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1 – 10 of 446It is some years since I submitted a thesis on The Financial Effects of Labour Turnover, which was subsequently published in abbreviated form. I am obliged to M E Orton…
Abstract
It is some years since I submitted a thesis on The Financial Effects of Labour Turnover, which was subsequently published in abbreviated form. I am obliged to M E Orton, therefore, whose writing in the Summer Journal encourages me to return to this old stamping ground and to clear up a long‐standing confusion — especially as his article in this Review so usefully reviews concepts and does not rehash old figures.
Anne E. Green and Michael Orton
The purpose of this paper is to engage with the theme of activation policies and organisational innovation in the capability perspective, from the viewpoint of active…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to engage with the theme of activation policies and organisational innovation in the capability perspective, from the viewpoint of active labour market policies in the UK.
Design/methodology/approach
The focus of the article is the City Strategy initiative in Great Britain, which encourages institutions to work together to develop solutions to concentrations of worklessness. The article presents findings from a case study of the introduction of the City Strategy in one English sub‐region: Birmingham, Coventry and the Black Country. The empirical investigation is based on analysis of documentary evidence including strategy papers and “grey literature” such as minutes of meetings and internal briefings. In addition, the case study draws on in‐depth qualitative interviews conducted with 18 local actors involved in the City Strategy.
Findings
The empirical investigation provides selected evidence of successful public action undertaken through the City Strategy. It discusses issues concerning the benefits of partnership working and inter‐agency cooperation, but also limits that are reached.
Originality/value
The paper identifies elements of the capabilities approach – the idea of situated public action, the importance of local actors, and key concepts of empowerment and voice – as providing a helpful framework for analysis. While the City Strategy represents an interesting example of situated public action to tackle worklessness, it can be argued that what is missing in this instance is what the capabilities approach identifies as key elements of empowerment and voice for local actors.
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Much has been written about the causes and measurement of labour turnover, but less has been written about the costs involved. It is generally assumed that high rates of…
Abstract
Much has been written about the causes and measurement of labour turnover, but less has been written about the costs involved. It is generally assumed that high rates of labour turnover will have harmful financial effects, without any serious attempt being made to quantify these effects. Sometimes it is considered that the costs involved in quantifying the costs will not justify the knowledge gained. Over the years, however, various methods for costing labour turnover have been suggested and used in specific examples. This article summarises the main methods suggested, and attempts to draw some conclusions as to their adequacy. No method yet devised has presented management with a simple but effective guide to labour turnover costs which can be applied in most situations.
This paper aims to offer an analysis of the conflicting values behind Norway's much celebrated inclusive working life (IWL) programme, which aims to reduce sickness…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to offer an analysis of the conflicting values behind Norway's much celebrated inclusive working life (IWL) programme, which aims to reduce sickness absenteeism, to increase the average age of retirement, and to hire functionally challenged persons. This article, moreover, presents sorely needed qualitative data from a preliminary study on IWL that shows how state‐owned enterprises have struggled to cope with the conflicting goals.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a qualitative study based on interviews with regional managers and representatives of the unions who had to adapt to IWL, and the results suggest possible explanations behind the disappointing numbers found by other quantitative studies on IWL.
Findings
Because of the decision to implement IWL, regional managers are caught in the middle of two different ideologies, namely, neo‐liberalism or new public management (NPM) and the welfare‐state ideology, and they find themselves making choices according to the former. This study on state enterprises at the local level has found that managers and union representatives appeared to support the intentions behind the programme, but they clearly prioritized productivity and efficiency over inclusiveness.
Research limitations/implications
As the results are from a preliminary qualitative study of IWL that only included state enterprises, there is a need for further research that also includes the private enterprises.
Practical implications
This study finds that IWL is ineffective because it cannot harmonize the NPM and the welfare‐state ideologies.
Originality/value
This article helps to remedy the lack of qualitative documentation on the progress of IWL. These results also question the prevailing optimism over the potential of IWL by pointing to the ideological tensions between welfare and efficiency.
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Maarten de Laat, Srecko Joksimovic and Dirk Ifenthaler
To help workers make the right decision, over the years, technological solutions and workplace learning analytics systems have been designed to aid this process…
Abstract
Purpose
To help workers make the right decision, over the years, technological solutions and workplace learning analytics systems have been designed to aid this process (Ruiz-Calleja et al., 2019). Recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI) have the potential to further revolutionise the integration of human and artificial learning and will impact human and machine collaboration during team work (Seeber et al., 2020).
Design/methodology/approach
Complex problem-solving has been identified as one of the key skills for the future workforce (Hager and Beckett, 2019). Problems faced by today's workforce emerge in situ and everyday workplace learning is seen as an effective way to develop the skills and experience workers need to embrace these problems (Campbell, 2005; Jonassen et al., 2006).
Findings
In this commentary the authors argue that the increased digitization of work and social interaction, combined with recent research on workplace learning analytics and AI opens up the possibility for designing automated real-time feedback systems capable of just-in-time, just-in-place support during complex problem-solving at work. As such, these systems can support augmented learning and professional development in situ.
Originality/value
The commentary reflects on the benefits of automated real-time feedback systems and argues for the need of shared research agenda to cohere research in the direction of AI-enabled workplace analytics and real-time feedback to support learning and development in the workplace.
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The final report of the Butter Regulations Committee has now been published and it is earnestly to be hoped that Regulations based on the Committee's Recommendations will…
Abstract
The final report of the Butter Regulations Committee has now been published and it is earnestly to be hoped that Regulations based on the Committee's Recommendations will at once be framed and issued by the Board of Agriculture. It will be remembered that in an Interim Report the Committee recommended the adoption of a limit of 16 per cent. for the proportion of water in butter, and that, acting on this recommendation, the Board of Agriculture drew up and issued the “Sale of Butter Regulations, 1902,” under the powers conferred on the Board by Section 4 of the Food Act of 1899. In the present Report the Committee deal with the other matters referred to them, namely, as to what Regulations, if any, might with advantage be made for determining what deficiency in any of the normal constituents of butter, or what addition of extraneous matter other than water, should raise a presumption until the contrary is proved that the butter is not “genuine.” The Committee are to be congratulated on the result of their labours—labours which have obviously been both arduous and lengthy. The questions which have had to be dealt with are intricate and difficult, and they are, moreover, of a highly technical nature. The Committee have evidently worked with the earnest desire to arrive at conclusions which, when applied, would afford as great a measure of protection—as it is possible to give by means of legislative enactments—to the consumer and to the honest producer. The thorough investigation which has been made could result only in the conclusions at which the Committee have arrived, namely, that, in regard to the administration of the Food Acts, (1) an analytical limit should be imposed which limit should determine what degree of deficiency in those constituents which specially characterise butter should raise a presumption that the butter is not “genuine”; (2) that the use of 10 per cent. of a chemically‐recognisable oil in the manufacture of margarine be made compulsory; (3) that steps should be taken to obtain international co‐operation; and finally, that the System of Control, as explained by various witnesses, commends itself to the Committee.
Matthew Jason Wells and Jason Boyd
Despite the popularity of the Computational Thinking (CT) paradigm and the call for broad social diffusion of CS fundamentals, the authors argue that the concept is…
Abstract
Purpose
Despite the popularity of the Computational Thinking (CT) paradigm and the call for broad social diffusion of CS fundamentals, the authors argue that the concept is inherently limited and limiting and does not sufficiently convey an understanding of how to enable people to create with computational technologies. The authors suggest an alternate paradigm, procedural creativity, that calls for the development of conceptual creative spaces governed by procedurally generative principles. The authors also call for game development to be the focus of procedural creativity pedagogy.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors first discuss the limitations of the CT paradigm, focusing, in particular, on the issue of abstraction and representation as opposed to execution and action. The authors then define procedural creativity in more detail. Following that, they discuss the use of game development as pedagogy, with a focus on Margaret Boden’s notion of conceptual creative spaces.
Findings
CT is limited because it focuses overly on solutions to computational “problems”, because it is tied too closely with economic concerns and because it focuses on abstraction at the cost of action. Procedural creativity, on the other hand, focuses on the individual’s capacity for personal expression with the computer and on the generative capacity of code in action. Game development is in ideal platform for procedural creativity because it emphasizes the development of creative domains and conceptual spaces.
Originality/value
This paper offers a challenge to the CT status quo and presents a novel way forward for understanding computation as a creative practice.
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Mari Elken and Martina Vukasovic
The term “loose coupling” has been widely employed in higher education research. Building partly on the “garbage can model” of decision-making, it proposed an alternative…
Abstract
The term “loose coupling” has been widely employed in higher education research. Building partly on the “garbage can model” of decision-making, it proposed an alternative to rational and linear views on organizing and governing, emphasizing instead ambiguity and complexity. The review of higher education research literature presented in this chapter demonstrates that the concept of loose coupling has frequently been used as a background concept, often taken for-granted either as a point of departure for studies of organizational processes in higher education or as a diagnosis of the complexity of higher education organization that inhibits implementation of reforms. This chapter provides systematization and critical examination of how the term “loose coupling”/“loosely coupled systems” has been employed in journal articles focusing on higher education in the last 40 years. It presents a broad mapping of 209 articles and a more detailed qualitative review of 22 articles, which employed loose coupling as more than a background concept.
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Chris Proctor and Paulo Blikstein
This research aims to explore how textual literacy and computational literacy can support each other and combine to create literacies with new critical possibilities. It…
Abstract
Purpose
This research aims to explore how textual literacy and computational literacy can support each other and combine to create literacies with new critical possibilities. It describes the development of a Web application for interactive storytelling and analyzes how its use in a high-school classroom supported new rhetorical techniques and critical analysis of gender and race.
Design/methodology/approach
Three iterations of design-based research were used to develop a Web application for interactive storytelling, which combines writing with programming. A two-week study in a high-school sociology class was conducted to analyze how the Web application's textual and computational affordances support rhetorical strategies, which in turn support identity authorship and critical possibilities.
Findings
The results include a Web application for interactive storytelling and an analytical framework for analyzing how affordances of digital media can support literacy practices with unique critical possibilities. The final study showed how interactive stories can function as critical discourse models, simulations of social realities which support analysis of phenomena such as social positioning and the use of power.
Originality/value
Previous work has insufficiently spanned the fields of learning sciences and literacies, respectively emphasizing the mechanisms and the content of literacy practices. In focusing a design-based approach on critical awareness of identity, power and privilege, this research develops tools and theory for supporting critical computational literacies. This research envisions a literacy-based approach to K-12 computer science which could contribute to liberatory education.
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Nahid Olfati, Saeed Dastgiri, Sakineh Hajebrahimi and Hassan Jahanbin
This study aims to fill the knowledge gap regarding general practitioners ' (GPs) research utilization (RU) behavior in Iran. It also aims to find possible…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to fill the knowledge gap regarding general practitioners ' (GPs) research utilization (RU) behavior in Iran. It also aims to find possible barriers to research use among GPs to inform organizational change processes.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors modified the research utilization questionnaire developed by Estabrooks et al., to address physicians ' views. The questionnaire was piloted and its validity and reliability was assessed before being sent to GPs. A 77 percent response rate was eventually achieved.
Findings
Respondents were generally positive concerning research evidence use. Respondents ' mean attitude score was 25.3 (SD=5.6, min. 13, max. 37). However, less than 25 percent of the GPs practiced any form of RU in the last year. Absent facilities and resources, little authority to change practices, expected increases in patient visit durations and the poor access to research information were found to be the main RU barriers for GPs.
Practical implications
The borderline 77 percent response rate was reached despite sending questionnaires to non-responders two times. Considering the non-probability sampling used in this study, generalizing the results should be considered cautiously.
Originality/value
Research utilization programs are new in Iran and there is little evidence to inform policies. This study focused attitudes concerning RU and GPs ' knowledge concerning novel research and skills, and to some extent, GPs ' behaviors toward RU.
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