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Open Access
Article
Publication date: 30 April 2024

Maria Qvarfordt, Stefan Lagrosen and Lina Nilsson

The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to explore how medical secretaries experience digital transformation in a Swedish healthcare organisation, with a focus on workplace…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to explore how medical secretaries experience digital transformation in a Swedish healthcare organisation, with a focus on workplace climate and health.

Design/methodology/approach

Data were collected using a sequential exploratory mixed-methods design based on grounded theory, with qualitative data collection (a Quality Café and individual interviews) followed by quantitative data collection (a questionnaire).

Findings

Four categories with seven underlying factors were identified, emphasising the crucial need for effective organisation of digital transformation. This is vital due to the increased knowledge and skills in utilising technology. The evolving roles and responsibilities of medical secretaries in dynamic healthcare settings should be clearly defined and acknowledged, highlighting the importance of professionality. Ensuring proper training for medical secretaries and other occupations in emerging techniques is crucial, emphasising equal value and knowledge across each role. Associations were found between some factors and the health of medical secretaries.

Research limitations/implications

This study adds to the knowledge on digital transformation in healthcare by examining an important occupation. Most data were collected online, which may be a limitation of this study.

Practical implications

Several aspects of the medical secretaries’ experiences were identified. Knowledge of these is valuable for healthcare managers to make digital transformation more effective while avoiding excessive strain on medical secretaries.

Originality/value

Medical secretaries are expected to contribute to the digitalisation of healthcare. However, minimal research has been conducted on the role of medical secretaries in workplace digitalisation, focusing on workplace roles and its dynamics.

Details

Journal of Health Organization and Management, vol. 38 no. 9
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1477-7266

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 15 February 2024

Pertti Vakkari

The purpose of this paper is to characterize library and information science (LIS) as fragmenting discipline both historically and by applying Whitley’s (1984) theory about the…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to characterize library and information science (LIS) as fragmenting discipline both historically and by applying Whitley’s (1984) theory about the organization of sciences and Fuchs’ (1993) theory about scientific change.

Design/methodology/approach

The study combines historical source analysis with conceptual and theoretical analysis for characterizing LIS. An attempt is made to empirically validate the distinction between LIS context, L&I services and information seeking as fragmented adhocracies and information retrieval and scientific communication (scientometrics) as technologically integrated bureaucracies.

Findings

The origin of fragmentation in LIS due the contributions of other disciplines can be traced in the 1960s and 1970s for solving the problems produced by the growth of scientific literature. Computer science and business established academic programs and started research relevant to LIS community focusing on information retrieval and bibliometrics. This has led to differing research interests between LIS and other disciplines concerning research topics and methods. LIS has been characterized as fragmented adhocracy as a whole, but we make a distinction between research topics LIS context, L&I services and information seeking as fragmented adhocracies and information retrieval and scientific communication (scientometrics) as technologically integrated bureaucracies.

Originality/value

The paper provides an elaborated historical perspective on the fragmentation of LIS in the pressure of other disciplines. It also characterizes LIS as discipline in a fresh way by applying Whitley’s (1984) theory.

Details

Journal of Documentation, vol. 80 no. 7
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0022-0418

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 14 December 2023

Paola Bellis, Silvia Magnanini and Roberto Verganti

Taking the dialogic organizational development perspective, this study aims to investigate the framing processes when engaging in dialogue for strategy implementation and how…

1131

Abstract

Purpose

Taking the dialogic organizational development perspective, this study aims to investigate the framing processes when engaging in dialogue for strategy implementation and how these enable the evolution of implementation opportunities.

Design/methodology/approach

Through a qualitative exploratory study conducted in a large multinational, the authors analyse the dialogue and interactions among 25 dyads when identifying opportunities to contribute to strategy implementation. The data analysis relies on a process-coding approach and linkography, a valuable protocol analysis for identifying recursive interaction schemas in conversations.

Findings

The authors identify four main framing processes – shaping, unveiling, scattering and shifting – and provide a framework of how these processes affect individuals’ mental models through increasing the tangibility of opportunities or elevating them to new value hierarchies.

Research limitations/implications

From a theoretical perspective, this study contributes to the strategy implementation and organizational development literature, providing a micro-perspective of how dialogue allows early knowledge structures to emerge and shape the development of opportunities for strategy implementation.

Practical implications

From a managerial perspective, the authors offer insights to trigger action and change in individuals to contribute to strategy when moving from formulation to implementation.

Originality/value

Rather than focusing on the structural control view of strategy implementation and the role of the top management team, this study considers strategy implementation as a practice and what it takes for organizational actors who do not take part in strategy formulation to enact and shape opportunities for strategy implementation through constructive dialogue.

Details

Journal of Knowledge Management, vol. 28 no. 11
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1367-3270

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 9 May 2024

Max Rosvall and Ida Gremyr

Quality management (QM) can support organisations in contributing to sustainable development. As a result of an expanding focus from customers towards stakeholders within QM, the…

Abstract

Purpose

Quality management (QM) can support organisations in contributing to sustainable development. As a result of an expanding focus from customers towards stakeholders within QM, the perspectives to consider multiply. Understanding how practices and tools for process management are specifically affected by this increase in perspectives is key to creating the right conditions for improvement initiatives that support sustainable development.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper constructs a typology wherein the use of process management practices and tools is described in nine distinguished system contexts. Inductive discrimination is used to differentiate the system contexts and different use cases for process practices and tools.

Findings

Using the system of systems grid (SOSG), mainstream business process management (BPM) practices are positioned in a simple unitary context, whilst sustainability challenges also involve more complex contexts. Addressing these challenges requires integrating new tools and methods from paradigms outside of traditional functionalist business process management practices.

Research limitations/implications

This paper highlights the necessity to consider system contexts when developing feasible practices and tools for effective process management.

Practical implications

Practical implications are that quality practitioners aiming to exploit the potential in process management to support sustainability get support for planning and conducting process improvement initiatives aiming to consider several stakeholder perspectives.

Originality/value

This paper presents a new typology for understanding the context of QM process initiatives and BPM in light of a contemporary sustainability focus.

Details

The TQM Journal, vol. 36 no. 9
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1754-2731

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 10 January 2024

Ryszard Kłeczek and Monika Hajdas

This study aims to investigate how art events can enrich novice visitors by transforming their practices.

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to investigate how art events can enrich novice visitors by transforming their practices.

Design/methodology/approach

This research uses an interpretive case study of the art exhibition “1/1/1/1/1” in the Oppenheim gallery in Wroclaw. It draws on multiple sources of evidence, namely, novice visitors’ interviews, observation including photo studies and content analysis of art-makers’ mediation sources. This study is an example of contextual theorizing from case studies and participatory action research with researchers as change agents.

Findings

The evidence highlights that aesthetic values and experiences are contextual to practices and are transformable into other values. The findings illustrate the role of practice theory in studying how art-makers inspire the transformation of practices, including values driving the latter.

Research limitations/implications

The findings provide implications for transformations of co-creating contextual values in contemporary visual art consumption and customer experience management.

Practical implications

Practical implications to arts organizations are also provided regarding cultural mediation conducted by art-makers. Exhibition makers should explain the meanings of the particularly visible artefacts to allow visitors to develop a congruent understanding of the meanings. The explanations should not provide ready answers or solutions to the problem art-makers suggest to rethink.

Social implications

The social implication of our findings is that stakeholders in artistic ventures may undertake adequate, qualified and convergent actions to maintain or transform the defined interactive practices between them in co-creating contextual aesthetic values.

Originality/value

The study provides new insights into co-creating values in practices in the domain of contemporary art exhibitions by bringing the practice theory together with an audience enrichment category, thus illustrating how novice visitors get enriched by transforming their practices led by contextual values of “liking” and “understanding”.

Details

Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, vol. 27 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1352-2752

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 9 May 2024

Nabila As’ad, Lia Patrício, Kaisa Koskela-Huotari and Bo Edvardsson

The service environment is becoming increasingly turbulent, leading to calls for a systemic understanding of it as a set of dynamic service ecosystems. This paper advances this…

Abstract

Purpose

The service environment is becoming increasingly turbulent, leading to calls for a systemic understanding of it as a set of dynamic service ecosystems. This paper advances this understanding by developing a typology of service ecosystem dynamics that explains the varying interplay between change and stability within the service environment through distinct behavioral patterns exhibited by service ecosystems over time.

Design/methodology/approach

This study builds upon a systematic literature review of service ecosystems literature and uses system dynamics as a method theory to abductively analyze extant literature and develop a typology of service ecosystem dynamics.

Findings

The paper identifies three types of service ecosystem dynamics—behavioral patterns of service ecosystems—and explains how they unfold through self-adjustment processes and changes within different systemic leverage points. The typology of service ecosystem dynamics consists of (1) reproduction (i.e. stable behavioral pattern), (2) reconfiguration (i.e. unstable behavioral pattern) and (3) transition (i.e. disrupting, shifting behavioral pattern).

Practical implications

The typology enables practitioners to gain a deeper understanding of their service environment by discerning the behavioral patterns exhibited by the constituent service ecosystems. This, in turn, supports them in devising more effective strategies for navigating through it.

Originality/value

The paper provides a precise definition of service ecosystem dynamics and shows how the identified three types of dynamics can be used as a lens to empirically examine change and stability in the service environment. It also offers a set of research directions for tackling service research challenges.

Details

Journal of Service Management, vol. 35 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1757-5818

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 12 March 2024

Nanna Gillberg

The article aims to investigate how washing practices focused on appeasing sceptics of diversity work in for-profit organizations play out in corporate online communication of…

Abstract

Purpose

The article aims to investigate how washing practices focused on appeasing sceptics of diversity work in for-profit organizations play out in corporate online communication of diversity and inclusion efforts, and how these enable communication to a wide audience that includes social equity advocates.

Design/methodology/approach

Online corporate communication data of diversity and inclusion themes were compiled from the websites of eight Swedish-based multinational corporations. The data included content from the companies’ official websites and annual reports and sustainability reports as well as diversity and inclusion-themed blog posts. A thematic analysis was conducted on the website content.

Findings

The study showcases how tensions between conflicting external demands are navigated by keeping the communication open to several interpretations and thereby achieving multivocality. In the studied corporate texts on diversity and inclusion, this is achieved by alternating between elements catering to a business case audience and those that appeal to a social justice audience, with some procedures managing to appease both audiences at the same time.

Originality/value

The article complements previously described forms of washing by introducing an additional type of washing – business case washing – an articulation of the business case rhetoric that characterizes the diversity management discourse. While much has been written about washing to satisfy advocates of social change and equity, washing to appease shareholders and boardroom members, who are focused on profit and economic growth, has received less attention. The article suggests that online corporate communication on diversity and inclusion, by appeasing diverse audiences, can be seen as aspirational talk.

Details

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, vol. 43 no. 9
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2040-7149

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 13 February 2024

Nicola Cobelli and Silvia Blasi

This paper explores the Adoption of Technological Innovation (ATI) in the healthcare industry. It investigates how the literature has evolved, and what are the emerging innovation…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper explores the Adoption of Technological Innovation (ATI) in the healthcare industry. It investigates how the literature has evolved, and what are the emerging innovation dimensions in the healthcare industry adoption studies.

Design/methodology/approach

We followed a mixed-method approach combining bibliometric methods and topic modeling, with 57 papers being deeply analyzed.

Findings

Our results identify three latent topics. The first one is related to the digitalization in healthcare with a specific focus on the COVID-19 pandemic. The second one groups up the word combinations dealing with the research models and their constructs. The third one refers to the healthcare systems/professionals and their resistance to ATI.

Research limitations/implications

The study’s sample selection focused on scientific journals included in the Academic Journal Guide and in the FT Research Rank. However, the paper identifies trends that offer managerial insights for stakeholders in the healthcare industry.

Practical implications

ATI has the potential to revolutionize the health service delivery system and to decentralize services traditionally provided in hospitals or medical centers. All this would contribute to a reduction in waiting lists and the provision of proximity services.

Originality/value

The originality of the paper lies in the combination of two methods: bibliometric analysis and topic modeling. This approach allowed us to understand the ATI evolutions in the healthcare industry.

Details

European Journal of Innovation Management, vol. 27 no. 9
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1460-1060

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 22 February 2024

Daniele Morselli

This article focuses on the assessment of entrepreneurship competence by selected vocational teachers in Italy. The exploratory research question addresses the extent to which…

Abstract

Purpose

This article focuses on the assessment of entrepreneurship competence by selected vocational teachers in Italy. The exploratory research question addresses the extent to which entrepreneurship assessments are competence based, and the research seeks to identify fully fledged assessment programmes with both a formative and summative component, and the use of assessment rubrics. It also explores the extent to which entrepreneurship competence is referred to in school documentation and later assessed, and the tools and strategies used for such assessment.

Design/methodology/approach

This case study is part of a larger European research project promoted by Cedefop; in Italy it focused on six selected vocational IVET and CVET programmes and apprenticeship schemes. It used a wide range of instruments to ensure triangulation and multiple perspectives: analysed policy documents and undertook online interviews with experts and policy makers. At VET providers' premises it deployed: analysis of school documents; observations of learning environments; interviews and focus groups with (in schools) teachers, directors and vice directors, learners and alumni (in companies) instructors, company tutors and employers, apprentices and alumni.

Findings

Assessment tasks were rarely embedded within fully fledged assessment programmes involving both formative and summative tasks, and assessment rubric for grading. Most of the time, entrepreneurship programmes lacked self-assessment, peer assessment and structured feedback and did not involve learners in the assessment process. Some instructors coached the students, but undertook no clear formative assessment. These findings suggest institutions have a testing culture with regard to assessment, at the level of both policy and practice. In most cases, entrepreneurship competence was not directly assessed, and learning outcomes were only loosely related to entrepreneurship.

Research limitations/implications

One limitation concerned the selection of the VET providers: these were chosen not on a casual basis, but because they ran programmes that were relevant to the development of entrepreneurship competence.

Practical implications

At the policy level, there is a need for new guidelines on competence development and assessment in VET, guidelines that are more aligned with educational research on competence development. To ensure the development of entrepreneurship competence, educators need in-service training and a community of practice.

Originality/value

So far, the literature has concentrated on entrepreneurship education at the tertiary level. Little is known about how VET instructors assess entrepreneurship competence. This study updates the picture of policy and practice in Italy, illustrating how entrepreneurship competence is developed in selected IVET and CVET programmes and apprenticeships.

Details

Education + Training, vol. 66 no. 10
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0040-0912

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 15 December 2023

Nicola Castellano, Roberto Del Gobbo and Lorenzo Leto

The concept of productivity is central to performance management and decision-making, although it is complex and multifaceted. This paper aims to describe a methodology based on…

Abstract

Purpose

The concept of productivity is central to performance management and decision-making, although it is complex and multifaceted. This paper aims to describe a methodology based on the use of Big Data in a cluster analysis combined with a data envelopment analysis (DEA) that provides accurate and reliable productivity measures in a large network of retailers.

Design/methodology/approach

The methodology is described using a case study of a leading kitchen furniture producer. More specifically, Big Data is used in a two-step analysis prior to the DEA to automatically cluster a large number of retailers into groups that are homogeneous in terms of structural and environmental factors and assess a within-the-group level of productivity of the retailers.

Findings

The proposed methodology helps reduce the heterogeneity among the units analysed, which is a major concern in DEA applications. The data-driven factorial and clustering technique allows for maximum within-group homogeneity and between-group heterogeneity by reducing subjective bias and dimensionality, which is embedded with the use of Big Data.

Practical implications

The use of Big Data in clustering applied to productivity analysis can provide managers with data-driven information about the structural and socio-economic characteristics of retailers' catchment areas, which is important in establishing potential productivity performance and optimizing resource allocation. The improved productivity indexes enable the setting of targets that are coherent with retailers' potential, which increases motivation and commitment.

Originality/value

This article proposes an innovative technique to enhance the accuracy of productivity measures through the use of Big Data clustering and DEA. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no attempts have been made to benefit from the use of Big Data in the literature on retail store productivity.

Details

International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, vol. 73 no. 11
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1741-0401

Keywords

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