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1 – 10 of over 19000The purpose of this research is to show that Christmas spirit is often given as a reason or excuse for the goodwill, generosity and altruism associated with the celebration of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this research is to show that Christmas spirit is often given as a reason or excuse for the goodwill, generosity and altruism associated with the celebration of Christmas. Despite the influence of the occasion on cultural, financial and economic issues, there has been no specific empirical attention toward the structure or measurement of the concept of Christmas spirit. Research into this popular topic is important, timely and has universal appeal.
Design/methodology/approach
Defining the structure of Christmas spirit drew upon previous academic research about feelings and evaluations. This research employed a process of exploratory factor analysis, correlations, a confirmatory analysis and path analysis that combined the associated constructs. The required information was gathered via a self‐administered survey method where the respondents fell within a sample frame of a parent with at least one child between the ages of three and eight years. A questionnaire package containing two instruments (each of 70 questions), instructions and a self‐addressed return envelope was delivered to five participating schools and seven kindergartens for children to take home to their parents. As a result, 450 acceptable cases were available for analysis.
Findings
Overall, the singular finding confirmed that the multi‐dimensional feelings‐evaluation model, as outlined in this study, is a valid measurement of Christmas spirit.
Practical implications
Future research that incorporates this measure has implications for consumer behaviour theory and the motivation toward Christmas festivities. The findings have consequences for content and themes of advertising, and the scope of brand promotion by owners, promoters and retailers of brands and the associated business activity.
Originality/value
Christmas celebrations are a complex amalgam of motives, strategies, attitudes, rituals, behaviours and relationships. Christmas spirit is an important topic of deep interest to consumer behaviour researchers; being an often‐used, but ambiguous term there is a need for theoretical clarification. Therefore, it is timely to explore and develop behavioural theory related to the celebration because of the festivity's economic and social impacts on society.
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In human history, poverty for most and prosperity for few is the norm. Thus, no theory or practice of common prosperity has been developed. Marxism first formulated the theory of…
Abstract
Purpose
In human history, poverty for most and prosperity for few is the norm. Thus, no theory or practice of common prosperity has been developed. Marxism first formulated the theory of common prosperity, and the classical Marxist authors conducted theoretical exploration on the issue of common prosperity, forming a series of scientific conclusions.
Design/methodology/approach
The century-long practical history of the Communist Party of China (CPC) is the great practice of leading the Chinese people in getting rid of poverty, letting some people and regions get rich first and ultimately achieving the goal of common prosperity.
Findings
Common prosperity is the great practice of the CPC that leads all Chinese people in building a modern socialist country in an all-round way in the new era.
Originality/value
The path of common prosperity with Chinese characteristics will certainly arise in the process of the great practice of common prosperity with Chinese characteristics. Based on the anti-poverty theory and the “spirit of poverty alleviation” from the battle against poverty with Chinese characteristics, the theory of common prosperity and its spirit with Chinese characteristics will certainly be formed. The above conclusions constitute the basic principles of the theory of common prosperity with Chinese characteristics.
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Alasdair Marshall and Udechukwu Ojiako
The purpose of this paper is to utilise Vilfredo Pareto ' s Machiavellian-realist social theory to provide a distinctive realist philosophical understanding of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to utilise Vilfredo Pareto ' s Machiavellian-realist social theory to provide a distinctive realist philosophical understanding of entrepreneurial risk-taking. By doing so, this paper seeks to stimulate debate and encourage future empirical testing that has the potential to present a richer understanding of entrepreneurial risk-taking.
Design/methodology/approach
To establish that a realist perspective can help theorise entrepreneurship, the authors look through a modern day risk and uncertainty optic at the hidden mechanisms within the social world where enterprises operate. Looking from this unique standpoint, where the long established social theory is reinvigorated by contemporary risk philosophy within a shared realist paradigm, human nature equips entrepreneurs with certain “animal spirits” to muddle blindly and instinctually through their risk environments.
Findings
The paper argues that this combined perspective unlocks a much richer understanding of entrepreneurial risk-taking, in particular, by capturing more of its behavioural reality and despite our strong emphasis on the inaccessibility and hiddenness of the risk environment to the entrepreneur, by exploring the entrepreneur-risk environment fit in ecological terms.
Originality/value
The paper’s unique blend of the classical Italian social theory with the contemporary risk theory offers a novel ecological view of the entrepreneur’s blind (mal) adaptation to their risk environment.
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Although resilience is heavily studied in both the healthcare and organizational change literatures, it has received less attention in healthcare information technology (HIT…
Abstract
Purpose
Although resilience is heavily studied in both the healthcare and organizational change literatures, it has received less attention in healthcare information technology (HIT) implementation research. Healthcare organizations are consistently in the process of implementing and updating several complex technologies. Implementations and updates are challenged because healthcare workers often struggle to perceive the benefits of HITs and experience deficiencies in system design, yet bear the brunt of the blame for implementation failures. This combination implores healthcare workers to exercise HIT resilience; however, how they talk about this construct has been left unexplored. Subsequently, this study explores healthcare workers' communicative constitution of HIT resilience.
Design/methodology/approach
Twenty-three physicians (N = 23), specializing in oncology, pediatrics or anesthesiology, were recruited from one healthcare organization to participate in comprehensive interviews during and after the implementation of an updated HIT system DIPS.
Findings
Thematic analysis findings reveal physicians communicatively constituted HIT resilience as their (1) convictions in the continued, positive developments of newer HIT iterations, which marked their current adaptive HIT behaviors as temporary, and (2) contributions to inter-organizational HIT brainstorming projects in which HIT designers, IT staff and clinicians jointly problem-solved current HIT inadequacies and created new HIT features.
Originality/value
Offering both practical for healthcare leaders and managers and theoretical implications for HIT and resilience scholars, this study's results suggest that (1) healthcare leaders must work diligently to create a culture of collaborative HIT design in their organization to help facilitate the success of new HIT use, and (2) information technology scholars reevaluate the theoretical meaningfulness a technology's spirit and reconsider the causal nature of a technology's embedded structures.
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In response to the rising interest in “spirituality in the workplace”, an exploratory analysis of text passages expressing definitions and applications of the topic was conducted…
Abstract
In response to the rising interest in “spirituality in the workplace”, an exploratory analysis of text passages expressing definitions and applications of the topic was conducted. A grounded theory process applying thematic and network analysis techniques was used to examine text samples from three different sources: e‐mail, survey responses, and a literature search. Throughout the investigation an emphasis was placed on maintaining the multiplicity of definitions and applications of “spirituality in the workplace” while methodologically studying the thematic content of these expressions. Code words representing concepts in four function categories emerged: nouns, actions, qualities, and theories. Sentences were re‐formed to reveal concepts and relationships discussed in the text samples. Practical applications of the themes of diversity, learning and development, intuition and the personal aspects of “spirituality in the workplace” are presented.
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A discourse analysis of the cognitive viewpoint in library and information science identifies seven discursive strategies which constitute information as a commodity, and persons…
Abstract
A discourse analysis of the cognitive viewpoint in library and information science identifies seven discursive strategies which constitute information as a commodity, and persons as surveyable information consumers, within market economy conditions. These strategies are: (a) universality of theory, (b) referentiality and reification of ‘images’, (c) internalisation of representations, (d) radical individualism and erasure of the social dimension of theory, (e) insistence upon knowledge, (f) constitution of the information scientist as an expert in image negotiation, and (g) instrumental reason, ruled by efficiency, standardisation, predictability, and determination of effects. The discourse is guided throughout by a yearning for natural‐scientific theory. The effect of the cognitive viewpoint's discursive strategy is to enable knowledge acquisition of information processes only when users' and generators' ‘images’ are constituted as objectively given natural‐scientific entities, and to disable knowledge of the same processes when considered as products of social practices. By its constitution of users as free creators of images, of the information scientist as an expert in image interpretation and delivery, and of databases as repositories of unmediated models of the world, the cognitive viewpoint performs ideological labour for modern capitalist image markets.
Dubbed as the “first digital generation,” the millennials (or Generation Y) have been ensconced in digital technologies throughout their lives. As a demographic cohort, the eldest…
Abstract
Dubbed as the “first digital generation,” the millennials (or Generation Y) have been ensconced in digital technologies throughout their lives. As a demographic cohort, the eldest members of Generation Y were the first to reach adulthood by 2001, which heralded the third millennium, and were, therefore, called the millennials.
This research study theorizes that the millennials are ushering an emerging post-digital era that is redefining how we live, work, and play. By situating media consumption within a cross-disciplinary context of mediated engagement, this study analyzed how millennials consume media based on a 2019 meta-analytical research analysis of 22 cross-disciplinary studies, published between 2015 and 2019.
This research study analyzes how millennials curate and engage with digital media and information content in the midst of incessant evolutions of their identity, media use, and digital life. This study explicates six theoretical insights into how millennials consume information and engage with media. In their pursuit of easy access to media, the millennials get most of their information and media content from social media.
In theorizing how millennials engage with digital media, this study explicates important conceptual trends such as incidental news exposure (INE), which refers to people stumbling upon news stories they otherwise would not have purposefully seen or sought. INE spawns “bumpers” who involuntarily bump into news items, as opposed to “seekers” who actively search or seek news content. This leads to the news-finds-me mindset among some passive news consumers who rely and expect other active news consumers to share important news and information.
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The two articles that comprise this analysis springboard from the availability and increased popularity of the term genius to nineteenth and twentieth century educational scholars…
Abstract
The two articles that comprise this analysis springboard from the availability and increased popularity of the term genius to nineteenth and twentieth century educational scholars and its (temporary) location along a continuum of mindedness that was relatively new (i.e., as opposite to insanity). Three generations of analysis playfully structure the argument, taking form around the gen‐ root’s historical association with tropes of production and reproduction. Of particular interest in the analysis is how subject‐formation, including perceptions of non‐formation and elusivity, occurs. I examine this process of (non)formation within and across key texts on genius, especially in relation to their narrative structures, key binaries and sources of authority that collectively produce and embed specific cosmologies and their moral boundaries. The argument is staged across two articles that embody the three generations of analysis.
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Fouzia Ashfaq, Mattiullah Butt and Sehrish Ilyas
Drawing on expectancy theory, this research explores how and when volunteers’ motivational drives for volunteering relate to organizational policies and practices. The paper…
Abstract
Purpose
Drawing on expectancy theory, this research explores how and when volunteers’ motivational drives for volunteering relate to organizational policies and practices. The paper analyses four areas of motivational association – affiliation, beliefs, career development and egoistic motives – together with organizational human resource (HR) policies and practices.
Design/methodology/approach
The study used a qualitative approach and through 17 interviews of the volunteer managers associated with 13 non-profit organizations (NPOs) examined that how through HR policies and practices, an NPO efficiently taps motivational drives of volunteers and maintains their spirit of volunteering.
Findings
The findings of the study indicated that the same behaviour may serve different functions for different individuals. Most of the motivational drives need to be tapped with specific tasks and events to become a source of fulfilment for volunteers, this plays a vital role in their decisions to continue volunteering. NPOs’ HR practices without volunteers’ motivation cannot serve any purpose. In the same vein, volunteers’ motivation cannot sustain for a longer period if it is not properly linked with organizational HR practices.
Research limitations/implications
The research findings may lack generalizability because of the selected research approach.
Originality/value
A great part of existing research, not previously captured in literature, is focussed on the assessment of the motivational underpinnings with respect to HR policies and practices.
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The purpose of this paper is to determine the value of I‐Ching (also called Book of Changes), the ancient Chinese book of wisdom, which has been used for thousands of years to…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to determine the value of I‐Ching (also called Book of Changes), the ancient Chinese book of wisdom, which has been used for thousands of years to help people make decisions in daily life. Recently, eastern and western scholars have begun discussing how to apply the wisdom of I‐Ching to the field of business administration, particularly decision‐making practices.
Design/methodology/approach
A content analysis method was adopted to uncover possible modern management decision‐making constructs. The single words approach did not find frequently appearing words that integrated decision‐making constructs in the context of I‐Ching. Further uncovering I‐Ching's administrative decision‐making approach, the managerial decision‐making model of I‐Ching is explained, including the premises, the decision contingencies, and the decision process.
Findings
By using an academic comparative analysis method, as it applies to managerial decision making, I‐Ching's early management decision‐making model is subsequently compared with western management decision models, which include rational decision making, bounded‐rationality decision making, intuitive decision making, implicit favorite decision making, and garbage‐can decision making.
Research limitations/implications
The majority of scholars that study I‐Ching focus on “practice divination” research, paying attention to the interpretation or critique of the text only. Unfortunately, related literature based upon a social science research foundation is limited.
Originality/value
The value of I‐Ching was determined to lie in allowing flexibility in the decision‐making process.
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