Search results

The differential impact of young adult diagnosis on families during the period of transition from school to adult life was examined. Participants were parents of 246 young adults with severe learning disability aged 18‐26. Young adults were classified into four diagnostic groups: autism (N = 30), Down's syndrome (N = 68), cerebral palsy (N = 95) and an undifferentiated learning disability group (N = 53). Research questions pertained to parent expectations about their young adults' transition to living and working environments post high school. Parental satisfaction and worries were also assessed. The results indicated more community expectations of work for young adults with Down's syndrome, and more restrictive expectations for young adults with autism, including more expectations that young adults with autism would move out of the family home into a residential environment. Parents of young adults with autism also worried significantly more about various aspects of transition than other parent groups.

DR. S. C. ROBERT'S Presidential Address which is printed in the L.A. Record for May and reprinted in the usual separate Proceedings, will be read by all manner of librarians not only for its individual charm but also for a suggestion here and there which may have lasting effects. His major conclusion is that “the spiritual harmony and the intellectual Stability of mankind will Still be largely determined by the reading and writing of books,” whatever may be the triumphs of cinema, wireless and television. This was well worth repeating at a time when we are occupied by visual methods, quite justly, indeed ; if only again to Stress that these must not become an obsession which prevents our seeing that our real purpose is the book. So, too, we may ponder his gentle caveat: “in our laudable efforts towards a perfection of order and classification, there is inevitably a tendency to mistake means for ends, to make our systems our masters rather than our servants.” We know that there is a growing revolt against the intricate simplicities that are being introduced in cataloguing and classification; so intricate, indeed, that except to those who have done careful preparatory reading, writers upon them are completely unreadable. Not the least interesting part of Dr. Roberts's address was his account of early encounters with a library indicator and its attendant difficulties. These may be read as a warning, seeing that most of us have never seen an indicator, and some, because of the losses open access involves, would like to return to what is stupidly called “closed‐access,” a term as sensible as hot ice or dry wet.

Many service firms have adopted creativity reinforcement mechanisms to manage employee-based service creativity so as to pursue their performance growth. However, its impact on firm performance has rarely been investigated in the extant research. The purpose of this paper is to satisfy this knowledge gap through an examination of how service creativity reinforcement (SCR) affects a firm’s performance.

Two samples were used to test the hypotheses. The first sample included a total of 4,381 service firms and was analyzed by using a traditional moderated regression method in relation to sales growth as the outcome variable. Due to a number of missing values, the second sample was reduced to 1,481 service firms. This sample was analyzed by using a moderated fractional regression method and the outcome variable was innovation performance. Furthermore, a multi-valued treatment approach with the augmented inverse-propensity weighted estimator was adopted to assess the performance effect that was associated with each of the SCR mechanisms.

Statistical analyses suggested that SCR positively affected both the firm’s performance and its innovation performance. Specifically, the stronger performance effects of SCR were associated with firms that had high innovation intensity, were small service firms and were part of the knowledge-intensive business service (KIBS) sector. The results also found that brainstorming sessions, a multi-disciplinary team approach, task rotation and non-financial incentives had greater performance effects than other mechanisms, especially for firms in the KIBS sector that had high innovation intensity. In addition, the results indicated that team-level mechanisms were more effective in developing highly innovative services than were individual-level mechanisms.

This study has contributed to the service literature by developing a contingency framework for SCR. This study has also advanced service research through the presentation of contextual effects associated with each mechanism of SCR.

The means by which leisure can provide a unique means of diversification from the traditional hotel markets of food and accommodation are outlined. These according to industry analysts are likely to demonstrate slow or even negative growth during the 1990s. The general trends in the leisure industry are examined and specific examples of leisure diversification are given with recommendations for effective space utilisation, management and marketing.

This chapter uses discourse analysis to explain why entrepreneurship has become a primary response to Africa’s youth employment challenge. It analyses almost 20 years of academic literature and publications from one of the world’s foremost authorities on entrepreneurship: the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM). The study found that youth were positioned within a discourse of entrepreneurial essentialism; where entrepreneurship was narrativised as the only option for youth employment; and youth were framed as entrepreneurship being the natural solution for them. Youth were concurrently framed within numerous contradictory entrepreneurial discourses which were used to elevate and legitimise entrepreneurship as the key pathway for addressing Africa’s youth employment challenge. An important finding in this study was that the dominant model of entrepreneurship being promoted by GEM to address the challenge is a mainly skills-based pathway to self-employment and low-growth microenterprise development. This is concerning for two reasons: firstly, global evidence does not demonstrate much support for such an approach, and secondly, it undermines other responses to youth unemployment, particularly those which seek to address more structural, demand-side barriers to employment.

This paper aims to report on a study of outcome‐focused care for older people in one English local authority. The aim of the research is to examine whether altering the delivery of care to an outcome‐focused model would improve the individual participant's subjective well‐being and save money for the local authority.

In order for the aim of the research to be established, a pilot study was devised. This was a longitudinal study over 18 months, using a quantitative design. The sample was of 40 service users aged 65 and over whom all had critical and substantial care needs. Half of the sample of service users was receiving the new form of outcome‐focused care and the other half were a comparison group who were receiving care packages according to the traditional form of delivery that could be characterised as a “task‐focused” model. The service users were administered the Measure Yourself Concerns and Wellbeing Questionnaire (MYCAW). This questionnaire involves respondents identifying quality of life issues; where they are seeking improvement; and measures change over time in relation to these.

The research established that there was a greater improvement in subjective well‐being in the group receiving outcome‐focused care, when compared with the comparison group receiving the traditional task‐focused model.

This paper will assist managers in their decision making to implement a more outcome‐focused model of home care with older people.

To use MYCAW in a social care context is an innovative aspect of this study as it has previously been used only in mainstream and complementary medicine. The focus of this paper is to examine the impact of two models of home care delivery for older people, and how these two models impact on the older persons' self‐reported well‐being.

This study aims to propose a framework to drive organizations, and particularly multinational enterprises, to understand and internalize a sustainable mindset for implementing efficient and effective corporate sustainability initiatives and helping them achieve sustainable development goals (SDGs).

The framework is based on the bidirectional iterative process of the flexible pattern matching methodology. The literature on ecocentric management was examined from top to bottom in its dialogue with corporate sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR). The bottom-up phase was based on highly visible deviant cases of companies that were significantly recognized for their CSR or for their sustainability programs but became well-known examples of unsustainability. Additionally, an illustrative case was analyzed to examine the mindset in practice.

The study offers a framework based on six constructs that were identified in ecocentric management literature. It translates the ecocentric management mindset framework into behaviors for organizations that want to conduct efficient sustainable programs that help them achieve the SDGs.

The proposed new framework highlights the conceptual pillars of ecocentric management, and offers practical and theoretical perspectives on how sustainability can be better addressed at the corporate level, and help achieve the SDGs.