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1 – 10 of over 1000This paper studied whether boredom at home due to social isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic may motivate individuals to engage in online leisure crafting, thereby contributing…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper studied whether boredom at home due to social isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic may motivate individuals to engage in online leisure crafting, thereby contributing to their thriving at home and career self-management. This paper aims to examine whether individuals’ growth need strength influences the impact of home boredom on online leisure crafting.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper performed a two-wave longitudinal study involving a group of employees from the hospitality industry (N = 340) in Mainland China. This paper evaluated home boredom, online leisure crafting and growth need strength at Time 1 and thriving at home and career self-management two months later at Time 2.
Findings
The respondents’ experience of home boredom had a time-lagged effect on their thriving at home and career self-management via online leisure crafting. Additionally, their growth need strength amplified the positive impact of home boredom on online leisure crafting.
Practical implications
Hospitality managers can motivate employees to engage in crafting online leisure activities at home when they experience home boredom during the outbreak of COVID-19, which may further allow them to experience thriving at home and engage in career self-management. Additionally, managers can develop managerial interventions to improve the growth need strength of employees with low growth needs, which may, in turn, render these employees less likely to tolerate home boredom, thereby increasing the positive impact of home boredom on their online leisure crafting.
Originality/value
This paper offer insights for the boredom literature regarding how individuals’ home boredom caused by social isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic might lead to their thriving at home through online leisure crafting. This paper also provides insights for the leisure crafting literature regarding the role of online leisure crafting in individuals’ thriving at home. This paper reveals the role of growth need strength in the impact of home boredom on thriving at home through online leisure crafting.
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Beatrice Godwin and Fiona Poland
The purpose of this paper is to examine the self-experience of people with moderate to advanced dementia. While people with dementia are widely assumed to lose their sense of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the self-experience of people with moderate to advanced dementia. While people with dementia are widely assumed to lose their sense of self, emotions are preserved long into dementia and some can still discuss their lives, enabling exploration of respondents’ own self-conceptualisation of experience.
Design/methodology/approach
Ten people, purposively sampled, living in long-term residential or nursing care. A mixed methods design with Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis approach used semi-structured empathetic interviews to explore their experience and continuing goals, using supplementary information from family and others to contextualise core data. Data analysis identified emerging themes and superordinate concepts.
Findings
Sustained well-being and resistant ill-being emerged as major themes. Findings demonstrated continuity in sense of self, moral awareness and diversity of emotional reactions to living with dementia, associated with their emotional capital.
Research limitations/implications
The sample was small and limited to well- and moderately funded care homes. How to provide such support in less-well-funded homes needs further research as do reasons for resistant ill-being in advanced dementia.
Practical implications
Findings suggest care provision for people with advanced dementia which acknowledges individual feelings may support their sustained well-being. Psychological assessments should take closer account of multiple factors in individuals’ situations, including their emotional capital.
Social implications
Findings suggest everyday care of people with advanced dementia, may sustain their sense of self, well-being and emotional capital.
Originality/value
By empathically facilitating in-depth expression of individuals’ feelings and views, this research illuminates the personal self-experience of advanced dementia, hitherto little explored.
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This study seeks to explore digital natives' mobile usage behaviors and, in turn, develop an analytic framework that helps articulate the underlying components of mobile addiction…
Abstract
Purpose
This study seeks to explore digital natives' mobile usage behaviors and, in turn, develop an analytic framework that helps articulate the underlying components of mobile addiction syndrome (MAS), its severity levels and mobile usage purposes.
Design/methodology/approach
The investigation adopts a survey method and a case study. The results of the former are based on 411 random classroom observations and 205 questionnaire responses, and the insights of the latter are derived from 24 interviews and daily observations.
Findings
The findings validate five distinctive signs that constitute MAS and their significant correlations with each of the Big Five personality traits. Classroom observations confirm the prevalence of addiction tendency among digital natives in the research context. Seven levels of MAS and six different mobile usage purposes further manifest themselves from case analysis. There appears to be a sharp contrast between the addicted and non-addicted groups in their mobile purposes and behavioral patterns. Additionally, family relationships seem influential in shaping non-addictive mobile usage behaviors.
Research limitations/implications
Psychological perspectives on MAS may be important but insufficient. Empirical investigation on a global scale, especially with distinctive cross-cultural comparisons, will be highly encouraged. How MAS evolves over time should also serve as future research interests.
Practical implications
Teaching pedagogy of college education might need certain adjustments to intrigue digital natives' learning interests. Future managers might also need to adopt better performance measurements for digital natives who barely separate work from personal matters in their mobile devices.
Social implications
Parents and healthcare institutions may need to develop response mechanism to tackle this global issue at home and in society. The long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on MAS might also deserve global attention.
Originality/value
The analytic framework developed provides an original mechanism that can be valuable in identifying MAS severity and associated behavioral patterns.
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Srikanth Beldona, Zvi Schwartz and Xian Zhang
With the advent of the smart home, where connectivity is facilitated by the internet of things, the provision of guest technologies in hotel service delivery has acquired greater…
Abstract
Purpose
With the advent of the smart home, where connectivity is facilitated by the internet of things, the provision of guest technologies in hotel service delivery has acquired greater significance. This ubiquity of technology implies that hotels need to view their technological offerings as facilitating guest’s broader lifestyles, and not just services in isolated spaces. This study aims to examine the role of “home” as a socio-technological unit, and how customers’ ownership of technologies at home affects evaluations of guest technologies at hotels.
Design/methodology/approach
Data are collected from a sample of US lodging consumers using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Partial least squares, which is a component-based structural equation modeling technique with SmartPLS 3.2, is used to test the hypotheses and meet the study’s objectives.
Findings
The findings show that hotel guest technologies should be of a higher standard than those at home, for guests to be satisfied with them. This relationship was robust across all hotel types, and both leisure and business visitation. Also, satisfaction with guest technologies has a relatively stronger impact on customer satisfaction in mid-scale and economy hotels compared to that in upscale and luxury hotels.
Research limitations/implications
By empirically validating “home” as a frame of reference in the evaluations of hospitality experiences, it opens up the potential for future research to study how home affects the evaluation of the hospitality experience as a whole.
Practical implications
Hotels need to identify viable technologies that have the potential to become mainstream, and be ahead of customers in the technology adoption curve.
Originality/value
This study is the first to look at home as a conceptual entity that is integral to hospitality using a socio-psychological lens, and evaluates its impact on evaluations of guest technologies at hotels.
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International human resource management research has only recently started to recognize the many millions of people who engage with the international labor market as low-skilled…
Abstract
Purpose
International human resource management research has only recently started to recognize the many millions of people who engage with the international labor market as low-skilled self-initiated expatriates. In contrast to company-assigned expatriates, they predominantly come from less-developed countries (often from rural areas) and independently decide to pursue an international career. The aim of this study is apply an expatriate-centered perspective and explore how expatriates at the base of the pyramid perceive the conditions of their international employment.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is based on a qualitative study among self-initiated expatriates in the tourism and hospitality industry in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Findings
Two theoretical categories that reflect the evaluation of expatriate employment were identified, namely the social comparison with friends and family who stayed at home as well as with other expatriates and locals and the temporal comparison to the situation before the expatriation and the prospective situation after the expatriation. Both categories largely differ from the concepts and categories prevalent in the expatriate literature.
Research limitations/implications
The study contributes to the understanding of the temporal and transitory dimensions of expatriation, which have been barely addressed in the academic literature. It shows that self-initiated expatriation often represents a break in the professional and personal biography. It is less perceived as linear continuation of a steadily advancing career path than a restart or springboard to the future. The results are situated in the tourism and hospitality sector in the UAE and cannot be generalized to other countries and industries.
Practical implications
The study emphasizes the relevance of social inclusion, equal opportunities, a safe work environment and a relaxed corporate culture for expatriates at the base of the pyramid.
Originality/value
While research about self-initiated expatriates usually compares them with company-backed assignees, this comparison is not salient in the narratives of the interviewees in this study. Instead, low-skilled self-initiated expatriates predominately compare their current foreign assignment with the situation in their home country. This social comparison reflects their perceived reality of life better than a fictional comparison with highly skilled and company-assigned expatriates that is prevalent in the academic expatriation literature. By emphasizing an expatriate-centered perspective, the study supports and extends Piore's (1979) application of segmented labor market theory.
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John Goodwin and Henrietta O’Connor
The transition from school to work is a crucial component in a young person’s transition to adulthood. Recently data have emerged from one of the very first projects on school to…
Abstract
The transition from school to work is a crucial component in a young person’s transition to adulthood. Recently data have emerged from one of the very first projects on school to work transitions. This research was undertaken in the early 1960s by researchers at the University of Leicester, and led by Norbert Elias. Nearly 900 interview schedules from the project “Adjustment of Young Workers to Work Situations and Adult Roles” have been discovered, which provide a significant insight into the school to work transitions of the 1960s. This paper aims to present some of this data for the first time. In particular the discussion will focus on the respondents’ reflections on education, their expectations of paid employment and their perceptions of a “good job”. The paper concludes by reflecting on the value of using such historical data and considers its implications for current debates on transitions and the expectations of school leavers.
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People who come to the UK seeking asylum from wars and persecution may sometimes be perceived as having mental health problems. This article examines a project which attempted to…
Abstract
People who come to the UK seeking asylum from wars and persecution may sometimes be perceived as having mental health problems. This article examines a project which attempted to address the wider determinants of mental health and well‐being in a non‐stigmatising, culturally appropriate manner.
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At a time when a great deal of attention is being given to the operation of equal opportunity and equal pay, it is proper for those engaged in further education to consider the…
Abstract
At a time when a great deal of attention is being given to the operation of equal opportunity and equal pay, it is proper for those engaged in further education to consider the extent to which the education system itself is reinforcing or helping to overcome disadvantages which women have traditionally encountered in their careers. The plight of the qualified teachers who cannot obtain employment is only one side of a coin, of which the reverse is the almost total absence of women on further education courses designed to equip them to be applied scientists, engineers, and technologists. The traditional avenues of tertiary education chosen by girls have been designed to equip them for careers in education and the health services.
Kenyan khat arrives in the UK four days a week and much of it, having arrived at Heathrow from Nairobi and been cleared through customs, is delivered by van to a depot in…
Abstract
Kenyan khat arrives in the UK four days a week and much of it, having arrived at Heathrow from Nairobi and been cleared through customs, is delivered by van to a depot in Southall. There it is collected by distributors who speed it on to retailers. It is estimated that around seven tonnes of khat enters the UK each week.
Through a large‐scale quantitative study, this paper aims to test and extend the qualitative findings of Richardson and McKenna and of Osland on reasons to expatriate and relate…
Abstract
Purpose
Through a large‐scale quantitative study, this paper aims to test and extend the qualitative findings of Richardson and McKenna and of Osland on reasons to expatriate and relate them to work outcomes.
Design/methodology/approach
Examining how reasons to expatriate may affect work outcomes, quantitative data was collected from self‐initiated expatriate academics from 60 countries employed in 35 universities in five northern European countries.
Findings
Results mostly indicated support for the proposed hypotheses. The most striking finding was the apparently uniformly destructive influence of behaviour associated with escape from one's previous life as a reason to expatriate on all of the studied work outcomes.
Research limitations/implications
The self‐developed scales measuring reasons for self‐initiated expatriates to expatriate may have been inadequate to capture all relevant aspects of their behavioural intentions and the data from the retrospective type of questioning regarding the original reasons to expatriate may have been biased by memory effects.
Practical implications
Any organization recruiting self‐initiated expatriates may want to inquire about the reasons for them to expatriate. Although there may be a plethora of other requirements on job applicants, the findings of this study may be used as contributing to additional hiring criteria.
Originality/value
Most of the fast growing literature on business expatriates has focused on organizational expatriates who have been assigned by their parent companies to the foreign location. However, there is much less research on self‐initiated expatriates, who themselves have decided to expatriate to work abroad.
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