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1 – 10 of over 153000Heather Dillaway and Catherine Lysack
We explore the effects and interplay of physical and social environments on the inaccessibility of gynecological health care for women with spinal cord injury. We also…
Abstract
Purpose
We explore the effects and interplay of physical and social environments on the inaccessibility of gynecological health care for women with spinal cord injury. We also explore women’s responses to the inaccessibility of this care, in hopes of trying to understand better how women navigate their gynecological health and health care when faced with physical and social environmental constraints.
Design/methodology/approach
The data for this phenomenological study were gathered using in-depth, qualitative interviews with 20 women living with spinal cord injuries in or around Detroit, Michigan. Each interviewee was questioned about overall health and physical functioning, accessibility of doctor offices, interactions with health care providers, gynecological health-seeking behaviors, and complementary and alternative medicine use. In this paper we report on data on women’s difficulties in securing gynecological health care experiences and related attitudes and practices.
Findings
Findings echo past literature about the inaccessibility of doctor’s offices, including the lack of suitable exam tables and medical equipment. Office staff varied in their willingness to help transfer women from wheelchairs to exam tables as well, often creating what we term an inaccessible social environment. Individual women in our sample found different strategies for navigating the environmental contexts of a doctor’s office and the encounters that they had with providers within medical settings. These strategies had varying impacts on individuals’ abilities to secure gynecological health care.
Originality/value
Our findings point to the possibility of an interplay between and intersection of physical and social environments within medical settings that needs to be explored further and, potentially, the primary importance of the social environment over the physical environment in determining whether an individual’s disability makes health care inaccessible.
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Peter G. Roma and Wendy L. Bedwell
To better understand contributing factors and mediating mechanisms related to team dynamics in isolated, confined, and extreme (ICE) environments.
Abstract
Purpose
To better understand contributing factors and mediating mechanisms related to team dynamics in isolated, confined, and extreme (ICE) environments.
Methodology/approach
Literature review.
Findings
Our primary focus is on cohesion and adaptation – two critical aspects of team performance in ICE environments that have received increased attention in both the literature and funding initiatives. We begin by describing the conditions that define ICE environments and review relevant individual biological, neuropsychiatric, and environmental factors that interact with team dynamics. We then outline a unifying team cohesion framework for long-duration missions and discuss several environmental, operational, organizational, and psychosocial factors that can impact team dynamics. Finally, we end with a discussion of directions for future research and countermeasure development, emphasizing the importance of temporal dynamics, multidisciplinary integration, and novel conceptual frameworks for the inherently mixed work and social setting of long-duration missions in ICE environments.
Social implications
A better understanding of team dynamics over time can contribute to success in a variety of organizational settings, including space exploration, defense and security, business, education, athletics, and social relationships.
Originality/value
We promote a multidisciplinary approach to team dynamics in ICE environments that incorporates dynamic biological, behavioral, psychological, and organizational factors over time.
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Jiun‐Sheng Chris Lin and Haw‐Yi Liang
Previous research on the relationship between service environments and customer emotions and service outcomes has focused on the physical environment. Among studies…
Abstract
Purpose
Previous research on the relationship between service environments and customer emotions and service outcomes has focused on the physical environment. Among studies exploring the social environment, the emphasis has been on service employees, ignoring the impact of other customers. Recent research has further called for the need to include displayed emotion within the social environment. Therefore, this study aims to develop and test a more comprehensive model that focuses on the relationship between the social environment (employee displayed emotion and customer climate) and the physical environment (ambient and design factors) and resulting customer emotion and service outcomes.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on past research, a theoretical framework was developed to propose the links between social/physical environments and customer emotion/perceptions. Extant research from various academic fields, including environmental psychology, was reviewed, deriving 11 hypotheses. Data collected from fashion apparel retailers, using both observation and customer survey methods, was examined through structural equation modeling (SEM).
Findings
Results show that both social and physical environments have a positive influence on customer emotion and satisfaction, which in turn affect behavioral intentions. The physical environment exhibited more influence on customer emotion and satisfaction than social environment.
Research limitations/implications
This research explains how both social and physical environments affect customer emotion and perceptions. Future research directions are discussed, with an emphasis on incorporating customer characteristics, industry attributes, and cultural variables to better understand the influence of service environments in different service settings.
Practical implications
Social and physical environments influence customer emotional states within the service delivery context, which in turn affect customer service evaluations. Therefore, both social and physical service environments should be emphasized by service firms.
Originality/value
This research represents an early attempt to develop a more comprehensive model explaining how both social and physical environments affect customer emotion and perceptions. This study also represents the first empirical study of service environment research to include employee displayed emotion as part of the social environment.
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The purpose of this paper is to treat WeChat moments as social media environments and applies the research model to explore the effect of social media environments on…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to treat WeChat moments as social media environments and applies the research model to explore the effect of social media environments on perceived interactivity from the perspective of environmental psychology.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper proposes social media environments as effective stimuli for future participate in online social interactions. First, two cues of social media environments (user-to-system cues and user-to-user cues) can be important antecedents of users’ perception of interactivity. Second, users’ intention of future participates in online social interactions can be influenced by three dimensions of perceived interactivity (action control, connectedness and responsiveness). Using data from 334 users of WeChat moments, the authors conduct partial least squares analysis to validate the research model.
Findings
The results indicate that both technological and social environments positively affect three dimensions of perceived interactivity, respectively, including action control, connectedness and responsiveness. Moreover, actual findings also suggest that higher perceived interactivity increases users’ intention of future participate in online social interactions.
Originality/value
This work contributes to in-depth research on the relationships between social environments and perceived interactivity. Besides, this paper demonstrates that both technological and social cues of social media environments are significant elements in simulating users’ internal experience and behavioral intention. The main conclusions of this study can be valuable to social media developers and managers.
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This study aims to understand how the coevolution of multinational enterprises (MNEs) and emerging economy institutions affects social and economic (in)equality in an…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to understand how the coevolution of multinational enterprises (MNEs) and emerging economy institutions affects social and economic (in)equality in an ambiguous, emerging economy context from a political actor perspective.
Design/methodology/approach
Qualitative in nature, the study builds on conversations with 20 political actors involved in the peacebuilding process in Myanmar/Burma. It analyzes their perceptions of interaction of MNEs and host economy institutions from a social constructionist viewpoint.
Findings
The study identifies four coevolution patterns which portray the evolving interaction between MNE activities and different elements of their host institutional environment as well as their consequences for social and economic (in)equality.
Originality/value
This study contributes to critical international business research on emerging economies by emphasizing the different and partly conflicting host institutions of various stakeholder groups involved in the coevolution of MNEs and host institutional environments. The more nuanced conceptualization of the complex institutional environment enables the analysis of inequality as a direct and indirect outcome of MNE–institution interaction. Thus, the study connects to the business and human rights discussion and provides insight into the consequences of MNEs’ adoption of social and environment standards.
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Lisa Troyer and Arwen H. DeCostanza
Purpose – We outline how research on groups in disrupted environments can advance research on group processes.Design/Methodology/Approach – We review studies of groups in…
Abstract
Purpose – We outline how research on groups in disrupted environments can advance research on group processes.
Design/Methodology/Approach – We review studies of groups in disrupted environments, drawing mostly on military research to generate understanding of intra- and intergroup dynamics. We also identify new technologies and methods to improve measurement and modeling of groups.
Findings – When consolidated, the research documenting challenges groups operating in disrupted environments face suggests the importance of considering them as a unique set of circumstances for groups. It also identifies methods for objectively measuring and modeling groups in these environments.
Practical Implications – This chapter will help practitioners determine factors pertinent to groups working in disrupted environments, identify group processes that generate success and those that undermine group effectiveness, and point to emerging technologies to better measure and model group processes in disrupted environments.
Social Implications – Group processes affect both individuals and societies. In the context of the disrupted environments, group performance translates to enormous consequences for individuals, as well as national security and humanitarian implications.
Originality/Value of the Chapter – This chapter uniquely consolidates the vast amount of research on groups operating in disrupted environments and also is innovative in emphasizing the disrupted context as a generalizable situation that elucidates key dimensions of group processes and performance in disrupted environments.
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This paper uses systems theory to clarify the crucial point that there is a basic, inborn, bodily motivation, and that a social theory of the self cannot simply be a…
Abstract
This paper uses systems theory to clarify the crucial point that there is a basic, inborn, bodily motivation, and that a social theory of the self cannot simply be a theory of process. By bridging across current neuroscience, cognitive science, and systems theory, I propose a self that is fundamentally emotional energy seeking. There are other bodily needs (food, drink, etc), but these satiate quickly, and although they can override everything else at moments when they are low, they are not the central switching mechanism, the top of the hierarchy in the subsumption architecture of the self. Basing the formation and ongoing processes of the self in the motive to maximize emotional energy can explain the seeming conflict between tendencies towards self-consistency and the potential for creativity and change. It also allows us to detail the mechanisms that underlie the process of individuals drawing on culture as a resource and in turn diffusing new symbols and meanings into the larger culture.
Sara Shostak and Jason Beckfield
This chapter compares interdisciplinary research that engages genomic science from economics, political science, and sociology. It describes, compares, and evaluates…
Abstract
Purpose
This chapter compares interdisciplinary research that engages genomic science from economics, political science, and sociology. It describes, compares, and evaluates concepts and research findings from new and rapidly developing research fields, and develops a conceptual taxonomy of the social environment.
Methodology/approach
A selection of programmatic and empirical articles, published mostly since 2008 in leading economics, political science, and sociology journals, were analyzed according to (a) the relationship they pose between their discipline and genomic science, (b) the specific empirical contributions they make to disciplinary research questions, and (c) their conceptualization of the “social environment” as it informs the central problematique of current inquiry: gene-environment interaction.
Findings
While all three of the social science disciplines reviewed engage genomic science, economics and political science tend to engage genomics on its own terms, and develop genomic explanations of economic and political behavior. In contrast, sociologists develop arguments that for genomic science to advance, the “environment” in gene-environment interaction needs better theorization and measurement. We develop an approach to the environment that treats it as a set of measurable institutional (rule-like) arrangements, which take the forms of neighborhoods, families, schools, nations, states, and cultures.
Research/implications
Interdisciplinary research that combines insights from the social sciences and genomic science should develop and apply a richer array of concepts and measures if gene-environment research – including epigenetics – is to advance.
Originality/value
This chapter provides a critical review and redirection of three rapidly developing areas of interdisciplinary research on gene-environment interaction and epigenetics.
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Nipuni Sumanarathna, Bismark Duodu and Steve Rowlinson
The study aims to provide suggestions for project-based firms (PBFs) to create value through the development of social capital, collaborative environment and…
Abstract
Purpose
The study aims to provide suggestions for project-based firms (PBFs) to create value through the development of social capital, collaborative environment and organisational learning (exploratory & exploitative learning). In this regard, a conceptual model is proposed that examines the interrelations between social capital, collaborative environment and exploratory & exploitative learning in the context of PBFs.
Design/methodology/approach
A semi-systematic literature review focussed on interrelations between social capital, exploratory & exploitative learning and collaborative environment was undertaken. Top ranked journals and highly relevant journal articles in the management domain were considered for the review. To analyse literature, the content analysis technique incorporating NVIVO 12 software was adopted.
Findings
Conceptual model suggests that social capital positively affects exploratory & exploitative learning through collaborative environment in PBFs. Three dimensions of social capital (network ties, trust and shared goals) create collaborative environment and collaborative environment enhances organisational learning in PBFs across different levels. Ultimately, social capital, collaborative environment and exploratory & exploitative learning contribute to value creation in PBFs.
Originality/value
Although the relationship between social capital and exploratory & exploitative learning has been researched previously, findings remain inconsistent. This study provides an alternative perspective to discuss this relationship with the proposed mediating construct: collaborative environment. Considering the context of PBFs, a conceptual model was developed to explain the interrelations between social capital, collaborative environment and learning. This study especially discusses collaborative environment as a value creation factor.
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Donna Witek and Teresa Grettano
The purpose of this paper is to offer a model of information literacy instruction that utilizes social media to teach metaliteracy as the foundation for information…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to offer a model of information literacy instruction that utilizes social media to teach metaliteracy as the foundation for information literacy today and articulate the effects of social media on students’ information-seeking behaviors and processes and complete the goals articulated in part one of this study (Witek and Grettano, 2012).
Design/methodology/approach
The study was conducted in conjunction with the course rhetoric and social media, co-designed and co-taught by the authors. Data sources consisted of student work and methodologies including textual and rhetorical analysis and observation. Findings are analyzed and presented through the lens of the Association of College and Research Libraries Standards (2000) and Mackey and Jacobson’s (2011) metaliteracy framework.
Findings
The study identified four effects of social media use on students’ information literacy practices and behaviors: information now comes to users; information recall and attribution are now social; evaluation is now social; and information is now open. Data illustrate metaliteracy in practice and tie examples of this to the authors’ pedagogical decisions.
Research limitations/implications
Article offers a model for teaching information literacy in the context of participatory information environments which can be adapted by other practitioners. Authors concede that the small sample size, limited by course enrollment, limits the generalizability of the study findings to student populations as a whole.
Originality/value
Valuable to information literacy instructors and researchers because it offers the first formal application of concepts theorized in Mackey and Jacobson’s (2011) metaliteracy framework to information literacy instruction.
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