Ola J. Lindberg, Anders D. Olofsson and Göran Fransson
The purpose of this paper is to examine Swedish upper secondary school teachers’ and students’ views and use of ICT in education.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine Swedish upper secondary school teachers’ and students’ views and use of ICT in education.
Design/methodology/approach
In total, 25 individual teachers and 39 students in small focus groups were interviewed. A qualitative content analysis was performed using NVivo11. The analysis was conducted in three steps: with each individual teacher, the student groups and the cohort of teachers and students. A comparative analysis was also conducted.
Findings
The teachers’ views and use of ICT are diverse. Teachers and students identify similar challenges when using ICT in education, e.g. time and subject, the shortcomings of a school’s learning management system (LMS) and teachers’ digital competence. Students report an extensive out-of-school use of smartphones and an extensive in-school use of laptops and LMS.
Research limitations/implications
The relatively small number of teachers and students in three schools make generalisations difficult. The examination of teachers’ and students’ views and use in the same context reveals new knowledge.
Practical implications
The study may influence teachers’ use of ICT in education, based on a better understanding of students’ use.
Social implications
The study may lead to a better understanding of teachers’ and students’ different perspectives and a more enhanced and sustainable in-school use of ICT.
Originality/value
The originality is that teachers’ and students’ views and use of ICT in education are examined at the same time. The paper contributes new knowledge about how teachers and students conceptualise and use ICT in upper secondary school practices.
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Hong Pew Tan, David Plowman and Phil Hancock
The purpose of the paper is to investigate the association between the intellectual capital (IC) of firms and their financial performance.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of the paper is to investigate the association between the intellectual capital (IC) of firms and their financial performance.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses the Pulic framework, has an Asian focus, and draws on data from 150 publicly listed companies on the Singapore Exchange. It is an empirical study using partial least squares (PLS) for the data analysis. The paper tests four elements of IC and company performance.
Findings
The findings show that: IC and company performance are positively related; IC is correlated to future company performance; the rate of growth of a company's IC is positively related to the company's performance; and the contribution of IC to company performance differs by industry.
Research limitations/implications
The data sample is restricted to 150 companies listed on the Singapore Exchange between the years 2000 and 2002.
Practical implications
IC is an area of interest to numerous parties, such as shareholders, institutional investors, scholars, policymakers and managers. The findings help to embolden modern day managers to better harness and manage IC.
Originality/value
The study of IC has undergone a number of stages, from early conscious awareness efforts to classification of IC, and to the search for appropriate measures of IC. This paper builds on the current research on IC and provides empirical evidence on the relevance of IC (as measured by the Pulic model) to the financial performance of companies.
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Hong Pew Tan, David Plowman and Phil Hancock
The purpose of the paper is to serve as a useful reference for anyone embarking on research into intellectual capital (IC). It provides a succinct summary of the seminal works on…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of the paper is to serve as a useful reference for anyone embarking on research into intellectual capital (IC). It provides a succinct summary of the seminal works on this research area.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper reviews the seminal literature arranges it into a chronology of the evolving research into IC.
Findings
The findings show that IC has undergone a number of development stages from definitions, models through to measures and applications of IC to business and management issues.
Research limitations/implications
The review is limited to refereed journals and books published before March 2007.
Practical implications
IC is an area of interest to numerous parties, including shareholders, institutional investors, scholars, policymakers and managers. This paper serves as a useful reference on the stages of development of IC and the applications to business and management issues.
Originality/value
The study of IC has undergone a number of stages, from early conscious awareness efforts, to classification of IC and to the search for appropriate measures of IC. This paper provides a taxonomy on IC research as suggestions about future research directions.
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The primary objective of this paper is to understand the extent to which Australian industrial relations academics took up the different heuristic frameworks from USA and U.K…
Abstract
The primary objective of this paper is to understand the extent to which Australian industrial relations academics took up the different heuristic frameworks from USA and U.K. from the 1960s to the 1980s. A second objective is to begin to understand why, and in what ways ideas are transmitted in academic disciplines drawing on a “market model” for ideas. It is shown that in the years between 1960s and 1980s a modified U.S. (Dunlopian) model of interpreting industrial relations became more influential in Australia than that of U.K. scholarship, as exemplified by the British Oxford School. In part this reflects the breadth, flexibility and absence of an overt normative tenor in Dunlop’s model which thus offered lower transaction costs for scholars in an emergent discipline seeking recognition and approval from academia, practitioners and policy-makers. Despite frequent and wide-ranging criticism of Dunlop’s model, it proved a far more enduring transfer to Australian academic industrial relations than the British model, albeit in a distorted form. The market model for the diffusion of ideas illuminates the ways in which a variety of local contextual factors influenced the choices taken by Australian industrial relations academics.
Gerardo David Abreu Pederezini
From a complexity leadership theory perspective, leadership stops being seen as residing in an individual, and come to be conceived as emergent from the myriad interactions among…
Abstract
Purpose
From a complexity leadership theory perspective, leadership stops being seen as residing in an individual, and come to be conceived as emergent from the myriad interactions among organizational members. However, in spite of this reconceptualization, organizations still have senior managers (e.g. the CEO) who are supposed to be leading, and thus, the purpose of this paper is to explore, then, who are these senior managers and what challenges emerge for them under a complexity leadership perspective.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper reviews first the literature on complexity theory and leadership, and then, conceptually develops an understanding of the challenges that senior managers might face under complexity.
Findings
The main finding and focus of the paper is that, from a complexity perspective, a paradox emerges regarding senior managers. On the one hand, senior managers might need to make sense of their limitations and the unowned essence of the processes that surround them. On the other hand, their subordinates might still insist on portraying senior managers as final causes of all success or failure.
Originality/value
This paper presents a novel way to re-conceptualize senior managers, under a complexity perspective, where they come to be perceived as trapped in a paradox of contradictory sensemaking processes: as they come to find out all that is outside of their control their subordinates insist on making them responsible for everything as if they had control.
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David M. Boje, Heather Baca-Greif, Melissa Intindola and Steven Elias
The purpose of this paper is to develop a new model for depicting organizational processes: the episodic spiral model (ESM).
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to develop a new model for depicting organizational processes: the episodic spiral model (ESM).
Design/methodology/approach
On the basis of a strong process view as the orienting paradigm, the authors demonstrate the need for the ESM by discussing the shortcomings of two specific spiral types in the organizational literature – the knowledge creation spiral and the efficacy spiral.
Findings
A review of each spiral type through the lens of nonlinear assumptions reveals the treatment to date of organizational spirals as uni-directional and insufficient for understanding organizations. The authors propose that managers must undertake a paradigm shift in order to gain a greater awareness of both the environment in which they operate, as well as their process actions. To facilitate this shift, the ESM depicts choice points, chosen and rejected trajectories, and upward and downward environmental drafts, as well as a multi-dimensional environment, as a way of re-conceptualizing approaches to space, time, and change in organization studies.
Originality/value
The authors propose that the model provides a way for scholars to enhance the study of organizations by understanding that organizations exist in a more dynamic environment than previously studied; recognizing that the organization has a wider range of choices available, and acknowledging the long-lasting ramifications of both choices made and choices discarded; and obtaining a more comprehensive look at the way the organization moves through space and time at any given moment. Taken together, the authors hope that these contributions allow organizational scholars a new approach to theorizing, exploring, and writing about the organizations they study.
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There is a rich literary tradition of depicting human-dwelling places (usually houses) as living bodies, stretching from the Middle Ages to contemporary fiction. On several…
Abstract
There is a rich literary tradition of depicting human-dwelling places (usually houses) as living bodies, stretching from the Middle Ages to contemporary fiction. On several occasions, the interaction between the characters in these works and the house-body entity described has taken the form of a digestive journey. Rooms come to symbolise mouths, kitchens and even bowels, and sometimes the human body and mind are gradually incorporated into the external architectural space. This chapter examines two literary works in which this occurs – the ‘House of Temperance’ in Spencer's The Faerie Queene (1590) and Shirley Jackson's novel The Haunting of Hill House (1959). These two examples, from two very different literary traditions (Renaissance allegorical and modern Gothic horror respectively) show the fine line between revelation and horror, how spatial materiality and meaning are flexible and how a building may transform the character within it both psychologically and physically.
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Markus Wiesenberg, Alexander Godulla, Katharina Tengler, Inga-Marit Noelle, Julia Kloss, Natalie Klein and David Eeckhout
The paper represents a starting point of a broader research project in strategic start-up communication. The main purpose of this study is to demonstrate the current state of…
Abstract
Purpose
The paper represents a starting point of a broader research project in strategic start-up communication. The main purpose of this study is to demonstrate the current state of research in this area and to compare those insights with an explorative study on the start-up ecosystem.
Design/methodology/approach
A neo-institutional framework is combined with the dual narrative framework of strategic communication and emergence to explain the emergence of strategic communication in this organizational field (start-up ecosystems). Research questions are derived from a systematic literature review and subjected to exploratory testing in two different qualitative surveys, with experts and investors, reflecting an external perspective, and with start-ups themselves.
Findings
Results from the literature review and the explorative interviews with expert external actors indicate eight areas in which start-ups face strategic communication challenges: the basic orientation of strategic communication, branding, external image, stakeholder relations, allocation of financial resources, owner centricity, human resources and internal communication. External consultants and funders recommend highly planned approaches like target group-oriented communication, well thought-out positioning with uniform messages and precisely applied communication channels. However, the internal perspective of start-ups presents a contrary picture based on emergent products of strategic communication.
Research limitations/implications
The study indicates the importance of both the emergence in strategic start-up communication and the demonstration of planned strategic communication. Investigating a whole start-up ecosystem in a country regarding the emergence of strategic communication forms, practices and products offers potential for cross-country comparative research.
Practical implications
The findings indicate key challenges of strategic communication of start-ups. Bearing in mind these key challenges when founding a start-up can make a difference in the success of the start-up.
Originality/value
The article presents the first systematic literature review in the area of strategic start-up communication and a theoretical framework for further investigation. Moreover, the results of the explorative study demonstrate the importance of the different forms of planning and emergence in strategic start-up communication. Hence, this paper provides practical implications for practitioners working and investing in the start-up ecosystem.
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Mahmud Hassan, Howard P. Tuckman, Robert H. Patrick, David S. Kountz and Jennifer L. Kohn
Hospital‐acquired infection (HAI) poses important health and financial problems for society. Understanding the causes of infection in hospital care is strategically important for…
Abstract
Purpose
Hospital‐acquired infection (HAI) poses important health and financial problems for society. Understanding the causes of infection in hospital care is strategically important for hospital administration for formulating effective infection control programs. The purpose of this paper is to show that hospital length of stay (LOS) and the probability of developing an infection are interdependent.
Design/methodology/approach
A two‐equation model was specified for hospital LOS and the incidence of infection. Using the patient‐level data of hospital discharge in the State of New Jersey merged with other data, the parameters of the two equations were estimated using a simultaneous estimation method.
Findings
It was found that extending the LOS by one day increases the probability of catching an infection by 1.37 percent and the onset of infection increases average LOS by 9.32 days. The estimation indicates that HAI elongates LOS increasing the cost of a hospital stay.
Research limitations/implications
The findings imply that studies on cost of HAI that do not properly control for the simultaneity of these two variables, will result in a biased estimation of cost.
Originality/value
The study produces quantitative estimation of the extent of interdependency of hospital LOS and the probability of catching an infection.
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David B. Szabla, William Dardick and Jennifer A. Devlin
The Perception of Change Strategy Scale (PCS) measures an individual’s perception of the change strategies being used by change agents during an organizational change. To ground…
Abstract
The Perception of Change Strategy Scale (PCS) measures an individual’s perception of the change strategies being used by change agents during an organizational change. To ground the reader in the tool’s history, two published studies are briefly discussed: one in which the measure was developed and a second in which the tool’s reliability was appraised. In a third study presented here a confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to test the theoretical framework and to select the best fitting model amongst several competing models of the constructs identified in the PCS. The results support a three-factor model as the best fit for a change strategy framework based on Chin and Benne’s (1961) three-part conceptualization for leading change: empirical-rational, power-coercive, and normative-re-educative.