Search results

This paper aims to explore perceptions and provides insights, from students who volunteer in policing whilst also studying the college of policing licenced professional policing degree (PPD) in Wales. It examines issues that act as enablers and blockers to volunteering in this public service, which also provides opportunities to develop their employability towards the careers to which they aspire. The paper provides insights from students and makes recommendations of interest to multiple stakeholders locally, regionally, nationally and internationally regarding attracting and recruiting volunteers.

Focus groups were conducted with students at three separate universities in the South and West of Wales. These undergraduate students were volunteers in different police forces and agreed to take part in connection with their experiences. The results were analysed using NVivo to establish commonalities.

The paper provides empirical insights concerning the issues surrounding the way those undergoing the process for recruitment as volunteers within policing are either hindered (blocked) or assisted (enabled). It identifies specific problematic areas as well as areas which have been of assistance. Policy makers, educators and recruiters should be aware of such blockers and enablers when considering adopting volunteering as an opportunity to enhance student employability. It also has resonance for other forms of volunteering in alternate public services.

This research is limited to those volunteers who are undertaking the licenced PPD at three separate universities in Wales. Although the research adds to the broader evidence-base with regards to volunteering and its use to enhance employability.

The paper includes practical implications for multiple stakeholders including university programme educators, administrators and decision makers in policing with regards to volunteering, employability, programme structures and process management.

The research is based upon the experiences and perceptions of those individuals who are actually engaged in volunteering.

Effective procurement of infrastructure is partly dependent on infrastructure procurement personnel having the skills that are important for the discharge of their role. Addressing the infrastructure deficits in developing countries, therefore, calls for an understanding of the skills that are important for the discharge of the roles of public personnel that are involved in infrastructure procurement. This study aims to investigate these skills from the perspective of public infrastructure procurement personnel in the sub-Saharan African region.

A questionnaire survey of procurement personnel yielded 590 useable responses, which were analysed using t-tests and exploratory factor analysis (EFA).

EFA established eight key components of important infrastructure procurement skills to include skills related to: project success factors; social and environmental sustainability; marketing and e-procurement; project phase management, the application of procurement laws and procedures; soft skills, ICT and communication; and data analysis and team building.

The findings are crucial in developing infrastructure procurement capacity building programmes that would be appropriate for infrastructure procurement personnel in developing country contexts. Infrastructure procurement personnel ought to engage more in capacity development training that is aligned to enhancing skills within the eight components.

In this paper we propose to study the differences among family and non-family-firms in relation to its financial strength, and therefore its potential position to resist in front of financial crisis and receive financial support or conditions by public or private institutions.

We used multiple hierarchical regressions on a sample of 137 Spanish medium-sized firms (SMEs).

We observe that the perspectives and idiosyncratic characteristics of family-firms (strongly influenced by their socioemotional wealth) will affect the way these companies invest and operate in the market, which would be more related to efficiency because of their higher willingness to continue the legacy of the business and their weak risk-bearing attributes.

Our study adopts a measure of familiness with a dummy variable, and not as a continuous variable as proposed by recent research. Therefore, our results although relevant and significant for the family firm literature, must be viewed carefully. Additional research could also retest some prior studies to depict differences caused by “real” family firm involvement.

Under a non-munificent environment, the financial strength maintained by firms will be highly relevant since this context could likely stress and influence their immediate future and viability, overcoming and blurring any other characteristic present in the firm or its managers.

This paper contributes to the family firm literature by offering insights into the nuanced dynamics between family and non-family firms during economic downturns, specifically examining their financial strength when different strategic options are pursued and when firms are managed by different type of managers.

Martial arts and combat sports (MACS) are supported on ritualistic practices which often encompass hazing creating environments where catastrophic masculinities prevail. These forms of masculinities are strengthened inside MACS’ world resonating with masculinities spread out in wider society. We consider this to be the situation found in Brazilian society. With this study, our aim is to analyse how hazing practices in MACS contribute to the production of a socially legitimised catastrophic masculinity in Brazil. Catastrophic masculinity appears as a new concept proposed by Andrade (2022) to define a hegemonic, toxic and tragic form of masculinity spread in Brazil attached to a political power project. We carried out two qualitative empirical pieces of research that focused on three martial arts. These were ethnographic (participant-) observations of various events, training sessions, belt examination and competition and interviews with men participants. Supported by the presented data, we argue that hazing practices end up acting as a means of reproducing the catastrophic masculinity fighters perform in the dojo. They learn and resonate with a pedagogy that requires them to conform to and follow hierarchies through the repetition of the word ‘oss’ as a symbol of submission to arbitrariness. Hazing constitutes, instantiates and reproduces catastrophic masculinity and originates in the same (social) catastrophic masculinity.

This chapter explores the concept of allyship in social justice struggles. It provides a road map for self-reflection as well as acquisition of skills necessary for effective allyship. It describes appropriate roles for allies in dismantling systems and structures that protect the privilege of the majority in various contexts – privilege often unseen, unacknowledged and/or actively denied. This chapter will examine unique roles of allies in exposing, challenging, and dismantling privilege and white supremacy. Concrete examples of benefits that have accrued to white Americans through privilege – both conscious and unconscious, are assessed. The reader will be encouraged to explore personal areas of privilege and marginalization and acknowledge multidimensional identities (race, ethnicity, gender, class, ability, etc.) of individuals and unique lived experiences. Those seeking authentic positions of allyship are challenged to root out embedded privilege/white supremacy through direct action.

For construction organisations to be effective at implementing an integrated safety, health and environmental (SHE) management system, they require the right level of organisational capability. This capability includes the policies, systems and resources of the organisation. However, within the academic literature, it is unclear which organisational attributes of construction companies are important for implementing integrated SHE management. This study aims to explore the organisational attributes that determine integrated SHE management capability and their relative priorities.

The study used a literature review supported by expert verification and a subsequent three-round expert Delphi technique accompanied by applying the voting analytical hierarchy process.

The study identified 20 attributes grouped under five main thematic categories. These are strategy (the organisation’s vision and top management commitment); process (the organisation’s procedures and processes for SHE management); people (organisation’s human resources, their competence, roles, responsibilities and involvement in SHE management); resources (organisation’s physical and financial resources for SHE management) and information (SHE related documents, data, records and their communication across an organisation). While these thematic categories and the attributes within carry different weights of importance, the strategy-related attributes are the most important, followed by the people-related attributes.

The results of this study should enable construction companies and key industry stakeholders to understand construction companies’ capability to successfully implement an integrated SHE management system. Furthermore, construction companies should be able to prioritise efforts or investments to enhance their SHE management capability.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the importance of personalisation in the relationship between the architectural design of homes and inhabitants’ psychological well-being.

This interdisciplinary mixed-method study first investigates the existence of a link between personalisation and users’ association with home through a quantitative study (n = 101) and then explores the nature of this relationship through qualitative interviews (n = 13) in a sequential explanatory approach.

The main findings of the study highlight the significance of personalisation in relation to the way people perceive home. A direct link was established between participants’ involvement in the transformation of the home and their satisfaction with the residence, as well as satisfaction with life in general. Further thematic analysis of the qualitative study revealed further conceptualisations of personalisation, which together form an umbrella concept called transformability.

The findings underscore the need for embedding flexibility as an architectural concept in the design of residential buildings for improving the well-being of occupants.

The design of homes has a great impact on inhabitants’ psychological well-being. This is becoming of greater importance in light of the global COVID-19 pandemic that has led to an increase in the amount of time spent in homes. This research contributes to this debate by proposing concepts for a deeper understanding of architectural influences on the psychology of the home.

Prior research on business analytics has advanced substantially our understanding of how social media analytics affect business performance. However, the specific value of social media analytics to product innovation has not been fully explored and appreciated. To address this important issue, the present study draws on the resource-based view and the knowledge-based view to examine (1) whether the use of social media analytics strengthens radical product innovation to a greater extent than it does incremental product innovation and (2) how knowledge-exploration competence and knowledge-exploitation competence mediate the influence of social media analytics on radical and incremental product innovation.

This study tested the proposed model using data collected from 205 manufacturing firms. Structural equation modeling was applied to test the research hypotheses using LISREL 8.80 software program.

The statistical findings provide compelling evidence that the use of social media analytics is more likely to lead to radical product innovation than to incremental product innovation. In addition, knowledge-exploration competence only partially mediates the relationship between social media analytics and radical product innovation. Knowledge-exploitation competence not only partially mediates such a relationship, but also fully mediates the link between social media analytics and incremental product innovation.

This study contributes to the social media analytics and innovation literature by offering novel theoretical and empirical insights into how firms can leverage the value of social media analytics to create superior product innovation.