Search results
1 – 10 of 86Esther Linnane and Alison Warren
Role-emerging placements have been used internationally within occupational therapy education but are relatively new to Ireland. At times, there has been a debate in the…
Abstract
Purpose
Role-emerging placements have been used internationally within occupational therapy education but are relatively new to Ireland. At times, there has been a debate in the profession regarding the use of this placement model. This paper aims to generate views from both occupational therapists and occupational therapy students on the use of role-emerging placements in the Republic of Ireland.
Design/methodology/approach
Electronic surveys were administered to occupational therapy students and occupational therapists in Ireland. Quantitative data were analysed using the SPSS Statistics software package and the content of the open question responses were analysed into themes.
Findings
Occupational therapists (n = 60) and occupational therapy students (n = 45) indicated that there were inconsistent views surrounding role-emerging placements. It is deemed as an effective method for student learning, but apprehension exists around inclusion within occupational therapy programmes in the Republic of Ireland. Preference was indicated towards inclusion of role-emerging placements on a part-time basis within formal occupational therapy education.
Originality/value
Both respondent groups viewed that role-emerging placements can positively influence new areas of occupational therapy practice and concern over the use of the placement model requires further exploration and debate. This study is from an Irish context, although there are similarities with other countries’ use of the placement model. There is a need for research through an in-depth exploration of the learning experience of undertaking role-emerging placements from the students’ perspective and identification of supports required to promote an optimal learning experience.
Details
Keywords
The purpose of this paper is to compare public health discourses on the importance of motherhood with organizational attitudes towards childbearing. It shows how pregnancy and the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to compare public health discourses on the importance of motherhood with organizational attitudes towards childbearing. It shows how pregnancy and the nurturing of infant children are valorized within public health discourses, which treat pregnancy and new maternity as a miraculous “project”, encouraging mothers to position maternity as central to their lives. By contrast, the paper shows how employers treat pregnancy and new motherhood as inconvenient and messy: as monstrous, at work.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper draws upon a database of qualitative netnographic (or internet-based) research. It analyses netnographic interactions between pregnant and newly maternal women. These virtual data are afforded the same validity as face-to-face research.
Findings
The paper demonstrates how maternal responsibilities for nurturing pregnancy and infant children, and the bio-medical properties of the maternal body, are central to public health discourses. By contrast, the maternal body is treated within organizations as alien, or monstrous.
Originality/value
The paper compares and contrasts public health valorizations of motherhood, with organizational tendencies to treat pregnancy/newly maternal bodies as monstrous. It highlights dichotomies faced by employed mothers. A continuing chasm between the social organization of maternity, and the attitudes of employers towards children and maternal bodies, is identified.
Details
Keywords
Emma Stevens, Liz Price and Liz Walker
This paper aims to explore the concept and practice, of dignity as understood and experienced by older adults and district nursing staff. The paper adds a new, nuanced…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore the concept and practice, of dignity as understood and experienced by older adults and district nursing staff. The paper adds a new, nuanced, understanding of safeguarding possibilities in the context of district nursing care delivered in the home.
Design/methodology/approach
The research used an ethnographic methodology involving observations of care between community district nursing clinicians and patients (n = 62) and semi-structured interviews with nursing staff (n = 11) and older adult recipients of district nursing care (n = 11) in England.
Findings
Abuse is less likely to occur when clinicians are maintaining the dignity of their patients. The themes of time and space are used to demonstrate some fundamental ways in which dignity manifests. The absence of dignity offers opportunities for abuse and neglect to thrive; therefore, both time and space are essential safeguarding considerations. Dignity is influenced by time and how it is experienced temporally, but nurses are not allocated time to “do dignity”, an arguably essential component of the caregiving role, yet one that can become marginalised. The home-clinic exists as a clinical space requiring careful management to ensure it is also an environment of dignity that can safeguard older adults.
Practical implications
District nurses have both a proactive and reactive role in ensuring their patients remain safeguarded. By ensuring care is delivered with dignity and taking appropriate action if they suspect abuse or neglect, district nurses can safeguard their patients.
Originality/value
This paper begins to address an omission in existing empirical research regarding the role of district nursing teams in delivering dignified care and how this can safeguard older adults.
Details
Keywords
The purpose of this paper is to provide a sociological analysis of emergent sociospatial structures in a hot‐desking office environment, where space is used exchangeably. It…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide a sociological analysis of emergent sociospatial structures in a hot‐desking office environment, where space is used exchangeably. It considers hot‐desking as part of broader societal shifts in the ownership of space.
Design/methodology/approach
This analysis is based on an ethnographically‐oriented investigation, in which data collection methods used were participant‐observation and interviewing. The analysis uses Lefebvre's conceptualisation of the social production of space and draws on the urban sociology literature.
Findings
The analysis first indicates that, in hot‐desking environments, there may be an emergent social structure distinguishing employees who settle in one place, and others who have to move constantly. Second, the practice of movement itself generates additional work and a sense of marginalisation for hot‐deskers.
Research limitations/implications
The paper does not provide a generalisable theory, but suggests that loss of everyday ownership of the workspace gives rise to particular practical and social tensions and shifts hot‐deskers' identification with the organisation.
Practical implications
Official requirements for mobility may result in a new social structure distinguishing settlers and hot‐deskers, rather than mobility being spread evenly.
Originality/value
The paper contributes to the literature on organisational spatiality by focusing on the spatial practices entailed in hot‐desking, and by contextualising hot‐desking within the wider spatial configuration of capitalism, in which space is used exchangeability in order to realise greater economic returns. Rather than using the popular “nomadic” metaphor to understand the experience of mobility at work, it uses a metaphor of vagrancy to highlight consequences of the loss of ownership of space.
Details
Keywords
THE MAJOR CONTRIBUTION, though not the only one, has been made by Scottish authors, both by the well‐known ones, such as R. L. Stevenson and J. M. Barrie, in whose work their…
Abstract
THE MAJOR CONTRIBUTION, though not the only one, has been made by Scottish authors, both by the well‐known ones, such as R. L. Stevenson and J. M. Barrie, in whose work their Scottish origin has played its part, and by others, like Norman Macleod and Ian Maclaren, whose reputation scarcely extended outside their native country or has been since forgotten.
How do we write from the sensory body in ways that can convey the lived experience of the researcher and the researched, which can allow other researchers to make sense of their…
Abstract
How do we write from the sensory body in ways that can convey the lived experience of the researcher and the researched, which can allow other researchers to make sense of their lived experience as well? What alternative writings could transform disembodied academia through dialogue and relational reflection? The aim of this chapter is to reflect on the value of the researcher’s embodied reflexivity in academic writing. More specifically, this chapter explores the ways in which we can write differently about organisational phenomena by experiencing aesthetic moments in the field. To accomplish this, I share examples of the aesthetic moments that I, as a researcher, experienced while undertaking three ethnographic projects: a study on professional dance, a study on academic motherhood and a study on female-canine companionship. This chapter identifies three aspects that allow the researcher to experience aesthetic moments – namely, appreciating sensory cues, writing ‘in and from the flesh’ and allowing vulnerability to flourish. Paying attention to the social micro-dynamics that exist between researchers and research phenomena and addressing the analytically marginalised experiences of researchers, therefore, allows for developing academic writing practices in more reflexive and sensory-appreciative directions.
Details
Keywords
Fedra Vanhuyse, Alison Bailey and Richard Tranter
Farm businesses in England are under pressure to intensify production sustainably while managing costs and meeting market demands. Commodity prices and support from Common…
Abstract
Purpose
Farm businesses in England are under pressure to intensify production sustainably while managing costs and meeting market demands. Commodity prices and support from Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) payments are important determinants of profitability. With the United Kingdom (UK) leaving the European Union (EU), revised policy will see farming more exposed to fluctuating commodity prices and financial support from Government more focused on encouraging environmental land management. The research reported here, investigated whether business management practices of farmers influences financial performance, and how policy could be tailored to better meet the needs of farm businesses.
Design/methodology/approach
Regression models were estimated for 862 Cereals, Dairy and Livestock farms in England using official data for 2011–2012, in order to assess whether different farm characteristics, business management practices (identified from a systematic review of 102 studies), knowledge acquisition indicators and manager experience had an effect on four different financial performance ratios. The financial performance of the top 25% of the sample was also compared to the bottom 25% in terms of use of business management practices.
Findings
The results show that business planning and benchmarking had a positive, statistically significant, effect on financial performance, as do business size and knowledge acquisition, albeit to a lesser extent.
Originality/value
The research reported here is the most extensive examination, to date, of the impact of management practices on the financial performance of farms. Thus, it sends strong policy recommendations.
Details
Keywords
The idea that criminal behavior is a function of the offender's personality, also called the Homology hypothesis, has a long history in forensic psychology and criminology. This…
Abstract
Purpose
The idea that criminal behavior is a function of the offender's personality, also called the Homology hypothesis, has a long history in forensic psychology and criminology. This assumption, however, has been decried as lacking empirical support. In spite of much social concern relative to sexual offenses, there is virtually no research looking at the stability of offending pattern in sex offenders of adult women. This paper aims to fill some of the gaps.
Design/methodology/approach
Latent structure analyses were conducted on a secondary dataset including 145 serial rapists. A cross‐sectional, discrete time‐series design was used including a sequence of three offenses.
Findings
Moderate support was found for the three main assumptions underlying the Homology hypothesis. Offenses tended to share a relatively similar underlying structure, with the victimology and aggression components being more prominent than the sexual dimension. The three primary profiles identified, labeled “Passive”, “Stranger‐aggressive”, and “Antisocial”, were found to be about 50 percent stable across the sequence. Finally, the presence of significant dysfunction in the family of origin predicted membership in the “Antisocial” class, as well as increased the specificity and stability of this profile. The presence of early maladjustment was not related to any of the states.
Research limitations/implications
Based on the results, it is proposed that future research incorporates contextual‐environmental elements in order to increase the validity of the findings.
Originality/value
This study represents a unique attempt at documenting patterns of stability and variations across incidents of rape, using an institutional sample. Furthermore, it illustrates the use and potential benefits of latent structure models in criminological research.
Details
Keywords
Argues that attempting to drive through change with little regard for employees’ emotional responses is futile. There is an important role for coaching in change management. The…
Abstract
Argues that attempting to drive through change with little regard for employees’ emotional responses is futile. There is an important role for coaching in change management. The attention it affords individuals can greatly strengthen their relationship with the organization and overcome barriers to issues such as change.
Details