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1 – 10 of over 1000Bach Quang Ho and Kunio Shirahada
The purpose of this paper is to develop a process model for the role transformation of vulnerable consumers through support services.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to develop a process model for the role transformation of vulnerable consumers through support services.
Design/methodology/approach
The study is based on four years of participant observation at a community-based support service and in-depth interviews with the consumers. Visual ethnography was used to document the process of the consumers' role transformation through service exchanges.
Findings
The main outcome of this study is a consumer transformation model, describing consumers' role transformation processes, from recipients to generic actors. The model demonstrates that vulnerable consumers will transform from recipients to quasi-actors before becoming generic actors.
Social implications
Vulnerable consumers' participation in value cocreation can be promoted by providing social support according to their dynamic roles. By enabling consumers to participate in value cocreation, social support provision can become sustainable and inclusive, especially in rural areas affected by aging and depopulation. Transforming recipients into generic actors should be a critical aim of service provision in the global challenge of aging societies.
Originality/value
Beyond identifying service factors, the research findings describe the mechanism of consumers' role transformation process as a service mechanics study. Furthermore, this study contributes to transformative service research by applying social exchange theory and broadening service-dominant logic by describing the process of consumer growth for individual and community well-being.
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This paper explores how actors engage in the situated learning of resource integration (RI) within value cocreation practices (VCPs). VCPs are collectively shared and organized…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper explores how actors engage in the situated learning of resource integration (RI) within value cocreation practices (VCPs). VCPs are collectively shared and organized routine activities that actors perform to cocreate value.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper draws on a qualitative study of how successful music actors engage in VCPs and learn RI. Interviews and observations were used to collect data that were analyzed by drawing on the Gioia methodology.
Findings
The findings illuminate the types of VCPs actors engage in to learn RI, the ways in which actors learn RI by engaging in VCPs, and how social contexts condition actors' learning of RI.
Research limitations/implications
This paper offers a framework for understanding actors' situated learning of RI by engaging in VCPs. It illuminates the VCPs that actors engage in to learn RI, how actors advance from peripheral to core participation through their learning, the ways in which actors learn RI by engaging in VCPs, and how social contexts condition actors' situated learning of RI. Implications for the scarce prior research on how actors learn RI are presented.
Practical implications
To contribute to innovative solutions and sustainable growth, managers and policymakers need to offer actors opportunities to learn and make space for actors with competencies that may be important and needed in future VCPs.
Originality/value
In focusing on how actors learn RI by engaging in VCPs, this study draws on theories of communities of practices and situated learning, as well as practice theoretical service research.
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Marie-Noelle Albert and Nancy Michaud
Studies on vulnerability in the workplace, although relevant, are rare because it is difficult to access. This article aims to focus on the benefits of using autopraxeography to…
Abstract
Purpose
Studies on vulnerability in the workplace, although relevant, are rare because it is difficult to access. This article aims to focus on the benefits of using autopraxeography to study and step back from vulnerability at work.
Design/methodology/approach
Autopraxeography uses researchers' experience to build knowledge.
Findings
Autopraxeography provides a better understanding of vulnerability and the opportunity to step back from the difficulties experienced. Instead of ignoring experiences related to vulnerability, this method makes it possible to transform them into new avenues of knowledge. Moreover, it enables researchers to step back from experiences of vulnerability, thus making them feel more secure.
Originality/value
The main differences from other self-studies stem from the epistemological paradigm in which this method is anchored: pragmatic constructivism. The most important difference is the production of generic knowledge in three recursive steps: writing in a naïve way, developing the epistemic work and building generic knowledge.
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This paper explores the idea of the prudent entrepreneurial self, through re-conceptualizing prudence into the domain of entrepreneurial education, to unite the two processes of…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper explores the idea of the prudent entrepreneurial self, through re-conceptualizing prudence into the domain of entrepreneurial education, to unite the two processes of becoming enterprising and entrepreneurial. It is argued that developing a capacity for prudence among graduates involves past, present and conjecture forms of knowledge that the authors find in the interplay between individuation and social awareness.
Design/methodology/approach
Building on Palmer's idea of wholeness, the authors discuss six poles of paradoxes in entrepreneurial education and in conjunction establish a philosophical argument for the idea of stimulating the development of prudence as fundamentally important to contemporary notions of entrepreneurial education.
Findings
The paper presents a model to develop a schema that moves students towards becoming prudent entrepreneurial selves. The model rests on two interrelated developmental processes – individuation and social awareness – conditional for developing the three forms of knowledge (past, present and conjecture) that makes up prudence where developing prudence is a means to handle or cope with the unknown.
Research limitations/implications
This paper argues that for enterprise and entrepreneurship education to realize their potential contributions, both the relationships between each field and the overarching purpose that ties the fields together need to be rethought, and the poles of paradoxes need to be connected to further develop both fields and creating wholeness for the emerging scholarly discipline.
Practical implications
To educate towards the prudent entrepreneurial self means educating towards an unknown end where student development aims to meet both the objectives of individual development and the growth in social awareness required to handle the changing nature of contemporary society.
Originality/value
This study philosophically conceives a united enterprise and entrepreneurship education landscape in which deeper student learning makes possible the notion of the prudent entrepreneurial self.
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At the beginning of the 21st century, a new class of information workers, the “information have-less” has risen. This class of workers alleviates the influence of information and…
Abstract
Purpose
At the beginning of the 21st century, a new class of information workers, the “information have-less” has risen. This class of workers alleviates the influence of information and communication technologies (ICTs) revolution on poverty and unemployment. The purpose of this study is to investigate the presence of this class of workers in Egypt and assess the size and potential growth of this category of workers.
Design/methodology/approach
The study clarifies the conceptual framework of the new division of labor, in the information age. The Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and Information and Decision Support Center websites provided secondary data for this study. These data are used to assess the size of “the information have less” in Egypt.
Findings
The division of work and class, in the 21st century, depends on the level of skills possessed to work with ICTs. So, class and labor nowadays could be divided into self-programmable labor (Innovators). Information have-less labor class, adding value to the economy by learning skills and presenting repetitive work. Generic labor class, who cannot work with ICTs, and work in jobs, that do not need computers or other ICTs. The study has shown that the “information have-less” labor class is present in Egypt since the beginning of the 21st century, in all its categories; entrepreneurism, the service sector and the manufacturing sector. There are approximately 50% of this labor class in the service sector and only 13% of the information have-less works in manufacturing sector despite the great opportunities that Egypt has to expand manufacturing to absorb more employment. The inclusion of information technology (IT), in all domains, has not decreased employment in Western countries but has reallocated information have-less employment toward the service sector, and there would probably be the same effect in Egypt.
Practical implications
The study highlights the need for Egyptian policymakers to encourage the manufacturing and service sectors to provide huge working opportunities. The Egyptian government has to change the educational policies, at all stages, to include digital learning skills so IT can be incorporated in a wide range of economic activities. Further research includes: conducting a survey to measure the contribution of the entrepreneurial part of the information have-less employment in Egypt. In addition, a model may be developed, by the researcher to examine the reallocation of employees in Egypt.
Originality/value
Studying employment, in Egypt, using the conceptual framework of the information age is rarely being done.
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