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1 – 10 of 65The purpose of this study is to contribute with knowledge about how valid research data in biodiversity citizen science are produced through information practices and how notions…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to contribute with knowledge about how valid research data in biodiversity citizen science are produced through information practices and how notions of credibility and authority emerge from these practices.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected through an empirical, interview-based study of the information practices of 15 participants active in the vicinity of the Swedish biodiversity citizen science information system Artportalen. Interview transcripts were analysed abductively and qualitatively through a coding scheme by working back and forth between theory and data. Values of credibility, authority and validity of research data were unfolded through a practice-oriented perspective to library and information studies by utilising the theoretical lens of boundary objects.
Findings
Notions of credibility, authority and validity emerge through participant activities of transforming species observations to data, supplementing reports with objects of trust, augmenting identification through authority outreach and assessing credibility via peer monitoring. Credibility, authority and validity of research data are shown to be co-constructed in a distributed fashion by the participants and the information system.
Originality/value
The article extends knowledge about information practices in emerging, heterogeneous scholarly settings by focussing on the complex co-construction of credibility, authority and validity in relation to data production.
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The purpose of this study is to gain insight into the dynamics and considerations of professionals regarding the sharing of tacit, personal knowledge in their practice.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to gain insight into the dynamics and considerations of professionals regarding the sharing of tacit, personal knowledge in their practice.
Design/methodology/approach
Adopting a social-constructivist ontology, the qualitative design deploys semi-structured interviews and focus groups. Data were coded, and analysed through interrelating and reasoning.
Findings
Personal knowledge is difficult to share precisely, but can be shared to some extent using reflection and stories. Knowledge also provides a position and professional agency, emphasising boundaries and impacting the decisions on interaction and sharing. As such, professional commitment is vulnerable and contextual and, by extension, material becomes part of this interplay of professional practice and collaborative development.
Research limitations/implications
Findings imply that exchange and use of knowledge and material present in organisations are impacted by individual professionals’ autonomy and decisions, which consequently impact on employees’ practice. This calls for research that focuses on individual factors such as autonomy, professionalism and attitudes in addition to organisational and facilitative matters.
Practical implications
Stimulating professional commitment and interpersonal learning is a matter of valuing personal knowledge and practice to avoid protectionism, boundaries and segregated agency. Management and professionals should consider how and why individuals exchange their personal knowledge, paying attention to social structures and individuals’ voices and objectives in forming communities.
Originality/value
This study combines the concept of tacit knowledge with the younger field of practice theory. By connecting personal knowledge to practice, it extends agency to the material world and offers a more individual perspective to knowledge sharing in and between entities.
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Jorge Tiago Martins and Miguel Baptista Nunes
This paper aims to examine how academics enact trust in e-learning through an inductive identification of perceived risks and enablers involved in e-learning adoption, in the…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine how academics enact trust in e-learning through an inductive identification of perceived risks and enablers involved in e-learning adoption, in the context of higher education institutions (HEIs).
Design/methodology/approach
Grounded Theory was the methodology used to systematically analyse data collected in semi-structured interviews with 62 academics. Data analysis followed the constant comparative method and its three-staged coding approach: open, axial and selective coding.
Findings
The resulting trajectory of trust factors is presented in a Grounded Theory narrative where individual change and integration through shared collective understanding and institutionalisation are discussed as stages leading to the overcoming of e-learning adoption barriers.
Originality/value
The paper proposes that the interplay between institutionalism and individualism has implications in the success or failure of strategies for the adoption of e-learning in HEIs, as perceived by academics. In practical terms, this points to the need for close attention to contextually sensitive trust-building mechanisms that promote the balance between academics’ commitments, values and sense of self-worth and centrally planned policy, rules, resources and exhortations that enable action.
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Charlotte A. Shahlaei and Ulrika Lundh Snis
The purpose of this paper is to identify the constituent parts of learning in the manufacturing work context and understand why these parts are key in the learning of the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to identify the constituent parts of learning in the manufacturing work context and understand why these parts are key in the learning of the employees.
Design/methodology/approach
The data was collected from two sources: a literature review of the Information Systems literature to establish an initial picture of what learning in relation to digital technologies entails and in-depth interviews with engineers in the automotive industry whose knowledge-intensive work is exposed to substantial digital transformation.
Findings
The authors first identified three constituent parts for learning: change, reflection and deliberation. When the authors cross-checked the initial findings through in-depth interviews with the engineers, it was found that these three themes trigger learning through three different mechanisms, that is, balancing newness, finding point of reference and organizing actively. Thus, the findings of this paper extend beyond a categorical identification of what constitutes learning to also illustrate why learning entails these constituent parts.
Research limitations/implications
This paper implies that progressive learning requires active organizing of learning stages. The data is limited to the review of the Information Systems field. The authors have also only focused on the automotive industry as the representative sector in the manufacturing industry.
Practical implications
Applying the model of progressive learning can be a primary way to actively plan and organize learning opportunities for employees. This is key for supporting learning culture in organizations that are exposed to continuous and disruptive changes.
Social implications
A significant part of social sustainability is based on sustainable employability and feelings of contentment at work. This paper is an attempt to highlight how sustainable employability can be achieved by providing effective learning opportunities at work.
Originality/value
The originality of this paper emerges from two sources. First, the authors conducted the literature review and in-depth interviews by devising innovative methods because of the challenges of identifying when (informal) learning has occurred at work. Second, the authors owe the in-depth interviews to the first author’s extensive familiarity with the automotive industry and the knowledge and rapport acquired through her prior longitudinal research on the engineers’ work. It was this background that allowed the authors to find out when these engineers were about to leave the firm because of discontent about their competence development.
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Many organizations struggle to achieve their desired levels of business process flexibility and support. However, these two capabilities conflict with each other and different…
Abstract
Purpose
Many organizations struggle to achieve their desired levels of business process flexibility and support. However, these two capabilities conflict with each other and different tradeoffs have to be made. In this paper, the authors analyze different process conceptualizations and discuss their implications. The authors argue that the conceptualizations people adopt to think (conceptualize) about business processes affect the way they model them, which in turn result in different flexibility-support tradeoffs.
Design/methodology/approach
A set of properties is proposed to compare process conceptualizations: dominant concept, contract, and existential and representational properties. Using these properties, several process conceptualizations are analyzed and integrated in a comparison chart, which highlights different flexibility-support tradeoffs. The storytelling method is adopted to support the analytic process.
Findings
The authors show how different process conceptualizations result in different flexibility-support tradeoffs. The authors suggest that we need to intervene on a set of properties of process conceptualizations to achieve different flexibility-support tradeoffs.
Research limitations/implications
This research contributes to understanding the relationships between process conceptualizations, process modeling, and the flexibility-support tradeoff. A comparison chart helps organizations analyze their desired levels of flexibility and support using a set of properties.
Originality/value
The extent of covered viewpoints makes this study unique in the process management field. Such effort provides a contribution towards a more multidisciplinary discussion of process models, which integrates different process conceptualizations.
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Sulakshana De Alwis, Patrik Hernwall and Arosha S. Adikaram
This study aims to explore how and why employees perceive technology-mediated interruptions differently and the role of sociocultural factors in this process using sociomaterial…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore how and why employees perceive technology-mediated interruptions differently and the role of sociocultural factors in this process using sociomaterial analysis.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were gathered from 34 Sri Lankan knowledge workers using a series of workshop-based activities. The concept of sociomateriality is employed to understand how sociocultural elements are entangled with technology in work-life boundary experiences.
Findings
The findings of the thematic analyses suggest how culture is intertwined in the way employees perceive technology-mediated interruptions and how they manage information communication technologies (ICTs) to balance their work and nonwork demands. Participants have been unable to avoid technology-mediated boundary interruptions from work, as organisations have created norms to keep employees connected to organisations using information communication technologies. Traditional gender roles are specifically found to be entangled in employees' boundary management practices, disadvantaging women more.
Practical implications
The findings highlight how national culture and gender norms create challenging work-life experiences for female employees than males. This could create a disadvantageous position for female employees in their career progression. It is crucial to consider factors such as boundary preferences and family concerns when deciding on family-friendly work policies. Also, organisations have to consider the development of explicit guidelines on after-hours communication expectations.
Originality/value
Using the lens of sociomateriality, researchers can understand the contextual entanglement of ICTs with national culture and gender norms in creating different work-life boundary experiences. It seems ICTs are creating a disadvantage for female employees when managing work–nonwork boundaries, especially in power distant and collectivist cultures where traditional gender norms are highly valued and largely upheld. This study also contributes to the current discourse on work-life boundaries by providing insights from non-western perspectives.
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The purpose of this paper is to explore how posthumanism can contribute towards reframing responsible management education (RME) after the pandemic. Ethics has been a growing…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore how posthumanism can contribute towards reframing responsible management education (RME) after the pandemic. Ethics has been a growing concern in management education for some time now, but the need to acknowledge the limitations and side effects of the global economy and the interdependences between biological and societal systems has come to the forefront in dramatic fashion during the pandemic.
Design/methodology/approach
Posthumanism proposes moving beyond traditional dichotomies such as nature-culture and social-material to introduce a relational epistemology in which attention is focused on local sociomaterial entanglements. This also introduces a new moral posture that is not based on formal principles but on a strong commitment to assembling the world and a capacity to cultivate response-abilities. As far as responsible management is concerned, it means moving the focus from managers to managing practices.
Findings
The contribution casts an original and critical eye on the reframing of RME and encourages a movement towards a “decolonisation” of educational methodologies. Posthumanist research acknowledges that pedagogical practices are the loci power relations and inclusion or exclusion come into play and are inscribed in the materiality of education, in the sense of objects as well as human bodies. Then, by applying on the author's experience as teacher, the paper provides inputs for developing a posthumanist research agenda for RME after the pandemic.
Originality/value
The contribution uses posthuman lens to explore RME and develops an original research agenda starting from the author’s teaching practices.
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Suvi Satama and Juulia Räikkönen
This study aims to explore how people bodily narrate and use collective memory to clarify their embodied experiences regarding a city which they memorise.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore how people bodily narrate and use collective memory to clarify their embodied experiences regarding a city which they memorise.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on 1,359 short stories collected by the online travel portal Visit Turku about ‘How the city feels’, the fine-grained embodied experiences of people are represented through descriptions of their feelings towards the city of Turku.
Findings
Based on the analysis, two aspects through which the respondents narrated their embodied experiences of cities have been identified: (1) the sociomaterial entanglements with the city and (2) the humane relationship with the city.
Research limitations/implications
This study is limited to short stories acquired online, raising questions of anonymity and representativeness. Thus, these narrations are constructions which have to be interpreted as told by specific people in a certain time and place.
Practical implications
Tourist agencies should pay attention to the value of looking at written stories as bodily materialisations of people’s experiences of city destinations. Understanding this would strengthen the cities’ competitiveness.
Originality/value
By empirically highlighting how people memorise a city through narrations, the study offers novel viewpoints on the embodied experiences in cities as well as the cultural constructs these narrations are based on, thus broadening our understanding of how cities become bodily entangled with us.
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Claudia Grisales Bohorquez, Lian Ruan and Kate Williams
This paper aims to understand how a special library helped firefighters in Illinois navigate the digital revolution by evidencing the elements and forms of work that made its…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to understand how a special library helped firefighters in Illinois navigate the digital revolution by evidencing the elements and forms of work that made its innovative services possible.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors examine the history of a special library through a community informatics lens, drawing from sociomaterial perspectives to highlight forms of work often invisible in digital innovation. Data was collected through documentary revision, oral histories and semi-structured interviews. Deductive-inductive coding and constant comparative analysis was used in the analysis.
Findings
A historical narrative of the library between 1990 and 2021 highlights three sociotechnical innovations that assisted firefighters through the digital revolution: the facilitated collection, the co-created collection and the inside-out library. To develop these innovations the library drew from institutional relations, personal relations, grants, labor, knowledge of firefighters and technology. Various forms of articulation work brought these elements together to create innovative services.
Originality/value
The role of special libraries in addressing the digital divide has not been sufficiently detailed so far; this paper is a contribution in that direction. It also has practical value for professionals working in specialized libraries and information centers.
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