Search results

This study aims to examine empirically the effect of emotional intelligence of the team, as calculated by the average of all team members’ individual emotional intelligence measurements, on the cohesiveness of the team, and the effect of the perception of self-efficacy of the team members on the relationship between emotional intelligence and team cohesion. Finally, certain financial indicators were analyzed to evaluate team performance.

This study used quasi-experimental design. Participated in the experiment a total of 146 students (35 teams) who were senior business major students in the mid-sized university in the USA. In the experiment, the participants played a business simulation game over an eight-year simulated time frame. After the final round of the simulation game, the variables of emotional intelligence, self-efficacy and team cohesion were measured using the survey questionnaire and team performance and participation data were collected from the business simulation game. In the support of the quantitative data analysis, the current study also collected and analyzed qualitative data comments on other group members’ contribution to the group task.

Results indicated that team cohesion was highest when team members demonstrated greater emotional intelligence. Self-efficacy also had a positive influence on team cohesion. High self-efficacy was found to be an important mediator of the relationship between emotional intelligence and team cohesion. High emotional intelligence promoted the development of self-efficacy, resulting in increased team cohesion. Increased team cohesion resulted in improved team performance and participation.

The current study has several limitations. First, the sample is mostly business major students in the mid-sized university in the USA. There is a limitation in generalizing the findings into other populations. Second, this study accessed information on 35 teams comprising a total of 146 students. While the number of students and teams is sufficient for a study, more data would improve the robustness of the results. Third, this study collected and analyzed cross-sectional data, so there is the possibility for the reversed causal relationship in the findings. Although the authors concluded that team cohesion had a positive impact on team performance and participation, they also found the reverse relationship from the additional analysis. Fourth, the validity of the construct for emotional intelligence has some detractors, mainly because of the subjective nature of the measurement that tends to overlap existing personality measures and the objective measurement which involves a consensual scoring method with poor reliability.

This paper implies practical strategies to manage teams and team members for enhanced team productivity. Teams are critical resources within companies. This study demonstrates that high team cohesion leads to better team performance. As team cohesion is important for team performance, the authors found that two antecedents for team cohesion are emotional intelligence and self-efficacy within team members. Therefore, it is important for managers to hire and select team members with high levels of emotional intelligence and self-efficacy. Managers can train employees to internalize increased levels of these traits.

The current study demonstrated that self-efficacy mediated emotional intelligence and team cohesion during a research project lasting one semester. There have been few studies examining the mediating effect of self-efficacy on the relationship between emotional intelligence and team cohesion. In particular, unlike many other studies that use short-term laboratory experiments, the duration of this study could provide enough time to more thoroughly develop cohesion among members. The current study collected both quantitative and qualitative data. In addition to the quantitative data analysis, the analysis of qualitative data reinforced the findings of the quantitative data analysis.

Despite all recent changes in families, and maybe because of them, the birth of a child remains an event of intense expectation, investment, and symbolic meaning. In this chapter, we offer a simultaneously new, innovative, and contemporary perspective on the social construction of the family through the lens of family rituals, specifically directed to the postnatal hospital visit following the birth of a child. The raw data were collected through episodic interviews carried out to Portuguese middle-class men and women. A qualitative content analysis of their detailed descriptions was then conducted making use of software NVivo (©QSR International). The sociological perspective we used allows us to conclude that the moment of the birth of a child is a quintessential time–space for the social construction of the family. Around the baby, for the task of rocking the cradle, men and women join and take on their old and new roles. While the postnatal hospital visit allows the presentation of the newborn family member for the extended family and friends, it strongly underlies the strategies and senses of belonging to one particular family, thereby serving the purpose of its social construction.

This study explores the relations between home and family in times of a pandemic, transporting the family away from the family home and, apparently, from the family itself. Specifically, it focuses art, culture, and society by shedding light on the enduring role of family rituals in creating and sustaining family identity while affirming the role of information and communication technology (ICT), in both the construction and reproduction of the family dynamics amid pandemic times. Reflection is taken upon a live-by-Zoom art exhibition opening. Family photo albums and several artifacts are used to show the family history, and, at the same time, the installed objects and surrounding narratives invite others to imagine the artist’s family as well as each audience member’s own family. The opening took place in March 2021, during the second lockdown in Portugal. Methodologically, the chapter draws on data collected through direct observation and autoethnography. Inspired by an arts-based approach, narrative is built on storytelling sociology, while using writing as a method of inquiry and reflexive composition to overcome the limits of the personal narrative. By the end, it is argued that as families “live” at Zoom, family rituals too. Zoom platform reproduces the family atmosphere, opportunities, and constraints. Looking at the art exhibit opening as a family ritual allows one to think about how individuals experienced family gatherings during the pandemic, but also how art might generate such familial intimacies in such exceptional times.

Is collaborative story production (CSP) a useful method to collaborate with bereaved families to record their reflections on the end of life circumstances and care of people of advanced age? The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Drawing from Te Pākeketanga, a bicultural study involving 58 bereaved Māori and non-Māori families on behalf of 52 older relatives, the authors describe the CSP method. Researchers and participants co-created personalised written stories about the older person and their end of life experiences, supported with photographs of family, friends and memorabilia. The authors aimed to uplift the status of the older person and their family by tangibly reflecting the significance and magnitude of what had been shared and to strengthen the research analysis.

CSP supported member checking, promoted a robust understanding of participants’ narratives and increased the trustworthiness of data and strengthened the Kaupapa Māori and social constructivist analysis. However, some participants experienced difficulty revisiting painful memories when reading their story. CSP took longer than anticipated, was labour intensive and required a highly skilled and resourced team to ensure participants benefitted.

Using the CSP method with a bicultural cohort of bereaved families who had provided care to someone over the age of 80 was very helpful in assisting the researchers to gather narrative information and present it back to participants in a story format for their comment and feedback. The method contributed a useful way to partner with bereaved family caregivers following the death of an older family member. The authors needed a way to record the participants’ narratives of the older person’s end of life circumstances and end of life care experiences. This was very important, particularly for grieving families and indigenous families who may have felt vulnerable engaging with research, and with the research processes. The approach provided a helpful and non-intrusive member-checking process. The unique bicultural study approach deliberately utilised the CSP method to assist the researchers to work safely with bereaved families as the participants reflected upon and explored not only the end of life circumstances of the older person, but they also focused on the “death” and their own bereavement experiences. CSP also provided a helpful member-checking method; the authors were working with highly sensitive information and wanted to ensure that the authors as researchers understood and interpreted the families’ narrative data correctly, according to their perspectives.

“The issue we confront today is not primarily one concerning a special day for an individual. The issue is in reality whether our nation can summon the will and vision to recognize a great and historic period in its history by designating the birthdate of one who made major contributions to the period a national public holiday.”

This paper aims to explore the place of disabled guests in the new world of hotel and holiday accommodation shaped by the sharing economy.

The paper uses Levitas’s (2013) Utopia as Method as a methodological tool to develop the hypothetical future scenarios, which are used to explore the place of disabled guests in peer-to-peer holiday accommodation.

Analysis of the hypothetical scenarios suggests that without state intervention, the place of disabled guests in both traditional hotels and peer-to-peer holiday accommodation is far from secure.

This is a new area and the authors’ discussion is therefore tentative in its intent.

Planners and policymakers should consult with, and take account of, the needs of disabled people and other socially excluded groups when regulating shared economy enterprises. It may be helpful to put in place broader legislation for social inclusion rather than regulate peer-to-peer platforms. Any recourse to markets as a means of resolving access issues needs also to acknowledge the limited power of socially excluded groups within both traditional and sharing economy markets.

The hypothetical scenarios discussed within this paper offer planners, policymakers and tourism stakeholders opportunities to think through the access and inclusion needs of disabled guests in the shared economy sector.

The paper extends discussion of hospitality and disability access to include shared economy approaches and the place of disabled guests in the new world of holiday accommodation shaped by the sharing economy.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how preservice teachers conceive of and implement social actions on their college campuses related to a chosen social problem developed in a young adult novel and to examine how social action projects develop teacher candidates’ critical literacies.

This qualitative exploratory multiple case study (Stake, 2005) investigated 70 pre-service teachers on two college campuses over two semesters as they engaged in social action projects. The researchers engaged in layers of open and thematic coding through the theoretical lens of critical literacies.

Preservice teachers engaged in a range of direct and indirect action and, as a result, experienced varying levels of self-efficacy and impact. While most felt their endeavors were successful, those who conducted awareness campaigns noted an inability to measure the effects they had on their communities. Their development of critical literacies through social action was evidenced in the partnerships across campus they established as well as their levels of engagement with peers and local officials.

While the results of conducting social action with youth in secondary classrooms are well established in the literature, lesser well known are ways to engage preservice teachers in such endeavors. This study illustrates not only how teacher candidates can engage in social action as aligned with young adult literature but also offers insights gained from those processes.

Although there is great potential for diversity, library and information science (LIS) is a relatively homogenous profession. Increasing the presence of librarians of color may help to improve diversity within LIS. However, recruiting ethnic minorities into LIS has proven to be difficult despite various initiative including scholarships, fellowships, and locally focused programs. The central questions explored in this research can be divided into two parts: (1) Why do ethnic minorities choose librarianship as a profession? (2) What would motivate members of minority groups to join a profession in which they cannot see themselves?

The research was conducted through semi-structured, qualitative interviews of 32 ethnic minority students from one of four ethnic minority groups (African American, Asian American, Hispanic/Latino, and Native American) currently enrolled in an LIS graduate program. Eleven themes emerged from the data: libraries, librarians, library work experience, LIS graduate program, career plans and goals, education and family, support, mentors, ethnicity and community, acculturation, and views of diversity.

The findings seem to support many assumptions regarding expectations and career goals. The findings related to libraries, librarians, mentors, and support illustrate that many recruitment initiatives are starting in the right place. However, the most noteworthy findings were those that centered on identity, acculturation, and diversity because they dealt with issues that are not often considered or discussed by many in the profession outside of ethnic minority organizations.

This chapter considers the mobilities of families subject to child protection involvement at the threshold of the birth of a new baby. The author presents data arising from an ethnographic study of child protection social work with unborn babies. This study aimed to draw near to social work practice within the Scottish context through mobile research methods and included non-participant observations of a range of child protection meetings with expectant families. Research interviews were sought with expectant mothers and fathers, social workers and the chair persons of Pre-birth Child Protection Case Conferences. Case conferences are formal administrative meetings designed to consider the risks to children, including unborn children. This chapter focusses on the experiences of expectant parents of navigating the child protection involvement with their as yet unborn infant. The strategies that parents adopted to steer a course through the multiple possibilities in relation to the future care of their infant are explored here. Three major strategies: resistance, defeatism and holding on are considered. These emerged as means by which expectant parents responded to social work involvement and which enabled their continued forwards motion towards an uncertain future.

Spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an increase in the open acknowledgment of the importance of teaching and learning praxis that is grounded in compassion, understanding, cocreation, community, and flexibility. This is especially so for ‘traditional’ university spaces, in essence questioning and resisting the many established dynamics that face-to-face teaching and learning took for granted within many neoliberal and neocolonial higher education contexts. In this chapter, I propose positioning a love ethic as a primary point of departure for all educational engagements, a foundational shift in ontology (way of being) of the university. By focusing on love as liberation and justice, and teaching as an act of love, I draw on critical, engaged, and feminist pedagogies, as well as my experience as a lecturer in a social justice– and global citizenship-oriented program at the University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa, where I positioned a love ethic as central to my pedagogical approach. I argue that when we begin to view love as more than mere emotion, but as an ideological position that informs values and praxis within higher education (and our university “classrooms” in particular), we may move toward new and exciting ways of envisioning the decolonized university of the 21st century. A love ethic, as defined by bell hooks, offers possibilities for an approach to critical transformation that is not merely motivated by the change of institutional structures, but by the reform of values guiding teaching and learning and ways of being within higher education institutions.