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Article
Publication date: 14 September 2021

James Richards and Vaughan Ellis

A retrospective action-research case study of one branch of the University and College Union (UCU) is used to show how threshold requirements of the Act can be systematically…

Abstract

Purpose

A retrospective action-research case study of one branch of the University and College Union (UCU) is used to show how threshold requirements of the Act can be systematically beaten.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper responds to calls for “best practice” on how trade unions may react to member voting threshold requirements of the Trade Union Act 2016 (the Act). A broader aim is to make a theoretical contribution related to trade union organising and tactics in “get the vote out” (GTVO) industrial action organising campaigns.

Findings

Findings are presented as a lead organiser's first-hand account of a successful GTVO campaign contextualised in relation to theories of organising. The findings offer “best practice” for union organisers required to beat the Act's voting thresholds and also contribute to theories surrounding trade union organising tactics.

Research limitations/implications

Further development and adaptation of the proposed model may be required when applied to larger bargaining units and different organising contexts.

Practical implications

The findings can inform the organising practices/tactics of trade unions in relation to statutory ballots. The findings also allow Human Resource (HR) practitioners to reflect on their approach to dealing with unions capable of mounting successful GTVO campaigns.

Social implications

The findings have the potential to collectively empower workers, via their trade unions, to defend and further their interests in a post-financial crisis context and in the shadow of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Originality/value

This is the first known empirical account of organising to exceed voting thresholds of the Act, providing practical steps for union organisers in planning for statutory ballots. Further value lies in the paper's use of a novel first-hand account of a GTVO campaign, offering a new and first, theoretical model of organising tactics to beat the Act.

Details

Personnel Review, vol. 51 no. 9
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0048-3486

Keywords

Case study
Publication date: 16 August 2021

Yaryna Boychuk, Artem Kornetskyy, Liudmyla Kryzhanovska, Andrew Rozhdestvensky and Yaryna Stepanyuk

The learning outcomes of this paper is as follows: to structure the impact investing phenomenon and distinguish it from traditional investing or philanthropy, including the…

Abstract

Learning outcomes

The learning outcomes of this paper is as follows: to structure the impact investing phenomenon and distinguish it from traditional investing or philanthropy, including the motivation of investors in impact investing projects; to analyse stakeholders in impact investing projects according to four main categories; to structure the implementation model of the theory of change in the context of impact investing; to build managerial decisions concerning the development of impact investing projects in crisis situations.

Case overview/synopsis

The case describes the development path of the Promprylad.Renovation project from its concept to the critical moment at the end of 2018. Yuriy Fyliuk – the case protagonist, acts as the main ideologist and leader of the project, the essence of which is the establishment of an innovation centre on the area of the old Promprylad plant in Ivano-Frankivsk. Impact investing was selected as the main project development tool, as it allows for attracting investors who share the aspiration for positive change of the city and potential financial benefit. The project is implemented in several stages as follows: partner involvement (Insha Osvita, MitOst, Pact Ukraine and LvBS), vision finalisation and research (together with Stanford Research Institute, Zotov & Co, FORMA Architects, Moris Group, etc.), the launch of the pilot floor (attracting more than $683,000 from allocated grants and more than $590,000 of private investments). Open equity crowdfunding and the purchase of the entire plant, with its subsequent renovation, should be the next stage. As of 2017, agreements have been reached to pay fully for the purchase of the plant by the end of 2019. After a successful pilot and lengthy negotiations, it was agreed that $1,000,000 should be paid by the end of 2018 and $2,000,000 by the end of 2019 to complete the buyout. However, as of the end of 2018, martial law was proclaimed in Ukraine. Hence, considering the risks, a major US investor refuses to contribute. The main dilemma is either to find a suitable solution to complete the buyout of the plant or to stop the project.

Complexity academic level

This case can be used in the master’s programmes of business schools (MBA, Executive MBA, Entrepreneurship, etc.), as well as in training programmes for public and state sector managers. The case study will be particularly useful for mixed groups with representatives from different sectors of the economy. This case study might be taught in the following disciplines: social entrepreneurship, social investing, leadership and crisis management. The subject of impact investing allows recognition of the benefits of combined cross-sectoral efforts over joint projects.

Supplementary materials

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

Subject code

CSS 7: Management science.

Open Access

Abstract

Details

The Intersections of a Working-Class Academic Identity: A Class Apart
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83753-118-9

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 28 June 2011

Isaac Wasswa Katono

This study aims to construct a parsimonious instrument to measure social valuation in a collective setting using Uganda as an example.

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to construct a parsimonious instrument to measure social valuation in a collective setting using Uganda as an example.

Design/methodology/approach

A triangulation technique was used in this study. Conversations with students, parents, teaching and non‐teaching staff at Uganda Christian University (UCU) main campus were carried out, as well as a rigorous review of the literature to gather an original set of items on social valuation. Content and face validity were carried out in order to get rid of redundant and ambiguous items. The remaining items were incorporated in a questionnaire which was pretested before being distributed to a convenience sample of 650 third‐year business students on the four campuses of UCU, each located in one of the four regions of Uganda.

Findings

Principal axis factoring by promax rotation extracted six oblique factors accounting for 56 percent of the variance, namely, teaching of entrepreneurship in schools, family, knowledge, institutions, perception of education, and culture. Confirmatory factor analysis found the measurement model to have acceptable fit statistics.

Research limitations/implications

The study used a convenience sample of students from four campuses of one institution in the country.

Practical implications

Government and other stakeholders in the entrepreneurial sector should use the instrument developed in this study as a guide in a bid to enhance entrepreneurship.

Originality/value

Existing measures of social valuation were designed in the West and may not be wholly applicable in a developing country setting. The instrument designed in this study in a collective setting should be a great contribution to entrepreneurial research and development in developing economies.

Details

Education + Training, vol. 53 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0040-0912

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 23 November 2020

Stuart Waiton

The UK government’s attempt to “prevent” terrorism and extremism in the university sector is rightly seen as an intolerant threat to academic freedom. However, this development…

Abstract

The UK government’s attempt to “prevent” terrorism and extremism in the university sector is rightly seen as an intolerant threat to academic freedom. However, this development has not come from a “right wing” authoritarian impulse, but rather, replicates many of the discussions already taking place in universities about the need to protect “vulnerable” students from offensive and dangerous ideas. Historically, the threat to academic freedom came from outside the university, from pressures exerted from governments, from religious institutions who oversaw a particular institution or from the demands of business. Alternatively it has been seen as something that is a particular problem in non-Western countries that do not have democracy. While some of these problems and pressures remain, there is a more dangerous threat to academic freedom that comes from within universities, a triumvirate of a relativistic academic culture, a new body of identity-based student activists and a therapeutically oriented university management, all three of which have helped to construct universities as safe spaces for the newly conceptualized “vulnerable student.” With reference to the idea of vulnerability, this chapter attempts to chart and explain these modern developments.

Details

Teaching and Learning Practices for Academic Freedom
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80043-480-6

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 11 February 2021

Gabriela Barrère, Andrés Jung and Diego Karsaclian

The purpose of this paper is to identify different outcomes in the relation innovation–exports for a firm located in a developing country, depending upon the destination market of…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to identify different outcomes in the relation innovation–exports for a firm located in a developing country, depending upon the destination market of its exports (i.e. a developed or a developing economy).

Design/methodology/approach

The specification strategy is a bivariate probit regression model applied to 640 Uruguayan manufacturing firms. Two simultaneous equations are used to estimate the probability of being an exporting or innovating firm. For both equations, the firm’s innovative activity and export status in the past are introduced as explanatory variables to solve endogeneity issues.

Findings

When firms located in a developing economy export to another developing country, the authors find that innovation precedes exports, in line with what they would expect according to theory. When the export market is a developed economy, firms are not able to cope with both innovation and export strategies simultaneously, whether innovating to access export markets or transforming knowledge from exports into innovation.

Research limitations/implications

Causality could not be found and endogeneity problems were not solved. The data are limited to a sample of Uruguayan manufacturing firms during six years between 2010 and 2015, and authors do not know when did the firms began to export either to a developed or a developing economy. Furthermore, the database indicates if a developed economy is between the three main export markets of the firm or not, but authors do not know what kind of products (i.e. their technological level) are exported by the firm to that destination.

Originality/value

Although the link between innovation and exports is an important topic for firms and policymakers, the main bulk of empirical studies has ignored the role of destination markets. This study attempts to fill this gap contributing to a better understanding of the differences in the relation between innovation and exports (i.e. its sequence), when the destination market is a developed or a developing economy.

Details

Competitiveness Review: An International Business Journal , vol. 32 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1059-5422

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 21 December 2017

Amanda French

This chapter critically examines how recent government papers and policies have informed and contextualised the new Higher Education and Research Bill (HERB) passed in April 2017…

Abstract

This chapter critically examines how recent government papers and policies have informed and contextualised the new Higher Education and Research Bill (HERB) passed in April 2017. In particular, it concerns itself with the issue of ‘teaching excellence’, through what has been termed the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) that has emerged as a key plank of the current government’s policy for future funding of higher education (HE). It will consider the other spurs for reform in HERB, such as the desire to create a culture in HE where teaching has equal status with research, the need to ensure that universities provide better information about their courses and the experiences that they can offer students and the predictable governmental requirement for institutions to give value for money and to be clearly held accountable for any failure to provide a quality service to students. Lastly, there is also a strong emphasis on widening student participation across the sector and ‘levelling the playing field’ so that new providers can set up with the minimum of red tape. It is interesting to note how each of these additional areas for reform is clearly linked to TEF, which, this chapter will argue, will be the key vehicle used to drive them forward.

Details

Teaching Excellence in Higher Education
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78714-761-4

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 7 April 2023

Özlem Arikan

This study aims to investigate the impact on organizational members of team marks and peer feedback in a classroom as an organizational setting, where equals were engaged in a…

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to investigate the impact on organizational members of team marks and peer feedback in a classroom as an organizational setting, where equals were engaged in a hierarchical form of accountability. It uses Roberts’s framework of hierarchical, socializing, and intelligent forms of accountability and discusses the viability of intelligent accountability in higher education, given the accountability structure for academics.

Design/methodology/approach

Autoethnography based on excerpts from the lecturer’s diary.

Findings

The blurred boundaries of hierarchical and socializing forms of accountability create both tensions and kinships for students, and these two forms of accountability constantly impact on each other. Although the accounting tools have an individualizing effect on some students, several examples of intelligent accountability are uncovered. It is concluded that academia’s audit culture, which focuses on immediate outcomes, and academics’ ever-increasing workloads make successful innovations less likely.

Originality/value

This study contributes to the accountability literature in revealing a constant dynamic between hierarchical and socializing forms of accountability through examination of a unique setting in which the boundaries between the two are completely blurred. By empirically examining how accounting individualizes and how intelligent accountability emerges, this study contributes to the limited empirical literature on the impact of accountability on individuals, and particularly to studies of classrooms as organizations, with implications for education policies.

Article
Publication date: 22 June 2021

Fred Cooper and Charlotte Jones

This paper explores the dissonance between co-production and expectations of impact in a research project on student loneliness over the 2019/2020 academic year. Specific…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper explores the dissonance between co-production and expectations of impact in a research project on student loneliness over the 2019/2020 academic year. Specific characteristics of the project – the subject matter, interpolation of a global respiratory pandemic, informal systems of care that arose among students and role of the university in providing the context and funding for the research – brought co-production into heightened tension with the instrumentalisation of project outputs.

Design/methodology/approach

The project consisted of a series of workshops, research meetings and mixed-methods online journalling between 2019 and 2020. This paper is primarily a critical reflection on that research, based on observations by and conversations between the authors, together with discourse analysis of research data.

Findings

The authors argue that co-producing research with students on university contexts elevates existing tensions between co-production and institutional valuations of impact, that co-production with students who had experienced loneliness made necessary space for otherwise absent support and care, that the responsibility to advocate for evidence and co-researchers came into friction with how the university felt the research could be useful and that each of these converging considerations are interconnected symptoms of the ongoing marketisation of HE.

Originality/value

This paper provides a novel analysis of co-production, impact and higher education in the context of an original research project with specific challenges and constraints. It is a valuable contribution to methodological literatures on co-production, multidisciplinary research into student loneliness and reflexive work on the difficult uses of evidence in university contexts.

Details

Qualitative Research Journal, vol. 22 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1443-9883

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 30 August 2024

Lizbeth Alicia Gonzalez-Tamayo, Adeniyi D. Olarewaju, Adriana Bonomo-Odizzio and Catherine Krauss-Delorme

This study examines how perceived institutional support, parental role models, and entrepreneurial self-efficacy, representing both macro-level and personal-level factors…

Abstract

Purpose

This study examines how perceived institutional support, parental role models, and entrepreneurial self-efficacy, representing both macro-level and personal-level factors, collectively influence students' intentions to pursue entrepreneurship in Mexico and Uruguay.

Design/methodology/approach

This research utilized quantitative methodology, specifically survey techniques, to collect data from students attending private universities. The study achieved a valid sample size of 419 respondents. Various reliability and validity tests were conducted before structural equation modeling was employed to test the hypothesized relationships between variables.

Findings

The analysis revealed that perceived institutional support does not directly impact students' entrepreneurial intentions (EI). Instead, its effect is mediated through entrepreneurial self-efficacy and the presence of parental role models, both of which are strong predictors of EI. Additionally, the study identified a direct correlation between students' nationality, their academic programs, and their EI. Age and gender, however, did not significantly influence EI.

Research limitations/implications

This study provides theoretical insights into understanding EI by combining macro-level and personal factors. This integrative method contributes to a more comprehensive approach of predicting EI within the context of Latin America.

Practical implications

The study suggests boosting investment to improve the quality of institutions, fostering an environment that supports entrepreneurship, and offering students opportunities to learn from successful role models.

Originality/value

This study was conducted in the context of two economies in Latin America. The novelty lies in combining perceived institutional factors and individual motivators to understand EI in Latin America. It uniquely emphasizes the significance of familial influences, particularly parental role models, in its analysis.

Details

Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, vol. 31 no. 8
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1462-6004

Keywords

1 – 10 of 144