Search results

Without the contribution of the higher education (HE) sector, none of the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) are achievable. Through research, teaching, and community engagement, universities globally make vital contributions towards Agenda 30. Through partnerships, their impact is enhanced – university networks are key to facilitating collaboration. The Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU) is a global university network encompassing more than 500 universities. ACU spans five continents with membership representative of the full diversity of the Commonwealth. University networks such as this demonstrate that bringing institutions together enhances their ability to tackle global challenges. University networks are vital vehicles for knowledge sharing and best practice. ACU members in low- to middle-income countries face systematic biases that need significant support for disparities to decrease. The ACU provides a platform for all its members, including in the global South, to have their voices heard and affect policy-makers at the most prominent forums, including the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), the Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers (CCEM), and the Conference of the Parties (COP). The ACU implements initiatives that build capacity. Examples include Climate Impacts Research Capacity and Leadership Enhancement (CIRCLE), which supports researchers and institutions across Africa to produce internationally peer reviewed research into the climate change; and Partnership for Enhanced and Blended Learning (PEBL), which works with universities in Africa to enhance access to quality education through blended learning. These projects rank alongside similar initiatives that leverage networks to deliver outcomes that would not otherwise be possible. Without networks such as these, the great potential of universities to tackle the SDGs will likely not be realised.

Work-life flexibility policies (e.g., flextime, telework, part-time, right-to-disconnect, and leaves) are increasingly important to employers as productivity and well-being strategies. However, policies have not lived up to their potential. In this chapter, the authors argue for increased research attention to implementation and work-life intersectionality considerations influencing effectiveness. Drawing on a typology that conceptualizes flexibility policies as offering employees control across five dimensions of the work role boundary (temporal, spatial, size, permeability, and continuity), the authors develop a model identifying the multilevel moderators and mechanisms of boundary control shaping relationships between using flexibility and work and home performance. Next, the authors review this model with an intersectional lens. The authors direct scholars’ attention to growing workforce diversity and increased variation in flexibility policy experiences, particularly for individuals with higher work-life intersectionality, which is defined as having multiple intersecting identities (e.g., gender, caregiving, and race), that are stigmatized, and link to having less access to and/or benefits from societal resources to support managing the work-life interface in a social context. Such an intersectional focus would address the important need to shift work-life and flexibility research from variable to person-centered approaches. The authors identify six research considerations on work-life intersectionality in order to illuminate how traditionally assumed work-life relationships need to be revisited to address growing variation in: access, needs, and preferences for work-life flexibility; work and nonwork experiences; and benefits from using flexibility policies. The authors hope that this chapter will spur a conversation on how the work-life interface and flexibility policy processes and outcomes may increasingly differ for individuals with higher work-life intersectionality compared to those with lower work-life intersectionality in the context of organizational and social systems that may perpetuate growing work-life and job inequality.

This study aims to examine the potential of Information Ethics (IE) to serve as a coherent ethical foundation for the library and information science profession (LIS profession).

This study consists of two parts: the first part present IE’s central theses and the main critiques it has received; the second part offers the authors' own evaluation of the theory from the LIS perspective in two steps: (1) assessing its internal consistency by testing its major theses against each other; (2) assessing its utility for resolving frequently debated LIS ethical dilemmas by comparing its solutions with solutions from other ethical theories.

This study finds that IE, consisting of an informational ontology, a fundamental ethical assertion and a series of moral laws, forms a coherent ethical framework and holds promising potential to serve as a theoretical foundation for LIS ethical issues; its inclusion of nonhuman objects as moral patients and its levels of abstraction mechanism proved to be particularly relevant for the LIS profession. This study also shows that, to become more solid an ethical theory, IE needs to resolve some of its internal contradictions and ambiguities, particularly its conceptual conflations between internal correctness, rightness and goodness; between destruction, entropy and evil; and the discrepancy between its deontological ethical assertion and its utilitarian moral laws.

This study alerts LIS professionals to the possibility of having a coherent ethical foundation and the potential of IE in this regard.

This study provides a systemic explication, evaluation and field test of IE from the LIS perspective.

The rich qualitative study builds on 11 semi-structured interviews with nine neurodivergent employees and two business professionals supportive of neurodiversity to understand the lived experiences of dealing with crisis in a remote working environment.

The purpose of the reported research is to understand how neurominorities experience remote working in the times of crisis and what the implications of this are for human resource (HR) professionals.

Moving to remote work resulted in a lack of routine, distractions and working long hours, which can all be difficult for line managers to monitor. Further problems with communication in a virtual environment and lack of understanding by others were found to be particularly burdensome to neurodivergent individuals. On the positive note, remote working in the times of crisis allowed for avoiding sensory overwhelm and was seen as an important step in creating a healthy work–life balance (WLB).

The findings of this study point HR practitioners' attention towards building a more neurodiversity friendly post-pandemic workplace and prompt employers to offer working arrangements, which better suit employees' domestic and personal circumstances.

This study addresses the lack of research on the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on neurominorities. In doing so, it answers recent calls to move away from universal HR as a route to positive employee outcomes and facilitates a more accurate reflection of organizational reality for disadvantaged members of society.

Research has shown that for young adults, marital attitudes (e.g., desire, importance, and expectation) are associated with relationship quality. However, how this association plays out for young adults of color is less known. Additionally, the influence of skin tone perception on the relationship between marital attitudes and relationship quality remains understudied. To explore these associations, the authors examined African American and Latinx young adults (N = 57, M_age = 20.71 years, SD = 1.28; 75.4% female) attending a Midwestern university. Exploratory results indicated that marital expectations were positively associated with relationship quality in that young adults who expected to marry one day, reported greater relationship satisfaction, commitment, and intimacy in their current relationships. Additionally, skin tone perception moderated the association between marital attitudes and relationship quality in two ways (i.e., between expectations and satisfaction and between importance and intimacy). Collectively, findings suggest that differing levels of marital attitudes and skin tone perception contributes to young adults’ perceptions of relationship quality. Considering these psychological factors of attitudes, skin tone perception, and relationship quality, together with systemic racial/ethnic discrimination, the authors discuss future research and practice considerations.

Cultural criminologists have long been interested in the politics of crime and deviance, whether that be in relation to youth subculture resistance or the social reaction to transgression evident in the media construction of folk devils and moral panics. While contemporary ‘new’ cultural criminology continues to be focused on the situated experience of deviant ‘edgeworkers’, this chapter argues cultural criminology’s concern with the crime-media nexus provides particularly fertile ground for exploring insights provided by activists, academics, professional journalists and citizen journalists around informal interventions on formal criminal justice processes using social media and digital technologies. Drawing on examples from a burgeoning body of crime-media research, the chapter makes a case for ‘cultural criminology activism’, which, like activist criminology, is consciously disengaged from mainstream criminology’s alignment with the neoliberal-carceral state and its reformist agenda.

HyFlex course design is an effective instructional course design that combines active and transformative learning techniques. HyFlex course design encourages active learning by focusing on interactive activities, discussions, and collaboration. It also allows learners to collaborate effectively and flexibly as a community, providing peer support and opportunities for authentic dialogue and learning experiences. HyFlex course design provides the opportunity for transformative learning through its ability to offer personalized educational experiences to individuals. It facilitates greater customization of the learning experience, allowing individual learners to access tailored educational modules, offer personalized educational experiences to individuals, and effectively develop and build independent and critical thinking skills. This conceptual review, supported by implications from HyFlex literature and triangulated with experts' views undertaking a Delphi study, facilitates understanding the current state of research in HyFlex course design and future application strategies. Existing research has identified HyFlex courses as a promising means of engaging students in active learning. Allowing students to learn through flexibly predesigned mixed online and in-person experiences enables higher levels of student autonomy and supports students in taking more ownership of their learning. This approach can facilitate an understanding of how HyFlex courses can improve active learning practices in higher education. The review study findings identify the reported alignment issues and challenges, suggest four strategies and actions for policymakers and stakeholders, and provide a suggested research agenda for bridging identified research gaps.

Future research can provide evidence of the benefits of HyFlex course design and how flexible course design can address the challenges of traditional face-to-face courses, such as reduced student engagement, lack of student-centered approaches, and limited support for different learning styles. Further research can focus on strategies that can be used to promote active learning in HyFlex courses. Moreover, research can investigate how this kind of course design can equip educators with the skills and knowledge needed to design and implement effective and meaningful active learning experiences. Finally, research can assess the potential impact of HyFlex course design on student outcomes, including performance, satisfaction, and engagement.

Football exists and evolves in a dynamic ecosystem, displaying a massive and multidimensional influence on most contemporary societies, and football has grown into a significant industry with a plethora of stakeholders. This research is the first to comprehensively identify the key industry stakeholders and their distinct value, from the individual club perspective, and to conceptualise and test their interrelationship toward the development of a corresponding framework of club benefits.

The study applied a multilevel approach to collect and verify qualitative data. It initially developed a preliminary conceptual framework, which was first validated by an expert panel and was subsequently extensively tested in the Cyprus-specific context, which offered fertile ground for such a study. The empirical stage rested on 41 semi-structured, face-to-face interviews with very high-ranking individuals from the top nine football clubs, as well as with key industry stakeholders.

Though the examined industry is partly in line with international norms, it is also highly affected by unique characteristics that alter the various stakeholders' role, producing (even negative) value of varied typologies that is directly linked with the industry's financial, sporting, cultural and social conditions.

The research ultimately presents scholars, practitioners and policymakers with a systemic and comprehensive understanding of the individual club stakeholder value offerings, delivers a tested framework as a tool for social and business management and prescribes future avenues for research, governance and practice.

Extant studies on the subject are either partial or focus on individual stakeholders and evidently lack requisite scientific comprehensiveness. The current research bridges this significant gap in knowledge by exhaustively identifying the key industry stakeholders, explicating their relative social, economic or other value in the individual club perspective and developing a value-based stakeholder framework.