Nkeiruka N. Ndubuka-McCallum, David R. Jones and Peter Rodgers
Business schools are vital in promoting responsible management (RM) – a management grounded in ethics and values beneficial to a wide array of stakeholders and overall society…
Abstract
Purpose
Business schools are vital in promoting responsible management (RM) – a management grounded in ethics and values beneficial to a wide array of stakeholders and overall society. Nevertheless, due to deeply embedded institutional modernistic dynamics and paradigms, RM is, despite its importance, repeatedly marginalised in business school curricula. If students are to engage with RM thinking, then its occlusion represents a pressing issue. Drawing on the United Kingdom (UK) business school context, this paper aims to examine this issue through a framework of institutional theory and consider the role played by (modernistic) institutional accreditation and research assessment processes in marginalisation of RM.
Design/methodology/approach
This study used an exploratory qualitative research method. Data were collected from 17 RM expert participants from 15 UK business schools that were signatories to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education through semi-structured in-depth interviews and analysed using the six phases of Braun and Clarke’s thematic analysis.
Findings
The study identifies a potent institutional isomorphic amalgam resulting in conservative impacts for RM. This dynamic is termed multiple institutional isomorphic marginalisation (MIIM) – whereby a given domain is occluded and displaced by hegemonic institutional pressures. In RM’s case, MIIM operates through accreditation-driven modernistic-style curricula. This leads business schools to a predilection towards “mainstream” representations of subject areas and a focus on mechanistic research exercises. Consequently, this privileges certain activities over RM development with a range of potential negative effects, including social impacts.
Originality/value
This study fills an important gap concerning the need for a critical, in-depth exploration of the role that international accreditation frameworks and national institutional academic research assessment processes such as the Research Excellence Framework in the UK play in affecting the possible growth and influence of RM. In addition, it uses heterotopia as a conceptual lens to reveal the institutional “mask” of responsibility predominantly at play in the UK business school context, and offers alternative pathways for RM careers.
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Patricia Gooding, Rebecca Crook, Melissa Westwood and Sarah Peters
Understanding ways to foster wellbeing in postgraduate-research students (PGRs) requires focus especially with respect to positive relationship formation with supervisory teams…
Abstract
Purpose
Understanding ways to foster wellbeing in postgraduate-research students (PGRs) requires focus especially with respect to positive relationship formation with supervisory teams. Hence, the purpose of this study was to explore six different ways of nurturing wellbeing; perceptions of positive relationships with supervisory teams; and interactions between these factors.
Design/methodology/approach
In total, 155 PGRs completed questionnaires at baseline and six months. The predictor variables were six ways of nurturing wellbeing; the outcome variable was psychological wellbeing appraisals overall; and the moderator variables were positive perceptions of relationships with key staff.
Findings
The most effective ways of nurturing wellbeing were Noticing and Being Aware; Discovering and Learning; Connecting with Others; and Being Healthy and Safe. Over time, Noticing and Being Aware predicted psychological wellbeing appraisals overall. Positive relationships with supervisors, co-supervisors and work peers were associated with wellbeing appraisals. Furthermore, positive relationships with co-supervisors most convincingly strengthened the relationships between wellbeing appraisals and Noticing and Being Healthy cross-sectionally, and Giving longitudinally.
Research limitations/implications
It is concerning that PGRs are often overlooked when developing policies and strategies to combat mental health problems. Rather than simply focusing on diminishing mental health problems, the current work evidences ways of optimizing positive aspects of PGR experiences by actively nurturing wellbeing in tandem with enhancing relationships with supervisory team members. However, such initiatives have to be an investment at institutional, as well as individual levels.
Originality/value
Examining the interactions between nurturing positive wellbeing in PGRs and positive relationships with supervisory team members is under-researched.
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Tony Blomqvist Mickelsson, Anders Nordström, Chato Rasoal and Mehdi Ghazinour
This paper sought to bring together police science and sport-for-development (SFD) with a scoping review of the empirical literature on at-risk youth and police…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper sought to bring together police science and sport-for-development (SFD) with a scoping review of the empirical literature on at-risk youth and police relationship-building in the context of sport interventions.
Design/methodology/approach
We conducted a scoping review with a Setting, Perspective, Intervention, Comparison and Evaluation (SPICE) model to systematically examine existing studies on the involvement of police in sports-based youth development programs. A total of 1,247 records were identified, and ten empirical research studies were included in the review.
Findings
The review identifies the critical role of stakeholders, especially coaches and community leaders, in facilitating police–youth contact. Coaches often serve as boundary-spanners, building trust between police officers and at-risk youth. Police involvement in these programs is multifaceted, with officers participating as teammates, leaders or mentors. This participation helps dismantle barriers and foster positive relationships but shows that different roles are associated with different benefits and risk factors. Relatedly, the review highlights potential risks such as the hyper-criminalization of youth, emphasizing the need for program designs that promote equality and collaboration.
Originality/value
This paper provides the first significant steps toward conceptualizing the role of police within sport interventions by integrating community policing and SFD literature. We advocate for interdisciplinary collaboration between police science and SFD scholars to further develop police–youth relationships.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly disrupted teaching and learning in higher education globally. The purposes of this study are to identify the demographics and contextual…
Abstract
Purpose
The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly disrupted teaching and learning in higher education globally. The purposes of this study are to identify the demographics and contextual challenges of emergency ICT-enabled education related to the future preferred mode of education of instructors and suggest a transition from emergency ICT-enabled education to blended education for future emergency preparedness and sustainability.
Design/methodology/approach
This quantitative, cross-sectional and correlational study administered an online survey using a structured questionnaire to collect data from 162 respondents during the closure of Malaysian higher education institutions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were analysed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences.
Findings
This study found that 56% of the respondents preferred blended education in the future. Multiple discriminant analysis generated characteristic profiles of respondents who preferred conventional face-to-face education, online education and blended education in the future in terms of their demographic characteristics and salient contextual challenges.
Research limitations/implications
This study is exploratory. The findings are not generalisable and the contextual challenges of emergency ICT-enabled education may evolve over time.
Originality/value
This study extends the existing literature by highlighting future preferred modes of education of instructors and suggests a resilience pedagogy of blended education for future emergency preparedness and sustainability.
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Yesolran Kim and Mina Lee
This study investigates the relationship between social media use and loneliness among adolescents and the moderating role of media literacy in this relationship.
Abstract
Purpose
This study investigates the relationship between social media use and loneliness among adolescents and the moderating role of media literacy in this relationship.
Design/methodology/approach
This study utilizes secondary cross-sectional data from the Korea Media Panel Survey conducted in 2021 by the Korea Information Society Development Institute. The sample comprised 480 Korean adolescents aged 13–18 years who had experience using social media.
Findings
The results showed that social media use was positively associated with adolescents’ loneliness and that media literacy moderated this relationship. Adolescents with low media literacy felt lonelier with increased social media use, while those with high media literacy felt less lonely as social media use increased. For those with average media literacy, social media use had no effect on loneliness.
Originality/value
The findings suggest that media literacy can serve as a protective factor against the negative effects of social media use, in particular, adolescent loneliness. This study underscores the importance of media literacy education and interventions by parents, educators and policymakers for adolescents.
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This paper aims to use the origin story of Dalhousie’s Faculty of Management as a foil for unpacking the tensions between deep disciplinary specialization and liberal education in…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to use the origin story of Dalhousie’s Faculty of Management as a foil for unpacking the tensions between deep disciplinary specialization and liberal education in business schools in Canada and the USA. Ultimately, the paper reveals that those tensions are not irreconcilable, and that through the fortunes of historical contingencies and deliberate decision-taking, a faculty can embrace the benefits of both breadth and depth.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper proposes a critical organizational history of management education through a case study. By drawing on secondary literature and archival sources, the authors focus on moments in business education, such as the founding of the Wharton School of Business, the release of the Carnegie and Ford Reports and the trend towards increased specialization to situate a case study of Dalhousie University’s Faculty of Management.
Findings
The authors find that the evolution of business education in North America from its broad, liberal origins towards narrow, specialization has come at a cost to some of the benefits of business and management education. An alternative approach, one reflected in the design of Dalhousie’s Faculty of Management, its programme offerings and its interconnection with other disciplines, enables the advantages of deep disciplinarity to co-exist (and cross-inform) with the advantages of liberal approach to knowledges.
Originality/value
The Dalhousie model offers business schools an example of a faculty that balances the rich insights of liberal interdisciplinarity with the need for sophisticated approaches to more granular, often disciplinary, topics. In addition, the paper offers the story of a multidisciplinary management faculty, some explanation for how that faculty was maintained despite pressures towards specialization; and in doing so, contributes to the limited historical research of management education, particularly in Canada, post-2000.
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Based on the reception of the principle of self-organization, the core of Heinz von Foerster's operational theories, I hypothesize how Heinz von Foerster's theory can be an…
Abstract
Purpose
Based on the reception of the principle of self-organization, the core of Heinz von Foerster's operational theories, I hypothesize how Heinz von Foerster's theory can be an orientation model for the epistemological problem of complexity. I have chosen this study to demonstrate complexity as an epistemological problem. This is because the question of how order arises - the core problem of complexity - is an epistemological question for which Heinz von Foerster developed an epistemology of self-organization. I do not present new research because HvF already had the complex organization of systems in mind. Rather, I build a critical approach to complexity on the research and work on operational epistemology in HvF.
Design/methodology/approach
This article aims to provide an orientation for a philosophical and epistemological understanding of complexity through a reading of Heinz von Foerster's operational theory. The article attempts to establish complexity as an epistemological phenomenon through the following method: (1) a conceptual description of the science of complexity based on the turn to thermodynamic time, (2) a genealogy of complexity going back to the systemic method, and (3) Heinz von Foerster's cybernetic approach to self-organization.
Findings
Based on the reception of the principle of self-organization, the core of Heinz von Foerster's operational theories, the conclusion is drawn that complexity as a description is based on language games.
Research limitations/implications
The results present complexity not as an object of science, but as a description that stands for the understanding of complex description.
Social implications
The hypothesis that complexity is a question of description or observation, i.e. of description for what language serves, has enormous social implications, in that the description of complexes and the recognition of their orders (patterns) cannot be left to algorithmic governmentality, but must be carried out by a social agency.
Originality/value
HvF's operational epistemology can serve as an epistemological model for critical complexity theory.
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This study aims to offer an original criterion of assessment for examiners of practice-based doctorates in contemporary arts practices, based upon the degree of intrigue…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to offer an original criterion of assessment for examiners of practice-based doctorates in contemporary arts practices, based upon the degree of intrigue, perceptual and conceptual, afforded by the research outputs. It is argued that intrigue is the necessary stimulus for the states of attention required for the recognition of fresh understanding and the acquisition of new knowledge from such outputs. The paper is intended to support doctoral students structuring theses for such research, those responsible for assessing proposals in university cross-disciplinary research committees with limited experience of practice-based research and the examiners of such research.
Design/methodology/approach
Acknowledging the several decades of work already published on practice-based research, this study adopts an aesthetic cognitivist position from which the visual arts are construed as powerful means of deepening our understanding, a source of non-propositional knowledge on a par with, although qualitatively different from, the way that the sciences are accepted as the means to propositional knowledge.
Findings
A case study demonstrates the efficacy of applying the proposed criterion in the assessment of practice-based doctoral research.
Social implications
Within the social context of academic research, the article strengthens the validation of practice-based research.
Originality/value
The terms perceptual intrigue and conceptual intrigue are coined as values implicit in aesthetic cognitivism; they are construed as the initial stimuli for the state of attentiveness required for fresh understanding, and the degree of balance between them is proposed as an original criterion for the assessment of practice-based research.
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Muhammad Farooq, Imran Khan, Mariam Kainat and Adeel Mumtaz
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has gained tremendous importance after several corporate scandals, financial crises and the rise of the hyper-competitive world. Firms must…
Abstract
Purpose
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has gained tremendous importance after several corporate scandals, financial crises and the rise of the hyper-competitive world. Firms must address multiple stakeholders’ interests to increase firm value. This study aims to investigate the effect of CSR on firm value. This study also examines the mediating role of enterprise risk management (ERM) and the moderating influence of corporate governance (CG) in this CSR-firm value relationship.
Design/methodology/approach
The sample of the study comprises 119 Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) listed firms and the study covers the period from 2010 to 2021. The corporate social responsibility performance has been quantified across five dimensions. These aspects are product, environment, employee relations, diversity and community. Four proxies i.e. strategy, operation, reporting and compliance, have been used to measure ERM. The governance quality of the sample companies was evaluated using the governance index, which included 29 governance provisions. The authors used the dynamic panel data technique (system-GMM) is used to achieve the objectives of the study. Furthermore, a firm’s engagement in CSR activities can also be measured through a multinational financial approach to check the robustness of the result.
Findings
Based on the regression analysis, the authors discovered that CSR was positively connected with firm value, validating the stakeholder view of CSR. Furthermore, following Baron and Kenny’s (1986) mediation technique, the findings confirm that ERM mediates this association. These results are robust by using the bootstrapping tests by Preacher and Hayes (2004). Furthermore, the result shows that corporate governance (CG) is positively connected with firm performance, and this relationship is strengthened in the presence of an effective governance system in the organization.
Practical implications
This study provides useful insights to regulators, investors and policymakers to consider CSR as a value-enhancing factor and encourage the development of enterprise risk management and compliance with CG mechanisms to improve firm value.
Originality/value
The presented analysis strengthens the existing CSR–firm value relationship by analyzing the mediating and moderating roles of ERM and CG, which have not yet been tested, particularly in the context of Pakistan.
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Karolina Lendák-Kabók, Stéphanie Mignot-Gerard and Marc Vanholsbeeck
The paper’s aim is to explore female academics’ publication aspirations and constraints in a less researched area of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE).
Abstract
Purpose
The paper’s aim is to explore female academics’ publication aspirations and constraints in a less researched area of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE).
Design/methodology/approach
The research data presented in this paper is part of a larger cross-European project involving semi-structured interviews conducted with Early Career Researchers (ECR) (PhD+ 8 years) from Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) from seventeen European countries.
Findings
The findings show how ECR women from the CEE region in SSH encounter difficulties when trying to publish, which obstacles add to a strong economic and geopolitical dependence. Findings reveal that female ECRs use various publications strategies to enhance their scientific career and engage in the neoliberal model of academia, but mostly stay in their local scientific communities, without building internationally recognized scientific careers. Thus, they do wish for a global recognition, but they opt for a safer and more accessible choice of publishing in their local scientific communities.
Originality/value
Knowledge which academic women from the CEE region produce (mostly in their local languages) stays in their local and isolated enviroments, creating an imbalanced knowledge advancement in a international academic arena which recognizes only publications written in English and in renowed journals.