Search results

This study aims to focus on implementing frugal innovation and its principles by social entrepreneurs to face the challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. The research paper discusses the case of an Indian social entrepreneur who works for menstrual health and hygiene of unprivileged and rural women in India. The social entrepreneur’s constant endeavor is to create an ecosystem to ensure rural women’s economic and social upliftment through financial inclusion and livelihood training. When faced with the COVID-19 pandemic, the social entrepreneur re-purposed the manufacturing process to produce masks that were the need of the hour.

The research paper is qualitative and follows an inductive case study approach. The underlying principles of frugal innovation are established through content analysis of the social entrepreneur’s interviews and her team members.

The study discusses how adversity can be an opportunity for social entrepreneurs by implementing frugal innovation principles, i.e. re-use, re-purpose, re-combine and rapidity, in times of crisis.

One of the major limitations of this study is that it is based on a single case study, as, in the current scenario, this case appeared to be the most suitable one. There is no way to generalize the assumptions of this model. Researchers will have to study the phenomena of frugal innovation in adversity across multiple cases in the future. Also, the study is based on a single emerging economy, i.e. India. Further research may be carried out with such cases from other countries.

The proposition of this research paper will help new and established social entrepreneurs understand that the four principles of frugal innovation and their practical application by a social entrepreneur. This will act as a guiding light for the present and future entrepreneurs regarding how one can respond to a crisis. This will also help advance our understanding of the distinct ways in which social entrepreneurs’ activities can help society in times of crisis. The findings of this research paper provide timely implications for social entrepreneurs. To respond efficiently to various crises, it is important to consider its effect on social entrepreneurship.

The research paper shows that the social enterprise has implemented frugal innovation principles to manufacture the COVID-19 protection items supplied through existing supply chain networks. Also, a social entrepreneur is not intimidated by the sudden changes in the business environment; instead, they look at the situation as an opportunity to do something new. They are always willing to take the risk to innovate a solution that will address people’s problems. frugal innovation, due to its highly collaborative nature and its ability to make the most from limited resources, is the only way social entrepreneurs can create an inclusive, secure and sustainable future.

There are several challenges in social entrepreneurship, especially in emerging economies like India. During the pandemic, availability of resources was the major challenge, due to which social entrepreneurs had to find solutions through frugal innovation. This paper provides the practical application of the four principles of frugal innovation implemented by a social enterprise to manufacture and supply Covid protection items. It also presents the practical and managerial implications of the principles of frugal innovation by social entrepreneurs in low resource settings.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the barriers to the re-purposing of under-utilised real property assets owned by Australian not-for-profit (“NFP”) organisations for affordable housing provision.

Exploratory research was undertaken with five diverse (non-housing) NFP organisations.

The research indicates that NFP organisations who are not principally engaged in housing provision, but hold surplus or under-utilised land and property assets, may be willing partners in affordable housing provision. However a range of institutional and structural barriers would need to be overcome for housing developments to occur on under-utilised NFP organisations land holdings.

The small scale of the study limits generalisation from the research findings. However, the findings point to an opportunity for innovation in housing land supply that warrants larger scale research.

This research provides evidence that a source of well-located land is potentially available for future affordable housing provision, but that NFP organisations would require skills and financial resourcing in order to make their land available for this purpose.

Well-located land is a major cost input for the provision of affordable housing, and the re-purposing of NFP organisations land or assets for affordable housing could make a significant contribution to the stock of social housing.

There has been no research on how NFP organisations view opportunities to repurpose their land for affordable housing despite this sector being actively encouraged to do so. This paper reports the first Australian study of dispositions and barriers to the re-use NFP organisations land assets.

The purpose of this paper is to address a gap in current heritage practice within the USA, as defined by the US Secretary of Interior’s Standards, which offers no treatment for a building entering the end of its lifecycle.

Building on research conducted for “Deconstructing the Culture of Demolition,” Master of Design Studies thesis completed in 2018, this paper seeks to better understand how deconstruction industry practice could be changed by the inclusion of heritage values through a case study of the sustainability non-profit Emergent Structures of Savanah, Georgia.

The benefits of replacing demolition with deconstruction extend beyond the preservation of materials alone. Applying critical heritage theories to deconstruction practice addresses challenging issues in the discipline, such as mutability of heritage objects and equity in heritage practice. Deconstruction redefines the concept of death in the built environment, harnessing its energy to serve the heritage goals of memory, revival and sustainable community development.

The findings are based on real-world practice, linking heritage methodology to deconstruction practice. These examples will be useful to preservation professionals who deal with demolition in the course of their work, to rethink the idea of waste and value in heritage practice.

This paper explores best practices in promoting heritage value and community engagement through deconstruction. This insight will promote interdisciplinary communication around historic materials and their treatment, which remains unexplored in both deconstruction and heritage research.

This chapter investigates the current trend toward both creative and experiential tourism in cities in terms of the development and marketing of local attractions.

Creative tourism in cities is profiled through a literature review and further investigated by means of a case study at a local attraction in Toronto, Canada. The choice of a site was one of a creative city and the re-purposing of a formerly industrial site for visitation.

The study of Evergreens Brickworks demonstrated the use of marketing techniques to identify markets and match visitors with experiences. The visitor segmentation method determined that pre-scheduled and bookable activities offered for locals need to be offered on a different basis for tourists, who may be one time visitors to the site. The product-market match process suggested areas in which products could be modified or indeed created.

This practical study offers lessons for other local visitor attractions and their managers desiring to identify market segments and match them with appropriate activities creating experiential tourism at the site level within the creative city context.

While many studies of the creative tourism concept and cities have been undertaken within the context of destinations this research offers a site-specific perspective as well as marketing perspective that will be of practical value to attraction managers.

The independence and well-being of people with dementia can be significantly influenced by the design of the physical environments around them. Several assessment tools exist to evaluate the dementia design quality of existing residential aged care facilities but, to date, none have been formally identified as suitable for use during the design process. This paper aims to examine the feasibility of re-purposing existing post-occupancy tools for use during the design process, while mapping the influence of design stages on resulting dementia design quality.

Literature searches identified audit tools for residential aged care settings. After reliability screening, three tools were analysed in-depth, mapping their suitability for use during the design process.

The study confirmed that existing tools can be re-purposed for design stage use and identified that early design stages have a larger influence on overall dementia design quality than previously thought.

Non-English language publications were not reviewed. Searches may not have identified other existing audit tools for residential care environments.

The ability to assess proposals at key stages of design may help improve the dementia design quality of future residential aged care environments – potentially enhancing the lives of ever-larger numbers of people with dementia.

According to the authors’ knowledge, this is the first known paper to consider formal design-stage evaluation of dementia design quality and the first to identify the relative influence of key stages of design on the resulting dementia design quality.

Developing digital content for online learning is an expensive task. A cost‐effective approach is to reuse and re‐purpose existing resources. Emerging specifications such as those developed by the IMS Global Learning Consortium allow content to be specified in standard ways, and are therefore reusable across different content management systems. This paper identifies the role of content packaging within the wider context of content management and describes the use of IMS specifications with their implementation in a prototype tool funded by the UK Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC).

This study aims to examine the impact of information and communication technologies (ICT) usage with mobile technologies and e-learning in academic libraries.

Selection of appropriate resources using the Communication and Mass Media, EBSCO, Web of Science and Library Literature and Information Science Fulltext databases.

The “Library as place” concept requires libraries to explore and re-purpose its physical space while redefining its virtual, online space to align with the needs of those who are native to the digital age. Library information specialists (LIS) must also be knowledgeable of – and comfortable with – the use of the new technologies introduced. As mobile technologies continue to evolve and advance in developing countries, libraries and LIS may be best positioned to assist students and researchers in accessing information required to be proficient and productive in scholarly pursuits without physical boundaries.

The existing research literature surveyed here implies that the growth of ICT and evolving concepts of libraries require the need for LIS training and greater understanding of the use of mobile technologies in providing academic library services.

Academic librarians are at the forefront of providing aspiring academics and professionals with access to digital collections and e-learning courses using mobile information communication and technology devices; the implications of the research discussed in this survey of the current literature discloses a need for diverse skills for the appropriate and continuing effectiveness to support students and academic researchers.

This paper seeks to identify and develop an exploratory framework for conceptualising how teachers might use the affordances of Web 2.0 technologies to support their own professional learning.

The paper draws on a large corpus of literature and recent research evidence to identify the principal elements and features of professional learning and the underlying affordances of Web 2.0 technologies and applications. It generates an exploratory conceptual framework based on the emerging findings from this review using a socio‐cultural theoretical perspective. The framework is explored through three individual illustrations which are drawn from a much larger case study which the author is undertaking within a newly established Academy in the North of England.

The findings indicate that there is potential value in exploring professional learning with Web 2.0 technologies in the ways described. The framework offers an exploratory instrument to examine how professional learning for teachers could be supported with Web 2.0 technologies in ways that might have significant benefits over traditional methods of continuing professional development (CPD).

The potential value and affordances of Web 2.0 technologies for teachers' professional learning are largely unexplored and under‐theorised, and this work seeks to establish a framework for further discussion and empirical exploration.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of information practices of welfare workers and how they fit into daily work of welfare work within a small community sector organisation in Victoria, Australia.

The study was constructivist (interpretivist) in its underpinning philosophy, drawing on both personal constructivist and social constructionist theories. The research methods used, with a sample of 14 welfare workers and two clients, were organisational ethnography and grounded theory. Data collection techniques were interview and participant observation, along with limited document analysis. Data analytic techniques, drawn from grounded theory method, provided a thorough way of coding and analysing data, and also allowed for the development of theory.

Key findings centre on the role of information in welfare work. Welfare workers mostly used resources to hand, “making do” with resources they already had rather than seeking new ones. They also recombined or re-purposed existing resources to make new resources or to suit new circumstances. Their information practices were found to be fluid, consultative and collaborative. The findings of the research have led to a deep exploration of bricolage as a way to describe both the use of resources and the processes inherent in welfare worker information practices.

The fact that there is a paucity of research focused on information practices of welfare workers in Australia makes the research significant. The bricolage theoretical framework is an original contribution which has implications for exploring other groups of workers and for the design of information systems and technology.

The paper provides a theory base for deriving connotative descriptors for photographs from existing denotative descriptors, and then demonstrates a model for enhancing browsing within image collections by providing a tool for carving up the searching space.

The paper conceptually explores the nature of iconic messages contained in an image by adopting semiotics as a theoretical tool. A problem of image retrieval is identified as loss of connotative messages during the image representation process. The paper proposes an image‐retrieval model utilizing an association thesaurus that facilitates the assignment of connotative index terms by making use of denotative index terms of an image. A series of experiments are performed for evaluating the effectiveness of the proposed model.

Experimental results demonstrate that the association thesaurus improves image‐retrieval effectiveness by increasing the recall of connotatively related image documents as well as the recall of browsing sets.

Applying connotative index terms to an image would be time consuming. Deriving connotative terms from denotative terms and then using them to enrich the browsing environment suggest a method of increasing retrieval effectiveness while reducing the resources required for representation.

Since images are often used to illustrate concepts that are not immediately evident from just the objects in front of the lens, connotative descriptions are particularly valuable. Since human perception of images is, in a sense, hard wired into our brains, browsing is a frequent and reasonable search method in image collections. Using connotative descriptors to point the way to clusters of images with a higher probability of relevance changes the locus of control over representation establishes an environment for dynamic representation, and gives credibility to browsing as a significant search method.