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21 – 30 of over 7000Marcelo de Souza Bispo and Silvia Gherardi
This paper aims to offer a perspective to interpret qualitative data drawing on the introduction of the notion of “embodied practice-based research”.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to offer a perspective to interpret qualitative data drawing on the introduction of the notion of “embodied practice-based research”.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on a comprehensive literature review to support a meta-theoretical approach, we developed a theoretical essay.
Findings
The body is not only a field of studies but a mean of study as well. The embodied practice-based research is an inquiry style to access the tacit texture of social action and cognition.
Practical implications
Embodied practice-based research may impact qualitative researchers’ education and the way to report methodological proceedings and data report.
Originality/value
The core contribution of the paper is the introduction of a new research style able to change how researchers’ bodies may be used in qualitative management research.
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Keywords
The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the value and limitations of a practice-based approach (PBA) to studying the adoption and use of information systems, through a summary of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the value and limitations of a practice-based approach (PBA) to studying the adoption and use of information systems, through a summary of the theory and exploration of empirical data about the use of collaborative software.
Design/methodology/approach
A selection of theoretical resources from the practice-based approach, namely, its view of routine and change, socio-materiality, relational thinking and knowing are introduced. They are employed to analyse the adoption of a collaborative technology in a corporate setting. The empirical data is 30 interviews with human resource (HR) professionals involved in a project in a large Mexican University.
Findings
The adoption and use of the collaborative technology is shaped by collective, historical, social and contextual factors that permeate the HR practices being supported by the information system. Among the factors that shaped participation are the interconnection of HR practices to other practices of the University; the existence of habits and the sense of routinisation reflected in HR practitioners’ patterns of interaction and media use; the concern of practitioners that participation in the community did not fit the way HR practices are performed; and the political manoeuvring taking place between actors to persuade potential users to participate in the community.
Research limitations/implications
The strength of the analysis using key tenets from a PBA is to deepen our understanding of context as shaped by collective and historical conditions. The sociology of translation can be used to further increase understanding of the political process around the adoption of the collaborative technology. Remaining issues point to a major issue with the theoretical resources from the PBA used in this study, namely the adequacy of its treatment of structural power.
Originality/value
The paper reports research of significance to those interested in information systems by providing an alternative perspective that sheds light on contextual, social and historical factors affecting the adoption and use of information technologies. The paper is also valuable in suggesting how the PBA can benefit from Actor-Network Theory (ANT). This will be relevant to the field of praxeological studies.
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This paper seeks to analyse the effectiveness and impact of how Google currently trains its new software engineers (“Nooglers”) to become productive in the software engineering…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper seeks to analyse the effectiveness and impact of how Google currently trains its new software engineers (“Nooglers”) to become productive in the software engineering community. The research focuses on the institutions and support for practice‐based learning and cognitive apprenticeship in the Google environment.
Design/methodology/approach
The study uses a series of semi‐structured interviews with 24 Google stakeholders. These interviews are complemented by observations, document analysis, and review of existing survey and statistical data.
Findings
It is found that Google offers a state‐of‐the‐art onboarding program and benchmark qualities that provide legitimate peripheral participation. The research reveals how Google empowers programmers to “feel at home” using company coding practices, as well as maximizing peer‐learning and collaborative practices. These practices reduce isolation, enhance collegiality, and increase employee morale and job satisfaction.
Research limitations/implications
The case study describes the practices in one company.
Practical implications
The research documented in the paper can be used as a benchmark for other onboarding and practice‐based learning set‐ups.
Originality/value
This is the first research that gives insights into the practice‐based learning and onboarding practices at Google. The practices are assessed to be state‐of‐the‐art and the insights therefore relevant for benchmarking exercises of other companies.
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Lydia A. Beahm and Bryan G. Cook
The research-to-practice gap occurs when practices supported as effective by research are infrequently used in applied settings, such as classrooms. This gap may be due to…
Abstract
The research-to-practice gap occurs when practices supported as effective by research are infrequently used in applied settings, such as classrooms. This gap may be due to teachers preferring to use practices they find to be trustworthy, usable, and accessible. Instead of relying on research, teachers frequently use resources from other teachers, which may be because teachers prefer practices that are supported by evidence developed in applied settings (i.e., practice-based evidence [PBE]). Using PBE to support the application of evidence-based practices (EBPs) may increase the latter's use in classrooms. In this chapter, we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of both EBPs and PBE and how the two can complement each other to help lessen the research-to-practice gap. We also discuss mixed-methods approaches that can be used to combine EBPs with PBE.
The study aims to explore the interaction between the students, the material objects surrounding them, and their social site. The purpose of this paper is to identify and…
Abstract
Purpose
The study aims to explore the interaction between the students, the material objects surrounding them, and their social site. The purpose of this paper is to identify and elucidate information literacy as it is being enacted within a complex and heterogeneous community of PhD students.
Design/methodology/approach
The study is conducted from a practice-based perspective, according to which information literacy is conceived as learnt through interaction within the socio-material practice where the learner is active. In order to produce empirical material, semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten doctoral students in an interdisciplinary research network, and their workplaces were visited.
Findings
The PhD students in this interdisciplinary network are more or less constantly engaged in the enactment of information literacy. It takes place in dialogue with others who can be both co-located and distantly located, and occurs through discussions about work in progress, through processes of evaluation and assessment of texts and authors, and through mundane everyday activities such as participating in meetings, which offer insights into how to navigate, in the broadest sense, the world of academia. A crucial part of the enactment of information literacy, which in practice is inseparable from interaction with others, is to pay attention to physical surroundings and material objects.
Practical implications
The findings have implications for prospective PhD students in interdisciplinary fields, for their supervisors, and potentially also for librarians who are supposed to serve these groups.
Originality/value
Research on the information literacies of PhD students in interdisciplinary fields is scarce. The practice-based approach applied in this study offers an extended and deepened understanding of the enactment of information literacy among PhD students in one interdisciplinary research practice.
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Maria Fernanda Rios Cavalcanti
This paper aims to examine how social entrepreneurship (SE) practices give rise to social change in the context of urban Brazil.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine how social entrepreneurship (SE) practices give rise to social change in the context of urban Brazil.
Design/methodology/approach
The study draws on a broader inductive, ethnographic and iterative practice-based study conducted in three Brazilian non-governmental organizations.
Findings
Social change is established through intertwined practices that involve active interplay of ambivalent positive and negative feelings associated with the social mission pursued by the social enterprise; flat organizational structures that encourage participation and taking of ownership among all stakeholders; and focused organizational objectives (social purposes).
Research limitations/implications
The paper presents an analytical framework composed of five propositions that may be used in future research aimed at maturing and refining the understanding of SE. The study also provides a methodological contribution for future studies of new phenomenon and young fields of research that often must rely on inductive methodologies, by demonstrating how an iterative thematic analysis can be used in practice-based studies.
Practical implications
This paper has practical implications directly connected to its social implications, because understanding how social change is achieved may enhance the effectiveness of SE practitioners in bringing desired changes about. Furthermore, the discussion also provided insights for practitioners to reflect upon the paradoxical nature of practices aimed at social change.
Originality/value
The study suggests a set of propositions and an original definition of SE that mitigates conceptual inconsistencies found in literature drawing on empirical data and by incorporating the political lens found in practice theory.
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Tiina Tuominen, Bo Edvardsson and Javier Reynoso
This study aims to understand and explain how institutional change occurs at the level of value co-creation practices in service ecosystems. Despite the centrality of collective…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to understand and explain how institutional change occurs at the level of value co-creation practices in service ecosystems. Despite the centrality of collective practices to the service ecosystems perspective, theoretically grounded explanations of how practices change and become institutionalized remain underdeveloped. Applying the theory of routine dynamics, this paper addresses two questions as follows: what does the institutional change mean at the level of value co-creation practices and what processes underlie these changes?
Design/methodology/approach
The study develops a conceptual framework that characterizes value co-creation practices as routines involving three aspects, namely, ostensive, performative and artifactual. As a key element in institutional change, the interplay between these informs an account of institutional change processes in service ecosystems.
Findings
The proposed conceptual framework specifies the conditions for institutional change in terms of value co-creation routines. First, any such change is seen to be grounded in alignment between changing institutional rules and the ostensive, performative and artifactual aspects of routines. Second, this alignment is seen to emerge through a dialectics of planned and practice-based activities during institutional change. An empirical research agenda is proposed for the analysis of institutional change processes in different service ecosystems.
Originality/value
This conceptual framework extends existing accounts of how service ecosystems change through the contributions of multiple actors at the level of value co-creation practices.
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Basil P. Tucker and Raef Lawson
This paper compares and contrasts practice-based perceptions of the research–practice gap in the United States (US) with those in Australia.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper compares and contrasts practice-based perceptions of the research–practice gap in the United States (US) with those in Australia.
Methodology/approach
The current study extends the work of Tucker and Lowe (2014) by comparing and contrasting their Australian-based findings with evidence from a questionnaire survey and follow-up interviews with senior representatives of 18 US state and national professional accounting associations.
Findings
The extent to which academic research informs practice is perceived to be limited, despite the potential for academic research findings to make a significant contribution to management accounting practice. We find similarities as well as differences in the major obstacles to closer engagement in the US and Australia. This comparison, however, leads us to offer a more fundamental explanation of the divide between academic research and practice framed in terms of the relative benefits and costs of academics engaging with practice.
Research implications
Rather than following conventional approaches to ‘bridging the gap’ by identifying barriers to the adoption of research, we suggest that only after academics have adequate incentives to speak to practice can barriers to a more effective diffusion of their research findings be surmounted.
Originality/value
This study makes three novel contributions to the “relevance literature” in management accounting. First, it adopts a distinct theoretical vantage point to organize, analyze, and interpret empirical evidence. Second, it captures practice-based views about the nature and extent of the divide between research and practice. Third, it provides a foundational assessment of the generalizability of the gap by examining perceptions of it across two different geographic contexts.
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Tiziana Russo-Spena, Cristina Mele and Jaqueline Pels
This paper aims to focus on how the use of new technologies disrupts markets. To date, marketing literature has lacked studies investigating the link between market practices and…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to focus on how the use of new technologies disrupts markets. To date, marketing literature has lacked studies investigating the link between market practices and new technologies. The study adopts the blockchain technology (BcT) context to elicit novel technology-enhanced market practices.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors adopt a qualitative multimethod research design to engage in interpretative theorizing. They investigated 77 companies and used the Gioia method for the data coding and analysis.
Findings
The study of the adoption of blockchain prompts three technology-enhanced market practices. The latter offers new ways of resourcing by removing constraints and expanding actors’ network and knowledge to integrate resources; sensemaking by expressing new language and assigning novel meaning to represent markets; and legitimizing, by structuring new rules and trusting new mechanisms to institutionalize markets.
Research limitations/implications
The technology-enhanced market practices are distinct from extant market practices as well as related, thus, enriching and complementing them. Therefore, this work expands the understanding of the mechanisms of how markets work.
Originality/value
This study is the first, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, to focus on how BcT features affect market practices. BcT market practices entail how actors perform, share and interpret symbols and objects and set rules for how markets should work.
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Keywords
Sue Starfield, Brian Paltridge and Louise Ravelli
This chapter discusses textography as a strategy for researching academic writing in higher education. Textography is an approach to the analysis of written texts which combines…
Abstract
This chapter discusses textography as a strategy for researching academic writing in higher education. Textography is an approach to the analysis of written texts which combines text analysis with ethnographic techniques, such as surveys, interviews and other data sources, in order to examine what texts are like, and why. It aims to provide a more contextualized basis for understanding students’ writing in the social, cultural and institutional settings in which it takes place than might be obtained by looking solely at students’ texts. Through discussion of the outcomes of a textography, which examined the written texts submitted by visual and performing arts doctoral students at a number of Australian universities, we reflect on what we learnt from the study that we could not have known by looking at the texts alone. If we had looked at the texts without the ethnographic data not only are there many things we would not have known, but many of the things we might have said would likely have been right off the mark. Equally, had we just had the ethnographic data without the text analysis, we would have missed the insights provided by the explicit text analysis. The textography enabled us to see the diversity of practices across fields of study and institutions as well as gain an understanding of why this might be the case, all of which is of benefit to student writers and their supervisors.