Libraries rely on endowment revenue for collection development and general operating expenses. Endowment gifts, both for collection development and for general operating expenses…
Abstract
Purpose
Libraries rely on endowment revenue for collection development and general operating expenses. Endowment gifts, both for collection development and for general operating expenses, can be a significant priority for a library during this fund‐raising effort. As such, it is this column's goal to summarize the challenges and advantages of these endowment gifts, and strategies for endowment fundraising in libraries.
Design/methodology/approach
Uses lessons learned by endowment efforts at the University of Pennsylvania Library, noting strategies that have worked.
Findings
Endowments present unique challenges and opportunities. While their benefits to the library are often less understood and intangible, often they are more accessible to donors due to a low threshold for establishment and the flexibility to give over a period of years.
Originality/value
Challenges and advantages are explored and strategies are offered to improve the effectiveness of endowment fundraising including marketing, challenge programs, and bequest encouragement.
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Chris Trevitt, Aliya Steed, Lynn Du Moulin and Tony Foley
The study aims to review the entrepreneurial and educational innovations in technology-enabled distance education in practical legal education (PLE) accomplished by a unit “on the…
Abstract
Purpose
The study aims to review the entrepreneurial and educational innovations in technology-enabled distance education in practical legal education (PLE) accomplished by a unit “on the periphery” of a strong research-led university. It also aims to examine the learning organisation (LO) attributes associated with this initiative.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a longitudinal case study based on interviews and reflective analysis, and reviewed using three “models” drawn from the literature: breaking the “iron triangle” (containing costs; widening access; enhancing quality); a tailored version of distance education appropriate for research-intensive universities; a strategy for successful adoption of disruptive technologies in higher education.
Findings
Entrepreneurialism yielded growth (PLE student numbers went from 150 to 2,000 in 15 years) and diversification (two new programmes established). The PLE programme advanced in two “waves”: the first centred on widening access and the second, on enhancing quality. Costs were contained. Both the presence and absence of LO attributes are identified at three different organisational levels.
Research limitations/implications
Challenges to academic identity may act to inhibit educational change, especially in research-strong settings.
Practical/implications
Business logic, and the creation and institutionalisation of educational development support – an “internal networking” group, were keys to success. “Organisational learning” in complex institutional environments such as universities involves understandably lengthy timescales (e.g. decades or more).
Practical/implications
Technology-enabled disruption in higher education appears relentless. While institutional and individual performance metrics favour research, proven cases of “how to do things differently” in education may well not get exploited, thus opening the market to alternative providers.
Originality/value
This is the only empirical example of a tailored version of distance education appropriate for research-intensive universities that we know about.
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Formulaic in both their narrative and character development, buddy-cop films are unique in their ability to present ideas about masculinity and the journey towards manhood without…
Abstract
Formulaic in both their narrative and character development, buddy-cop films are unique in their ability to present ideas about masculinity and the journey towards manhood without sacrificing the likeability or relatability of their male leads. The focus of this chapter is how aspects of masculinity are depicted when there are two or more male protagonists in an action film. Examples I have selected for analysis are the highly successful franchises Beverly Hills Cop (1984–1993) and Lethal Weapon (1987–1998). In the case of Beverly Hills Cop, the male dynamic is unique in that there are a trio of male leads (as opposed to the traditional duo), each of which depicts masculinity in different ways, often resulting in the lead characters jostling for the role of the alpha-male. In contrast, the Lethal Weapon franchise explores the dynamics of age and the importance of mateship and mentoring in the construction of relationships between men. In both examples the necessity of vulnerability in the dynamic of solid man-to-man peer relationships is also paramount. The enduring popularity of these films and their subsequent sequels is indicative of the fact that while pop-cultural ideas around masculinity may be in a constant state of flux, elements of the stereotypical action hero remain prominent.
Discussions about the male action hero will be informed by Susan Jeffords Hard Bodies (1994), while concepts of maturing will be explored through the lens of Joseph Campbell's construct of the Hero's Journey and Carl Jung's archetypes, which, as I will demonstrate, are central components of the relationship dynamics present in each film.
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Louise Palmer, Jill Foley and Chris Parsons
Corporate values are increasingly common in companies and now in the public sector, and it is rare not to be greeted by a number of value statements when entering an organisation…
Abstract
Corporate values are increasingly common in companies and now in the public sector, and it is rare not to be greeted by a number of value statements when entering an organisation. However, many of the implementations of corporate values are unsuccessful and may increase divisions within an organisation. In this article it is argued that employers can reap significant benefits by returning to the original concept of values as a set of guiding principles. By focusing on, and communicating the business needs of the company, rather than culturally‐specific and woolly values, embedding these principles in the organisation, and making sure that progress in each area of principle is monitored and controlled, individual employees understand better what they need to do and the organisation is able to move in one coherent direction.
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This chapter addresses one of the most common and long-standing problems among college students, namely depression, as well as a potential consequence of depression, suicide. A…
Abstract
This chapter addresses one of the most common and long-standing problems among college students, namely depression, as well as a potential consequence of depression, suicide. A formal definition of depression is presented, and symptoms of depression are discussed. Notably, clinical depression is differentiated from “feeling down” or having “the blues.” Common measures of depression for college students are described, and the current prevalence of depression among college students is explored, along with data pertaining to trends and trajectories. Particular attention is devoted to differences in rates and severity of depression among students of various ethnicities, gender identities, disabilities and sexual orientations. Next, the chapter covers various theories about and studies on the causes and consequences of depression, as well as preventive and remedial efforts that students can engage in to minimize the adverse effects of depression. The chapter concludes with a focus on college student suicide, including its prevalence, predictors of suicidal thoughts and behaviors and prevention and treatment of college student suicide.
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Colm McLaughlin and Chris F. Wright
This chapter assesses the response by trade unions in New Zealand, Australia and Ireland to labour market deregulation since the 1980s. While these three countries have been on…
Abstract
This chapter assesses the response by trade unions in New Zealand, Australia and Ireland to labour market deregulation since the 1980s. While these three countries have been on the front line of neoliberalism, and the traditional web of rules in each country has been weakened, change has occured unevenly, in part due to different union strategies. The chapter examines the ways in which unions employed institutional experimentations to defend the collectivist web of rules and strengthen labour standards. It argues that an augmented model of pluralism has emerged in all three countries in the form of stronger individual rights but that this is no substitute for collective bargaining mechanisms.
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How did gays in the military go from being characterized as dangerous perverts threatening to the state, to victims being persecuted by the state, to potential heroes fighting on…
Abstract
How did gays in the military go from being characterized as dangerous perverts threatening to the state, to victims being persecuted by the state, to potential heroes fighting on behalf of the state? What implications does this shift have for understanding the means by which the liberal state uses law to include the previously excluded? Offering a critical account of the inclusion of gays in the military, I argue that while the lifting of the ban can be seen as an important step in a classic civil rights narrative in which the liberal state gradually accommodates the excluded, pop culture allows us also to see state and minority group interest convergence as well as divergence, revealing the costs of inclusion.
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In spite of escalating efforts to curb abuse, fraud, and corruption in Congress, members of Congress persist in violating the norms, rules, and laws that aim to ensure they behave…
Abstract
In spite of escalating efforts to curb abuse, fraud, and corruption in Congress, members of Congress persist in violating the norms, rules, and laws that aim to ensure they behave ethically. This chapter combines qualitative and quantitative analysis to describe congressional corruption in the modern era. Case studies illustrate consequential financial scandals while also differentiating four categories of corrupt financial practices.
Existing datasets on congressional scandals span the time period from 1972 to 2010, and this chapter extends the dataset to 2018. The analysis next uses the dataset to answer important questions empirically. Which types of scandals occur more often? Have these scandals grown more common or less common over time? What are the consequences of financial scandals for representatives' careers as public servants?
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The purpose of this paper is to explore Thomas Pynchon's novel Against the Day as a symptomatology of organization and examine the (un)easy relationship between the novel and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore Thomas Pynchon's novel Against the Day as a symptomatology of organization and examine the (un)easy relationship between the novel and organization.
Design/methodology/approach
The novel is explored through three interrelated readings: first, the novel is considered as a representation of the gruesome nature of capitalist ordering; Second, the novel's textual strategies are examined to consider its co‐implication and knotting into the very logic of organization it abhors; Third, the novel is read as a search for other spaces haunting the broken machine of capitalist organizing.
Findings
The paper shows how Pynchon's writing and critique of capitalist organizing occupies an indeterminate space characterised by the ambivalence of ambivalence, where deciding upon its final meaning is a reductivist strategy ill suited to this complex text. Instead the novel functions through a complex process of displacement and emplacement.
Originality/value
Theoretically, the paper extends further the understanding of the relationship between literature and organization, challenging reductivist readings of this relationship to explore how the novel simultaneously emplaces and displaces the reader so that critique, as well as convention, are thoroughly unsettled.