Search results
1 – 10 of 705Gill Venner, Stephen Walker and Nathalie Mitev
This article is a continuation and expansion of, which reported on an early stage of “Microcomputer networking in libraries”, a project funded by the British Library Research and…
Abstract
This article is a continuation and expansion of, which reported on an early stage of “Microcomputer networking in libraries”, a project funded by the British Library Research and Development Department and the Department of Trade and Industry. The work was carried out at the Polytechnic of Central London (PCL) by Mitev, Venner and Walker; its main aim was to construct a prototype online public access catalogue (OPAC) using local area network (LAN) hardware. The hardware was a Nestar PLAN 4000 network, using Apple IIe microcomputers as work stations and a 137 megabyte Winchester disc controlled by a 68000‐based file server.
The importance of developing intermediate care options for older people is gaining increasing prominence in the UK with the promotion of new health and social care partnerships…
Abstract
The importance of developing intermediate care options for older people is gaining increasing prominence in the UK with the promotion of new health and social care partnerships. Consequent changes in practice and values are demanded from staff. An action research approach provides a process of generating information linked to dialogues which facilitate such changes. This article draws on a case study of nursing staff working with older people in a newly‐defined rehabilitation setting in a Welsh community hospital. The action research cycle reported, focused on a series of collaborative interventions aimed at bringing about such changes in thinking and practice from a ‘doing for’ to an ‘enabling’ rehabilitative style of nursing. Three questionnaires and a round of group interviews were successively undertaken with a group of 49 staff, with planning and discussion sessions taking place between each data collection round. The process highlighted differing assumptions between different grades of nursing staff and between nurses and therapists about the nature of the rehabilitative process and how far it could be integrated with nursing care. The article discusses how the action research process supported a shared change in perspective that progress needed to be made to work in an integrated rehabilitative way. Participative approaches, such as action research, should be drawn on if the positive and cost‐effective benefits of rehabilitation for older people are to be more actively realised.
Details
Keywords
Reshaping Care for Older People (RCOP) and Integration of Health and Social Care are central to providing a care system in Scotland that meets older people's current and future…
Abstract
Purpose
Reshaping Care for Older People (RCOP) and Integration of Health and Social Care are central to providing a care system in Scotland that meets older people's current and future needs. Their implementation requires a workforce with the appropriate knowledge, skills and values to engage with older people across health and social care sectors, which requires a change in professionals’ thinking about services. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
NHS Education for Scotland, the Scottish Social Services Council and a learning and development consultancy designed and delivered innovative education resources to support health and social care staff across Scotland to understand the new agenda and recognise its meaning for practice.
Findings
Two related resources were developed: workshop using actors to depict scenarios from older people's lives to support participants to reflect on the new policy direction and outcomes-focused approaches; and an online resource using the same characters that can be delivered locally for groups and individuals. Participants were enabled to identify what they need to do differently and how they can support one another to make necessary changes. A formal evaluation has been commissioned.
Originality/value
The resource characters represent the people the new policy is designed to affect. By following their lives through an educational drama approach, health and social care staff can understand the difference RCOP and the integration agenda can make and recognise their part in effecting change.
Details
Keywords
Blaine McCormick and Jonathan Bean
The purpose of this paper is to continue and extend the ongoing conversation about greatness in American business.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to continue and extend the ongoing conversation about greatness in American business.
Design/methodology/approach
This survey, conducted in 2021, replicates and extends McCormick and Folsom’s 2001 and 2011 rankings of the greatest entrepreneurs and businesspeople in American history. The authors’ pool surveyed 51 experts to develop an updated ranking and explore factors of greatness.
Findings
Henry Ford topped the ranking followed by John D. Rockefeller and Steve Jobs. Business scholars ranked Oprah Winfrey the greatest female and minority businessperson.
Originality/value
The authors extend previous research by surveying the authors’ expert pool about factors of greatness in American business history. “Ability to imagine or envision the future” ranked highest with “created wealth for shareholders” in last place.
Details
Keywords
Margaret Fieldhouse and Micheline Hancock‐Beaulieu
Describes the Okapi projects and Okapi′s development as anexperimental online catalogue system over ten years. The first Okapiproject in 1984 introduced “best match” retrieval…
Abstract
Describes the Okapi projects and Okapi′s development as an experimental online catalogue system over ten years. The first Okapi project in 1984 introduced “best match” retrieval and focused on the user interface design. The second investigated word stemming, spelling correction and cross‐reference tables as retrieval aids. A comparative study of two library catalogues was undertaken in 1987, while in 1988 query expansion and relevance feedback were introduced and evaluated by laboratory tests. Live evaluation of automatic query expansion in an online catalogue and an online database was carried out in 1990. In 1993, subject enhancement of bibliographic records was investigated. The latest project has examined the design of a graphical user interface to support interactive query expansion. Discusses the research and evaluation of each project.
Details
Keywords
Having used the systems approach to industrial relations with considerable success in management education in industrial relations in an international setting, I was much…
Abstract
Having used the systems approach to industrial relations with considerable success in management education in industrial relations in an international setting, I was much interested in the account of Gill and Golding's “test” of this approach as a training intervention, which suggested that the systems approach has a number of deficiencies.
Lisa Evans and Ian Fraser
The paper aims to explore the social origins of Scottish chartered accountants and the accounting stereotype as portrayed in popular fiction.
Abstract
Purpose
The paper aims to explore the social origins of Scottish chartered accountants and the accounting stereotype as portrayed in popular fiction.
Design/methodology/approach
The detective novels of the Scottish chartered accountant Alexander Clark Smith are used as a lens through which to explore the social origins of accountants and the changing popular representations of the accountant.
Findings
The novels contribute to our understanding of the construction of accounting stereotypes and of the social origins of Scottish accountants. They suggest that, while working class access to the profession was a reality, so was class division within it. In addition, Smith was ahead of contemporary professional discourse in creating a protagonist who combines the positive aspects of the traditional stereotype with qualities of a private‐eye action‐hero, and who uses accounting skills to uncover corruption and address (social) wrongs. However, this unconventional portrayal may have been incongruent with the image the profession wished to portray. The public image (or stereotype) portrayed by its members would have been as important in signalling and maintaining the profession's collective status as the recruitment of its leadership from social elites.
Originality/value
Smith's portrayal of accountants in personal and societal settings at a time of profound social change, as well as his background in the Scottish profession, provide a rich source for the study of social origins of Scottish chartered accountancy during the first half of the twentieth century. Further, Smith's novels are of a popular genre, and innovative in the construction of their hero and of accounting itself; as such they merit attention because of their potential to influence the construction of the accounting stereotype(s) within the popular imagination.
Details