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Article
Publication date: 11 November 2013

Beth Sundstrom, Rowena Lyn Briones and Melissa Janoske

The purpose of this paper is to explore a postmodern approach to crisis management through the lens of complexity theory to understand six non-profit organizations’ communication…

1083

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore a postmodern approach to crisis management through the lens of complexity theory to understand six non-profit organizations’ communication responses to anti-abortion terrorism.

Design/methodology/approach

Researchers conducted a qualitative content analysis of publicly available documents from six non-profit organizations, which included 62 news releases and statements on organization web sites, 152 tweets, and 63 articles in national and local newspapers.

Findings

A history of violence and rituals of remembrance emerged as important pieces of organizational, personal, and social history surrounding anti-abortion terrorism. The process of self-organization facilitated calling publics to action and combating the “terrorism” naming problem. The non-profits’ dynamic environment exemplified the importance of coalition building to construct digital attractor basins, or networks extending beyond permeable boundaries, through a variety of strategies, including new media. Twitter served as a strange attractor, where the concept of interacting agents emerged as a key component of relationship building.

Research limitations/implications

Findings provide opportunities to expand complexity theory.

Practical implications

Findings suggest practical implications for anti-abortion counterterrorism and crisis management, and provide opportunities to develop communication counter measures.

Originality/value

Applying a complexity lens to the study of anti-abortion counterterrorism builds on the growing emphasis of the postmodern approach to crisis management and answers the call for further inquiry into the application of complexity theory to crisis situations. Furthermore, this study fills a gap in the study of crisis management by investigating how multiple organizations handle a crisis.

Details

Journal of Communication Management, vol. 17 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1363-254X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 13 June 2008

Kelum Jayasinghe Dennis Thomas and Danture Wickramasinghe

The purpose of this paper is to advocate the employment of “bounded emotionality”, as borrowed from organisational studies on emotionality, as an alternative framework to examine…

2173

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to advocate the employment of “bounded emotionality”, as borrowed from organisational studies on emotionality, as an alternative framework to examine and understand entrepreneurial behaviour and practice.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors review the debate and trends in entrepreneurship research with particular regard to structure and agency. They then argue that the application of Mumby and Putnam's concept of “bounded emotionality” strengthens the critical tradition and particularly contributes to that strand which utilises Giddens' structuration theory by explicitly treating the emotional aspects of entrepreneurial behaviour that operate outside the consciousness of individual agency.

Findings

The adoption of an alternative methodological framework, involving “bounded emotionality”, within a broad socio‐cutural and political‐economic perspective, can assist policy makers to rethink their generalised approach to the design and implementation of specific programmes and initiatives to support entrepreneurial development in favour of devising alternative approaches to fit particular contexts and localised settings.

Research limitations/implications

This theoretical paper contributes to the critical debate in entrepreneurial research, which advocates the need for an alternative, more socialised approach that attempts to account for the relationship between social structure and individual entrepreneurial action.

Originality/value

The paper contains the first attempt to apply the concept of “bounded rationality” to entrepreneurship research.

Details

International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research, vol. 14 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1355-2554

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 11 May 2010

Steve McKenna

The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of a dialogical approach, associated with the Russian literary critic and philosopher Bakhtin, in understanding the portrayal of…

1254

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of a dialogical approach, associated with the Russian literary critic and philosopher Bakhtin, in understanding the portrayal of managerial identity in management narratives. In particular, it applies these ideas critically to understand how managers' identities are partly shaped by the dominant discourse or idea about what a manager should “be.”

Design/methodology/approach

The paper draws on three written narratives of managers. It applies a dialogical approach to consider how they position themselves interactionally in the narratives in such a way as to highlight a managerial identity based on being “enterprising” and “for change,” while simultaneously voicing alternative identities negatively. The use of the written narratives of managers and the application of a dialogical approach is an important contribution to the literature.

Findings

The findings suggest that managers, when reflecting on organizational events through narrative, assume a managerial identity that reflects current dominant discourse about what a manager should “be.” In doing so they reject other possible discourses that offer alternatives, not only to managerial “being,” but also to what management and organizations might reflect and represent. The paper also, however, recognizes that some managers reject this identity and its implications for organizational activity.

Research limitations/implications

The paper suggests that managerial identity is partly a product of a dominant discursive/ideological formation rather than individual choice. Although managers may reject this interpellation creating an alternative is constrained by the regime of truth that prevails about what management is at any given time. The approach might be considered overly deterministic in its view of managerial identity.

Originality/value

The paper extends the understanding of managerial identity and how it is portrayed through narrative by using a dialogical approach to interpretation.

Details

Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management: An International Journal, vol. 5 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1746-5648

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 March 1983

Helen Rippier Wheeler

Five years ago a friend whose business has the word “women” in its title began referring to me requests she received for information about a large area encompassing women's…

Abstract

Five years ago a friend whose business has the word “women” in its title began referring to me requests she received for information about a large area encompassing women's issues, herstory, Women Studies, feminism, nonsexist education, nontraditional employment, reentry persons, comparable worth, health, portrayal of women in literature, scientific developments by and affecting women, etc. They came from feminist and sexist people of all ages throughout the world. Most, however, were American women attempting to bridge the information gap and to counteract misinformation and lack of information about and affecting females. This eventually evolved into a non‐profit service through which I responded directly to inquiries.

Details

Collection Building, vol. 5 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0160-4953

Article
Publication date: 14 December 2021

Peter Nugus, Joanne Travaglia, Maureen MacGinley, Deborah Colliver, Maud Mazaniello-Chezol, Fernanda Claudio and Lerona Dana Lewis

Researchers often debate health service structure. Understanding of the practical implications of this debate is often limited by researchers' neglect to integrate participants'…

Abstract

Purpose

Researchers often debate health service structure. Understanding of the practical implications of this debate is often limited by researchers' neglect to integrate participants' views on structural options with discourses those views represent. As a case study, this paper aims to discern the extent to which and how conceptual underpinnings of stakeholder views on women's health contextualize different positions in the debate over the ideal structure of health services.

Design/methodology/approach

The researchers chose a self-standing, comprehensive women's health service facing the prospect of being dispersed into “mainstream” health services. The researchers gathered perspectives of 53 professional and consumer stakeholders in ten focus groups and seven semi-structured interviews, analyzed through inductive thematic analysis.

Findings

“Women's marginalization” was the core theme of the debate over structure. The authors found clear patterns between views on the function of women's health services, women's health needs, ideal client group, ideal health service structure and particular feminist discourses. The desire to re-organize services into separate mainstream units reflected a liberal feminist discourse, conceiving marginalization as explicit demonstration of its effects, such as domestic abuse. The desire to maintain a comprehensive women's health service variously reflected post-structural feminism's emphasis on plurality of identities, and a radical feminist discourse, holding that womanhood itself constituted a category of marginalization – that is, merely being at risk of unmet health needs.

Originality/value

As a contribution to health organizational theory, the paper shows that the discernment of discursive underpinnings of particular stakeholder views can clarify options for the structure of health services.

Details

Journal of Health Organization and Management, vol. 36 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1477-7266

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 January 1992

Melba Jesudason

Over the last two decades, women's issues such as education, employment, pay equity, sexuality, lifestyle, housing, economics, environmental safety, health, child‐rearing…

Abstract

Over the last two decades, women's issues such as education, employment, pay equity, sexuality, lifestyle, housing, economics, environmental safety, health, child‐rearing practices, reproductive rights, military service, and criminal justice have become a major focus of public policy at every level. There has been equal interest about women of various ethnic backgrounds, women in other countries, and women's writing. There have been burgeoning social and political demands for research, scholarship, and activism on women‐related topics. To meet these demands, universities and colleges started interdisciplinary women's studies programs. Sheila Tobias, a leading scholar in the field of women's studies, defines it this way:

Details

Reference Services Review, vol. 20 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0090-7324

Article
Publication date: 1 August 2003

Anthony James Rea

The aims and objectives of this paper were to understand the key influences hindering patients, participation in the contact tracing process for sexually transmissible infection…

Abstract

The aims and objectives of this paper were to understand the key influences hindering patients, participation in the contact tracing process for sexually transmissible infection exposure; to study the anatomy of a complex sexual network through the eyes of a committed contact tracer and a group of teenagers; and to identify lessons from the research. Unstructured and group interviews were undertaken with a group of sixth form students and an unstructured interview with a contact tracer. Cue (storyboards) cards and hypothetical sexual networks were used – the outcome demonstrated that generated narrative about sexual network experiences can be analysed using a schema of representation of experience and could be subjected to Labov's structural categories for assignment of spheres of action, to undertake interpretation. Themes identified include: confidentiality, secrecy, friendship, community, the law and social sanctions. We conclude that contact tracing is under the spotlight and that we need to understand the personal experiences of being subjected to a process where little consideration has been given to the social and psychological consequences. Narrative analytic strategies can be applied to gain this much‐needed rich data.

Details

Journal of Health Organization and Management, vol. 17 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1477-7266

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 August 2000

Daphna Birenbaum‐Carmeli, Yoram S. Carmeli and Rina Cohen

Provides a comparison of the press coverage of the introduction of IVF in different contexts, giving a vantage point for examining the variability and the context‐dependence of…

Abstract

Provides a comparison of the press coverage of the introduction of IVF in different contexts, giving a vantage point for examining the variability and the context‐dependence of the issue. Sheds some light on the cultural‐political‐social problems that the new technology entails. Contrasts the differences between Canada and Israel, showing that both countries endorse modern technology in the field of medidine: in both countries, IVF was imported about the same time and both used the US and Britain as a frame of reference and model rather than local developments. Shows the cultural differences of how each culture embraced the new technology.

Details

International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, vol. 20 no. 7
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0144-333X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 3 October 2016

Julia Horne

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the idea of the “knowledge front” alongside ideas of “home” and “war” front as a way of understanding the expertise of…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the idea of the “knowledge front” alongside ideas of “home” and “war” front as a way of understanding the expertise of university-educated women in an examination of the First World War and its aftermath. The paper explores the professional lives of two women, the medical researcher, Elsie Dalyell, and the teacher, feminist and unionist, Lucy Woodcock. The paper examines their professional lives and acquisition and use of university expertise both on the war and home fronts, and shows how women’s intellectual and scientific activity established during the war continued long after as a way to repair what many believed to be a society damaged by war. It argues that the idea of “knowledge front” reveals a continuity of intellectual and scientific activity from war to peace, and offers “space” to examine the professional lives of university-educated women in this period.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper is structured as an analytical narrative interweaving the professional lives of two women, medical researcher Elsie Dalyell and teacher/unionist Lucy Woodcock to illuminate the contributions of university-educated women’s expertise from 1914 to the outbreak of the Second World War.

Findings

The emergence of university-educated women in the First World War and the interwar years participated in the civic structure of Australian society in innovative and important ways that challenged the “soldier citizen” ethos of this era. The paper offers a way to examine university-educated women’s professional lives as they unfolded during the course of war and peace that focuses on what they did with their expertise. Thus, the “knowledge front” provides more ways to examine these lives than the more narrowly articulated ideas of “home” and “war” front.

Research limitations/implications

The idea of the “knowledge front” applied to women in this paper also has implications for how to analyse the meaning of the First World War-focused university expertise more generally both during war and peace.

Practical implications

The usual view of women’s participation in war is as nurses in field hospitals. This paper broadens the notion of war to see war as having many interconnected fronts including the battle front and home front (Beaumont, 2013). By doing so, not only can we see a much larger involvement of women in the war, but we also see the involvement of university-educated women.

Social implications

The paper shows that while the guns may have ceased on 11 November 1918, women’s lives continued as they grappled with their war experience and aimed to reassert their professional lives in Australian society in the 1920s and 1930s.

Originality/value

The paper contains original biographical research of the lives of two women. It also conceptualises the idea of “knowledge front” in terms of war/home front to examine how the expertise of university-educated career women contributed to the social fabric of a nation recovering from war.

Article
Publication date: 8 June 2015

Alexander Styhre and Rebecka Arman

Institutional theorists treat law and regulations as external factors that is part of the organization’s environment. While institutional theory has been criticized for its…

Abstract

Purpose

Institutional theorists treat law and regulations as external factors that is part of the organization’s environment. While institutional theory has been criticized for its inability to recognize the role of agents and to theorize agency, the growing literature on institutional work and institutional entrepreneurship, partially informed by and co-produced with practice theory, advances a more dynamic view of processes of institutionalization. In order to cope with legal and regulatory frameworks, constituting the legal environment of the organization, there are evidence of organizational responses in the form of bargaining, political negotiations, and decoupling of organizational units and processes. The purpose of this paper is to report how legal and regulatory frameworks both shape clinical practices while at the same time they are also informed by the activities and interests of professional communities and commercial clinics.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper reports an empirical study of the Swedish-assisted conception industry and is based on a case study methodology including the use of interviews and formal documents and reports issues by governmental agencies.

Findings

The empirical material demonstrates how scientists in reproductive medicine and clinicians regard the legal and regulatory framework as what ensures and reinforces the quality of the therapies. At the same time, they actively engage to modify the legal and regulatory framework in the case when they believe it would benefit the patients. The data reported presents one successful case of how PGD/PGS can be used to develop the efficacy of the therapy, and one unsuccessful case of regulatory change in the case of patient interest groups advocating a legalization of commercial gestational surrogacy. In the former case, scientific know-how and medicinal benefits served to “push” the new clinical practice, while in the latter case, the “demand-pull” of patient interest groups fails to get recognition in regulatory and policy-making quarters.

Originality/value

The study contributes to the literature on agency in institutional theory (e.g. the emerging literature on institutional work) by emphasizing how legal and regulatory frameworks are in a constant process of being modified and negotiated in the face of novel technoscientific practices and social demands. More specifically, this process include many scientific, technological, economic, political and social relations and resources, making the legal environment of organizations what is the outcome from joint negotiations and agreements across organizational and professional boundaries.

Details

Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management: An International Journal, vol. 10 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1746-5648

Keywords

1 – 10 of 332