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While many works have reported adopting exploratory practice (EP) principles in language teaching research, only a few studies have explored the enactment of EP in an online extensive reading of students majoring in English education. Given the relative paucity of attention to the use of EP as the practitioner research in English language teaching (ELT), the present EP investigates how students understand online extensive reading practice mediated by online group discussion and extensive reading logs, where the first author served as the online extensive reading practice instructor.

The exploratory practice focuses on incorporating research into pedagogy and fastens the importance of the quality-of-life in the classroom. The data were collected through students reading logs and semi-structured interviews. The collected data were analyzed using the thematic analysis. In this case, there were six phases including familiarizing with the data, generating initial codes, searching for the themes, reviewing the themes, defining the theme and writing up.

The findings reveal that online group work driven by EP enables everybody to engage in learning activities. EP assists the students in perceiving their potential and gaining a better awareness of the need to devote themselves to the class. In the EP activities, they work together to build a peaceful situation to advance the quality of learning in EFL classrooms.

The present study’s limitation is the small sample. Apart from that, the research results cannot be generalized to other places.

This study suggests that EP is suitable to create a mutual understanding among the learners and teachers. To conclude, English language competency can be achieved in a pleasant atmosphere through EP.

The present study succeeded in adding new literature studies related to EPs by discussing online group discussions and their challenges during the learning process. These aspects were identified through reading logs and interviews with students. Thus, it focuses on the implementation and challenges of online group discussions.

This study operationalizes risks in stakeholder dialog (SD). It conceptualizes SD as co-produced organizational discourse and examines the capacities of organizers' and stakeholders' practices to create a shared understanding of an organization’s risks to their mutual benefit. The meetings and online forum of a German public service media (PSM) organization were used as a case study.

The authors applied corpus-driven linguistic discourse analysis (topic modeling) to analyze citizens' (n = 2,452) forum posts (n = 14,744). Conversation analysis was used to examine video-recorded online meetings.

Organizers suspended actors' reciprocity in meetings. In the forums, topics emerged autonomously. Citizens' articulation of their identities was more diverse than the categories the organizer provided, and organizers did not respond to the autonomous emergence of contextualizations of citizens' perceptions of PSM performance in relation to their identities. The results suggest that risks arise from interactionally achieved occasions that prevent reasoned agreement and from actors' practices, which constituted autonomous discursive formations of topics and identities in the forums.

This study disentangles actors' practices, mutuality orientation and risk enactment during SD. It advances the methodological knowledge of strategic communication research on SD, utilizing social constructivist research methods to examine the contingencies of organization-stakeholder interaction in SD.

This study aims to understand the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic disruptive event on delivery of the built environment degree apprentice programme in higher education in the UK and identify the key strategies to minimise the effect.

A qualitative approach was used to collect and analyse data from a sample set of built environment degree apprenticeship stakeholders. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 17 key stakeholders to collate emerging themes on their perceptions of the impacts of the pandemic and strategies to adopted to minimise it.

The investigation reveals that the core impacts of Covid-19 on the apprentices training programme are lack of access to the site, furlough, limited access to off the job training, limited interaction with tutors and peers, too much time on the screen, limited pastoral care and lack of contact with a mentor. The census from the research participants is that despite the development and gain with the various virtual platform used during pandemic physical meetings with their mentor remain pivotal to the built environment apprentices learning and training.

The results provide relevant stakeholders and actors supporting degree apprentices training programmes (training providers and employers, among others) with the information needed to improve the delivery of built environment degree apprenticeship training programmes during a disruptive event Covid-19. The study identifies various strategies to minimise the impact of disruptive events on the apprentices training, including technology, regular meeting with mentors online, and personal and pastoral care.

The study is the first to document the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on degree apprenticeship programs in the built environment. This study provides an in-depth understanding of how these programs have been affected and offers potential solutions to reduce or mitigate potential damage. The research will inform future policy decisions related to degree apprenticeship programs in the built environment.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the various forms of organizational and team-level actions that were perceived to be helpful or not helpful by employees as they navigate the hybrid work arrangements and how these had an impact on their work behaviors and experiences. This research utilized Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory as framework.

The exploratory study used a qualitative approach in gathering data via online survey from a total of 45 Filipino employees working in a hybrid work arrangement for at least three months. The analysis utilized both inductive and deductive methodologies in examining the data. Inductive thematic analysis was used in coding the data based on the participants' responses, while the deductive approach ensured that the themes are aligned with the research questions and reflect the different systems within Bronfenbrenner's EST (1986).

Results surfaced helpful organizational (e.g. provision of work tools, financial assistance, supportive policies and engagement and wellness initiatives) and team level actions (i.e. use of technology-based communication tools, open virtual door policy, effective performance management system, employee care practices and team engagement activities). Actions that were perceived as not helpful include inadequate technological infrastructure, poor communication, insufficient training, punitive policies/practices and leadership issues at the organizational level as well as unresponsive colleagues and ineffective implementation of policies/processes at the level of teams. Employees reported being able to build on savings, becoming more productive and having greater work–life balance amid hybrid work. However, they continue to be challenged by blurred boundaries and inability to disconnect from work similar to when work was done remotely and now with sustaining momentum given the shifts on where they do their work.

The findings of this study may guide programs and initiatives of human resource management practitioners and organizational leaders as they support employees in navigating through hybrid work.

The research expands extant knowledge on practices and experiences in hybrid work (Gifford, 2022). It also contributes to studies on human resource management that are nuanced based on where work is performed (Ng and Stanton, 2023) or with emerging work arrangements.

The Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) for Higher Education in the UK focuses on maintaining, enhancing and standardising the quality of higher education. Of significant impact are the development of subject benchmark statements (SBS) by the QAA, which describe the type and content of study along with the academic standards expected of graduates in specific disciplines. Prior to 2022, the QAA did not have a SBS to which higher education policing programmes could be directly aligned.

Over 12-months, a SBS advisory group with representatives from higher education across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, The College of Policing, QAA, Police Federation of England and Wales and policing, worked in partnership to harness their collective professional experience and knowledge to create the first UK SBS for policing. Post publication of the SBS, permission was sought and granted from both the College of Policing and QAA for members of the advisory group to reflect in an article on their experiences of collaborating and working in partnership to achieve the SBS.

There is great importance of creating a shared vision and mutual trust, developed through open facilitated discussions, with representatives championing their cause and developing a collaborative and partnership approach to completing the SBS.

A collaborative and partnership approach is essential in developing and recognising the academic discipline of policing. This necessarily requires the joint development of initiatives, one of which is the coming together of higher education institutions, PSRBs and practitioner groups to collaborate and design QAA benchmark statements.

The SBS advisory group has further driven forward the emergence of policing as a recognised academic discipline to benefit multiple stakeholders.

The SBS for policing is the first across the UK. The authors experiences can be used to assist others in their developments of similar subject specific benchmarking or academic quality standards.

Gazelle companies are characterized by rapid growth in a short time. Identifying the determinants of this exponential expansion is important as these firms have a significant impact on the economy. They generate increased employment and investment by investors interested in new opportunities. Previous studies have failed to reach a consensus about what fosters high growth in gazelle companies as each firm’s geographical, political and economic context is different. The present research uses cognitive mapping and interpretive structural modeling (ISM) to overcome the limitations of prior investigations and identify factors that can potentially accelerate growth in gazelle companies.

Two sessions were held with an expert panel with knowledge about and experience with these firms. In the first session, data were collected to create a group cognitive map, while the second meeting comprised ISM-based analyses of the high-growth determinants identified and the causal relationships between them. A final consolidation session was held to discuss the results with two members of the Committee for Central Region Coordination and Development (i.e. Comissão de Coordenação e Desenvolvimento Regional do Centro – a public entity that grants gazelle awards in Portugal).

The analysis system created was tested, and the results demonstrate that the dual methodology used can increase our understanding of the dynamics of high-growth determinants and lead to more informed and potentially better evaluations of gazelle companies. Indeed, once high-growth determinants in gazelle companies are understood, this information can help other firms implement the same business model to achieve similarly rapid growth. The strengths and shortcomings of this new structured analysis model are also analyzed.

The authors know of no prior work reporting the integrated use of cognitive mapping and ISM in this study context.

This perspective article highlights the importance of future research that explores how intra-family communication in family businesses was affected during challenging times such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

The paper is based on a literature review of current perspectives on the role of informal communication in family businesses. The author offers some research insight into contributing to redirect the study of informal intra-family communication in family businesses.

The COVID-19 pandemic and its consequential effects have presented a series of challenges that possess the capacity to affect communication in any business. Nevertheless, these challenges in informal communication within family members hold a particular relevance for family businesses and require a reassessment of the fundamental assumptions that serve as the basis for research in challenging times.

This paper synthesizes the existing research on informal communication in the family business context and proposes some key research opportunities.

The purpose of this essay is to explore the opportunities and challenges that early-career researchers (ECRs) face when they seek to contribute to academic knowledge production through research activities “other than” those directly focused on making progress with their own, to-be-published, research papers in a context associated with the “publish or perish” (PoP) mentality.

Drawing broadly on the notion of technologies of humility (Jasanoff, 2003), this reflective essay develops upon the experiences of the authors in organizing and participating in a series of nine workshops undertaken between June 2013 and April 2021, as well as the arduous process of writing this paper itself. Retrospective accounts, workshop materials, email exchanges and surveys of workshop participants provide the key data sources for the analysis presented in the paper.

The paper shows how the organization of the workshops is intertwined with the building of a small community of ECRs and exploration of how to address the perceived limitations of a “gap-spotting” approach to developing research ideas and questions. The analysis foregrounds how the workshops provide a seemingly valuable research experience that is not without contradictions. Workshop participation reveals tensions between engagement in activities “other than” working on papers for publication and institutionalized pressures to produce publication outputs, between the (weak) perceived status of ECRs in the field and the aspiration to make a scholarly contribution, and between the desire to develop a personally satisfying intellectual journey and the pressure to respond to requirements that allow access to a wider community of scholars.

Our analysis contributes to debates about the ways in which seemingly valuable outputs are produced in academia despite a pervasive “publish or perish” mentality. The analysis also shows how reflexive writing can help to better understand the opportunities and challenges of pursuing activities that might be considered “unproductive” because they are not directly related to to-be-published papers.

While previous studies have highlighted the importance of incorporating environmental sustainability in building designs, there is a paucity of studies that assess the extent to which design teams in developing countries consider environmental sustainability at the building design stage. Therefore, using Zambia as a case study, this study examined the extent to which infrastructure design teams in a developing country consider environmental sustainability at the design stage.

The study used a qualitative research approach using structured interviews because there are hardly any studies which have explored the extent to which designers incorporate environmental sustainability in infrastructure designs in developing countries. The data is analysed thematically using the ATLAS.ti software.

The results show that environmental sustainability is not an important design consideration because it is secondary to functional, technical and aesthetic considerations. Environmental considerations are also made in an ad hoc manner and when it is cost-effective for the project. Regulatory requirements pertaining to environmental protection are adhered to without any cost considerations. It was, therefore, theorised that building design teams in developing countries make technical, functional and aesthetic consideration during the infrastructure design stage ahead of environmental considerations.

There is a paucity of studies that have investigated whether building infrastructure designers consider issues of environmental sustainability at the design stage in developing countries. The findings have practical implications on how developing countries can foster environmental sustainability at the design stage and avoid generating a building infrastructure stock that will require environmental resilience adaptation in the future.

Drawing upon the authors’ experiences as minoritised academic scholars within leadership roles of a Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic (BAME) Network in the United Kingdom (UK) academe, the authors explored the research question “In what ways do racially minoritised academics use coping techniques and strategies to counter racism and inequality in the higher education environment”.

The authors used a collective autoethnography approach accompanied by storytelling, underpinned by a qualitative interpretative process, supported by inductive, data-driven theorising. The authors’ approach is supplemented by the usage of content analysis (Schrieier, 2012) to analyse the data and generate findings.

The research findings specifically highlight (1) collectivism, solidarity and belonging, (2) knowledge expansion and critical consciousness, (3) disarming approaches and emotional labour, (4) resistance through setting boundaries and (5) intersectionality and BAME men allyship, as specific approaches for taking forward anti-racism.

Autoethnographic research has encountered challenges around verification, transparency and veracity of data, and issues have been debated due to its subjective nature (see Jones, 2010; Keeler, 2019; Méndez, 2013). Additional complications arise regarding neutrality and objectivity associated with the researchers' identities and experiences being represented in autoethnographic accounts. The authors acknowledge that the accounts provided are subjective, and have influenced the research process and product.

Research on the experiences of minoritised academics leading staff equality networks constitutes a research gap. This article offers an original analysis through outlining the authors’ lived experiences in leadership positions of a BAME Network and hope to other minoritised employees undertaking anti-racist work.