Search results

Futures thinking is used by governments to consider long-term strategic approaches and develop policies and practices that are potentially resilient to future uncertainty. English in Action (EIA), arguably the world's largest English language teacher professional development (TPD) project, used futures thinking to author possible, probable and preferable future scenarios to solve the project's greatest technological challenge: how to deliver audio-visual TPD materials and hundreds of classroom audio resources to 75,000 teachers by 2017. Authoring future scenarios and engaging in possibility thinking (PT) provided us with a taxonomy of question-posing and question-responding that assisted the project team in being creative. This process informed the successful pilot testing of a mobile-phone-based technology kit to deliver TPD resources within an open distance learning (ODL) platform. Taking the risk and having the foresight to trial mobile phones in remote rural areas with teachers and students led to unforeseen innovation. As a result, EIA is currently using a mobile-phone-based technology kit with 12,500 teachers to improve the English language proficiency of 700,000 students. As the project scales up in its third and final phase, we are using the new technology kit — known as the 'trainer in your pocket' — to foster a 'quiet revolution' in the provision of professional development for teachers at scale to an additional 67,500 teachers and nearly 10 million students.

This paper analyzes the ways in which accounting enables operations managers to enter and perform multiple roles in their interplay with organizational groups on the shop floor and in management, and the associated negotiations that operations managers have with “the self.”

Using field-based studies in a mining organization, the study draws on Goffman’s backstage–frontstage metaphor to analyze how operations managers enter and perform several roles with the aid of accounting.

The findings show that accounting legitimizes operations managers when they cross organizational boundaries, as accounting gives them an “entry ticket” that legitimizes their presence with the group. Accounting further allows operations managers to embrace more than one role by “putting on a mask” to become an outsider or insider in relation to a group. In performing their roles, operations managers exhibit varying attributes and knowledge. Accounting can thereby be withheld from, or shared with, organizational groups. The illusion of accounting as deterministic presented frontstage is not necessarily negotiated that way backstage. Rather, alternatives discussed backstage often become silenced in the frontstage performance. The study concludes that operations managers cross boundaries, embrace roles and exert agency as they navigate with accounting, enrolling it into their performance simultaneously as they backstage reflect upon accounting and its role for their everyday work.

This study relies on the frontstage/backstage metaphor to visualize the discrepancies in how accounting is enrolled into role performances and how seemingly categorical fronts do not necessarily share that dominant position backstage.

The purpose of this paper is to propose an explication of the concept of “maturity,” as it applies to communication evaluation and measurement (E&M) practice, along with contextualization of recent maturity model adoption within academic and professional communities.

Drawing from previous work on maturity models within other fields, recent communication scholarship and industry practice, this paper fills a gap in the literature by offering a theoretical conceptualization of communication E&M maturity, including the construct’s core dimensions and sub-dimensions.

Communication E&M maturity is conceptualized into four essential elements: holistic approach, investment, alignment and culture. The contribution of E&M efforts is represented as the direct support of corporate strategy, and ultimately increased value, from the communications function. Operational elements of maturity include levels of analysis, time, budget, tools, skills, process, integration, motivations, relationships and standards.

In exploring the factors necessary for “mature” E&M programs, and specifically emphasizing the need for a holistic approach, along with sufficient investment and alignment, and conducive cultural factors, the research builds upon existing work examining how communication can serve to inform corporate strategy and create value for an organization. Greater understanding and application of the maturity concept has the potential to advance the field by increasing both accountability and credibility for the work done by the communications function.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how new public management (NPM) reform from the national level is implemented as practice in a local unit within the police sector in Sweden.

A qualitative case‐study approach is applied using semi‐structured interviews, participant observations and analysis of documents.

The paper illustrates different kinds of resistance at the organizational level. The dominant form of resistance was found to be cultural distancing. The paper demonstrates a tendency among police officers to deal with a changing and more complex work context by embracing a traditional work role.

The paper shows that reforms that add complexity may fail because of potential contradictions and the limited capacity and motivation of employees to deal with the complexity in the manner prescribed by NPM.

The paper shows that the popular trend to adopt multi‐dimensional forms of control (for instance the balanced‐scorecard approach) may fail if there is a lack of consensus about what goals and measurement are important and/or there is a lack of dialogue about how the new goals should be implemented in practice.

Research about NPM‐reforms in the police sector is rare. The original contribution of this paper is to study NPM‐reforms with a focus on the role of complexity in relation to resistance.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an introduction and overview of the various papers in this special issue.

A short discussion of the main quests of interventionist research and how these are related to the papers in this special issue, is undertaken.

The essence of interventionist research is its methodological location, researching where practice and theory meet.

Interventionist research places strong demands on the individual researcher's interpretative, social, and abstracting skills in order to carry observations to ontological and epistemological levels.

Interventionist research is rich in research designs and specific intervention types. Selecting the “right” one is strongly related to the connection the researcher makes with the social context she/he will operate in. Changes over time in both design and intervention can be expected, given the dynamic, longitudinal and interactive nature of interventionist research.

This special issue provides examples of a varied set of interventionist research situations, including the selection of typical intervention methods and how knowledge contributions were extracted.

The purpose of this paper is to provide guidance for designing and generating cumulative knowledge based on qualitative research.

The paper draws on the philosophy of science and specific examples of qualitative studies in accounting that have claimed a cumulative contribution to knowledge to develop a taxonomy of theoretically justified approaches to generating cumulative knowledge from qualitative research.

The paper argues for a definition of cumulative knowledge that is inclusive of anti-realist research, i.e. knowledge is cumulative if it increases the extent and density of intertextual linkages in a field. It identifies the possibility of cumulative qualitative research based on extensions to the scope of the knowledge and the depth of the knowledge. Extensions to the scope of the knowledge may include expanding the time periods, context, and/or theoretical perspective used to explore a phenomenon. Extensions to the depth of the knowledge may include new empirical knowledge, methodological pluralism, theory elaboration, or analytic generalization. Individual studies can demonstrate their contribution to cumulative knowledge by locating their research within a typology/taxonomy that makes explicit the relationship of current research to past, and potential, research.

The taxonomy may be useful to qualitative researchers designing and reporting research that will have impact on the literature.

The increased use of research impact as an evaluation metric has the potential to handicap the development qualitative research which is often thought of as generating non-cumulative knowledge. The taxonomy and the strategies for establishing cumulative impact may provide a means for this approach to research to establish its importance as a contribution to knowledge.

The concept of cumulative knowledge has not been systematically applied to research based on qualitative methods.

The University of Michigan (U-M) is planning its course toward carbon neutrality. A key component in U-M carbon accounting is the calculation of carbon sinks via estimation of carbon storage and biosequestration on U-M landholdings. Here, this paper aims to compare multiple remote sensing methods across U-M natural lands and urban campuses to determine the accurate and efficient protocol for land assessment and ecosystem service valuation that other institutions may scale as relevant.

This paper tested three remote sensing methods to determine land use and land cover (LULC), namely, unsupervised classification, supervised classification and supervised classification incorporating delineated wetlands. Using confusion matrices, this paper tested remote sensing approaches to ground-truthed data, the paper obtained via field-based vegetation surveys across a subset of U-M landholdings.

In natural areas, supervised classification incorporating delineated wetlands was the most accurate and efficient approach. In urban settings, maps incorporating institutional knowledge and campus tree surveys better estimated LULC. Using LULC and literature-based carbon data, this paper estimated that U-M lands store 1.37–3.68 million metric tons of carbon and sequester 45,000–86,000 Mt CO₂e/yr, valued at $2.2m–$4.3m annually ($50/metric ton, social cost of carbon).

This paper compared methods to identify an efficient and accurate remote sensing methodology to identify LULC and estimate carbon storage, biosequestration rates and economic values of ecosystem services provided.