Search results

Career burnout is prevalent in the PR industry, precisely when demand for professionals is increasing. While career burnout has been included in studies and theorising on professionalism and feminisation, issues with turnover and burnout remain.

Using a grounded theory approach, this qualitative study draws upon the lived experiences of 30 current and former female Australian PR professionals to gain an understanding of how they perceive signs of career burnout and the factors that contribute to it.

Career burnout is an occupational syndrome whereby someone gradually morphs from being highly motivated in their role to emotionally exhausted, cynical and/or experiencing feelings of failure. It is a protracted response to chronic workplace demands and stressors, and includes three dimensions: emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation and reduced personal accomplishment. It is specifically a workplace phenomenon, distinguished from anxiety and depression, which can emerge in any context.

A key contributor to career burnout were PR-specific workplace stressors that were perceived to stem from a lack of respect for, or understanding of, PR as a profession. The stressors included the need to‘prove the spend’of PR, unreasonable deadlines, clients disregarding advice or counsel, as well as broader societal perceptions of PR as ‘spin doctors’. This often led to the PR practitioner undertaking work that went against their own advice or resulted in unsuccessful organisational outcomes they felt could have been avoided had their advice been listened to and valued. The workplace factors contributing to burnout overlap in complex ways and the study supports the idea that burnout is a product of situational contexts, despite being acutely felt at the individual level.

This chapter reports research conducted in Melbourne, Australia that is focused on the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in schools and families. The emphasis is on the relationship between technology, learning, culture and (dis)advantage. It is generally agreed that ICTs are associated with major social, cultural, pedagogical and lifestyle changes, although the nature of those changes is subject to conflicting norms and interpretations. In this chapter we adopt a critical, multi-disciplined, relational perspective in order to examine the influence of ICTs, in schools and homes, on a sample of students and their families.

If integrating technology means nothing more than enhancing the traditional delivery system of social studies content, where laptops replace notebooks, where PowerPoint slides replace handwritten overheads, where e-textbooks replace hard copy textbooks, then we will be no closer to the NCSS vision of transformative, powerful social studies instruction. (Doolittle & Hicks, 2003, p.75)

After comprehensive review of discourse surrounding school-banking programmes and marketing to children, the authors develop evidence-based guidelines for such programmes. Guidance for organisations is provided to ensure they understand these products' impact on children and other vulnerable consumers.

A comprehensive, systematised review of literature related to school-banking programmes was undertaken during 2019, 22 Boolean searches were collated, appraised using a five-step quality appraisal framework and analysed against selection criteria. To accommodate literature across disciplines, quality appraisal combined two existing hierarchies of evidence and peer-review status.

Searches returned over 375,000 articles; 149 were relevant and met quality thresholds. Evidence supports the role of financial education in producing positive financial outcomes. However, education should involve communities and families to enhance consumer socialisation and limit negative consequences. From this, guidelines are presented accounting for students' and parents' ability to understand marketing messages and the impact of in-school marketing on students – including on longer-term perceptions, attitudes and behaviours.

Guidelines are to assist financial institutions, policymakers and schools balance the benefits of financial literacy and education with potentially negative consequences of school-banking programmes. Classifying programmes as marketing rather than CSR also benefits organisations contributing corporate resources and voluntarily engaging practices underpinned by commitment to community well-being.

Avoiding moral panic, the authors instead outline evidence-based guidelines on school-banking programmes. The quality appraisal process used in this review offers a new approach to synthesising inter-disciplinary evidence.

The relationship between work and family has long been the subject of lively debate in the political, public, and academic arena. Employers in the hospitality industry should carefully consider the work–family balance of their employees because maintaining a good balance will result in lower costs, lower sick rates, and lower staff turnover. The term “balance” refers to the way in which work interferes with life at home and how home life interferes with work. It includes both the positive and negative effects that work has on the family domain and vice versa. As research on the psychological contract approach to the employment relationship is scarce with regard to work–family interference, it became the subject of this study. The results demonstrate that psychological contract measures, in particular time commitment, can explain work–family conflict, while job content can explain work–family enrichment. In addition, the study revealed that with the appearance of gender as a moderator, different additional factors may play a role in work–family enrichment and work–family conflict. Furthermore, it revealed that family structure is not a predictor for work–family interference. This paper discusses managerial implications and offers recommendations for further research.

Discussions about an Open College — a system of flexible learning opportunities for those aiming at ends other than degrees and diplomas — have gathered strength and subsided many times in the UK during the last fifteen years. It is not widely known that during the period 1963–1965, when Sir Harold Wilson (then Opposition Leader and Prime Minister Wilson) was making his challenging speeches about a University of the Air and the academic and newspaper fraternities were both having fun with ‘telly degrees’, the senior educationists at the BBC were in close discussion with HM Inspectorate and DES officials on an equally ambitious but less charismatic project. This was a proposal for using radio and television in close collaboration with correspondence courses and local tuition to extend opportunities in technical and commercial education and in preparatory courses for higher education: in other words, an Open College. It was Miss Jenny Lee's insistence that the new institution must be ‘a university, and nothing less than a university’ that finally closed the files on those discussions; and, in terms of political survival through a period of recession, no doubt she was right.

This article examines the national and international connections made by women graduates of the School of Home Science in their efforts to develop the scholarly expertise and professional capacity that would enable them to pursue academic careers and to improve the position of women in universities. It argues that despite the obstacles, many women were able to pursue academic pathways and to establish their own authority. By undertaking a transnational analysis, this article examines webs of influence that linked women scholars in New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the United States as well as those in the so called “centre” (Europe and the United Kingdom). It explores the networks formed by a select number of middle class women ‐ scholars such as Ann Gilchrist Strong, Elizabeth Gregory and Neige Todhunter ‐ as they attempted to expand the range of their scholarly work beyond national borders. It considers the influence of appointments of women academics from the United States and the United Kingdom on; the significance of post graduate study opportunities for home science graduates; and the role of scholarships and awards that enabled two way travel between the southern and northern hemispheres. A number of tensions are evident in the way women scholars located their work in new and emerging fields of academic knowledge within the university. This article explores interrelationships between women academics and graduates from the School of Home Science at the University of Otago and academic women in the United Kingdom and the United States. The final section of the paper examines the academic and scholarly life of Catherine Landreth who exemplifies the experience of a select group of women who gained personally, culturally and professionally from their international opportunities, experiences and networks. It considers Landreth’s transnational travels in search of scholarly expertise, the influence of her personal and professional networks, the significance of her pioneering work in the emerging field of early childhood education and the constraints experienced in a highly gendered academic enclave. To begin however it gives a brief overview of the introduction of Home Science at the University of New Zealand and the influence of initial international appointments on the expansion of women’s academic work at the University of Otago.

Coaching in higher education has become increasingly common across the United States. Our qualitative study explores the perceptions of coaches and advisors, as they consider academic coaching as a role distinct from academic advising.

Our study adopts a qualitative research approach. Two focus groups were conducted with 14 coaching and academic advising professionals.

Our findings identify at least three major themes when considering academic coaching as a role distinct from academic advising: (1) Potential role overlap, (2) Caseload disparities and (3) Philosophical differences. The indiscriminate use of the title of “coach” contributed to confusion, ambiguity and tension.

Without a clear understanding of the coach role as a distinct type of support in higher education, confusion and ambiguity are likely to continue.

No studies have explored the perceptions of coaches and advisors, as they consider academic coaching as a role distinct in the United States.

This research draws on qualitative interviews with primarily lower socioeconomic status (SES) public library internet users to illuminate their perceptions of economic benefits afforded by the internet. This powerful evidence challenges utopian new technological theories. The results from this study allow for the comparison of perspectives from Millennials, Generation Xers, Boomers, and the Silent generation. These results suggest a disconnect between the cultural mythology around the internet as an all-powerful tool and the lived experiences of lower SES respondents. Lower SES participants primarily use the internet to train and educate themselves in areas where they would like to work in the process of applying for jobs using the internet. Participants recognized marginal benefits such as socialization and less burdensome job application processes. However, they struggled to identify significant job-related benefits when comparing applying for jobs online as opposed to applying for jobs in person. With the exception of millennials, all generational groups believed in the economic promise of the internet to make their lives easier given enough time. Millennials, however, challenged the techno-utopianism expressed by other generations. Only millennials recognized the realities of digital inequalities that make techno-utopian outcomes unattainable given broader economic realities for low-SES individuals.