Search results

The purpose of this paper is to present a case study of a process undertaken to improve the provision of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for children with disabilities in the formal education system of a developing country.

We review two inclusion-oriented interventions that have been implemented by a disability centre at a regional university in the Caribbean; firstly a survey of 100 primary and high schools in Jamaica to assess their technology accessibility and inclusiveness for children with disabilities, and secondly, a collaborative project between the centre and a government institution to provide assistive technologies, training and curriculum components for students with disabilities.

The results indicate that more than 77 per cent of Jamaican schools are inaccessible to children with disabilities, and 90 per cent of children with disabilities have not been provided with modern technologies to assist with their education. Inadequacies with the technological infrastructure of the educational system are related to broader inaccessibility issues for children with disabilities. A significant hindrance to ICT procurement is connected to costs of technology hardware and software, but institutional advocacy can be instrumental in mobilizing support for technology investments, particularly for vulnerable groups.

Partnerships between institutions, advocacy groups and government are important in developing countries in order to incorporate and sustain initiatives for ICT provision for children with disabilities in the education system.

Purpose: Researchers and advocates alike have noted that persons with disabilities and older persons are the two groups most marginalized by neoliberal economic policies and therefore could come together as a broad-based movement against the roll back of their rights. Yet, these two groups fail to collaborate, and instead compete against one another for an ever-shrinking pool of benefits. This chapter explores the barriers to their collaboration within the context of structural adjustment in Jamaica.

Methods/Approach: The author engages in a critical analysis of neoliberalism's effect on the advocacy strategies of the disability and older persons' movements in Jamaica based on 32 semi-directed depth interviews, participant observation of numerous events, and a survey of media written by local advocates.

Findings: The disability movement makes claims on behalf of their members by focusing on the potential returns that society will gain by providing the opportunities that will make young persons with disabilities productive employees over their lifetime. The older persons' movement advocates by portraying themselves as “vibrant” and worthy of social investment because of the contributions they make. Both of these arguments for inclusion are also exclusionary. The disability movement excludes older persons as potential contributors and the older persons' movement similarly excludes persons with disabilities.

Implications: The only way neoliberalism will successfully be rolled back and universal rights returned is if the disability movement and older persons' movements build an alliance that is more inclusive, including of one another, by rejecting the language of investment and productivity, and instead focus on rights and inherent dignity.

Environmental uncertainty, turbulence, and heterogeneity create a host of strategic and operational challenges for today’s organizations (Brown & Eisenhardt, 1998). To cope with the challenge of simultaneously developing and nurturing both today’s and tomorrow’s core competencies, firms increasingly rely on effective use of corporate entrepreneurship (Covin & Miles, 1999). These facts make it imperative that managers at all levels actively participate in designing and implementing a strategy for corporate entrepreneurship actions. The recent literature reveals that there is a general although certainly not a complete consensus around the position that successful corporate entrepreneurship (CE) is linked to improvement in firm performance (Ireland et al., 2001). Covin, Ireland and Kuratko (2003) suggest that corporate entrepreneurship is increasingly recognized as a legitimate path to high levels of organizational performance and that the understanding of corporate entrepreneurship as a valid and effective practice with real, tangible benefits is occurring across firm type and managerial levels. Other researchers cite corporate entrepreneurship’s importance as a growth strategy (Kuratko, 1993; Kuratko et al., 1993; Merrifield, 1993; Pinchott, 1985; Zahra, 1991; Zahra & Covin, 1995; Zahra, Kuratko & Jennings, 1999). As an example, Dess, Lumpkin and McGee (1999) note that, “Virtually all organizations – new start-ups, major corporations, and alliances among global partners – are striving to exploit product-market opportunities through innovative and proactive behavior” – the type of behavior that is called for by corporate entrepreneurship. Barringer and Bluedorn (1999) suggested that in light of the dynamism and complexity of today’s environments, “…entrepreneurial attitudes and behaviors are necessary for firms of all sizes to prosper and flourish.” Developing an internal environment that cultivates employees’ interest in and commitment to creativity and the innovation that can result from it contributes to successful competition in today’s competitive arenas. A valuable and appropriate internal organizational environment is a product of effective work (often within the context of corporate entrepreneurship) by managers at all levels (Floyd & Lane, 2000).

Unassisted childbirth, also known as “freebirth,” is when a person intentionally gives birth at home with no professional birth attendant. The limited research on unassisted birth in the United States focuses on women’s reasons for making this choice. Studies suggest women are committed to birthing without a professional and that this choice is rooted in religious or natural-family belief systems. These studies do not adequately account for the ways a framework of “choice” obscures the role structural barriers play in decision-making processes. International research on unassisted childbirth finds that it is not always a first choice and may be a last resort for women who have had negative experiences with maternity care. More research on unassisted birth in the United States is needed to better understand if people face similar structural barriers. In this paper I examine how structural limitations of the US healthcare system intersect with values in decision-making processes about childbirth. Drawing on in-depth interviews with nine women who gave birth unassisted in the United States, I examine the women’s shared ideological commitments, negative experiences with health care, and barriers faced seeking care. I discovered that unassisted birth may not be a first, or even positive choice, but rather a compromise informed by ideological commitments and constrained choices. Structural barriers in the US healthcare system prevented women from having a professional birth attendant who they felt was acceptable, available, and accessible. I conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for debates about birth justice and health policy.

A corporate entrepreneurship (CE) strategy implies that a firm’s strategic intent is to continuously leverage entrepreneurial opportunities for growth- and advantage-seeking purposes. CE has gained greater research attention with a focus on the factors that influence an organization’s willingness to initiate and sustain a CE strategy. In the current disruptive age, firms acknowledge the importance of CE (also referred to as corporate innovation) as the critical element for sustained competitive advantage in the global economy. Yet, so many organizations struggle with the actual implementation of an innovative strategy. There are key challenges that must be addressed by today’s corporate entrepreneurial leaders in this age of disruptive innovation. These include framing the innovation, developing the internal architecture, coordinating the managerial levels, integrating design thinking, recognizing the grief associated with project failure, and demanding ethical standards. As research on corporate innovative activity has evolved, numerous researchers have acknowledged the importance of these leadership activities to enhance the effectiveness of corporate entrepreneurial activity. In this chapter, the authors discuss these critical elements confronting corporate entrepreneurial leaders.

This chapter focuses on how corporate entrepreneurs seize opportunities and deal with threats through resource acquisition, control, and use. When corporate entrepreneurs fail to gain control of preferred resources they must rely on their ability to optimize their use of resources on hand in order to avoid the typical limitations inherent in a constrained set of resources. However, control of resources, whether existing or supplementary, by itself is an insufficient basis for influencing performance. Performance also depends on an organization’s capacity to deploy resources in combination with strategically important organizational processes to affect a desired end. The way in which corporate entrepreneurs utilize their resources is likely to have a more significant effect on performance than is merely having control of them. The current research aims to elaborate on how corporate entrepreneurs can become more resourceful by using a vacillation approach to resource acquisition and utilization. In this context, vacillation is movement between exploration and exploitation, or knowledge acquisition and knowledge integration from a knowledge management perspective. Vacillation is distinguished from the “balance” hypothesis prevalent in the organizational ambidexterity literature. A balance hypothesis states that both exploration and exploitation may be pursued simultaneously either by creating structural or contextual organizational ambidexterity. Here, we explain how vacillation enables an organization’s corporate entrepreneurship posture to lead to improved performance. In this chapter, we first describe the extant literature and construct relationships between corporate entrepreneurship posture, organizational resource level, vacillation, and organizational performance. We then analyze the learning processes associated with vacillation and discuss the research and managerial implications associated with the proposed relationships.

This chapter draws on qualitative interviews to examine how Bhutanese refugees interact with norms around mothering and childbirth. Since these women have birthed and reared children in Bhutan and/or Nepal, as well as in the United States, their stories help to explore how the implications of medicalization differ for individuals by race, class, and nation, with a unique cross-comparative lens. In particular, the respondents uniquely identify epidurals as an important medical intervention, simultaneously increasing their autonomy while subscribing to neoliberal mothering. This research furthers our understanding of neoliberal mothering and medicalization by showing a nuanced script that illuminates social processes, resistance, and internalization through an intersectional and cross-cultural lens.

A centuries-long history of theory and research shows that every authority system tries to cultivate a belief in its legitimacy. This paper focuses on the legitimation of regimes – social relationships and the rules that govern them. We use existing theory and research to identify a basic legitimation assumption that includes four conditions necessary to establish legitimacy. We also identify four corollaries of the assumption and use our own published and unpublished laboratory research to show (1) how successful experimental procedures satisfy the assumption’s conditions, and (2) how the failure of experimental procedures to establish legitimacy violate the assumption and its corollaries.