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This paper aims to position the evidence in the history of architectural education, which has contributed to the development of architecture as a discipline. The paper focusses on the transformational stages of architectural education through history. It builds on considering its evolution from informal stages towards formal educational discipline and then standardization as a curriculum-based model in contemporary times.

The research adopts a qualitative approach focussing on epistemological interpretations through triangulation. The qualitative data includes two main categories; first, historical research and second, interviews and focussed group discussions. It then adopts the triangulation method for the analysis of data. The exploration positions historical pieces of evidence encompassing important factors involved in the process that directed the changes while suggesting the modes of training of architects. The interviews and focus groups provide a valuable addition to historical data for connecting it to contemporary times. Significant modes examined include master pupil, apprenticeship and curriculum-based model, in addition to several fundamental skill sets such as drawing, painting and sculptures that remained constant in this process.

The historical pieces of evidence inform that architectural education has been inclusive and considerate towards cultural concerns throughout its developmental stages untill the currently adopted curriculum-based model. It concludes that the development of architecture as a discipline in formal education has been influenced by methods of disseminating knowledge, contents incorporated for teaching architecture, deliberate inclusion of relevant knowledge areas such as arts and cultural integrations of societies.

This research is limited to a structured study to explore and position pieces of evidence in the history of architectural education considering its methods and contents. While it signifies the role of culturally sensitive contents in the architectural curricula, the scope of this research is not to focus on the development of any new theory, model or postulate regarding the inclusion of some specific contents. The implications of this research aspire to the best use of methods and contents deeply rooted in the development of the discipline, of architectural curricula in the future. It suggests the negation of possible overlooking of such content in curricula.

The study signifies the core argument of the relevance of architectural education to social and cultural concerns as an important facet in the developmental stages in the history of the discipline. The exploration of pieces of evidence is significantly important to avoid the inadvertent overlooking of the culturally sensitive content in architectural education in the future development of architectural curricula that were included purposefully.

The purpose of this paper is to specify the role of emotions played in information seeking and sharing taking place in online discussion forum. To this end, an explorative study was made that focussed on consumer awareness.

The study is based on the analysis of a sample of 30 discussion threads containing altogether 1,630 messages available in Canadian Content – a major online platform. The expression of emotions was examined by using the categories of the interaction process analysis (IPA) model. Two research questions were addressed: first, what kind of emotions are expressed in the four functional areas of the IPA model when discussing online about consumer awareness? and second, what is the role of positive and negative emotions in information seeking and sharing about the above topic? The data were analyzed by means of descriptive statistics and qualitative content analysis.

Of the emotional expressions, 42 percent were positive and 58 percent negative. The most frequent emotions were amusement, contempt, worry, irritation and pleasure. The frequencies of positive and emotional expressions varied in the context of 12 IPA categories. Positive emotions predominated when participants showed solidarity or agreed, while negative emotions were particularly prevalent when indicating antagonism. The repertoire of positive and negative emotions was broadest while providing opinions or sharing information with others. In contrast, emotions were expressed rarely in the context of information seeking.

The study is explorative in nature and the findings are based on the examination of an online discussion group focussed on the issues of consumer awareness.

The study contributes to the study of affective factors in computer-mediated interaction by empirically specifying the repertoire of positive and negative emotions expressed in online discussion.

The purpose of this paper was to document the food-related environmental beliefs and behaviours of undergraduate university students. More specifically, this research was focussed on determining if environmental sustainability is a consideration in students’ food choices, identifying the specific choices and behaviours adopted to reduce their food-related environmental footprint, and documenting the role of gender and pro-environmental values in these food-related environmental beliefs and behaviours.

This research employed a mixed methods approach, i.e. focus group discussions and a survey, to document the food-related environmental beliefs and behaviours of undergraduate university students. The survey was informed by the results of the focus group discussions, and included standard measures of pro-environmental values and worldview.

Results from focus group discussions revealed a broad array of beliefs and behaviours related to the connection between food, food production and the environment. The survey confirmed these results, but indicated a preference for such actions as recycling and reducing food waste in contrast to such alternatives as reducing meat consumption or avoiding processed foods. These results suggest that educational campaigns could focus on strengthening beliefs about the food-environment connection, as well as help to empower students to take a greater variety of actions to reduce their food-related environmental footprint.

Relatively little attention has been focussed on individual beliefs and practices with respect to achieving more sustainable food consumption, particularly on university and college campuses. The research also represents a departure from previous work in that it utilizes both qualitative and quantitative methods, and takes a broad approach to the food-environment connection.

The paper aims to report initial empirical research that examines UK employees’ perceptions of the changing nature of work since the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) to consider how the financial context may have constrained HRD practice and more sustainable approaches.

Focus group research was facilitated through collective group discussion. Through template analysis of the findings, thematic analysis was undertaken to extend prior research. Themes used by Hassard et al. (2009) in terms of the changing nature of the workplace between 2000 and 2008, were used to provide new data on HRD realities.

Participants reported diminishing personal control over changes within the workplace and a cultural shift towards a harsher work climate. HRD was considered as silenced or absent and associated solely with low cost-based e-learning rather than acting in strategic role supporting sustainable business objectives.

Whilst providing only indications from employee perceptions, the research identifies a weakened HRD function. The key contribution of this paper lies with empirical evidence of post-GFC constraints placed upon HRD strategies. It further identifies whether alternative development approaches, mediated by organisational learning capabilities, might emancipate UK HRD.

This paper engenders a debate around the status of HRD within the UK organisations, further to the global financial crisis (GFC), where HRD might be viewed as at a juncture to argue a need for a shift from a financialised mode for people management towards one of greater people focus.

This research provides initial findings of the impact of the economic climate. It considers new approaches which might resolve expiring HRD through more sustainable practices.

Children are familiar with retail outlets (especially supermarkets) and the reality of shopping from an increasingly early age. In turn, retailers are actively engaging this young market, targeting them through various promotional strategies. One popular strategy adopted by grocery retailers is giveaway collectible set items. The purpose of this paper is to question the ethicality of such campaigns, within the framework of vulnerable consumers by examining children’s opinions of the campaigns and the supermarkets who run them, and the drivers of children’s involvement in the campaigns.

Qualitative focus groups were employed with 67 children aged five to ten years. Focus groups were made up of children in similar age groups to cluster responses by age and allow for comparisons. Thematic analysis was undertaken and responses were coded into themes.

Children were initially driven to collect through promotional advertising or because a third party offered them a collectible. The drivers for subsequent collecting differed between age groups, with younger children more focussed on themes around play and older children (seven and above) collecting through habit, because it was a craze amongst their peers and therefore the collections became items of social currency. Children’s perceptions of the supermarkets motivations also differed by age. Younger children thought supermarkets gave the collectibles away as “gifts” for altruistic reasons. The older children articulated a clear understanding of the economic motives of the organisation including: to attract children to their stores, to encourage pester power and to increase revenue by encouraging customers to buy more. The older children questioned the ethics of the collectible campaigns, referring to them as scams.

The findings extend the important discussion on the nature of children’s vulnerability to advertising by showing that the children’s vulnerability stretches beyond their ability to understand advertising intent. Despite older children in the present study being cognisant of retailers’ intentions they were still vulnerable to the scheme; the embeddedness of the scheme in the social lives of the children meant they lacked agency to opt out of it. Further, the finding that the scheme transcended boundaries in the children’s lives, for instance, being associated with social currency at school, highlights the potential negative impact such schemes can have on the well-being of children.

Until now, research has investigated the motivations that children have to collect, but previous studies have focussed on collections which have been determined by the children. This paper presents the opinions and perceptions of the children who are directly targeted by commercial organisations to collect and raises concerns around the ethicality of such schemes.

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualise and examine the processes through which abstract concepts, or abstractions, can be utilised in co-creating knowledge within “impact-focussed” organisational and business research, i.e. applied research that primarily seeks to promote change in practice rather than principally aiming to make theoretical contributions to academic debates. The paper uses the abstraction “hospitality” as an empirical example and discusses the techniques used to “operationalise” this concept, i.e. make it understandable for research participants enabling researchers to use it within data generation and the creation of practical insights in organisational enquiry.

The study employed two methods: first, participant-generated photos; and second, two interactive workshops with 38 practitioners where the abstract concept “hospitality” was used to generate practical organisational insights.

The paper distinguishes between four stages: the elaboration of abstraction, concretisation of abstraction, probing perspectives on abstraction and exploring experiences of abstraction. It is argued that utilising specific techniques within these four stages facilitates: recognisability: the extent to which organisational stakeholders understand the content and meanings of the abstraction; and relatability: the extent to which stakeholders appreciate how the abstract concepts are relevant to interpreting their own practices and experiences.

This is an exploratory study, used to develop and refine elicitation techniques, rather than to draw definitive conclusions about the applicability of specific abstract concepts. Nevertheless, reflecting on the processes and techniques used in the utilisation of abstractions here can help to operationalise them in future impact-focussed research.

The paper conceptualises the processes through which abstract concepts can be made apprehendable for non-specialist, non-academic practitioners. In doing so, it discusses how various elicitation techniques support the utilisation of abstractions in generating insights that can support the development of constructive, context-specific practices in organisations and businesses.

Here, this study aims to report a case study of the initial design and programme theory of an interdisciplinary work-focused relational group cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) treatment programme for moderate-severe depression using realist methods.

This case study shows how the authors designed the intervention using component analysis of existing literature and focus groups of frontline practitioners and former service users and mind-mapping analysis to establish its operational logic and evaluated the theory underpinning the intervention using realist synthesis and evaluation to establish its conceptual logic.

An iterative hybrid approach of literature review, component analysis, focus group discussion and realist methods established the initial design and programme theory for the new intervention. The intervention focused on three areas of therapy, three inter-dependent outcomes, in a group format, with opportunities created for peer interaction. The main theoretical principles most likely to promote efficacy were to accelerate and optimise activation of one or more of six hypothesised mechanisms: realise, reflect, regulate, resolve, relate and retain/resume in the context of skilfully facilitated group psychotherapy.

This study outlines a methodological approach based on the layered ontology of critical realist philosophy, applied to a successful example, which will be useful during the early stages of the design and development of new group-based psychotherapeutic interventions.

By adopting the critical realist approach, the authors identified underlying mechanisms of change in relational group CBT. The theoretically integrated approach involving service users and practitioners from different professional backgrounds was unique and meant that the treatment programme was multi-modal rather than informed by a single therapeutic or theoretical approach.

This paper presents a conceptual design process for developing a maintenance-focused heritage conservation model. Currently, there are several intervention approaches that can be applied in conservation from reconstruction, restoration and repairs to a “do-nothing” approach. This paper examines whether a maintenance solution is more than just an option or a necessity. The aim of the paper is to study the challenges and opportunities when putting more emphasis on the maintenance approach in conservation.

This research was conducted in an Australian context, where many major buildings were constructed from the 19th and 20th centuries and are now categorised as “modern heritage”. three case studies were undertaken to inform this paper and others. In addition, 17 global heritage conservation experts were interviewed, and their responses were analysed. Also, comparative field observations and archival records were examined and used to develop the initial framework model. Finally, using focus group discussions amongst 7 experts, the framework was reviewed and formally validated in order to ensure the development of a useful model for use in devising an effective maintenance management plan and monitoring conditions in heritage buildings.

This paper supports others in a series that have already been accepted by this journal, focussing the research on heritage building conservation being conducted in Australia, the homeland of the Burra Charter. The other papers are entitled (1) model for the maintenance-focused heritage building conservation and (2) engineering in heritage conservation.

The paper examines contemporary issues in heritage building maintenance and conservation in Australia and focusses specifically on the lack of focus on maintenance as a conservation intervention for heritage buildings.

The purpose of this study is to gauge the awareness and perception of Indian individual investors about a new fintech innovation known as robo-advisors in the wealth management scenario. Robo-advisors are comprehensive automated online advisory platforms that help investors in managing wealth by recommending portfolio allocations, which are based on certain algorithms.

This is a phenomenological qualitative study that used five focussed group discussions to gather the stipulated information. Purposive sampling was used and the sample comprised investors who actively invest in the Indian stock market. A semi-structured questionnaire and homogeneous discussions were used for this study. Discussion time for all the groups was 203 min. One of the authors moderated the discussions and translated the audio recordings verbatim. Subsequently, content analysis was carried out by using the NVIVO 12 software (QSR International) to derive different themes.

Factors such as cost-effectiveness, trust, data security, behavioural biases and sentiments of the investors were observed as crucial points which significantly impacted the perception of the investors. Furthermore, several suggestions on different ways to enhance the awareness levels of investors were brought up by the participants during the discussions. It was observed that some investors perceive robo-advisors as only an alternative for fund/wealth managers/brokers for quantitative analysis. Also, they strongly believe that human intervention is necessary to gauge the emotions of the investors. Hence, at present, robo-advisors for the Indian stock market, act only as a supplementary service rather than a substitute for financial advisors.

Due to the explorative nature of the study and limited participants, the findings of the study cannot be generalised to the overall population. Future research is imperative to study the dynamic nature of artificial intelligence (AI) theories and investigate whether they are able to capture the sentiments of individual investors and human sentiments impacting the market.

This study gives an insight into the awareness, perception and opinion of the investors about robo-advisory services. From a managerial perspective, the findings suggest that additional attention needs to be devoted to the adoption and inculcation of AI and machine learning theories while building algorithms or logic to come up with effective models. Many investors expressed discontent with the current design of risk profiles of the investors. This helps to provide feedback for developers and designers of robo-advisors to include advanced and detailed programming to be able to do risk profiling in a more comprehensive and precise manner.

In the future, robo-advisors will change the wealth management scenario. It is well-established that data is the new oil for all businesses in the present times. Technologies such as robo-advisor, need to evolve further in terms of predicting unstructured data, improvising qualitative analysis techniques to include the ability to gauge emotions of investors and markets in real-time. Additionally, the behavioural biases of both the programmers and the investors need to be taken care of simultaneously while designing these automated decision support systems.

This study fulfils an identified gap in the literature regarding the investors’ perception of new fintech innovation, that is, robo-advisors. It also clarifies the confusion about the awareness level of robo-advisors amongst Indian individual investors by examining their attitudes and by suggesting innovations for future research. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to investigate the awareness, perception and attitudes of individual investors towards robo-advisors.