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1 – 10 of 67COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted the nature of support available to new parents. Previously we conducted a study to explore parents' experiences of shifting to…
Abstract
COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted the nature of support available to new parents. Previously we conducted a study to explore parents' experiences of shifting to ‘digitalised’ caregiving specifically focussing on parents' access to online parenting groups. That study is re-examined in this chapter, presenting parents' narratives about their attempts to provide the best environment for their children while most of their face-to-face support networks were unavailable. The analysis aims to determine parents' constructions of the ‘COVID baby’, a term introduced by Brown (2021), although never defined in detail. Three themes were identified: ‘Hopes and fears for the babies’ future’; ‘Peaceful and oblivious babies’; ‘Babies as a perceived mirror of parents’ abilities’. Parents in this study depicted a positive portrait in which babies thrived at home; however, they expressed worries about their children’s future, as they lacked opportunities for development and socialisation usually offered by paid or unpaid group activities. To compensate, some parents engaged in extra labour at home in the face of home-made activities, inspired by previously attended group sessions. We argue that new parents, specifically mothers, are often pressured to display ‘intensive mothering’ to provide the best opportunities for development for their babies and fulfil gender and class expectations: such pressure leads to increased consumerism. Limitations of this approach have been emphasised by the simpler life that the lockdown forced on them, with apparent benefits to the babies' well-being. On the other hand, the need for new parents to be connected to nurturing networks of support remains essential.
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The purpose of this paper is to examine different approaches to framing interviews from the planning stage of interview design, drawing on Goffman’s (1974) notion of frame…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine different approaches to framing interviews from the planning stage of interview design, drawing on Goffman’s (1974) notion of frame analysis.
Design/methodology/approach
Reflecting on previous studies the author has been involved with, in the context of accountability, three approaches to framing interviews are presented and discussed.
Findings
Framing interviews around the experience of interviewees, peers or fictitious yet familiar others provides three pathways to access interviewees’ insights, perspectives, knowledge and experience on issues relevant and familiar to them.
Research limitations/implications
The approaches to framing interviews detailed in the paper provide valuable alternatives to access interviewees’ personal insights based on their worlds and worldviews.
Originality/value
Consideration of interviews on accountability through the use of framing and frame analysis provides novel, strategic perspectives on interview design.
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Alfred Austin Farrell, James Ashton, Witness Mapanga, Maureen Joffe, Nombulelo Chitha, Mags Beksinska, Wezile Chitha, Ashraf Coovadia, Clare L. Cutland, Robin L. Drennan, Kathleen Kahn, Lizette L. Koekemoer, Lisa K. Micklesfield, Jacqui Miot, Julian Naidoo, Maria Papathanasopoulos, Warrick Sive, Jenni Smit, Stephen M. Tollman, Martin G. Veller, Lisa J. Ware, Jeffrey Wing and Shane A. Norris
This study aims to ascertain the personal characteristics of a group of successful academic entrepreneurs in a South African university enterprise and the prevalent barriers and…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to ascertain the personal characteristics of a group of successful academic entrepreneurs in a South African university enterprise and the prevalent barriers and enablers to their entrepreneurial endeavour.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors used a Delphi process to identify and rank the characteristics, enablers, barriers and behaviours of entrepreneurial academics, with a Nominal Group Technique applied to establish challenges they encounter managing their enterprise and to propose solutions.
Findings
Perseverance, resilience and innovation are critical personal characteristics, while collaborative networks, efficient research infrastructure and established research competence are essential for success. The university’s support for entrepreneurship is a significant enabler, with unnecessary bureaucracy and poor access to project and general enterprise funding an impediment. Successful academic entrepreneurs have strong leadership, and effective management and communication skills.
Research limitations/implications
The main limitation is the small study participant group drawn from a single university enterprise, which complicates generalisability. The study supported the use of Krueger’s (2009) entrepreneurial intentions model for low- and middle-income country (LMIC) academic entrepreneur investigation but proposed the inclusion of mitigators to entrepreneurial activation to recognise contextual deficiencies and challenges.
Practical implications
Skills-deficient LMIC universities should extensively and directly support their entrepreneurial academics to overcome their contextual deficiencies and challenging environment.
Originality/value
This study contributes to addressing the paucity of academic entrepreneur research in LMIC contexts by identifying LMIC-specific factors that inhibit the entrepreneur’s movement from entrepreneurial intention to entrepreneurial action.
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Leah Watkins and Robert Aitken
The purpose of this study is to understand the nature of children’s consumer competence and the role that parents play in its development.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to understand the nature of children’s consumer competence and the role that parents play in its development.
Design/methodology/approach
A total of 15 parent/children dyads provided a novel and participatory approach. Children were accompanied to their local supermarket to conduct a grocery shop for their families and asked to explain the reasons for each consumption choice. Parents were interviewed separately to discuss their role in the development of their children’s consumer competence. Both sets of responses were analysed thematically to identify commonalities.
Findings
The research identified four themes comprising children’s consumer competence: decision-making; advertising, brands and promotion; financial awareness and shopping knowledge. The themes are the result of an intentional process of parental socialization that enable children to move from simple to complex and contingent shopping scripts as an essential stage in the development of their consumer competence.
Research limitations/implications
Although the study comprised a mixed sample of participants, its small size prevents extrapolation of the results to inform wider conclusions. It should also be noted that the influence of social desirability bias needs to be acknowledged.
Originality/value
Results show that children are highly aware of the competing demands of individual and family needs and able to make the consumption decisions necessary to meet them. These decisions are underpinned by parental values and attitudes that are explicit in the socialization of their children’s consumption. The authors define children’s consumption competence as the ability to make informed, independent, contingent, complex and values-based consumption decisions.
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This paper aims to elucidate responsible leadership as a construct with strong moral and ethical underpinnings, as well as a focus on multiple stakeholders and the triple bottom…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to elucidate responsible leadership as a construct with strong moral and ethical underpinnings, as well as a focus on multiple stakeholders and the triple bottom line. This paper also highlights the interdependence of the economic, social and environmental dimensions of a business to achieve corporate sustainability.
Design/methodology/approach
This conceptual paper is the outcome of analysing and synthesizing the findings of the literature review on three main constructs: responsible leadership, triple bottom line and corporate sustainability. This review enabled the development of logical associations among these constructs.
Findings
The literature revealed logical associations between responsible leadership, the triple bottom line and corporate sustainability. All three constructs embody the three dimensions of economic, social and environmental sustainability, which form the basis of the associations.
Practical implications
Responsible leadership, grounded in stakeholder theory, goes beyond the traditional dyadic leader–follower relationship to influence multiple stakeholders within and outside the organization and achieve positive outcomes for both the organization and society. Multiple levels of outcomes and higher levels of organizational performance for businesses are the hallmarks of responsible leadership.
Originality/value
This paper highlights the importance of responsible leadership and triple bottom-line performance for corporate sustainability. Responsible leadership has the potential to create significant impact on business and society, to achieve long-term corporate sustainability. A conceptual model of responsible leadership is also proposed to show the association between responsible leadership, the triple bottom line and corporate sustainability.
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Peng Ouyang, Jiaming Liu and Xiaofei Zhang
Free knowledge sharing in the online health community has been widely documented. However, whether free knowledge sharing can help physicians accumulate popularity and further the…
Abstract
Purpose
Free knowledge sharing in the online health community has been widely documented. However, whether free knowledge sharing can help physicians accumulate popularity and further the accumulated popularity can help physicians attract patients remain unclear. To unveil these gaps, this study aims to examine how physicians' popularity are affected by their free knowledge sharing, how the relationship between free knowledge sharing and popularity is moderated by professional capital, and how the popularity finally impacts patients' attraction.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors collect a panel dataset from Hepatitis B within an online health community platform with 10,888 observations from April 2020 to August 2020. The authors develop a model that integrates free knowledge sharing, popularity, professional capital, and patients' attraction. The hierarchical regression model is used to for examining the impact of free knowledge sharing on physicians' popularity and further investigating the impact of popularity on patients' attraction.
Findings
The authors find that the quantity of articles acted as the heuristic cue and the quality of articles acted as the systematic cue have positive effect on physicians' popularity, and this effect is strengthened by physicians' professional capital. Furthermore, physicians' popularity positively influences their patients' attraction.
Originality/value
This study reveals the aggregation of physicians' popularity and patients' attraction within online health communities and provides practical implications for managers in online health communities.
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Periodic economic instabilities and structural changes in the labour market have given rise to a variety of forms of job insecurity. This article compares the scarring effects of…
Abstract
Purpose
Periodic economic instabilities and structural changes in the labour market have given rise to a variety of forms of job insecurity. This article compares the scarring effects of different forms of job insecurity on future employment chances, and how they vary across education groups.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a sample of real vacancies and data collected in a vignette experiment with employers in Switzerland, a country with a strongly developed vocational education and training (VET) system, this article investigates how employers evaluate a period of unemployment, job hopping and work experience in deskilling jobs when hiring candidates.
Findings
The findings reveal that work in deskilling jobs is by far more scarring than unemployment or job hopping. The study also demonstrates that applicants with upper secondary vocational education are impacted the greatest by all three forms of job insecurity.
Originality/value
The study makes use of real vacancies. While experiments have the strength of high internal validity, most experimental studies in recruitment research rely on students as respondents. As this study works with real employers hiring for positions it benefits from high external validity.
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Jia Li, Ying Xia, Chengyu Ji and Hongxu Li
This study aims to explore the impact of leader emotional labor on employee voice. According to the emotion as information theory and the voice as a deliberate decision-making…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore the impact of leader emotional labor on employee voice. According to the emotion as information theory and the voice as a deliberate decision-making process framework, this study develops and tests a model that examines the mediating effects of psychological safety and perceived voice efficacy in this relationship.
Design/methodology/approach
This study conducted two studies to test hypotheses. Study 1 used a quantitative research methodology using a two-wave survey of 435 employees and 58 leaders in China. The research model was analyzed using multilevel path analyses. Study 2 collected 301 full-time employees from Prolific Platform. Hypotheses were tested using Mplus.
Findings
The results in Study 1 reveal that leader deep acting has a positive indirect relationship with employee voice via psychological safety. Conversely, leader surface acting has a negative indirect effect on employee voice through psychological safety. The results in Study 2 supported the hypotheses.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the voice as a deliberative process literature by introducing leader emotional labor as an antecedent of voice behavior. Additionally, this study indicates that perceived psychological safety and perceived voice efficacy are two important mediating mechanisms for implementing voice behavior.
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Patrick Arthur and Samuel Koomson
There is evidence of country-level contextual variations regarding the benefits of practical experience acquired by students during higher education. This paper, therefore…
Abstract
Purpose
There is evidence of country-level contextual variations regarding the benefits of practical experience acquired by students during higher education. This paper, therefore, analyses the benefits of student internships in the Ghanaian context.
Design/methodology/approach
In Study 1, two structured but distinct surveys were distributed to senior members and students of six specialised technical education institutions (TIs). Study 2 involved in-depth interviews with the heads of organisations in the tertiary education sector, including trade groups, industries and government agencies.
Findings
Internship provides soft skills, confidence, career development, sense of responsibility, employability, income, knowledge sharing and networking for students/interns. For TIs, it contributes to the professional development of faculty supervisors and helps them to update the content they teach. For employers, it unveils talented and promising students who can be employed immediately after graduation at a relatively cheaper cost.
Research limitations/implications
There is still the need for additional research in different contexts: both developed and developing economies to clear doubts on the controversies surrounding the relevance of internship in the 21st century.
Practical implications
TIs should continue to champion student internship programmes. This study highlights the need for employers to place internship students in areas that relate to their fields of study. It also underscores the need for students to embrace internship since it is the cornerstone to their employability in the labour market.
Social implications
Undeniably, student internships provide a critical platform for career beginners.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to knowledge by offering contextual literature in Ghana on the benefits of student internship programme for interns/students, TIs and employers, all together.
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Raheleh Khosravi, Maryam Mogheiseh and Reza Hasanzadeh Ghasemi
The present study aims to design and simulate various types of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) origami-based nanopores and explore their stability under different temperatures and…
Abstract
Purpose
The present study aims to design and simulate various types of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) origami-based nanopores and explore their stability under different temperatures and constraints. To create DNA origami nanopores, both one-layer and two-layer structures can be utilized.
Design/methodology/approach
One of the key applications of DNA origami structures involves the creation of nanopores, which have garnered significant interest for their diverse applications across multiple scientific disciplines. DNA origami nanopores can be studied individually and in combination with other structures. The structural stability of these nanopores across various temperature conditions is crucial for enabling the passage of diverse payloads.
Findings
Comparing these DNA origami structures can provide valuable insights into the performance of these nanopores under different conditions. The results indicate that two-layer nanopores exhibit better structural stability under various temperatures compared to one-layer nanopores. Additionally, small structural changes in two-layer nanopores enable them to maintain stability even at high temperatures.
Originality/value
In this paper, various DNA origami-based nanopores were designed and simulated, focusing specifically on one-layer and two-layer configurations. The two-layer nanopore consistently exhibited superior stability across both free and restrained scenarios, undergoing fewer structural changes compared to the one-layer nanopore. As temperatures increased, the two-layer nanopore remained less susceptible to deformation, maintaining closer to its original shape. Moreover, in the free scenario, the geometric shape of the two-layer nanopore demonstrated fewer variations than the one-layer nanopore.
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