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The purpose of this paper is to examine the potential and durability of arts practice as research through developing a new approach to arts research that challenges the conventional association between dominant constructions of community and dominant modes of research.

A co-design approach, situated in arts practice, has been used to generate a conceptual framework that offers potential to open up the workings of communities by examining them from the standpoint of those who have everyday experience of these communities.

The paper argues that there can no longer be clearly demarcated boundaries between “academics” and “community partners” in a genuinely co-designed arts research process. Rather, there are “research partners” who share mutual recognition of skills and experiences that allow them to commit to a durable “new creative scholarship” that reflects their collective identities.

The conceptual framework celebrates the life stories of individuals at the expense of the grand metanarratives favoured by empirical sociology and mainstream humanities. The framework reflects the commitment of the authors to create accounts of communities that do justice to their collective wisdom, dynamism and connectivity, as well as their transience, their needs to transform and their responses to change, in ways that reflect the lives of those involved rather than the needs of externally imposed disciplinary regimes.

The conceptual framework is a new approach to qualitative research; its value lies in putting the participants at the heart of the research process where they not only generate narrative, but also situate, mediate and remediate it in ways that extend conventional participative research practices.

This chapter aims to provide an overview and conceptualization of multiscreening in the field of advertising effectiveness.

By means of the multi-dimensions of media multitasking, it is possible to differentiate different forms of media multitasking. This framework is used to describe and explain the phenomenon of multiscreening. The framework consists of four categories each with its own dimensions: (1) task relations (e.g., task hierarchy, task switch, shared modality), (2) task inputs (e.g., information flow), (3) task outputs (e.g., behavioral responses), and (4) user differences. The description of multiscreening per dimensions is completed with a review of recent literature in the field of multiscreening, media multitasking and persuasion.

Literature in the field of media multitasking often assumes detrimental effects. Practical implications for advertisers are discussed by presenting an overview of the existing literature on multiscreening and advertising effectiveness. At the end of the chapter, a summary of the different dimensions is presented and an answer is formulated to the question: Is multiscreening a challenge or opportunity for advertisers?

In addition to practical implications, this chapter also offers an overview of the current research in the field of multiscreening and advertising effects. By presenting recent literature in this field, it becomes clear where knowledge is lacking. Directions for future research are discussed.

This chapter is the first to present a structured overview of the phenomenon of multiscreening. It will provide practitioners and researchers with the current status in the field of multiscreening and advertising effectiveness. In addition, the chapter can also be seen as a guide for future directions in the field of multiscreening.

Although informal communication at work has been shown to serve important functions of sociality, little is known about the messages that comprise routine, everyday interaction. The purpose of this paper is to examine two different informal interactions between 100 remote employees and their central office peers to determine the kinds of messages used in informal interaction using thematic analysis.

Teleworkers recalled informal interactions with central office peers; interactions were coded using constructivist methodology, then collapsed into dominant themes using a constant comparison approach. Patterns in responses were then related to a literature‐based (constructivist) analysis of how informal communication functions.

Five key themes were identified: personal disclosure, sociality, support giving and getting, commiserating/complaining, and business updates and exchanges. These informal workplace interactions also reflected underlying dimensions of perceived organizational membership: need fulfillment, mattering, and belonging, and suggest ways the framework could be strengthened.

Themes from reported interactions provide message‐level evidence that informal communication serves both instrumental and constitutive functions. Including interactions reported by co‐located employees would have allowed for a comparison.

Results have important implications for how informal communication functions between peers. Managers can use the results to facilitate communication opportunities for remote and co‐located employees.

Message‐level analysis of informal communication between peers has not been considered as important as hierarchical communication within businesses and organizations. Reported interactions illuminate how informal communication functions, and suggest a link between informal interaction and important individual‐ and organizational‐level outcomes, adding to existing knowledge about the understudied population of permanent, high‐intensity teleworkers.

The purpose of this paper is to propose the development and adoption of a Lean Six Sigma Framework (LSSF) that attempts to create a more balanced and integrated approach between Lean and Six Sigma and one that is capable of achieving improved efficacy of curriculum and programme development in a higher education environment. The implementation of the LSSF is new to the higher education sector.

Using the standard DMAIC cycle as the key driver in the implementation process, most in-depth Lean Six Sigma (LSS) case studies have focussed on manufacturing and engineering-based problems and solutions. This case study offers a detailed analysis of the design and implementation of an integrated LSSF within higher education and focusses primarily on the curriculum design and delivery of a new undergraduate engineering programme in a subject university. As such, this offers a unique perspective of LSS implementation in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) which drives systems improvements in to the heart of the teaching and learning process.

The design, development and subsequent application of the LSSF enabled the curriculum development team to comprehensively apply LSS in to a subject institution. The Shainin Key Variables Search Technique (KVST) more specifically enabled the team to prioritise the key variables by way of order of importance and, this allowed the team to apply the most appropriate tools and techniques at the key points within the LSSF in order to obtain maximum performance.

Whilst this work provides key information on how LSS initiatives are implemented across different institution types, the work has only focussed at a very small sample of HEIs and the case study only being applied to one institution. The work will need to be extended much more widely to incorporate a larger set of HEIs (both research and teaching focussed) in order to provide a more complete map of LSS development in HEIs.

The aim of the paper is to provide LSS project leaders in HEIs with a coherent and balanced LSSF in an attempt to assist them in implementing comprehensive LSS programmes thus maximising the improvements in efficiency and operational performance of departments within HEIs.

This paper is the first of its kind to study the application of Shainin’s KVST in the implementation of LSS programmes in HEIs. The key features highlighted in this work raise important issues regarding the need and importance of developing a balanced LSSF for HEI project implementation.

The purpose of this paper is to attempt to fill a research gap in the relationship between corporate governance mechanisms and financial performance of family and non-family firms’ by using a sample of non-financial firms listed on Amman Stock Exchange (ASE) for the period 2009–2015.

This research employs a quantitative method using data that include corporate governance mechanisms, firm characteristics and financial ratios of a sample of Jordanian listed firms in the ASE over the period 2009–2015. The sample covers all companies that have been part of the ASE during the period including both family and non-family firms, part of total of 228 companies listed on the ASE as of 31 December 2015. The study used accounting-based measures such as return on asset (ROA) and market-based measures such as Tobin’s Q as proxies for corporate financial performance.

The study found that board size both in term of Tobin’s Q and ROA has a negative relationship with the performance of family firms. In non-family firms, there is no systematic relationship with corporate performance. There is a strong relationship between corporate performance and independent directors in non-family firms. In addition, the authors found some evidence for a relationship between performance and independent directors in family firms. Also, results indicated that ownership concentration has an insignificant correlation with corporate performance and in family firms has a negative and significant correlation with Tobin’s Q. There is a significant relationship between local investors’ ownership and corporate performance as measured by Tobin’s Q in family and non-family firms.

Studies concerned with the effect of corporate governance on firm performance remains comparatively under-researched in Middle East countries and Jordan in particular (Najib, 2007; Omet, 2004; Marashdeh, 2014). Moreover, studies investigating whether the practice of corporate governance has the same impact on family firm performance are still relatively less well known than those when ownership is distributed widely (non-family firms) (Jaggi, Leung and Gul, 2009; Prencipe and Bar-Yosef, 2011). This research is seeking to fill this current gap in Jordan, which is one of the developing countries with an emerging economics that are very poorly represented in the literature.

This chapter offers a reading of the inclusion of Susan Glaspell's short story, A Jury of Her Peers, in the casebook, Procedure. What does it mean that the editors turn to a secular, literary narrative to ground a consideration of “The Problem of Judgment?” How should we read the irony of the reading instructions they provide, which reproduce the blindness to form – to the significance of “trifles” – that the text describes? How do we read literature in the context of law? More specifically, what does attention to the form of the story yield for an understanding of legal judgment?

Workplace violence is a serious problem within the National Health Service (NHS). To combat this and to reduce the incidence of abuse and aggression shown to staff, a zero tolerance public campaign was introduced in 2007 within the UK. The campaign endorsed employer‐led zero tolerance policies, despite any evidence of the effectiveness of this approach and concerns that it is discriminatory and denies health care to those who most need it. Decisions to exclude patients from GP registers are subject to varied interpretations regarding what is deviant behaviour and the blacklisting of patients is unregulated and subject to ambiguity. Furthermore, staff training programmes, which emphasise de‐escalation strategies, have not proven to be effective and can even increase violent incidences. Initiatives to provide safe havens for those excluded, while initially believed to be effective, raise many ethical arguments about the ‘ghettoising’ of health care for those already socially excluded. Research is needed into these centres in the hope of providing some of the answers, particularly around the triggers of violence, how violence is perceived and how it can be prevented.