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1 – 10 of over 85000Sanda Kaufman and George T. Duncan
Recognizing fertile ground and preparing ground not yet ready is an essential skill of an effective intervenor. This sequence of diagnosis and action is studied in a theoretical…
Abstract
Recognizing fertile ground and preparing ground not yet ready is an essential skill of an effective intervenor. This sequence of diagnosis and action is studied in a theoretical framework in which mediators examine and alter four classes of disputants' perceptions. These classes are (1) the available set of actions, (2) the class of possible consequences, (3) the likelihoods of uncertain events and consequences of actions, and (4) preferences over consequences. Denver's increasing demand for water led to the Foothills environmental dispute in 1977. This dispute featured various forms of third party intervention. U.S. Representative Patricia Schroeder's failure to mediate the Foothills conflict, and U.S. Representative Timothy Wirth's success, are compared in terms of the disputants' key beliefs affected by the two self‐appointed intervenors' actions. Using the technique of counterfactual case analysis, an exploration is made of a range of possible timing and ground preparation decisions. Although the particular circumstances of any dispute play a key role in its resolution, the proposed perspective extracts features that are general and therefore transferable to other contexts, thereby enabling mediators to belter develop, transmit, and apply intervention skills.
Yun Li and Jiakun Wang
In modern society, considering the multi-channel of public opinion information (public opinion) propagation and its strong influence on social development, it is necessary to…
Abstract
Purpose
In modern society, considering the multi-channel of public opinion information (public opinion) propagation and its strong influence on social development, it is necessary to study its propagation law and discuss the intervention strategy in online social networks (OSN).
Design/methodology/approach
First, a conceptual model of double-layer OSN was constructed according to their structural characteristics. Then, a cross-network propagation model of public opinion in double-layer OSN was proposed and discussed its spreading characteristics through numerical simulations. Finally, the control strategy of public opinion, especially the timing and intensity of intervention were discussed.
Findings
The results show that the double-layer OSN promotes the propagation of public opinion, and the propagation of public opinion in double-layer OSN has the characteristics of that in two single-layer OSN. Compared with the intervention intensity, the regulator should give the priority to the timing of intervention and try to intervene in the early stage of public opinion propagation.
Practical implications
This study may help the regulators to respond to the propagation of public opinion in OSN more actively and reasonably.
Originality/value
This research has a deep comprehension of the cross-network propagation rules of public opinion and manages the propagation of public opinion.
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Arielle Silverman and Geoffrey Cohen
Achievement motivation is not a fixed quantity. Rather, it depends, in part, on one’s subjective construal of the learning environment and their place within it – their narrative…
Abstract
Purpose
Achievement motivation is not a fixed quantity. Rather, it depends, in part, on one’s subjective construal of the learning environment and their place within it – their narrative. In this paper, we describe how brief interventions can maximize student motivation by changing the students’ narratives.
Approach
We review the recent field experiments testing the efficacy of social-psychological interventions in classroom settings. We focus our review on four types of interventions: ones that change students’ interpretations of setbacks, that reframe the learning environment as fair and nonthreatening, that remind students of their personal adequacy, or that clarify students’ purpose for learning.
Findings
Such interventions can have long-lasting benefits if changes in students’ narratives lead to initial achievement gains, which further propagate positive narratives, in a positive feedback loop. Yet social-psychological interventions are not magical panaceas for poor achievement. Rather, they must be targeted to specific populations, timed appropriately, and given in a context in which students have opportunities to act upon the messages they contain.
Originality/value
Social-psychological interventions can help many students realize their achievement potential if they are integrated within a supportive learning context.
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Stephen Graham Saunders and V. Dao Truong
The purpose of this paper is to explore the dynamic nature of behaviour change over time and to gain insights into the effectiveness of social marketing efforts at three different…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the dynamic nature of behaviour change over time and to gain insights into the effectiveness of social marketing efforts at three different intervention points under three different delay time conditions.
Design/methodology/approach
A system dynamics simulation modelling approach was used.
Findings
The findings showed that the effectiveness of social marketing interventions at different points of intervention and delay times is dependent on complex dynamic system interactions and feedback loops.
Research limitations/implications
As the dynamic simulation model was an abstraction or simplified representation, it was only useful to gain insights into generalised patterns of behaviour over time.
Practical implications
The paper provided practical guidance to social marketers’ intent on gaining insights into “where to do” and “when to do” social marketing rather than “how to do” social marketing.
Originality/value
The paper provided theoretical and practical insights into the temporal nature of behaviour change and the effectiveness of social marketing interventions in influencing behaviour over time.
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Kathryn Hynes, Emilie Smith and Daniel Perkins
Policy‐makers are looking to after‐school programmes to improve family and child wellbeing and are searching for evidence‐based ways to improve the quality of after‐school…
Abstract
Policy‐makers are looking to after‐school programmes to improve family and child wellbeing and are searching for evidence‐based ways to improve the quality of after‐school programmes. This study examines whether the Good Behaviour Game, a behaviour management curriculum designed for school classrooms, can be easily migrated to academically focused after‐school programmes. Our results are based on programme observations, qualitative interviews and ratings of implementation fidelity. We describe the structure and activities in these after‐school programmes and then identify challenges to implementing and evaluating classroom‐based interventions in the after‐school setting.
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Marco D’Orazio, Gabriele Bernardini and Elisa Di Giuseppe
This paper aims to develop predictive methods, based on recurrent neural networks, useful to support facility managers in building maintenance tasks, by collecting information…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to develop predictive methods, based on recurrent neural networks, useful to support facility managers in building maintenance tasks, by collecting information coming from a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS).
Design/methodology/approach
This study applies data-driven and text-mining approaches to a CMMS data set comprising more than 14,500 end-users’ requests for corrective maintenance actions, collected over 14 months. Unidirectional long short-term memory (LSTM) and bidirectional LSTM (Bi-LSTM) recurrent neural networks are trained to predict the priority of each maintenance request and the related technical staff assignment. The data set is also used to depict an overview of corrective maintenance needs and related performances and to verify the most relevant elements in the building and how the current facility management (FM) relates to the requests.
Findings
The study shows that LSTM and Bi-LSTM recurrent neural networks can properly recognize the words contained in the requests, thus correctly and automatically assigning the priority and predicting the technical staff to assign for each end-user’s maintenance request. The obtained global accuracy is very high, reaching 93.3% for priority identification and 96.7% for technical staff assignment. Results also show the main critical building elements for maintenance requests and the related intervention timings.
Research limitations/implications
This work shows that LSTM and Bi-LSTM recurrent neural networks can automate the assignment process of end-users’ maintenance requests if trained with historical CMMS data. Results are promising; however, the trained LSTM and Bi-LSTM RNN can be applied only to different hospitals adopting similar categorization.
Practical implications
The data-driven and text-mining approaches can be integrated into the CMMS to support corrective maintenance management by facilities management contractors, i.e. to properly and timely identify the actions to be carried out and the technical staff to assign.
Social implications
The improvement of the maintenance of the health-care system is a key component of improving health service delivery. This work shows how to reduce health-care service interruptions due to maintenance needs through machine learning methods.
Originality/value
This study develops original methods and tools easily integrable into IT workflow systems (i.e. CMMS) in the FM field.
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Zoe Stephenson, Jessica Woodhams and Leigh Harkins
The purpose of this paper is to explore the views and opinions of offender supervisors and offender managers regarding the sequencing of interventions for prisoners in England…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the views and opinions of offender supervisors and offender managers regarding the sequencing of interventions for prisoners in England. More specifically, the research aims to gain an understanding of any barriers to implementing desired practice.
Design/methodology/approach
Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten participants located across four HM prisons in the West Midlands. Questions were designed to gather information and views regarding: current practice in the area of sequencing of interventions; opinions on the potential importance of coherent sequencing of interventions; views on how interventions should be sequenced; and what, if any, issues impacted upon coherent sequencing. Thematic analysis was used to identify, analyse and report themes within the interviews.
Findings
Participants discussed current practice regarding the sequencing of interventions and made suggestions regarding tailoring the sequence of interventions to the individual offender. The issue of readiness to change was emphasised (i.e. engagement with interventions will increase where offenders are able to participate in an intervention when they feel ready to do so). In addition, participants commented that they felt there to be insufficient resources at their disposal which led to barriers to the coherent sequencing of interventions (e.g. waiting lists for treatment programmes).
Practical implications
Suggestions were made by participants regarding the coherent sequencing of interventions; for example, providing prisoners with experience of a generic group intervention prior to an offence-specific intervention, prioritising motivation to change and being responsive to the needs of individual offenders.
Originality/value
The study provides insight regarding the sequencing of interventions from the perspective of offender supervisors and offender managers who are involved in the planning of treatment programmes across the course of an offender’s sentence.
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Alina Morawska and Matthew Sanders
Despite the importance of increasing engagement and minimising attrition and drop‐out in parenting interventions, there is a paucity of empirical evidence examining factors…
Abstract
Despite the importance of increasing engagement and minimising attrition and drop‐out in parenting interventions, there is a paucity of empirical evidence examining factors related to engagement and participation. The range of factors examined in relation to engagement is generally limited in scope and variety, focusing on variables of convenience rather than utilising a theoretically‐driven approach.The aim of this article is to review the factors related to parental engagement with interventions and to describe strategies and implications for improving engagement with parenting interventions. Several policy and practice implications are identified: (1) Poor parental engagement may threaten or compromise the capacity of parenting programmes to deliver valued outcomes. Viable engagement strategies need to be a core part of prevention and early intervention parenting programmes; (2) Agencies delivering parenting services need a proactive engagement strategy, which includes strategies to prevent drop‐out, as well as strategies to actively respond to parental disengagement; (3) Research is needed to test the efficacy and robustness of different engagement enhancement strategies. Empirical tests are needed to test the effectiveness of different engagement strategies in order to ensure that the most efficient, cost‐effective and efficacious approach is used in order to engage parents. Investment of research effort to improve parental engagement is likely to have a high yield in terms of programme efficiency, utility and cost effectiveness. We conclude that research examining how to improve engagement and decrease non‐completion is needed to strengthen the population level value of parenting programmes as preventive interventions.
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Tianshu Zheng, John Farrish, Ming-Lun Lee and Hui Yu
– The purpose of this study is to examine how the recent recession affected Iowa's gaming industry by analyzing gaming volumes before and through the recession.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to examine how the recent recession affected Iowa's gaming industry by analyzing gaming volumes before and through the recession.
Design/methodology/approach
This study used autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) with intervention analysis to examine Iowa statewide aggregated monthly slot coin-in, table drop, and admission from December 2001 through June 2012.
Findings
The results of analyses show that: slot coin-in was not affected by the recession; table drop was slightly affected, but started to recover in late 2010; and monthly admission was not affected by the recession, and showed a significant increase after the recession. The results also indicate that the decrease in table drop in Iowa casinos represented only a very small amount of state gaming revenue in 2008. Therefore, the findings of this study suggest that Iowa's gaming volume was not significantly affected by the recent recession. In other words, Iowa's gaming industry is still recession-proof.
Practical implications
Current economic conditions suggest that the threat of a double-dip recession is quite real. The findings of this study are expected to help casino managers in Iowa understand how non-destination casinos behaved differently through the recession and strategically plan for a possible future economic downturn. In fact, the significant increase of monthly admission during the last recession implies that the Iowa gaming industry has actually benefited from the recession by accommodating more patrons. Therefore, to capitalize on the next recession, Iowa's casino operators should consider reducing the number of table games and increasing the number of slot machines to accommodate more slot players and reduce operating costs.
Originality/value
Most existing gaming-related research focuses on gaming destinations such as Las Vegas and Atlantic City. No known study on gaming volume in non-destination gaming markets has been identified. By examining Iowa's gaming volume through the recession, this study provides initial empirical evidence of the impact of recession on non-destination gaming markets.
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Thomas Borup Kristensen, Henrik Saabye and Amy Edmondson
The purpose of this study is to empirically test how problem-solving lean practices, along with leaders as learning facilitators in an action learning approach, can be transferred…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to empirically test how problem-solving lean practices, along with leaders as learning facilitators in an action learning approach, can be transferred from a production context to a knowledge work context for the purpose of becoming a learning organization while enhancing performance. This is important to study because many organizations struggle to enhance efficiency in the short term while still trying to be long-term learning oriented (i.e. learning organization development).
Design/methodology/approach
The authors draw on theory on learning interventions to show how lean practices for problem-solving can foster learning and help an organization to become adaptive. This study’s subject is a non-production department of 100 employees at the LEGO corporation. The authors applied survey results from a natural experiment lasting 18 months between a pre-measurement survey and a post-measurement survey. The results were compared to a control department of 50 employees who were not exposed to the lean practices intervention. The authors’ focus was on the individual level as individuals have different perceptions of lean practices, performance, and learning.
Findings
Using repeated-measures tests, difference-in-difference regressions analyses, and structural equation models, the authors find that a package of contemporary lean practices for problem-solving, along with leaders who function as learning facilitators, significantly improved learning organization dimensions while also enhancing efficiency and quality and that learning organizations positively mediate the relationship between the lean intervention and quality-related performance, while efficiency is directly affected by the lean interventions. Data from LEGO's key performance indicators (KPIs), benefit trackers, on-site observations and more than 40 interviews with managers provided results that were consistent with the survey data. A detailed description of the lean practices implemented is provided to inspire future implementations in non-operations environments and to assist educators.
Research limitations/implications
The authors contribute to the learning literature by showing that a learning-to-learn approach to lean management can serve as an active and deliberate intervention in helping an organization becoming a learning organization as perceived by the individual organizational members. The authors also add to the lean literature by showing how a learning approach to lean, as used by LEGO, can positively affect short-term efficiency and quality and create a foundation for a longer-term competitive advantage (i.e. a learning organization) in a non-production context. By contrast, most of the lean literature streams treat efficiency separately from a learning organization and mainly examine lean in a production context.
Originality/value
The extant literature shows three research streams on lean, learning, and performance. The authors built on these streams by trying to emphasize both learning and efficiency. Prior research has not empirically tested whether and how the application of problem-solving lean practices combined with leaders as learning facilitators helps to create a comprehensive learning organization while enhancing performance in a non-production context.
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