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1 – 10 of over 6000George Puia and Joseph Ofori‐Dankwa
There is an established link between national cultural differences and documented variations in technological innovations across countries. To move beyond a narrow emphasis on…
Abstract
Purpose
There is an established link between national cultural differences and documented variations in technological innovations across countries. To move beyond a narrow emphasis on national cultures, scholars have suggested using within‐country diversity to compensate for known limitations in national culture measures. Given that ethno‐linguistic diversity is a known source of cultural variation, this paper specifically aims to explore the relationship between culture, ethno‐linguistic diversity and national innovativeness.
Design/methodology/approach
The researchers used publicly available data on patents and trademarks in a multivariate regression context to study the effects of national culture and within‐country diversity on national levels of innovativeness.
Findings
The research found that culture and ethno‐linguistic diversity are independently positively associated with national innovation. More importantly, cultural and intra‐cultural variation measures when taken together account for significantly greater variance in levels of national innovation than does national culture when measured separately.
Research limitations/implications
While this study points to the importance of ethno‐linguistic diversity in explaining national levels of innovativeness, there are other measures of within‐country diversity to be explored.
Practical implications
If national culture were the sole factor in innovativeness, then companies would be limited by their host cultural legacies; since within‐country diversity is also associated with innovation, it provides entrepreneurs, government policy makers and executives with important options for increasing innovativeness.
Originality/value
While previous studies pointed to the potential link between ethno‐linguistic diversity and innovation, prior research has generally not taken this variable into account.
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The purpose of this study is to explore the link between aggregate production efficiency and the extent of linguistic clustering in Indonesia.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to explore the link between aggregate production efficiency and the extent of linguistic clustering in Indonesia.
Design/methodology/approach
The author draws on the stochastic frontier model and applies it to the data on Indonesian provinces to compute the effects of various determinants on these provinces' aggregate production efficiency. The key determinant is the spatial index of linguistic clustering that the author believes has never been applied before in this context.
Findings
Linguistic clustering is an important determinant of aggregate production efficiency. Linguistic diversity is positively associated with productive efficiency if members of a specific linguistic group are not clustered beyond a certain level.
Originality/value
To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study that links the spatial index of linguistic clustering (because of Massey and Danton) to production efficiency. In other words, the contribution of this study is to introduce a geographical dimension to the mainstream analysis of the association between ethnic diversity and economic performance.
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Cassandra E. DiRienzo, Jayoti Das and John Burbridge
In today's global economy, a country's level of competitiveness has emerged as an important policy tool for business leaders and the impact of many economic and institutional…
Abstract
Purpose
In today's global economy, a country's level of competitiveness has emerged as an important policy tool for business leaders and the impact of many economic and institutional “hard” factors on competitiveness have been studied. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact that diversity, a “soft” factor, has on a country's level of competitiveness.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a sample of 102 countries, a multiple regression analysis is performed in which the relationship between a country's competitiveness, as proxied by the global competitiveness index, and diversity, as proxied by ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity, are tested while controlling for other factors known to affect competitiveness. Further, a cluster analysis is performed in an effort to illuminate global patterns in competitiveness.
Findings
The results indicate that greater levels of ethnic diversity negatively and significantly affect a country's competitiveness, but greater levels of linguistic diversity positively and significantly affect competitiveness while religious diversity has no effect.
Research limitations/implications
The reasons behind for the analysis results still need further research. For example, why do greater levels of linguistic diversity positively affect country competitiveness?
Practical implications
The IMF, World Bank, and other investors of capital need to understand whether diversity will help or hinder aid and loan programs and corporations need to consider diversity when conducting global business and foreign investment.
Originality/value
This study is the first to examine the relationship between diversity and country‐level competitiveness and has value to global business managers and investors.
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Post‐secondary educational organizations are currently some of the most diverse settings to be found. However, few educational studies have dealt with staff diversity and hardly…
Abstract
Purpose
Post‐secondary educational organizations are currently some of the most diverse settings to be found. However, few educational studies have dealt with staff diversity and hardly any has looked outside the USA. The purpose of this paper is to present a study of members of international university departments in Denmark. The authors set out to investigate the relationship between different types of staff diversity and openness to diversity in terms of linguistic, visible, value, and informational heterogeneity.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses responses from 489 staff members from diverse university departments to a self‐report electronic survey.
Findings
It was found that diversity‐related internationalization (cultural and linguistic) was generally positively related to favorable diversity attitudes. Inherent demographic diversity (age and gender), on the other hand, was unrelated or negatively associated with positive diversity attitudes.
Originality/value
Few studies deal with the role of staff diversity and no prior studies the authors know of have examined the link between diversity types and openness to diversity.
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The purpose of this study is to contribute to the field of diversity studies with novel insights on how language diversity and communication frequency influence dissimilarity…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to contribute to the field of diversity studies with novel insights on how language diversity and communication frequency influence dissimilarity attitudes.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors examine language diversity and communication frequency as group‐level antecedents for positive dissimilarity attitudes by use of questionnaire responses from 489 members of academic culturally diverse departments.
Findings
The results showed that communication frequency has strong positive relationships with three variables depicting positive dissimilarity attitudes, namely openness to linguistic, visible and informational diversity. Contradicting our predictions, language diversity had positive associations with all variables portraying positive dissimilarity attitudes. The implications of these findings are discussed in detail.
Originality/value
Few prior studies have dealt with the relations between language, communication and dissimilarity attitudes.
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Emily Machado, Rebecca Woodard, Andrea Vaughan and Rick Coppola
This study examines how writing teachers manage linguistic ideological dilemmas (LIDs) around grammar instruction and highlights productive strategies employed by one teacher in…
Abstract
This study examines how writing teachers manage linguistic ideological dilemmas (LIDs) around grammar instruction and highlights productive strategies employed by one teacher in an instructional unit on poetry. We conducted semi-structured interviews with nine elementary and middle-school teachers to better understand how they conceptualized and enacted writing pedagogies in urban classrooms. Then, we documented the teaching practices of one teacher during a 9-week case study. We describe three LIDs expressed by the teachers we interviewed: (1) a perception of greater linguistic flexibility in speech than in writing; (2) a sense that attention to grammar in feedback can enhance and/or inhibit written communication; and (3) apprehension about whether grammar instruction empowers or marginalizes linguistically minoritized students. We also highlight three productive strategies for teaching grammar while valuing linguistic diversity employed by one teacher: (1) selecting mentor texts that showcase a range of grammars; (2) modeling code-meshing practices; and (3) privileging alternative grammars while grading written work. We describe how teachers might take up pedagogical practices that support linguistic diversity, such as evaluating written assignments in more flexible ways, engaging in contrastive analysis, and teaching students to resist and rewrite existing language rules.
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The purpose of this paper is to review the current state of knowledge about the links – metaphorical and real – between cultural and biological diversity.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to review the current state of knowledge about the links – metaphorical and real – between cultural and biological diversity.
Design/methodology/approach
By way of approach, the paper focuses on language and music cultures, two areas of intangible cultural heritage whose diversity has come under threat in recent decades.
Findings
The paper suggests some ways in which recent advances in the fields of ecolinguistics, biolinguistic diversity, and music sustainability continue to further knowledge of the links between cultural diversity and biodiversity.
Practical implications
Metaphorical parallels between biodiversity and cultural diversity (such as the interconnectedness of the various forms of intangible cultural heritage, as in a biological ecosystem) may, to some extent, be able to inform the development of models for supporting intangible cultural heritage, such as language and music. Moreover, the very real interconnections between these two kinds of “diversities” holds implications for cultural heritage management, since efforts to safeguard cultural diversity will be impacted by the successes and failures of efforts to protect biodiversity, and vice versa.
Originality/value
For this reason, the issues explored in this review hold implications for policy‐makers, governments, non‐governmental organisations, culture‐bearers themselves, and other stakeholders in the viability and diversity of cultural heritage.
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The prioritization of multilingual and multicultural education (MME) must spread beyond educators and researchers, who have long known the benefits, to the politicians and…
Abstract
Purpose
The prioritization of multilingual and multicultural education (MME) must spread beyond educators and researchers, who have long known the benefits, to the politicians and policymakers and to the general public. This paper aims to propose that the MME field needs a good economist who can explain MME benefits in terms of the language of economy, clarifying that economic advantages extend beyond diverse individuals, including those who may be ideologically opposed, via increased economic output to potentially benefit all.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a conceptual framework, connections are demonstrated between MME and increased cultural and linguistic sensitivity as well as between the effects of increased sensitivity on the potential for economic benefits. These connections can be logically extended to consider the effects of MME on economic output.
Findings
Research indicates that MME can increase cultural and linguistic sensitivity and that increased sensitivity to cultural and linguistic diversity can affect economic output. A logical bridge between the two fields of research is illustrated.
Originality/value
This paper uses a practical approach to support the flourishing of MME. If MME is, ultimately, to result in benefits that all can appreciate, it is imperative to get groups with various purposes on board. Then, maybe we can look forward to the effective and pervasive implementation of MME. The challenge remains that this message has not been reaching the general public, and a good economist’s communication could be the key.
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Purpose – It may be time to reformulate the rejection of censorship. Freedom is not the only opposite of, strategic resource against, or antidote to, censorship…
Abstract
Purpose – It may be time to reformulate the rejection of censorship. Freedom is not the only opposite of, strategic resource against, or antidote to, censorship. Methodology/Approach – This chapter argues against censorship with a Kantian-normative approach (the deontological position of the categorical imperative), using conceptual analysis, constructivism, and international legal scholarship, from the standpoint of a humanity-wide duty to safeguard and promote cultural diversity and biodiversity. Increasingly visible weaknesses of the argument against censorship from the utilitarian standpoint of freedom, a negative argument, can be avoided in this way. Findings – Especially the neoliberal approach to freedom has no provisions against corporate and only little against copyright censorship, which are both becoming increasingly acute. Diversity, on the other hand, both biological and cultural, is argued to be instrumentally good, and intrinsically good, but the latter only if balanced by equality of basic rights. Originality/Value – The resulting moral and legal imperatives are to support, safeguard, and promote diversity, and thus to minimize both censorship in culture and selection/elimination in nature, but only to minimize them, simply because they cannot themselves be eliminated. It is impossible to eliminate elimination. This becomes clear when one considers self- and soft censorship. At least in the wide sense, censorship is inevitable – but sustainable development is impossible without strict minimization of censorship.
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Kathleen A. King Thorius, Tammera S. Moore and M. Nickie Coomer
We reviewed three existing reviews of literature: two related to cultural and linguistic diversity in well-regarded special education research outlets including Advances in…
Abstract
We reviewed three existing reviews of literature: two related to cultural and linguistic diversity in well-regarded special education research outlets including Advances in Special Education, and the third regarding constructions of culture, race, disability, and risk in early childhood and early childhood special education (ECSE) literature. Some of our findings reflected ongoing oppressions for young children at the intersections of race, disability, and other forms of social difference to which negative treatment has been attached, including static and deficit-based framings of disability, reliance on whiteness, and English as the norm for developmental benchmarks, and failure to account for disability beyond medical models. We present a preliminary framework for special education research and practice considerations in order to remediate these issues in ECSE for young learners of color, among others, with disabilities.
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