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1 – 10 of 555Zixin Tang, Andong Lu and Yue Yang
The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibility that design research involving a series of actions is an appropriate approach to memory place-making. It tries to explore…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibility that design research involving a series of actions is an appropriate approach to memory place-making. It tries to explore how memory expressed in public space and how memory place becomes an agency system and re-organize fragments of memory in practice specifically.
Design/methodology/approach
Taking the memory project of Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge (NYRB) as an example of design research and re-establishing new cognitions of contemporary memory place-making through the elaboration and analysis of the design process of a series of teaching, exhibition and public participatory activities.
Findings
Design research is oriented towards multi-discipline campaigns of agency and actions and acts as thinking patterns and integration mechanisms, so that the memory place-making can be incorporated into the scope of planning and design. This paper suggests that contemporary memory place-making should pay more attention to the spiritual experience of individual participation and the identity relations behind these emotional memories. On one hand, social bonds are established between people and have involved more public participation. On the other hand, multiple resources are integrated through a series of practical activities and design research, and the memory place becomes a catalyst for individual memory, emotions and communication thus redefining memory place-making.
Social implications
NYRB is a controversial mid-20th century national monument. In the social context of contemporary China, design research has helped to redefine and shape this national icon into a contemporary memory place where people can share memories of the bridge.
Originality/value
It is project-based in the sense of adding the dimension of memory to the practice of place-making through design research.
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One of the urgent questions in the field of diversity is the knowledge about effective diversity practices. This paper aims to advance our knowledge on organizational change…
Abstract
Purpose
One of the urgent questions in the field of diversity is the knowledge about effective diversity practices. This paper aims to advance our knowledge on organizational change toward diversity by combining concepts from diversity studies and organizational learning.
Design/methodology/approach
By employing a social practice approach to organizational learning, the author will be able to go beyond individual learning experiences of diversity practices but see how members negotiate the diversity knowledge and how they integrate their new knowledge in their day-to-day organizational norms and practices. The analysis draws on data collected during a longitudinal case study in a financial service organization in the Netherlands.
Findings
This study showed how collective learning practices took place but were insufficiently anchored in a collective memory. Change agents have the task to build “new” memory on diversity policies and gender inequality as well as to use organizational memory to enable diversity policies and practices to be implemented. The inability to create a community of practice impeded the change agenda.
Research limitations/implications
Future research could expand our knowledge on collective memory of knowledge on diversity further and focus on the way employees make use of this memory while doing diversity.
Practical implications
The current literature often tends to analyze the effectiveness of diversity practices as linear processes, which is insufficient to capture the complexity of a change process characterized with layers of negotiated and politicized forms of access to resources. The author would argue for more future work on nonlinear and process-based perspectives on organizational change.
Originality/value
The contribution is to the literature on diversity practices by showing how the lack of collective memory to “store” individual learning in the organization has proven to be a major problem in the management of diversity.
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Marco Bellucci, Diletta Acuti, Lorenzo Simoni and Giacomo Manetti
This study contributes to the literature on hypocrisy in corporate social responsibility by investigating how organizations adapt their nonfinancial disclosure after a social…
Abstract
Purpose
This study contributes to the literature on hypocrisy in corporate social responsibility by investigating how organizations adapt their nonfinancial disclosure after a social, environmental or governance scandal.
Design/methodology/approach
The present research employs content analysis of nonfinancial disclosures by 11 organizations during a 3-year timespan to investigate how they responded to major scandals in terms of social, environmental and sustainability reporting and a content analysis of independent counter accounts to detect the presence of views that contrast with the corporate disclosure and suggest hypocritical behaviors.
Findings
Four patterns in the adaptation of reporting – genuine, allusive, evasive, indifferent – emerge from information collected on scandals and socially responsible actions. The type of scandal and cultural factors can influence the response to a scandal, as environmental and social scandal can attract more scrutiny than financial scandals. Companies exposed to environmental and social scandals are more likely to disclose information about the scandal and receive more coverage by external parties in the form of counter accounts.
Originality/value
Using a theoretical framework based on legitimacy theory and organizational hypocrisy, the present research contributes to the investigation of the adaptation of reporting when a scandal occurs and during its aftermath.
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Ilaria Boncori and Kristin Samantha Williams
This article explores memory work and storytelling as an organising tool through family histories, offering theoretical and methodological implications and extending existing…
Abstract
Purpose
This article explores memory work and storytelling as an organising tool through family histories, offering theoretical and methodological implications and extending existing conceptualisations of memory work as a feminist method. This approach is termed as impressionist memory work.
Design/methodology/approach
To illustrate impressionistic memory work in action, the article presents two family histories set during Second World War and invite the reader to engage in the “undoing” of these stories and dominant ways of knowing through storytelling. This method challenges the taken-for-granted roles, plots and detail of family histories to uncover the obscured or silenced stories within, together with feminine, affective and embodied subjectivities, marginalisation and social inequalities.
Findings
This study argues that impressionistic memory work as a feminist method can challenge the silencing and gendering of experiences in co-constructed and co-interpreted narratives (both formal and informal ones).
Originality/value
This study shows that engagement with impressionistic memory work can challenge taken-for-granted stories with prominent male actors and masculine narratives to reveal the female actors and feminine narratives within. This approach will offer a more inclusive perspective on family histories and deeper engagement with the marginalised or neglected actors and aspects of our histories.
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Suvi Satama and Juulia Räikkönen
This study aims to explore how people bodily narrate and use collective memory to clarify their embodied experiences regarding a city which they memorise.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore how people bodily narrate and use collective memory to clarify their embodied experiences regarding a city which they memorise.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on 1,359 short stories collected by the online travel portal Visit Turku about ‘How the city feels’, the fine-grained embodied experiences of people are represented through descriptions of their feelings towards the city of Turku.
Findings
Based on the analysis, two aspects through which the respondents narrated their embodied experiences of cities have been identified: (1) the sociomaterial entanglements with the city and (2) the humane relationship with the city.
Research limitations/implications
This study is limited to short stories acquired online, raising questions of anonymity and representativeness. Thus, these narrations are constructions which have to be interpreted as told by specific people in a certain time and place.
Practical implications
Tourist agencies should pay attention to the value of looking at written stories as bodily materialisations of people’s experiences of city destinations. Understanding this would strengthen the cities’ competitiveness.
Originality/value
By empirically highlighting how people memorise a city through narrations, the study offers novel viewpoints on the embodied experiences in cities as well as the cultural constructs these narrations are based on, thus broadening our understanding of how cities become bodily entangled with us.
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Diogo Cotta and Fabrizio Salvador
The purpose of this paper was to explore individual- and firm-level antecedents of the ability of a manufacturing firm's personnel to collaborate and integrate knowledge for…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper was to explore individual- and firm-level antecedents of the ability of a manufacturing firm's personnel to collaborate and integrate knowledge for organizational resilience practices.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors apply hierarchical regression analysis to study a sample of 192 European industrial equipment manufacturers. Data for each firm are collected from surveys of two key informants in each firm, as well as from public sources.
Findings
Firms' personnel’s ability to integrate information and knowledge for organizational resilience practices was positively related with the extent of the head of manufacturing's network of personal contacts inside the firm. This effect was stronger in firms with more formalized job descriptions and clearly defined roles. The head of manufacturing's orientation to teamwork and cooperation impacted this ability only in firms that did not financially incentivize cooperation. The authors also found that cooperation incentives and role formalization directly relate to firms' personnel’s ability to integrate information and knowledge for organizational resilience practices.
Originality/value
The study proposes to study organizational resilience practices through a transactive memory systems lens. The study is also the first to link characteristics of individual managers to firm-level resilience practices by examining the antecedents of firms' ability to integrate information and knowledge to recover from operational disruptions. Furthermore, the study serves to enhance the knowledge of resilience practices by examining the role of firm-level antecedents and their interplay with characteristics of individual managers.
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Emmanuel Garnier and Florence Lahournat
The paper focuses on an aspect of disaster often overlooked by experts: that of disaster memory both as a prevention tool and one potentially contributing to the resilience of…
Abstract
Purpose
The paper focuses on an aspect of disaster often overlooked by experts: that of disaster memory both as a prevention tool and one potentially contributing to the resilience of vulnerable communities in Japan. The objective is, more specifically, to explore one specific source of disaster memory in Japan, namely the disaster-related stone monuments scattered throughout the archipelago.
Design/methodology/approach
To achieve the goals, the authors have studied several types of materials. First, the authors have used the “Natural Disaster Monument” online database compiled by the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan (GIS), data upon which the authors based the field research study, focused on water-related disaster in Otsu city (Shiga Prefecture). Simultaneously, the authors have systematically searched Japanese newspapers since the middle of the 19th century as well as the archives of Shiga prefecture in order to collect additional information on the statistical reality of these monuments, the context of their creation and in order to better estimate the severity of our case studies.
Findings
First, the findings show that stone monuments are indeed structuring elements of disaster memory in Japan. Not only are they present throughout the archipelago, but in addition, they are still for the most part visited by local communities. Second, the findings show how this material culture of disaster, as a vector of disaster memory, could be used as a tool to better understand and bring awareness to the occurrence of specific hazards, especially to future generations.
Originality/value
The authors promote an interdisciplinary approach by associating anthropology and history. The study offers a new and original character about an object of study relating to both the cultural and historical fields but still often neglected as a tool and object of research in DDR. The authors provide a method and suggest ways to integrate these stone monuments into DDR policies. Finally, the authors propose to better integrate these monuments into the overall reflection on disaster awareness and disaster mitigation.
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Antonio-Miguel Nogués-Pedregal
This paper aims to show that tourism is one of the most perfect creations of the capitalist mode of production insofar as not only does it consume places and territories and…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to show that tourism is one of the most perfect creations of the capitalist mode of production insofar as not only does it consume places and territories and perpetuate dependency relations, but in the expressive dimension, it also produces feelings and meanings and generates a new relationship of the past with the present and future (chronotope).
Design/methodology/approach
The study was carried out using a socio-anthropological approach with participant observation over several decades.
Findings
The modes of time are described and how the tourism chronotope shapes the historic centre of a consolidated tourist destination. The case study, analysed with the model of the “conversion of place through the mediation of tourism space”, illustrates the prevalence of instrumental and commercial values over one’s own aesthetic-expressive values in tourism contexts. This fact encourages the emergence of local political projects and the incorporation of uniformities outside the local place. These processes end up uprooting the anchors from collective memory. The definition of territories according to visitors’ imaginaries and expectations encourages the abusive occupation of public space and the adoption of new aesthetic attributes of urban space.
Research limitations/implications
Because of the chosen research approach and methodologies, the research results may lack generalisability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test both the model and the propositions further.
Originality/value
This study approaches the relationship of the idea Tourism with the idea Development based on the anchors of memory.
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Emma Harriet Wood and Maarit Kinnunen
To explore the value in reminiscing about past festivals as a potential way of improving wellbeing in socially isolated times.
Abstract
Purpose
To explore the value in reminiscing about past festivals as a potential way of improving wellbeing in socially isolated times.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses previous research on reminiscence, nostalgia and wellbeing to underpin the analysis of self-recorded memory narratives. These were gathered from 13 pairs of festivalgoers during Covid-19 restrictions and included gathering their individual memories and their reminiscences together. The participant pairs were a mix of friends, family and couples who had visited festivals in the UK, Finland and Denmark.
Findings
Four key areas that emerged through the analysis were the emotions of nostalgia and anticipation, and the processes of reliving emotions and bonding through memories.
Research limitations/implications
Future studies could take a longitudinal approach to see how memory sharing evolves and the impact of this on wellbeing. The authors also recommend undertaking similar studies in other cultural settings.
Practical implications
This study findings have implications for both post-festival marketing and for the further development of reminiscence therapy interventions.
Originality/value
The method provides a window into memory sharing that has been little used in previous studies. The narratives confirm the value in sharing memories and the positive impact this has on wellbeing. They also illustrate that this happens through positive forms of nostalgia that centre on gratitude and lead to hope and optimism. Anticipation, not emphasised in other studies, was also found to be important in wellbeing and was triggered through looking back at happier times.
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Nadia Albu, Cătălin Nicolae Albu, Oana Apostol and Charles H. Cho
Mobilizing a theoretical framework combining institutional logics and “imprinting” lenses, this paper provides an in-depth contextualized analysis of how historical imprints…
Abstract
Purpose
Mobilizing a theoretical framework combining institutional logics and “imprinting” lenses, this paper provides an in-depth contextualized analysis of how historical imprints affect social and environmental reporting (SER) practices in Romania, a post-communist country in Eastern Europe.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conduct a qualitative field study with a diverse dataset including regulations, publicly available reports and interviews with multiple actors involved in the SER field in Romania. The authors follow a reflexive approach in constructing the narratives by mobilizing their personal experience and understanding of the field to analyze the rich empirical material.
Findings
The authors identify a blend of logics that combine local and Western conceptualizations of business responsibilities and explain how the transition from a communist ideology to the free market economy affected SER practices in Romania. The authors also highlight four major imprints and document their longitudinal development, evidencing three main patterns: persistence, transformation and decay. The authors find that the deep connections that form between logics and imprints explain the cohabitation of logics rather than their straight replacement.
Originality/value
The paper contributes by evidencing the role of imprints' dynamics in the institutionalization of SER logics. The authors claim that the persistence (decay) of imprints from a former regime such as communism hinders (facilitates) the institutionalization of Western SER logics. Transformation instead has more uncertain effects. The pattern that an imprint takes hinges upon its usefulness for business interests.
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