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The purpose of this paper is to address the advantages of education and training in creating the “Audiovisual/Digital Media Essay” (AV/DME), starting from visual and cinematic thinking as a way of setting up, developing and concluding an argument.

Recognising the advantages to education and training of the “AV/DME” this paper explores ways of enabling visually disciplined students to work on film theory within their chosen medium, and to develop arguments incorporating audiovisual sources, using appropriate academic skills. It describes a hands-on BA/MA workshop held at Newport Film School (May 2011) and subsequent initial implementation of an examinable DME. The paper contextualises the issue in the light of practice-led and practice-based research and of parity with written dissertations. Drawing on analysis of in-depth interviews with students and tutors, it makes practical recommendations for how to resource, staff and support the implementation and continuation of the AV/DME and/or dissertation.

The paper feeds back from both students and staff on the running of an initial AV/DME workshop and finds that the Film School Newport is suited to running the AV/DME and suggests a framework for its support.

The study needs to be followed up when the students complete their full dissertations.

The AV/DME needs sufficient technical and human resources to support student learning.

The paper provides a clear and original framework for teaching, supporting and assessing the AV/DME. This framework can be disseminated beyond the University of Wales Newport, and can be used to teach the AV/DME in further contexts and to wider groups of students.

PurposeThis paper aims to discuss one of the most critical issues of our time, impediments to global ethics, and seeks to explore the question more intensely for a better outcome.Design/methodology/approachThe Robert J. Rutland Center for Ethics at Clemson University was the venue for an annual four‐day event to reflect and discuss ethics, ethical principles, and the framework for ethical decision making. The theme for 2004's seminar was Ethics in Politics – the 5th Annual Ethics across the Curriculum. Four philosophy professors each presented ethics from a slightly different angle with specific cases provided to better illustrate the points raised. In addition, several cases were assigned to groups while each of the four professors acted as discussion leaders.FindingsThe paper begins with the information provided by the seminar instructors. It is followed by the creeping case – a case that is followed by a series of variations that change it in important ways. Additional suggestions are provided for analysis of the case. Some concluding remarks are provided at the end together with relevant passages from the 9/11 Commission Report.Originality/valueThis paper is the writer's contribution to the seminar in the form of a creeping case on the ethics of oil, weapons, and the Middle East.

The COVID-19 pandemic impacted the workplace in significant ways, creating changes in the daily work routines of individuals globally, many of which are likely to be permanent. Women, in particular, were affected by increased childcare responsibilities and faced with decisions about the future of their careers. The purpose of this practitioner article is to present an overview of work-related challenges and opportunities resulting from COVID-19, introduces the concept of family supportive supervisor behaviors (FSSB), and shares ideas for application.

The concept of FSSB offers insights into the role of supervisors in the adoption of family-friendly approaches that not only mitigate the challenges women, and parents in general, face in the workplace but offers organizations the opportunity to assess the degree to which these practices are present and adopt relevant training and policies. The paper examines the literature on FSSB.

The review identifies ways in which organizations can apply FSSB to support women (and all parents) in the workplace. These include a better understanding of the supervisor role, the need to examine policies and practice and make supervisors accountable and direction for FSSB training.

The paper shares key outcomes of FSSB and provides practical ways for its implementation by leaders and managers. It links the challenges and opportunities of COVID-19 to enhanced FSSB practices.

Social media such as blogs are being widely used in organizations in order to undertake internal communication and share knowledge, rendering them important boundary objects. A root metaphor of the boundary object domain is the notion of relatively static and inert objects spanning similarly static boundaries. A strong sociomaterial perspective allows the immisciblity of object and boundary to be challenged, since a key tenet of this perspective is the ongoing and mutually constituted performance of the material and social. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The aim of the research is to draw upon sociomateriality to explore the operation of social media platforms as intra-organizational boundary objects. Given the novel perspective of this study and its social constructivist ontology, the authors adopt an exploratory, interpretivist research design. This is operationalized as a case study of the use of an organizational blog by a major UK Government department over an extended period. A novel aspect of the study is the use of data released under a Freedom of Information request.

The authors present three exemplar instances of how the blog and organizational boundaries were performed in the situated practice of the case study organization. The authors draw on the literature on boundary objects, blogs and sociomateriality in order to provide a theoretical explication of the mutually constituted performance of the blog and organizational boundaries. The authors also invoke the notion of “extended chains of intra-action” to theorize changes in the wider organization.

Adoption of a sociomaterial lens provides a highly novel perspective of boundary objects and organizational boundaries. The study highlights the indeterminate and dynamic nature of boundary objects and boundaries, with both being in an intra-active state of becoming challenging conventional conceptions. The study demonstrates that specific material-discursive practices arising from the situated practice of the blog at the respective boundaries were performative, reconfiguring the blog and boundaries and being generative of further changes in the organization.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of a dialogical approach, associated with the Russian literary critic and philosopher Bakhtin, in understanding the portrayal of managerial identity in management narratives. In particular, it applies these ideas critically to understand how managers' identities are partly shaped by the dominant discourse or idea about what a manager should “be.”

The paper draws on three written narratives of managers. It applies a dialogical approach to consider how they position themselves interactionally in the narratives in such a way as to highlight a managerial identity based on being “enterprising” and “for change,” while simultaneously voicing alternative identities negatively. The use of the written narratives of managers and the application of a dialogical approach is an important contribution to the literature.

The findings suggest that managers, when reflecting on organizational events through narrative, assume a managerial identity that reflects current dominant discourse about what a manager should “be.” In doing so they reject other possible discourses that offer alternatives, not only to managerial “being,” but also to what management and organizations might reflect and represent. The paper also, however, recognizes that some managers reject this identity and its implications for organizational activity.

The paper suggests that managerial identity is partly a product of a dominant discursive/ideological formation rather than individual choice. Although managers may reject this interpellation creating an alternative is constrained by the regime of truth that prevails about what management is at any given time. The approach might be considered overly deterministic in its view of managerial identity.

The paper extends the understanding of managerial identity and how it is portrayed through narrative by using a dialogical approach to interpretation.

This paper analyzes two external costs often associated with port development, cost to fisheries from marine dredge disposal and damages from air pollution, using estimates of development and operation for a proposed (but since cancelled) container port as a case study. For dredge disposal, a bio-economic model was used to assess short- and long-term and indirect (joodweb) damages to fisheries from marine disposal of clean sediments. In the case of air pollution, estimates of annual activity levels and emission coefficients are used to estimate incremental annual emissions of three key pollutants (NOx, HC and CO) for trucks, trains, yard vehicles, and vessels. These estimates allow for phasing in of strict new air pollution regulations. For both external costs, sensitivity analyses are used to reflect uncertainty. Estimates of shadow values in year 2002 dollars amount from $0.094 per cubic yard to $0.169 per cubic yard of clean dredged material for the selected disposal site and from $0.0584 per mile (jor current control standards) to $ 0. 0023 per mile (after phasing in of new regulations) for air pollution from heavy trucks.

We highlight key assumptions implicit in the models used by academics conducting research on market efficiency. Most notably, many academics assume that investors can borrow unlimited amounts and construct long-short portfolios at zero cost. We relax these assumptions and examine the attractiveness of long-short strategies as stand-alone investments and as a part of a diversified portfolio. Our analysis illustrates that the key benefit of long-short investing is adding diversification to a portfolio beyond what the market provides. We show that as stand-alone investments, nontrivial risk remains in the “hedge” strategies and that the returns generally do not beat the market in a head-to-head contest. Our findings raise questions about the degree of inefficiency in anomaly studies because plausible measures of costs generally offset strategy returns. The ability to achieve greater diversification may be, but is not necessarily, due to market inefficiency. We also highlight the key role of the generally ignored but critically important short interest rebate and show that absent this rebate, the long-short strategies we examine generally yield insignificant returns.

This paper aims to determine the impact of online community participation on attitudes and product-related behaviour in the health and fitness sector.

Survey data are collected from 221 users of the social medium Instagram, members of the self-proclaimed health and fitness community (#fitfam). Data are analysed with structural equation modelling.

The study shows that online community identification and engagement significantly increase health environment sensitivity, resulting in heightened engagement in physical fitness and healthy product choices.

Given the difficulty to remain engaged in pro-health behaviour and the growing impact of social media on young adults’ lives, these findings are encouraging. They show that online health and fitness communities provide a supportive environment in which consumers can identify and freely engage and a fertile ground to the development of health sensitivity and product-related behaviour.

The study advances knowledge on the role of social media and online communities in promoting health and fitness product behaviours and attitudes.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to determine if job satisfaction increases with age, and if this is consistent across countries; and second, if individuals belonging to the same age cohort, who experience similar life conditions and events and have been posited to share common attitudes and behaviors, differ in terms of job satisfaction, and if this difference is comparable across countries.

The study provides a comparative analysis of the impact of age and generational differences on job satisfaction globally, based on non-panel longitudinal data from the most recent wave of the International Social Survey Program (Work Orientations IV, 2015).

Age has a positive statistically significant impact on job satisfaction (e.g. the older you get, the more satisfied you are with your job). However, the same analysis with each specific age cohort indicates that age is only statistically significant with the baby boomers. Statistically significant cross-generational differences exist in the levels of job satisfaction across generations and cross-generational differences in the determinants of job satisfaction. Most differences are seen between the silent generation and the other three age cohorts.

Previous comparative studies have found that job satisfaction across generations, even within the same or similar countries, shows little variation. Research measuring the relationship between age and job satisfaction indicates three key contradictory findings – satisfaction increases with age, decreases with age, or no relationship exists. The current large-scale, global study updates and extends previous research by exploring similarities and differences in job satisfaction and work quality characteristics by age cohort, with a global sample.