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1 – 10 of over 10000Roshni Das, Kamal K. Jain and Sushanta K. Mishra
Archival research is a much under-rated and under-utilized method of research in management studies. Yet multi-disciplinary undertakings being observed in recent times, such as in…
Abstract
Purpose
Archival research is a much under-rated and under-utilized method of research in management studies. Yet multi-disciplinary undertakings being observed in recent times, such as in knowledge management (KM) systems, business history and social network studies, among others, indicate that there is a lot of potential to be explored. The purpose of this paper is to highlight this point and make a case for its inclusion in the researcher’s toolkit in the future.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors follow a two-stage method here: the first stage being an improvised process to benchmark articles for this review; while the second stage involves content analysis and synthesis of the same.
Findings
The authors have dealt with the intricacies of the archival research methodology by minutely examining the fieldwork steps, proxies generation, other related processes of triangulation, etc. With the discussion on “multi-disciplinary undertakings,” the authors offer not only a selective bibliography of works that have effectively harvested this family of methods, but also critique the nuances involved. Finally, coming into more contemporary concerns and developments, the authors undertake an in-depth look at technological applications in the domain of KM, in case study mode. Methodological richness leads to substantive granularity. As such, the authors argue that archival methods contribute to the robustness, contextuality and holism of any research endeavor, more so in the study of business and organizations.
Research limitations/implications
This paper is based on the literature review.
Practical implications
This paper makes a case for archival method’s contribution toward the robustness, contextuality and holism of any research endeavor, more so in the study of business and organizations.
Originality/value
This paper re-positions the method of archival research as a viable and sophisticated tool for researchers to employ effectively in singular or mixed method studies.
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Dunia Llanes-Padrón and Juan-Antonio Pastor-Sánchez
The purpose of this paper is to examine the Records in Contexts proposal of a conceptual model (RiC-CM) from the International Council on Archives’ (ICA) archival description and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the Records in Contexts proposal of a conceptual model (RiC-CM) from the International Council on Archives’ (ICA) archival description and to propose an OWL ontology for its implementation in the semantic web.
Design/methodology/approach
The various elements of the model are studied and are related to earlier norms in order to understand their structure and the modeling of the ontology.
Findings
The analysis reveals the integrating nature of RiC-CM and the possibilities it offers for greater interoperability of data from archival descriptions. Two versions of an OWL ontology were developed to represent the conceptual model. The first makes a direct transposition of the conceptual model; the second optimizes the properties and relations in order to simplify the use and maintenance of the ontology.
Research limitations/implications
The proposed ontology will follow the considerations of the final version of the ICA’s RiC-CM.
Practical implications
The analysis affords an understanding of the role of RiC-CM in publishing online archival data sets, while the ontology is an initial approach to the semantic web technologies involved.
Originality/value
This paper offers an overview of Records in Contexts with respect to the advantages in the field of semantic interoperability, and supposes the first proposal of an ontology based on the conceptual model.
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Niall G. MacKenzie, Zoi Pittaki and Nicholas Wong
This paper aims to show how historical approaches can better inform understanding of hospitality and tourism research. Recent work in business and management has posited the value…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to show how historical approaches can better inform understanding of hospitality and tourism research. Recent work in business and management has posited the value of historical research and narrative frameworks to explicate business phenomena – here the authors propose an approach to hospitality and tourism studies could be similarly beneficial.
Design/methodology/approach
Three principal historical approaches are proposed: systematic study of historical archives, oral histories and biography and prosopography. The paper further proposes that such work should be aligned to Andrews and Burke’s framework of the 5Cs: context, change over time, causality, complexity and contingency to help situate research appropriately and effectively.
Findings
This paper suggests that historical methods can prove particularly useful in hospitality and tourism research by testing, extending and creating theory that is empirically informed and socially situated. The analysis put forward shows that undertaking historical work set against the framework of the 5Cs of historical research offers the potential for wider and deeper understandings of hospitality and tourism research by revealing temporal and historical dynamics in the field that may hitherto be unseen or insufficiently explored.
Originality/value
Much of the existing work on the benefits of historical approaches in business and management has focussed on the why or the what. This paper focuses on the how, articulating how historical approaches offer significant potential to aid the understanding of hospitality and tourism research.
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This paper aims to examine social media communication that may consist of a database for online research and may create an online imagined community that follows special language…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine social media communication that may consist of a database for online research and may create an online imagined community that follows special language symbols and shares common beliefs in a similar way to Anderson’s imagined communities.
Design/methodology/approach
Well-known databases were searched in the available literature for specific keywords which were associated with the imagined community, and methodological tools such as online interviews, content analysis, archival analysis and social media.
Findings
The paper discusses the use of multiple measures, such as document and archival analysis, online interviews and content analysis, which may derive from the online imagined community that social media create. Social media may in fact provide useful data that are available for research, yet are relatively understudied and not fully used in communication research, not to mention in archival services. Comparison takes place between online community’s characteristics and traditional communication research. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) and social media’s use of special language requirements may categorise discussion of these potential data, based on specific symbols, topical threads, purposeful samples and catering for longitudinal studies.
Practical implications
Social media have not been fully implemented for online communication research yet. Online communication may offer significant implications for marketers, advertisers of a company or for an organisation to do research on or for their target groups. The role of libraries and information professionals can be significant in data gathering and the dissemination of such information using ICTs and renegotiating their role.
Originality/value
The theoretical contribution of this paper is the examination of the creation of belonging in an online community, which may offer data that can be further examined and has all the credentials to do so, towards the enhancement of online communication research. The applications of social media to research and the use by and for information professionals and marketers may in fact contribute to the management of an online community with people sharing similar ideas. The connection of the online imagined community with social media for research has not been studied, and it would further enhance understanding from organisations or marketers.
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Educating researchers on how to use archival and manuscript materials and repositories is an important component in any records program. This is more important now that increasing…
Abstract
Educating researchers on how to use archival and manuscript materials and repositories is an important component in any records program. This is more important now that increasing amounts of information concerning archives and manuscripts appear daily on the web. Twenty years ago, all use of archives and manuscripts was mediated by reference personnel. This is not true today. However, the archivists' paradigm for educating researchers has not shifted accordingly. Furthermore, archivists do not have the defined basic competencies that might comprise “information literacy for primary sources”.
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The study of strategy is the study of how firms gain and maintain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. It is an examination of both the types of strategy that appear to be…
Abstract
The study of strategy is the study of how firms gain and maintain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. It is an examination of both the types of strategy that appear to be most successful in a given situation, as well as the organizational resources, systems, principles, and processes that create, transform, and carry out strategic action in competitive arenas. Since its development as a distinct disciplinary area, strategy research has focused primarily on large, cross-sectional studies of quantitative data gathered through questionnaires, archival sources such as financial reports, and commercial data bases such as PIMS and COMPUSTAT. These analyses have focused on, and revealed, patterns of strategy content, formulation processes, and competitive interaction that exist across firms within a given competitive context and that explain variations in performance across firms. These results have led to the development of several basic theoretical frameworks that help us to understand and predict competitive activity and organizational performance.
Daniël Coetsee and Nerine Stegmann
The purpose of this paper is to examine the profile of accounting research in the two academic accounting research journals in South Africa (Meditari Accountancy Research and SA…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the profile of accounting research in the two academic accounting research journals in South Africa (Meditari Accountancy Research and SA Journal of Accounting Research) during the ten‐year period from 2000 to 2009.
Design/methodology/approach
The archival research method is applied, which analyses existing data (in this case the articles published in the South African (SA) accounting research journals) to come to research conclusions. The research method used to analyse the related articles in the SA accounting research journals is based on various international studies. The following dimensions are assessed: authorship; research field; the nature of the research; and research methods. Authorship is classified by institution, and the top seven authors by relative contribution are also identified. Both empirical and theoretical work are classified separately in different research methods.
Findings
These different dimensions provide a broad‐based review of the current profile of accounting research in South Africa.
Research limitations/implications
Other refereed academic articles in the field of accounting have been published in non‐accounting specific SAPSE‐approved journals. These articles are also excluded from the scope of this research since the journals in which they are published have not been established by accounting academics specifically.
Practical implications
The motivation for doing this research is to identify the current profile of accounting research in South Africa that could be used as a basis for future research‐related development.
Originality/value
Knowledge of the profile of accounting research in South Africa could provide opportunities for scholars to expand identified research areas and explore methods that are currently under‐developed in the South African accountancy research field. The paper also acknowledges the contributions by the most prolific authors in the identified journals.
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This paper considers how archival accounting records may support truth-telling about past atrocities during Australia's frontier wars.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper considers how archival accounting records may support truth-telling about past atrocities during Australia's frontier wars.
Design/methodology/approach
The study examines two colonial accounting records – military muster payrolls and the ledger statements of a local tax fund – used during the British's punitive expeditions against the Aboriginal peoples of Sydney in 1816.
Findings
The accounting records reveal new information about the full scale of the campaign, the degree to which the violence was formally endorsed and acts of Aboriginal resistance. However, much of the human toll of the campaign remains obscured by the highly structured, monetary lens of financial records authored and archived by the British colonial regime.
Social implications
Australia's First Nations have called for greater truth-telling about the frontier wars to enable meaningful reconciliation and political recognition of Indigenous sovereignty. This study highlights the potential role of accounting records as a resource for contemporary truth-telling processes.
Originality/value
The study contributes to the literature about the dark history of accounting by explicating genre features in the content, form and context of archival accounting records, which can both render past atrocities more visible as well as perpetrate invisibilities, ambiguities and silences.
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The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive analysis of Indonesia’s public service innovation drawn from the top 99 nominees of the national competition for public…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive analysis of Indonesia’s public service innovation drawn from the top 99 nominees of the national competition for public service innovation from 2014 to 2016.
Design/methodology/approach
To answer the research question, this study applied archival research as a research strategy. A documentation method was conducted to collect the data. Using content analysis aided by NVivo 11 this study analyzes the following themes: implementing agencies, innovation types, innovation goals, innovation outcomes, policy sector in which innovation implemented and geographical perspective.
Findings
The public service innovation in Indonesia from 2014 to 2016 were dominated by local government and process innovation in which designates to the amalgamation of technological and administrative dimensions of innovation. The most occurrence outcomes were aimed to tackling societal problems in the health and education sector. Whilst in the geographical perspective, big portion of innovation were taking place in Java Island.
Research limitations/implications
The result of this study is mainly based on secondary data drawing from public service innovation competition held by the Indonesian Ministry of Administrative Reform. Consequently, the result is limited to provide a mapping feature and trends of innovation. Future research may use more extensive samples (not only sourced from the nominees but also all submitted initiatives) to obtain more representation of public service innovation in Indonesia.
Practical implications
Given the fact that lack of collaboration between public and private actors, the government needs to consider on designing strategies and policy direction to foster collaboration in public service innovation.
Originality/value
This research offers a comprehensive analysis on Indonesian public service innovation. Methodologically, the research introduces archival research as one of the alternative research strategies on public sector innovation scholarships.
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Laura Maran and Alan Lowe
This paper reports an investigation of a hybrid ex-state-owned enterprise (ex-SOE) providing ICT (Information and Communication Technology) services in the Italian healthcare…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper reports an investigation of a hybrid ex-state-owned enterprise (ex-SOE) providing ICT (Information and Communication Technology) services in the Italian healthcare sector (in-house provision). The authors aim to offer a framing that reflects the concerns expressed in the interdisciplinary literature on hybrid SOEs from management, public administration and, more recently, accounting.
Design/methodology/approach
This study operationalizes Besharov and Smith’s (2014) theoretical model on multiple logics to analyze institutional structures and organizational outcomes at an ICT in-house provider. It builds on extensive textual analysis of regulatory, archival, survey and interview data.
Findings
The study results show that the combination of hybridity in the form of layering of multiple logics in the health care sector (Polzer et al., 2016) creates problems for the effectiveness of ICT provision. In particular, the hybrid organization the authors study remained stuck in established competing relationships despite a restructure of regional health care governance. The study findings also reflect on the design of organizational control mechanisms when balancing different logics.
Research limitations/implications
The identified case-study accountability practices and performance system add to the debate on hybrid organizations in the case of ex-SOEs and facilitate the understanding and management of hybrids in the public sector. The authors note policymaking implications.
Originality/value
The authors’ operationalization of Besharov and Smith's (2014) model adds clarity to key elements of their model, notably how to identify evidence in order to disentangle notions of centrality and compatibility. By doing this, the authors’ analysis offers potential insights into both managerial design and policy prescription. The authors provide cautionary tales around institutional reorganization regarding the layered synthesis of logics within these organizations.
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