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1 – 10 of 24Tessa Parkes, Sara Meddings and Steve Tilley
This inspiring article describes a series of activities that have taken place in the UK over the past year (2001) aiming to generate interest in user/survivor/consumer‐run…
Abstract
This inspiring article describes a series of activities that have taken place in the UK over the past year (2001) aiming to generate interest in user/survivor/consumer‐run social enterprises. The writers want to let others know about these activities, about the survivor‐run businesses in Ontario, and hopefully to create more interest in this type of work/community initiative. As editor of this journal I hope that the article will provoke those of you already running user/survivor‐led businesses in the UK to rise to the challenge and write about your work for future issues. Can't let the Canadians have things all their own way… Bob Grove.
Rather than organize as traditional firms, many of today’s companies organize as platforms that sit at the nexus of multiple exchange and production relationships. This…
Abstract
Rather than organize as traditional firms, many of today’s companies organize as platforms that sit at the nexus of multiple exchange and production relationships. This chapter considers a most basic question of organization in platform contexts: the choice of boundaries. Herein, I investigate how classical economic theories of firm boundaries apply to platform-based organization and empirically study how executives made boundary choices in response to changing market and technical challenges in the early mobile computing industry (the predecessor to today’s smartphones). Rather than a strict or unavoidable tradeoff between “openness-versus-control,” most successful platform owners chose their boundaries in a way to simultaneously open-up to outside developers while maintaining coordination across the entire system.
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Minette Bellingan, Catherine Tilley, Luciano Batista, Mukesh Kumar and Steve Evans
Businesses are under pressure to ensure social responsibility in their globalised supply chains. However, conventional factory audits are not providing adequate data about…
Abstract
Purpose
Businesses are under pressure to ensure social responsibility in their globalised supply chains. However, conventional factory audits are not providing adequate data about production workers’ well-being. Industry attempts to measure working conditions have shown bias and inconsistency, and there is no consensus on what to measure, or how. Well-being can be intangible and difficult to capture without appropriate theoretical and methodological frameworks. This paper investigates factors influencing the well-being of a Chinese factory’s workers, tests an innovative research method, and proposes interventions to improve well-being in factories.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a longitudinal study using the diaries of production workers at a large assembly manufacturing site in China. Workers left daily digital voice diaries about their day, which were analysed to identify factors related to their well-being at work.
Findings
The picture is more complex than the concerned Western narrative suggests. Workers’ personal and professional concerns extend beyond the criteria currently measured in audits, tending to be more relational and less about their physical state.
Practical implications
The current approach of auditing management practices neglects workers’ well-being. This study offers a more comprehensive view of well-being and tests a new method of investigation.
Originality/value
This is the first study to use diary methods in a Chinese factory. It addresses an issue supported by little empirical evidence. It is the first longitudinal study to hear from factory workers themselves about how they are and what impacts their well-being daily.
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The Tilley Awards for Problem‐Oriented Policing ‘recognise and reward the most intelligent, courageous and effective approaches to dealing with the problems police…
Abstract
The Tilley Awards for Problem‐Oriented Policing ‘recognise and reward the most intelligent, courageous and effective approaches to dealing with the problems police encounter on the streets’ (Home Office website). They are open to the police and crime and disorder reduction partnerships. Entrants have to submit a description of their project and its achievements. Following the publication of Safer Hastings Partnership's winning entry in Volume 6, Issue 4, another winning entrant's submission is reproduced here, and the next issue will feature the other winner's submissions.
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Regional policy instruments are typically driven by economic rationales, from either a firm or industrial perspective. Yet too often, these rationales are taken as ex ante…
Abstract
Regional policy instruments are typically driven by economic rationales, from either a firm or industrial perspective. Yet too often, these rationales are taken as ex ante to the contexts within which firms and industries compete. Recent regional development research has urged a better link be developed between the individual, the firm, and their context, so as to understand the role of regions in supporting effective competitiveness of organizations. In this article, recent research themes are explored that may shed light on the nature of this relationship and that can be developed into an investigative methodology that could aid policy practitioners in generating policy instruments that reflect differing societal constructions of SME reality.
Steve Gillard, Rhiannon Foster and Constantina Papoulias
Patient and public involvement (PPI) is increasingly central to the delivery of health services research. However, it has proved challenging to evaluate the impact of PPI…
Abstract
Purpose
Patient and public involvement (PPI) is increasingly central to the delivery of health services research. However, it has proved challenging to evaluate the impact of PPI on the implementation of research into clinical practice and health service delivery. The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a conceptual model explaining how PPI in the research process might impact on implementation.
Design/methodology/approach
A scoping review of knowledge translation and implementation science literature was performed to develop a conceptual model of the impact of PPI in research on implementation. A retrospective case study of a research project was used to illustrate the model.
Findings
The authors identified five domains in which PPI can impact on the implementation of research into practice. The review demonstrated that successful implementation depends on developing relational models of knowledge production, valuing experiential knowledge, engaging in collaborative practice, making use of knowledge brokers or tools for knowledge facilitation and embedding these factors into the implementation context. In the case study the authors were able to find examples that illustrated each of the five domains of the model.
Originality/value
The paper builds on existing endeavour to evaluate the impact of PPI in research, demonstrating that it is possible to model, conceptually, the processes whereby PPI in research might impact on practice and service delivery. By illustrating those processes through the exemplar case the authors also demonstrate the potential for the model to be “operationalised”, allowing the impacts, on practice, of PPI in research to be systematically and directly evidenced.
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Heather Michele Moorefield-Lang
The purpose of this paper is to describe the use of podcasts, online radio broadcasts, YouTube channels, and other technology medium to deliver information and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to describe the use of podcasts, online radio broadcasts, YouTube channels, and other technology medium to deliver information and professional development to peers in the field and professionals in librarianship.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper explores five case studies of librarians and library professionals who have created online programs specifically geared to the field using technologies such as podcasting, YouTube channels, Twitter Chats, and Google Hangouts. The case studies include librarians in the public, academic, and school settings as well as one professional from The American Library Association. Interviews via Google Hangouts took place to gather information for each narrative. NVivo 10 qualitative data analysis software was used to pull out themes and commonalities among narratives. Some examples include, intended audience, program focus, platform topics, technology, and challenges.
Findings
Face-to-face delivery of information and professional development can be difficult with librarians and professionals located across the USA and the world. These five interviewees share new opportunities and examples in the delivery of training and information in the field of librarianship without ever needing to leave an office or desk.
Originality/value
Podcasting in librarianship is a topic of modest popularity but it is typically used with students and at the academic library level where the topics of podcasts and libraries are addressed. The topics of podcasts, online radio broadcasts, and other technologies in librarian peer-to-peer instruction and professional development are uncharted territory in the field of scholarly research. This piece opens research to multiple opportunities in both practice and scholarship in how technology can aid in professional development and information delivery to peers and practitioners in the field.
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Melanie Rose Nova King, Ray J. Dawson, Steve J. Rothberg and Firat Batmaz
This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of a theory-driven realist evaluative research approach to better understand complex technology implementations in organizations.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of a theory-driven realist evaluative research approach to better understand complex technology implementations in organizations.
Design/methodology/approach
An institution wide e-learning implementation of lecture capture (LC), within a UK University, was chosen, and a realist evaluation framework was used, tailored for educational technology. The research was conducted over four, increasingly focused, evaluation cycles combining engagement analytics, user interviews and theory to refine what works (or does not work), for whom, in which contexts and why.
Findings
Despite explicit demand and corresponding investment, overall student engagement is lower than expected. Increased student use appears linked to particular staff attitudes and behaviours and not to specific disciplines or course content. The main benefits of LC are providing reassurance to the majority, aiding revision and understanding for the many and enabling catch-up for the few. Recommendations for future research are based on some unexpected outcomes uncovered, including evolving detrimental student behaviours, policy development based on technological determinism and future learner-centred system development for next-generation LC technologies.
Practical implications
The realist approach taken, and evaluation framework used, can be adopted (and adapted) for future evaluative research. Domain specific reference models, categorizing people and technology, supported analysis across multiple contexts.
Originality/value
This study responds to a call for more theory-based research in the field of educational technology. The authors demonstrate that a theory-driven approach provides real and practical recommendations for institutions and allows for greater insight into the political, economic and social complexity of technology implementation.
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Lorraine Mazerolle, Steve Darroch and Gentry White
The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of leadership in problem‐oriented policing (POP).
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of leadership in problem‐oriented policing (POP).
Design/methodology/approach
This paper uses interrupted time series models to isolate the impact on crime trends of a transformational leader's efforts to spearhead the implementation of a program of POP, called the problem solving model (PSM), in a southern state in Australia.
Findings
This paper finds that the PSM led directly to an impact on overall crime, with a significant reduction in crimes per 100,000 persons per year after the introduction of the PSM. The majority of the overall crime drop attributable to implementation of POP was driven by reductions in property crime. It was noted that the leadership influence of the PSM was not effective in reducing all types of crime. Crimes against the person where not affected by the introduction of the PSM and public nuisance crimes largely followed the forecasted, upward trajectory.
Practical implications
The driver behind the PSM was Commissioner Hyde and the success of the PSM is largely attributable to his strong commitment to transformational leadership and a top‐down approach to implementation. These qualities encapsulate the original ideas behind POP that Goldstein (1979, 2003), back in 1979, highlighted as critical for the success of future POP programs.
Social implications
Reducing crime is an important part of creating safe communities and improving quality of life for all citizens. This research shows that successful implementation of the PSM within South Australia under the strong leadership of Commissioner Hyde was a major factor in reducing property crime and overall crime rates.
Originality/value
This paper is valuable because it demonstrates the link between strong leadership in policing, the commissioner's vision for POP and how his vision then translated into widespread adoption of POP. The study empirically shows that the statewide adoption of POP led to significant reductions in crime, particularly property crime.
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In June 2016, a clear majority of English voters chose to unilaterally take the United Kingdom out of the European Union (EU). According to many of the post-Brexit vote…
Abstract
In June 2016, a clear majority of English voters chose to unilaterally take the United Kingdom out of the European Union (EU). According to many of the post-Brexit vote analyses, the single strongest motivating factor driving this vote was “immigration” in Britain, an issue which had long been the central mobilizing force of the United Kingdom Independence Party. The chapter focuses on how – following the bitter demise of multiculturalism – these Brexit related developments may now signal the end of Britain's postcolonial settlement on migration and race, the other parts of a progressive philosophy which had long been marked out as a proud British distinction from its neighbors. In successfully racializing, lumping together, and relabeling as “immigrants” three anomalous non-“immigrant” groups – asylum seekers, EU nationals, and British Muslims – UKIP leader Nigel Farage made explicit an insidious recasting of ideas of “immigration” and “integration,” emergent since the year 2000, which exhumed the ideas of Enoch Powell and threatened the status of even the most settled British minority ethnic populations – as has been seen in the Windrush scandal. Central to this has been the rejection of the postnational principle of non-discrimination by nationality, which had seen its fullest European expression in Britain during the 1990s and 2000s. The referendum on Brexit enabled an extraordinary democratic vote on the notion of “national” population and membership, in which “the People” might openly roll back the various diasporic, multinational, cosmopolitan, or human rights–based conceptions of global society which had taken root during those decades. This chapter unpacks the toxic cocktail that lays behind the forces propelling Boris Johnson to power. It also raises the question of whether Britain will provide a negative examplar to the rest of Europe on issues concerning the future of multiethnic societies.
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