Search results

The purpose of this paper is to identify and analyse the methods of housing finance adopted by the low income and informal groups in Nigeria.

A survey of 300 households in selected areas (low‐income/informal) of Jos Metropolis, Nigeria, was carried out, concerning the methods of housing finance used for building and home improvement.

The survey showed that 75 per cent of the households utilized traditional methods of financing and 25 per cent using modern methods.

Based on data collected from the survey, the research serves as a basis for further research into traditional methods of housing finance in developing countries.

The analysis of traditional financing methods highlights the range and structure of the traditional methods of financing in operation in informal and low income areas of Jos Metropolis, Nigeria. For example, informal and customary/traditional methods (Esusu/Asusu, Age grade association, Men's Revolving Loan Association, Social club contribution among others), of financing appear to be very effective housing finance methods.

The paper shows that In the absence of formal institutional financing methods, strengthening the community‐based social network through formalisation and empowerment for housing finance becomes vital.

It is argued that it is possible to utilise and formalise these traditional methods of housing finance, in order to enhance access to finance for housing development in low‐income urban areas in developing countries.

Although there is an international consensus concerning how police investigative interviews should be adequately and reliably conducted, daily police interview practices are still rather poor. It is hypothetically assumed that this may be caused by unsatisfactory interview training programmes. The purpose of this paper is to focus on a new type of interviewing training, the individual coaching project, where interpersonal interview competences are being defined and optimised.

Building upon previous studies, this paper reflects the outcome of an elaborate process concentrated on exploring new investigative interview training opportunities. In addition the interviewer's perceptions of feedback and mentoring were evaluated in order to study the feasibility and practicability of the individual coaching project.

Results showed that 72 per cent of the participating interviewers were very eager about their project participation. Almost all interviewers thought the coaching project was very worthwhile and instructive, and believed they really developed and optimised their interview skills.

The present paper innovatively contributes to the current discussion concerning investigative interviewing and training by concentrating and defining the role and necessity of ongoing feedback. Moreover this paper concentrates on the content of this new training project, which can be of high interest for the daily police interview practices.

With the advancement of social economy, science and technology, nowadays, people face increasingly complex decision-making problems and ever-growing decision-associated information contents. Owing to the unique advantages of the evidence theory, evidence decision flow fits in well with the cognitive process of human beings, which provides us with an effective decision method. However, traditional evidence theories are built upon the one-dimensional evidence recognition framework, which merely reflects the reliability of information determined by evidence source and as such may fail to present the characteristic information of evidence source itself or the information required for the process of determining reliability. This greatly influences processes in decision-making, such as evidence processing and combination. This essay aims to propose a two-dimensional evidence-reasoning theory to address specific decision problems.

This article uses a two-dimensional evidence framework to reflect the process and characteristic information of evidence source based on the traditional evidence framework. As a result, evidence is processed and combined by two-dimensional modified information.

This research is of theoretical and practical significance by extending theoretical connotation, fully utilizing precise evidence information and therefore meeting the requirements of efficient and accurate decision-making performances.

The theory adds a two-dimension to modify and capture evidence on the basis of the traditional evidence framework. This proposal has significant theoretical and practical value to expand evidence theory and provides more accurate use of evidence information, higher efficiency and quality requirements and more precise decision-making.

In India – the largest democracy and second most populated country globally – the housing research domain is relatively under-researched and under-theorized. To support and advance research in this domain, this study aims to form and organize the repository of extant academic knowledge in the subject matter of housing research in India.

This study uses a scoping review methodology and a thematic analysis method. All the articles analyzed in this study were systematically searched by following the scoping review approach proposed by Arksey and O’Malley (2005). An initial search found 365 articles and finally, 108 articles that met the inclusion criteria were analyzed using the thematic analysis method.

The data extracted from these 108 articles were analyzed using thematic analysis to arrive at four thematic areas, namely, housing policy, slum housing, housing finance and affordable housing. These thematic areas and 11 sub-themes present under them were used to present a thematic map of housing policy research in India.

This paper contributes to presenting an up-to-date literature review of the housing policy research in India.

To the best of our knowledge, this scoping review focused on housing research in India is the first of its kind. We hope that this study provides a repository of extant research on housing research in India to help current and future researchers.

This paper aims to extend our understanding of how mid-tier firm auditors legitimise and institutionalise the logic of commercialism within their profession. This paper is responsive to research that shows how Big Four auditors have restructured the market and re-cast the relationality between the two logics to forge an identity that suits them commercially. Such research provides insight into auditor agency and intentionality, illustrating how auditors maintain and indeed grow their status and role within society.

Semi-structured interviews with audit executives situated in a strategically challenging regulatory context are interpreted through a theoretical framework developed from institutional complexity theory, coupled with the understanding that institutional logics are a socially constructed phenomenon.

Mid-tier auditors appear to be as commercially orientated as their Big Four counterparts, expressing the logics of professionalism and commercialism as highly complementary. In response to competitive pressures and the difficulty of replicating the multi-disciplinary practice business model of the Big Four, mid-tier auditors present a competitive and contrasting identity as “more devoted experts”, using various legitimation techniques and “heroic” representations. This identity representation is strategic, allowing them to forge a consistent and coherent “collective identity defining story” designed to counter the “versatile expert” identity of the Big Four and establish social legitimacy with their potential client base.

These findings contribute to our understanding of how mid-tier auditors are “catching up” to the Big Four in the construction of their commercial business model. By shedding light on the rhetoric and “identity experimentation” of auditors, the findings can aid legislators and regulators to exercise democratic control over the profession and promulgate regulations that better align auditors’ interests with the public interest. As regulators encourage mid-tier firms to compete with the Big Four and lower supply concentration in the market, this study believes the tensions inherent in the logics, as well as the strategic necessity for firms to represent themselves in a favourable manner, will become more prominent.

This paper aims to comment on resilience research within the context of frontline employees in sales and services marketing.

This commentary is a reflection based on my research, extant academic and managerial literature and personal perspectives.

Research findings show resilience is associated with increased employee effort and reduced turnover intentions in customer-facing roles. In addition, resilience can change over time and is not just a trait the employee is born with (or not). Hence, managers can cultivate resilience in employees.

Resilience cannot be purchased. Instead, managers can inspire resilience in frontline employees by developing their feelings of self-efficacy on the job, a sense of belongingness to the organization and peers and a sense of purpose and relatedness to customers.

Resilience is not merely perseverance or grit; it is overcoming adversity and bouncing back to become better in the process. Thus, resilience is an important construct to study, particularly in customer-facing roles.

This commentary offers a unique approach to understanding resilience, its outcomes and its antecedents in customer-facing roles.

The purpose of this paper is to answer the question of how continuity and change coexist in the work of institutional actors who can combine maintenance, disruption and/or creation. Past studies mention this coexistence without an explanation.

The paper develops a perspective through literature review.

Institutional actors are both socialized into the norm-oriented space of continuity and maintenance through their reciprocal relations and associated social knowledge and roles and disciplined into the goal-oriented space of change and disruption/creation through their power relations and associated expert discourse and subject positions. Their institutional existence indicates a particular combination of reciprocity and power and thus their work includes changing degrees of maintenance, disruption and creation, depending on the nature of this combination.

The paper points out research directions on the relational conditions of the actors, which facilitate or constrain their work toward institutional continuity or change.

Organizations whose concern is to continue the existing practices in a stable environment should emphasize reciprocal relations whereas organizations whose concern is to change those practices for more effectiveness in a dynamic environment should emphasize power relations. Also, too much emphasis on either relations leads to inflexibility or instability.

The paper provides an explanation on the sources of coexistence of continuity and change in institutional work. It also contributes to the discussions on contingency of institutions, resistance productive of institutional change, reflexivity of institutional actors and intersubjective construction of institutional work.

Institutional arrangements for collaborative purposes have gained increasing attention within research on service ecosystems. For collaborations to be effective, actors need to undertake institutional work that will result in new institutional arrangements. When institutional work takes place across service ecosystems, actors may be confronted with non-harmonious or conflicting institutional arrangements, which need to be reconciled by translating the incompatible views of diverse ecosystems. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of boundary objects as a means of facilitating institutional work across ecosystems, and present their mechanism in undertaking institutional work.

Longitudinal qualitative interviews were conducted with three key actors (funding agency, service provider and clinicians) in providing home-based support services (HBSS). The data were analyzed by undertaking a thematic analysis of the transcripts, which helped to identify the actors’ views on the nature of HBSS and its impact as a boundary object within the implementation of the case-mix system, and thus to empirically illustrate the theoretical assumptions.

The data assisted in the creation of a conceptualization that maps out the process of boundary objects facilitating (disrupting and creating) institutional work. This study supports that boundary objects disrupt boundaries between actors’ ecosystems, which was a sufficient condition to dismantle institutional support for the practices of individual fields. Furthermore, the object has changed the type and extent of interaction between actors in an ecosystem to allow these actors to redefine their identity and role in the new institutional arrangement.

This work has developed a novel conceptualization for a boundary object-led translation process in facilitating institutional work. To the researchers’ knowledge, this is the first study to explore the processes and mechanisms of boundary objects in facilitating institutional work across ecosystems.

The purpose of this paper aims to examine differences in measures of and relationships between visitation and quality of life (QOL) among older and younger jailed adults. The authors also explored the contribution of visitation to QOL among adults in this setting. The authors anticipated fewer visits and lower QOL among older adults. Framed by psychosocial developmental theory, the authors also anticipated a larger effect in the relationship between visitation and QOL among older rather than younger adults and that visitation would contribute most readily to psychological QOL.

Cross-sectional data from a large US jail were used (n = 264). The authors described the sample regarding visitation and QOL measures among older (≥45) and younger adults (≤44) and examined differences in measures of and relationships between visitation and QOL using independent sample t-tests and bivariate analyses. The authors explored the contribution of visitation to psychological, social relationships, physical and environmental QOL among jailed adults using hierarchical multiple linear regression.

Older adults had fewer family visits and lower physical QOL than younger adults, disparities were moderate in effect (d range = 0.33–0.35). A significant difference also emerged between groups regarding the visitation and environmental QOL relationship (z = 1.66, p <0.05). Visitation contributed to variation in physical and social relationships QOL among jailed adults (Beta range = 0.19–0.24).

Limited research exists among jailed older adults and scholars have yet to examine the relationship between visitation and QOL among persons in these settings.

This paper aims to analyze how strategizing practices can legitimate construction of public sector policy. The Porto Alegre Film Commission was set up as part of a strategy to increase the city’s competitiveness as a tourism destination. The municipal government engaged with private and public stakeholders and embarked on a collective process of policy construction.

The authors based their research on two theoretical lenses from business administration theory: strategy as practice (SaP) and neo-institutional theory (NIT), whereby SaP attempts to explain formation and implementation of strategy on the basis of a process that seeks a collective result, whereas NIT reveals the limits of this formation and implementation, attributing the process to influences of power and legitimacy. Thus, the authors get a more accurate view of the actors and the system of governance, considering the in-built reflexivity of these relationships and their capacity to change institutional arrangements. The authors conducted an in-depth case study with a qualitative approach, using semi-structured interviews, participatory observation and documentary analysis.

The results revealed the role played by the government and how practices used in the strategizing process ensured the legitimacy of public sector policy formulation and engaged private and public stakeholders.

The authors recognize limitations such as the investigation being set in a single country and responses based on the interviewees’ perceptions of momentum. It would be interesting to undertake cross-national comparisons using empirical data that allow comparison of film commissions with different relationships between strategizing, power and politics.

This case study analyzed the relationship between formal institutional agents and the strategies adopted to create and run the Porto Alegre Film Commission (PAFC), positioning Porto Alegre as a destination for film and video production and, reflexively, making it more attractive to tourists interested in getting to know the locations where publicity campaigns, films and soap operas were filmed. This formal institution agent was converted into a strategic catalyzer to influence the institutional issues in a creative industry in which trade associations and firms had encountered difficulties when they attempted to set up a film commission alone.

The evidence compiled showed that the practices, besides being strategic, were enacted in a specific context and directed toward results and survival of the PAFC. The practices shaped the results, because they were constructed together with other actors, achieving legitimacy through collaborative development of practices and targeting survival by establishing governance structures capable of riding out periods of political transition. In short, the collective construction of the PAFC policy, led by the public sector, legitimized it in the eyes of society.

This study furthers the discussion about strategizing in an organizational field marked by power relationships and how their consequences can affect society in general. There is a need to take a closer look at the implications of strategizing for power relationships and how the consequences can influence the organizational field.