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1 – 10 of over 1000Samantha Vlcek, Monica Cuskelly, Michelle Somerton and Scott Pedersen
The present study explored the extent to which home–school interactions for students with disability are addressed within Australian Federal, and State and Territory government…
Abstract
Purpose
The present study explored the extent to which home–school interactions for students with disability are addressed within Australian Federal, and State and Territory government and Catholic education department policies and guidelines.
Design/methodology/approach
Utilising a framework adapted from Trezona et al.’s (2018a, b) Organisational Health Literacy Responsiveness self-assessment tool, a document analysis of pertinent policies and guidelines provided an opportunity to understand the prominence of home–school interactions within these guiding documents, the prioritisation of home–school interactions, as well as stipulated actions, implementation resources and monitoring processes.
Findings
The findings of this analysis indicate that there are varying approaches to identifying and articulating home–school interactions and associated processes, as well as the roles and responsibilities assigned to stakeholders across the education system(s). Recommendations for increasing in-school and in-classroom translation of documented priorities and objectives are presented.
Originality/value
The article concludes with a broad conceptualisation of home–school interactions for students with disability as established within the analysed documents, as well as considerations for policymakers and researchers involved in policy and guideline development and implementation.
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Organizations are affected top-down by the overarching societies and bottom-up by foundational face-to-face encounters: societies provide norms, values, laws, institutions…
Abstract
Organizations are affected top-down by the overarching societies and bottom-up by foundational face-to-face encounters: societies provide norms, values, laws, institutions, beliefs, markets, political structures, and knowledge bases. What happens within organizations is done by people interacting with other people, arguing, discussing, convincing each other when preparing and making decisions. Organizations operate within social environments that leave their – however indirect – imprint on what is going on within organizations. This article argues that organizational sociology can benefit from an integrated theoretical framework that accounts for the embeddedness of organizations within the micro- and macro-levels of social order. The argument is developed in two main points: First, this article introduces the multilevel framework provided by Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory to demonstrate how organizations are shaped by the functionally differentiated macro-structure of society. Organizations follow and reproduce the operational logics of societal domains such as the political system, the economy, science, law, religion, etc. Second, this paper demonstrates how organizations are shaped by micro-level dynamics of face-to-face interactions. Face-to-face encounters form a social reality of its own kind that restricts and resists the formalization of organizational processes. Here, this article draws on Erving Goffman’s and Randall Collins’ work on interaction rituals, emotions, and solidarity, which is inspired by Durkheimian micro-sociology. At the end, this article brings together all the elements into one general account of organizations within the context of their macro- and micro-structural social environments. This account can yield a deeper and more sociological understanding of organizational behavior.
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Karin Högberg and Sara Willermark
This study aims to develop the understanding of learning processes related to the new ways of interacting in the enforced digital workplace over time.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to develop the understanding of learning processes related to the new ways of interacting in the enforced digital workplace over time.
Design/methodology/approach
A multiple, longitudinal case study of knowledge-based workers in three firms located in Sweden has been conducted from March 2020 to March 2023. In total, 89 interviews with 32 employees in three knowledge-based firms have been collected.
Findings
The study shows how the intricate interaction between rules and norms for interaction and work must be renegotiated as well as un- and relearned when the physical work environment no longer frames the work context. Furthermore, technology can be viewed as both an enable and a barrier, that is, technology has enhanced collaboration between organizational members yet also created social difficulties, for example, related to communication and interaction. The study emphasizes that individuals learned through trial and error. That is, they tried behaviors such as translating social interactions" to a digital arena, appraised the outcomes and modified the practices if the outcomes were poor.
Research limitations/implications
The present study does have several limitations. First, it is based on interviews with respondents within three organizations in Sweden. To broaden and deepen the understanding of both organizational and learning, future studies can contribute by studying other contexts as well as using a mixed method approach in other countries.
Practical implications
Results from the study can provide a practical understanding of how the rapid change from working at the office to working from home using digital technologies can be understood and managed.
Originality/value
Contributions include combining interaction order and un- and relearning among organizational employees. This insight is important given that the rapid digital transformation of our society has changed how work is performed and how the future workplace will be both structured and organized.
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Mingfang Li, Askar Choudhury and Na Zhang
The purpose of this study is to identify the structural determinants of e-returns service interactions, examine their impact on online shoppers' loyalty and propose returns…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to identify the structural determinants of e-returns service interactions, examine their impact on online shoppers' loyalty and propose returns service interventions from an interactive marketing perspective to facilitate consumer interaction and repeat purchase intentions with e-retailers.
Design/methodology/approach
This study empirically tests the research hypotheses based on cross-sectional survey data collected from Chinese online consumers who experienced interactions during the product returns process.
Findings
E-return service interaction includes three determinants: access support, friendly interaction and communication support. These interactions positively impact ease of return, returns satisfaction and customer loyalty. Returns satisfaction is a key mediator in the relationship between return service interaction and loyalty. Access support and friendly interaction have both direct and indirect effects on loyalty, while communication support has only an indirect effect.
Originality/value
This study contributes to understanding e-returns service interaction by analyzing its structural determinants, providing a robust scale foundation and analytical framework for future empirical research. Additionally, this study explores the driving role of e-returns service interaction in forming e-customer loyalty, offering a theoretical basis for the service recovery function of e-returns service interaction. It enriches the application of service recovery theory and relationship marketing theory in the field of interactive marketing.
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Hope Jensen Schau, Ignacio Luri and Melissa Archpru Akaka
This paper aims to explore practice innovation and organizational resiliency during exogenous service ecosystem disruptions. This inquiry focuses on the extreme disruption caused…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore practice innovation and organizational resiliency during exogenous service ecosystem disruptions. This inquiry focuses on the extreme disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which required service firms to recodify long-established service scripts, adapt digital and physical material elements of the service encounter and ultimately reconfigure a system of practices. The specific context is forced practice innovation in Starbucks servicescape (kiosks and coffeehouses). Starbucks is best known for its custom beverages and third-place strategy. Their strict adherence to a complex service script and unique ordering practices altered during pandemic stay-home disease prevention mandates.
Design/methodology/approach
Thematic coding consistent with prior research on practice innovation and diffusion and a grounded theory methodology was conducted. Data were triangulated and analyzed within and across a variety of sources. These include field notes from direct observation, interviews, focus groups, firm-authored collateral in the form of marketing communications and third-party authored secondary sources such as news, social media, blogs and forums.
Findings
Data reveal how practice innovation occurs through the reconfiguration of a system of practices, which support organizational resiliency and can force brand evolution, in prolonged exogenous service ecosystem disruptions. The COVID-19 pandemic required service industries to adapt and recodify service scripts and alter physical and digital elements of service encounters. While the pandemic affected all firms in the sector, we argue that Starbucks' established scripts and third-place strategies, which characterized the brand experience, were particularly vulnerable. We find that practice innovation occurs through the reconfiguration of practice elements – competences, meanings and materiality – and restructures the service encounter. Practice codification, transposition, adaptation and stabilization support organizational resiliency and brand evolution. We find that Starbucks' brand experience emphasis on the third place is reconceptualized from an in-person community-based retailscape to a platform-based strategy necessitating script recodification and practice adaptation. Our analysis of Starbucks' kiosks and coffeehouses illuminates how a distinctly branded service encounter is constituted by a system of practices that can be reconfigured and diffused anew in the face of disruption.
Originality/value
The conceptualization of practice innovation as systems reconfiguration establishes a novel approach to understanding innovation in service ecosystems. The COVID-19 pandemic is a unique context to study a sector-wide exogenous extended service disruption. We focus on a firm with an elaborate pre-pandemic service script and commitment to a third-place brand experience guiding its system of practices. We reveal unique insights on practice innovation within service ecosystems during exogenous prolonged disruptions in which brands evolve through the recodification of service scripts and sustained reconfiguration of systems of practice.
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Patrik Jonsson, Johan Öhlin, Hafez Shurrab, Johan Bystedt, Azam Sheikh Muhammad and Vilhelm Verendel
This study aims to explore and empirically test variables influencing material delivery schedule inaccuracies?
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore and empirically test variables influencing material delivery schedule inaccuracies?
Design/methodology/approach
A mixed-method case approach is applied. Explanatory variables are identified from the literature and explored in a qualitative analysis at an automotive original equipment manufacturer. Using logistic regression and random forest classification models, quantitative data (historical schedule transactions and internal data) enables the testing of the predictive difference of variables under various planning horizons and inaccuracy levels.
Findings
The effects on delivery schedule inaccuracies are contingent on a decoupling point, and a variable may have a combined amplifying (complexity generating) and stabilizing (complexity absorbing) moderating effect. Product complexity variables are significant regardless of the time horizon, and the item’s order life cycle is a significant variable with predictive differences that vary. Decoupling management is identified as a mechanism for generating complexity absorption capabilities contributing to delivery schedule accuracy.
Practical implications
The findings provide guidelines for exploring and finding patterns in specific variables to improve material delivery schedule inaccuracies and input into predictive forecasting models.
Originality/value
The findings contribute to explaining material delivery schedule variations, identifying potential root causes and moderators, empirically testing and validating effects and conceptualizing features that cause and moderate inaccuracies in relation to decoupling management and complexity theory literature?
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Zhongqin Bi, Susu Sun, Weina Zhang and Meijing Shan
Predicting a user’s click-through rate on an advertisement or item often uses deep learning methods to mine hidden information in data features, which can provide users with more…
Abstract
Purpose
Predicting a user’s click-through rate on an advertisement or item often uses deep learning methods to mine hidden information in data features, which can provide users with more accurate personalized recommendations. However, existing works usually ignore the problem that the drift of user interests may lead to the generation of new features when they compute feature interactions. Based on this, this paper aims to design a model to address this issue.
Design/methodology/approach
First, the authors use graph neural networks to model users’ interest relationships, using the existing user features as the node features of the graph neural networks. Second, through the squeeze-and-excitation network mechanism, the user features and item features are subjected to squeeze operation and excitation operation, respectively, and the importance of the features is adaptively adjusted by learning the channel weights of the features. Finally, the feature space is divided into multiple subspaces to allocate features to different models, which can improve the performance of the model.
Findings
The authors conduct experiments on two real-world data sets, and the results show that the model can effectively improve the prediction accuracy of advertisement or item click events.
Originality/value
In the study, the authors propose graph network and feature squeeze-and-excitation model for click-through rate prediction, which is used to dynamically learn the importance of features. The results indicate the effectiveness of the model.
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Seoyoun Lee, Younghoon Chang, Jaehyun Park, Alain Yee Loong Chong and Qiuju Yin
This study examines how users' multidimensional representational fidelity factors affect sociability and cyberself engagement in the Metaverse platform; that is, how they interact…
Abstract
Purpose
This study examines how users' multidimensional representational fidelity factors affect sociability and cyberself engagement in the Metaverse platform; that is, how they interact with newly defined self-images as their personas in the environments. It investigates how representational fidelity serves platform users to perform social roles and increase their sociability by establishing a new cyberself, thus influencing continuous platform use.
Design/methodology/approach
This study surveyed 314 users of the Metaverse platform Horizon, where users can create a virtual agent avatar, meet people in the same online environment in real time, and interact with a sense of three-dimensional immersion. Data were analyzed using partial least squares regression models.
Findings
User socialization significantly influenced the intention to use the Metaverse platform. Representational fidelity was a crucial variable for sociability, and activity representational fidelity was the most influential aspect among the four other elements. Platforms should consider how to enable users to create and use activities that faithfully represent their personas.
Originality/value
The novelty of this study is that it introduces representational fidelity based on representation theory into the context of virtual persona in the Metaverse platform. This study extended representational fidelity to the socialization perspective by utilizing the integrated model of user satisfaction and the technology acceptance model. Through the results, this study emphasized that users' sociability significantly influences their intention to use the Metaverse platform. Finally, this study provides a feasible guideline on how practitioners could design and strengthen their platforms so that users can represent their cyberselves faithfully.
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Kai Liu, Yuming Liu, Yuanyuan Kou and Xiaoxu Yang
The mega railway infrastructure projects are faced with complex environments and multi-level management challenges. Thus, the mega railway infrastructure project management system…
Abstract
Purpose
The mega railway infrastructure projects are faced with complex environments and multi-level management challenges. Thus, the mega railway infrastructure project management system not only needs to focus on its composition, but also needs to consider changes and impacts of internal and external environment.
Design/methodology/approach
This study attempts to introduce the concept of dissipative structure from the perspective of complexity theory and constructs a positive entropy and negentropy flow index system for mega railway infrastructure project management system in order to analyze the factors of management system more deeply. The Brusselator model is used to construct the structure of the mega railway infrastructure project management system, and the entropy method is used to calculate the positive entropy and negentropy values to verify whether the management system is a dissipative structure.
Findings
A plateau railway project in China was used as an example for an empirical study, not only its own characteristics are analyzed, but also the role of constraints and facilitation of the internal and external environment. Based on the research results, several effective suggestions are put forward to improve the stability and work efficiency of mega railway infrastructure project management system.
Originality/value
This study demonstrates that mega railway infrastructure project management system has the characteristics of dissipative structure. It can provide theoretical support for the development of mega railway infrastructure project management system from disorderly state to orderly state.
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Sarah A. Courchesne, Dave Stynen, Judith H. Semeijn and Marjolein C.J. Caniëls
Organizations are increasingly joining inter-organizational networks to foster sustainable employability for their employees. The purpose of this study is to identify the factors…
Abstract
Purpose
Organizations are increasingly joining inter-organizational networks to foster sustainable employability for their employees. The purpose of this study is to identify the factors and mechanisms central to their success as experienced by key stakeholders.
Design/methodology/approach
An explorative, qualitative approach was adopted, using four focus groups with network coordinators (N = 18) and HR professionals (N = 14). Fourteen Dutch inter-organizational networks were represented. Respondents were recruited through purposive and snowballing sampling techniques. Thematic analysis was applied using open coding to generate themes.
Findings
The results of this study outline environmental, structural, and inter-personal factors and mechanisms that contribute to the success of inter-organizational networks that aim to foster sustainable employability for their employees. The environmental factors and mechanisms consist of challenges stemming from the labor market. The structural factors and mechanisms include: a network’s flat structure, flat fee, lack of informal rules, the allocation of roles and expectations for stakeholders and shared network activities. Lastly, the inter-personal factors and mechanisms are: communication among stakeholders, establishing reciprocity, interaction and collaboration between stakeholders, the valuation of trust, a convivial culture and shared vision among stakeholders. The dynamics between these factors and mechanisms are compared to other forms of inter-organizational networks. Furthermore, several recommendations for network coordinators and practitioners regarding the development of networks are presented.
Originality/value
This study provides insights into the factors and mechanisms that are regarded by stakeholders as influencing the success of inter-organizational networks in their ability to foster sustainable employability for workers. We have identified a unique model that captures this new way of inter-organizational collaboration and builds on insights from literature on collaborative governance regimes, institutional fields and entrepreneurial ecosystems. Specifically, the model provides a framework that consists of environmental, structural and interpersonal factors and mechanisms for network success. This study increases our understanding of how collaborative efforts can be fostered beyond organizational boundaries and existing Human Resource Management practices.
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