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1 – 10 of over 6000Jinjing Li, Cathal O’Donoghue, Jason Loughrey and Ann Harding
Health disparities exist because discrimination and poverty exist. However, health equity is the right of all. Regardless of differing backgrounds, all human beings should be able…
Abstract
Health disparities exist because discrimination and poverty exist. However, health equity is the right of all. Regardless of differing backgrounds, all human beings should be able to access healthcare services when they experience a change in their physiological, psychological, and spiritual health. Misdiagnoses happen in health care. However, once data yield definitive researched findings of health disparities, the accountability of healthcare professionals begs the question of social justice. The patient is left angry and dismayed. It would seem the best way to move forward would be to forgive so that emotional healing can begin.
Jose Bento da Silva and Paolo Quattrone
This paper discusses how mystery was imprinted into the Jesuit Spiritual Exercises, supporting their diffusion across space and time. It shows that the book of the Spiritual…
Abstract
This paper discusses how mystery was imprinted into the Jesuit Spiritual Exercises, supporting their diffusion across space and time. It shows that the book of the Spiritual Exercises is a practice in itself and fosters a practice or set of practices. The book is more than an object: it is an action, unleashed not by the specification of what actions it dictates but by the mystery the “book-as-practice” carries. The paper contributes to the literature on practice-driven institutionalism, namely by showing how mystery furthers our understanding of the mutual constitution of practices and institutions. The Spiritual Exercises have been practiced for more than four centuries, even though their meaning is not stable and they are never fully understood. Therefore, our paper asks: how do the Jesuits understand what they have to do if the book does not prescribe everything? The authors argue that it is indeed this mystery that distinguishes religious practices, explaining their endurance across time and space and, henceforth, their institutionalization. The authors show that the Spiritual Exercises are to be practiced and it is this practicing that allows them to diffuse and institutionalize a new understanding of how the individual relates to God. “God’s will” is searched through the practicing, without ever being determined by the practice. It is by practicing the book that the mystery of “God’s will” reveals itself. Moreover, “God’s will” is never known or knowable. Instead, it is embodied and felt while practicing the book of the Exercises. Emotions thus reconcile, through mystery, the book and the practicing of it. Our paper contributes to practice-driven institutionalism by showing how mystery can drive institutionalization processes.
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Frank Mueller and Chris Carter
This paper aims to present a detailed examination of the relationship and debate between realist understandings of HRM, on the one hand, and discourse‐based notions of HRM, on the…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to present a detailed examination of the relationship and debate between realist understandings of HRM, on the one hand, and discourse‐based notions of HRM, on the other. The objective is to provide a basis for a possible debate between these, seemingly contradictory, perspectives.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper argues that these perspectives can be integrated if one adopts a perspective that overcomes this dualism by thinking of HRM as a “project” where speech acts and non‐linguistic forms of action are seen as interdependent. The paper uses interview extracts in order to illustrate how the HRM Project gets constituted but also resisted in the context of a post‐privatisation electricity company.
Findings
This paper is predicated on the notion that the discourse of HRM is closely intertwined with the shift in power relations between employers, managers, employees and trade unions from the early 1980s onwards. In order to capture the broader context of the discourse it is suggested that the notion of an “HRM Project” includes not only language but also practices, boundary‐spanning linkages, and external agents such as regulators and financial institutions.
Originality/value
Builds on the notion of discourse as a strategic resource.
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How do we measure the success of a hotel business? What factors determine performances? This paper seeks to explore the responses which researchers and practitioners have given to…
Abstract
Purpose
How do we measure the success of a hotel business? What factors determine performances? This paper seeks to explore the responses which researchers and practitioners have given to these questions in the last 20 years.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is based on the analysis of 152 contributions and uses the balanced scorecard as a model to rationalize the main streams of research.
Findings
The analysis of literature shows the gradually assumed importance of the balanced scorecard as a satisfactory performance measurement system. The findings related to the determinants of results are instead highly complex and far‐reaching. The determining factors are generally looked for within the enterprise. Four main functional research fields have been identified (strategy, production, marketing and organization) and for each one main research goals, findings and open questions are defined. The horizontal axis of the balanced scorecard (customer perspective, strategy and process perspective) is the area of greatest research (over half of the papers). This evidence appears in line with the structural features of the hotel business and with the importance held, respectively, by customer relations and the protection of the efficiency of management processes.
Research limitations/implications
The paper shows the main weaknesses and strengths in previous research design in terms of: dependent and independent variables, sample and data sources. At theoretical level, the current research is strongly based on six countries (69 percent of the sample). Given the profound diversity of national contexts, researchers focusing on internal determinants should use external control variables more extensively. Furthermore, some recent subfields appear very fragmented especially in terms of independent variables used.
Originality/value
The paper identifies research streams and gaps in the field of hotel performance.
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