objects operating in complex multi-layered boundary systems; (2) diversity of the backgrounds, experiences and preferences of patients and services users and (3) the role of artificial intelligence and other non-human actors in boundary organising.

Practical implications

Developing strategies of reflection, mitigation, justification and relational work is crucial for the success of boundary organising initiatives.

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 10 May 2022

Lai Ma

This paper examines the socio-political affordances of metrics in research evaluation and the consequences of epistemic injustice in research practices and recorded knowledge.

1528

Abstract

Purpose

This paper examines the socio-political affordances of metrics in research evaluation and the consequences of epistemic injustice in research practices and recorded knowledge.

Design/methodology/approach

First, the use of metrics is examined as a mechanism that promotes competition and social acceleration. Second, it is argued that the use of metrics in a competitive research culture reproduces systemic inequalities and leads to epistemic injustice. The conceptual analysis draws on works of Hartmut Rosa and Miranda Fricker, amongst others.

Findings

The use of metrics is largely driven by competition such as university rankings and league tables. Not only that metrics are not designed to enrich academic and research culture, they also suppress the visibility and credibility of works by minorities. As such, metrics perpetuate epistemic injustice in knowledge practices; at the same time, the reliability of metrics for bibliometric and scientometric studies is put into question.

Social implications

As metrics leverage who can speak and who will be heard, epistemic injustice is reflected in recorded knowledge and what we consider to be information.

Originality/value

This paper contributes to the discussion of metrics beyond bibliometric studies and research evaluation. It argues that metrics-induced competition is antithetical to equality and diversity in research practices.

Details

Journal of Documentation, vol. 78 no. 7
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0022-0418

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 18 September 2017

Nora Hangel and Diana Schmidt-Pfister

The purpose of this paper is to examine researchers’ motivations to publish by comparing different career stages (PhD students; temporarily employed postdocs/new professors;…

1579

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine researchers’ motivations to publish by comparing different career stages (PhD students; temporarily employed postdocs/new professors; scholars with permanent employment) with regard to epistemic, pragmatic, and personal motives.

Design/methodology/approach

This qualitative analysis is mainly based on semi-structured narrative interviews with 91 researchers in the humanities, social, and natural sciences, based at six renowned (anonymous) universities in Germany, the UK, and the USA. These narratives contain answers to the direct question “why do you publish?” as well as remarks on motivations to publish in relation to other questions and themes. The interdisciplinary interpretation is based on both sociological science studies and philosophy of science in practice.

Findings

At each career stage, epistemic, pragmatic, and personal motivations to publish are weighed differently. Confirming earlier studies, the authors find that PhD students and postdoctoral researchers in temporary positions mainly feel pressured to publish for career-related reasons. However, across status groups, researchers also want to publish in order to support collective knowledge generation.

Research limitations/implications

The sample of interviewees may be biased toward those interested in reflecting on their day-to-day work.

Social implications

Continuous and collective reflection is imperative for preventing uncritical internalization of pragmatic reasons to publish. Creating occasions for reflection is a task not only of researchers themselves, but also of administrators, funders, and other stakeholders.

Originality/value

Most studies have illuminated how researchers publish while adapting to or growing into the contemporary publish-or-perish culture. This paper addresses the rarely asked question why researchers publish at all.

Details

Aslib Journal of Information Management, vol. 69 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2050-3806

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 5 July 2019

Rachel Ivy Clarke and Brian Dobreski

Library work is increasingly being explored from the perspective of design. Still, little work has actively explored specific aspects of design as they relate to library…

Abstract

Purpose

Library work is increasingly being explored from the perspective of design. Still, little work has actively explored specific aspects of design as they relate to library cataloging. The purpose of this paper is to dive deeper into the relationship between library cataloging and design by exploring a specific aspect of design – the concept of repertoire, or the use of previous experiences and bodies of knowledge during current work.

Design/methodology/approach

To examine catalogers’ use of repertoire, this paper employed a juxtaposition of field observations of professional library catalogers’ work processes with elements of “think-aloud” protocols.

Findings

The researchers identified three major types of repertory knowledge that were demonstrated by catalogers: internally embedded repertory knowledge; externally embedded repertory knowledge; and seeking out new knowledge using other sources. Additionally, certain trends were noted concerning which repertory knowledge was utilized for which particular task. Determining subject and genre headings were noted for relying quite extensively on internal repertoire such as personal knowledge and institutional knowledge, along with external sources, such as personal notes and local examples.

Originality/value

This paper adds to a growing body of work calling for design approaches in libraries and related information settings, and breaks ground by applying the previously unexplored concept of repertoire to librarianship, specifically library cataloging, which offers a new perspective on cataloger’s judgement.

Details

Journal of Documentation, vol. 75 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0022-0418

Keywords

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