Judith Fraser and Catherine Hemmings
This paper aims to look at a recent delivery by Oakridge Training and Consulting of a programme to enhance the ability to deliver change management at Contour Housing Group.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to look at a recent delivery by Oakridge Training and Consulting of a programme to enhance the ability to deliver change management at Contour Housing Group.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper looks at the background to the need – the client's own research, which highlighted employee concerns regarding the management and communication of change – and outlines the development of focus groups to understand more about the need and to develop a strategy for learning.
Findings
Understanding the need for change is the first step to its acceptance. Yet all too often managers are frustrated by a lack of employee vision. It is probably the case that they see things in a different light and there is a real need for the rationale for the change to be substantive, well thought through and credible. Imposing change without communication and consultation serves only to widen the understanding and communication gap. To avoid this, employers need to consider what they are doing to help employees' understanding and ability to manage the process – how are they avoiding the guesswork? They must also consider what they will continue to do. Change management does not end after the announcement of change plans, it is really only the starting‐point.
Originality/value
Oakridge designed a bespoke programme that was delivered to 60 managers at different managerial levels within the company. Included in this paper is some early anecdotal evidence of the programme's success from those attending. It is supported by a best practice guide to change management, based on Oakridge's experience in helping organizations deal with change.
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Examines how Oakridge Training and Consulting designed and delivered a training program to enhance Contour Housing Group's ability to deliver effective change.
Abstract
Purpose
Examines how Oakridge Training and Consulting designed and delivered a training program to enhance Contour Housing Group's ability to deliver effective change.
Design/methodology/approach
Reports on the background to the training program and some of the results it has achieved.
Findings
Claims that understanding the need for change is the first step to its acceptance, yet managers are too often frustrated by a lack of employee vision. Imposing change without communication and consultation serves only to widen the understanding and communication gap. Argues that, to avoid this, employers need to consider what they are doing to develop employees' understanding and ability to manage the process.
Practical implications
Describes how, over the course of the program, managers were introduced to the concepts of personal impact and influence training, leading and managing change, building teams and the concept and application of action learning.
Social implications
Highlights some basic principles that can help to make change a success in a wide range of organizations.
Originality/value
Argues that change management does not end after the announcement of change plans; that is really only the starting‐point.
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This chapter seeks to compare and contrast two compelling portrayals of the bisexual or ‘gender-blind’ vampire: The Hunger (1983) and American Horror Story: Hotel (2015). These…
Abstract
This chapter seeks to compare and contrast two compelling portrayals of the bisexual or ‘gender-blind’ vampire: The Hunger (1983) and American Horror Story: Hotel (2015). These texts present a number of notable differences. They were released over 30 years apart and they also diverge markedly in form: Hotel is a 12-episode television serial, whilst The Hunger is a tight 97-minute-feature film. Whilst these differences highlight shifts in the format of horror more broadly, they also facilitate the reflection on whether the portrayal of the bisexual vampire has dramatically shifted alongside these changes. Such a reflection is ripe with potential given that in addition to their differences, both texts also share significant aesthetic and narrative similarities. Both Hotel and The Hunger foreground performativity and feature female protagonists who defy heteronormative understandings of gender and sexuality. Undoubtedly, Hotel can be read as an aesthetic homage to The Hunger. However, whether Hotel also echoes some of the more conservative aspects of the earlier film’s politics is a more complex question. Focusing on the ways that these female vampire protagonists, as well as a selection of their lovers and victims, are gendered, this chapter will illuminate a number of developments and lingering issues in the ways that horror depicts (or circumvents) complex facets of the relationship between bisexuality and gender.
Academic literature and news media on young people’s activism predominantly champions young people who align with liberal or progressive values, evident most recently in the…
Abstract
Academic literature and news media on young people’s activism predominantly champions young people who align with liberal or progressive values, evident most recently in the youth-led climate strikes around the world. Research is often undertaken by scholars who see their work as advocacy for children and young people, countering deficit-based depictions of politically disengaged or ill-informed youth. Yet, this scholarship rarely includes young people whose forms of political activism align with conservative, right-wing, or even alt-right politics. Such ‘selective advocacy’ reinforces a limited picture of the who and what of young people’s political participation. In this chapter, I explore what it might mean for the field of youth studies to provide a more complex picture of young people’s activism and the necessary discomfort that emerges when the desire to advocate for young research participants conflicts with a researcher’s own political and moral concerns. Through a feminist post-structural frame, I examine media and public discourses surrounding instances of young people’s activism in conservative, right-wing, and alt-right spaces. I present the case of a conservative protest organised by a group of university students and targeting a drag queen hosted children’s story time at a library in Brisbane, Australia. This case highlights the importance of maintaining ‘epistemic uncertainty’ when it comes to the complexity of youth and activism. If we are to provide a fuller picture of youth activism, I argue that it is important not to overlook less ‘comfortable’ forms that do not neatly align with the progressive advocacy that dominates the field of youth studies.
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This paper aims to explore the nature of the marketing of concerts 1672–1749 examining innovations in the promotion and commodification of music, which are witness to the early…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore the nature of the marketing of concerts 1672–1749 examining innovations in the promotion and commodification of music, which are witness to the early development of music as a business.
Design/methodology/approach
The study takes as its basis 4,356 advertisements for concerts in newspapers published in London between 1672 and 1749.
Findings
Musicians instigated a range of marketing strategies in an effort to attract a concert audience, which foreground those found in more recent and current arts marketing practice. They promoted regular concerts with a clear sense of programme planning to appeal to their audience, held a variety of different types of concerts and made use of a variety of pricing strategies. Concerts were held at an increasing number and range of venues with complementary ticket-selling locations.
Originality/value
Whilst there is some literature investigating concert-giving in this period from a musicological perspective (James, 1987; Johnstone, 1997; McVeigh, 2001; Weber, 2001; 2004b; 2004c; Wollenberg, 1981–1982; 2001; Wollenberg and McVeigh, 2004), what research there is that uses marketing as a window onto the musical culture of concert-giving in this period lacks detail (McGuinness, 1988; 2004a; 2004b; McGuinness and Diack Johnstone, 1990; Ogden et al., 2011). This paper illustrates how the development of public commercial concerts made of music a commodity offered to and demanded by a new breed of cultural consumers. Music, thus, participated in the commercialisation of leisure in late 17th- and 18th-century England and laid the foundations of its own development as a business.
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Yixiu Yu, Xu Li and Tun-Min (Catherine) Jai
The purpose of this paper is to examine guests’ experiences at green hotels and the impact of green experience on customer satisfaction.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine guests’ experiences at green hotels and the impact of green experience on customer satisfaction.
Design/methodology/approach
A total of 727 green reviews (reviews on green experiences) of the top ten green hotels in the USA were downloaded from TripAdvisor for content analysis. Descriptive statistics and ordinal logistic regressions were then used.
Findings
Guests have both positive and negative experiences at green hotels. “Energy”, “purchasing” and “education and innovation” are the most frequently discussed green practices. Some guests’ green experiences, such as “guest training”, “energy”, “water”, “purchasing” and “education and innovation”, significantly influence their overall satisfaction with hotels. Compared with basic green practices, advanced green practices tend to have greater impacts on customer satisfaction.
Research limitations/implications
This study provides insight into guests’ green experiences at hotels and their impact on customer satisfaction. More importantly, this study examines the contribution of different types of green practices to customer satisfaction. As the green hotels examined in this study were not randomly selected, the results should be interpreted with caution.
Practical implications
Different practices impact customer satisfaction in different ways, so hoteliers should refine their green strategies when they implement these green practices.
Originality/value
Very few studies have examined the relationship between green practices and customer satisfaction. A gap still exists in specifically what types of green practices affect customer satisfaction and whether different levels of green practices have different impacts on customer satisfaction. This study investigates guests’ actual experiences and fills the above research gap.
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Caroline Essers, Maura McAdam and Carolin Ossenkop
This paper explores the ways women entrepreneurs in male-dominated industries do identity work in order to gain legitimacy. In particular, we consider such identity work as a…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper explores the ways women entrepreneurs in male-dominated industries do identity work in order to gain legitimacy. In particular, we consider such identity work as a process being prompted by their direct environment, while demonstrating the gendered structural power relations in these women’s entrepreneurial contexts. We use a postfeminist lens to show how, in their quest for more legitimacy, they seem to be interpellated by postfeminist discourse.
Design/methodology/approach
We have used a narrative approach to show how women entrepreneurs in masculinised contexts do identity work to acquire legitimacy, and moreover use a postfeminist perspective to reflect on this identity work as to demonstrate how these Dutch businesswomen consider their agency in specific feminist terms within these men-dominated industry environments.
Findings
We present empirical data of ten women entrepreneurs in the Netherlands and how they discursively and subjectively make sense of their surrounding gendered contexts, in order to illustrate how local gender regimes and individual actions may conspire to constrain as well as stimulate these women’s entrepreneurship. By reflecting on three different ways of identity work through a postfeminist lens, we show how these women are interpellated by postfeminist discourses when trying to gain legitimacy.
Research limitations/implications
The rather small sample does not allow us to generalise our findings to the whole population of women entrepreneurs in men-dominated contexts, yet this was not our goal anyway.
Practical implications
Such a reflection might help policy makers and such women themselves realise how, after all, gender inequality is still persistant in the entrepreneurship field and drawing on postfeminism does not necessarily help to support these women entrepreneurs' work–life balance.
Social implications
Our findings underline the importance of a more gender inclusive entrepreneurship ecosystem, in which women entrepreneurs in both masculinised ánd feminised sectors are seen and treated as legitimate entrepreneurs.
Originality/value
Postfeminism, to our knowledge, has hardly been applied to women entrepreneurs' experiences in men-dominated environments, and is in itself still a rather new field in entrepreneurship studies.