The regulation of the medical profession has recently been the subject of considerable debate. This paper describes a survey of the views of Trust medical directors and health…
Abstract
The regulation of the medical profession has recently been the subject of considerable debate. This paper describes a survey of the views of Trust medical directors and health authority directors of public health in the Northern and Yorkshire region on the way the GMC operates. A total of 46 out of 50 (92 per cent) gave a substantive response to the survey, of whom 16 (35 per cent) had not had cause to contact the GMC during the previous year, nine (20 per cent) were happy with their contact with the GMC and 21 (46 per cent) expressed some concern. The most commonly cited causes for concern were the length of time taken to process a complaint and lack of communication. While the individual opinions expressed are entirely subjective, it is argued that collectively they identify issues which the GMC and executive directors need to address.
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Most of my work focusing on educational systems – including universities, public elementary schools, private schools, and training programs in organizations – was supported by…
Abstract
Most of my work focusing on educational systems – including universities, public elementary schools, private schools, and training programs in organizations – was supported by Stanford University centers and grants separate from the Training Program, for example, the Stanford Center for Research and Development in Teaching (1968–1977) and the Institute for Research on Educational Finance and Governance (1979–1986). Faculty collaborators in these studies included Elizabeth Cohen and Terrence Deal in the School of Education, and John W. Meyer, my colleague in Sociology. A number of NIMH trainees participated in these studies, including Andrew Creighton, Margaret Davis, and Brian Rowan. Other doctoral students involved in this research included Sally Cole, Joanne Intili, Suzanne E. Monahan, E. Anne Stackhouse, and Marc Ventresca.
Elizabeth Daniel, Elizabeth Hartnett and Maureen Meadows
Social media such as blogs are being widely used in organizations in order to undertake internal communication and share knowledge, rendering them important boundary objects. A…
Abstract
Purpose
Social media such as blogs are being widely used in organizations in order to undertake internal communication and share knowledge, rendering them important boundary objects. A root metaphor of the boundary object domain is the notion of relatively static and inert objects spanning similarly static boundaries. A strong sociomaterial perspective allows the immisciblity of object and boundary to be challenged, since a key tenet of this perspective is the ongoing and mutually constituted performance of the material and social. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
The aim of the research is to draw upon sociomateriality to explore the operation of social media platforms as intra-organizational boundary objects. Given the novel perspective of this study and its social constructivist ontology, the authors adopt an exploratory, interpretivist research design. This is operationalized as a case study of the use of an organizational blog by a major UK Government department over an extended period. A novel aspect of the study is the use of data released under a Freedom of Information request.
Findings
The authors present three exemplar instances of how the blog and organizational boundaries were performed in the situated practice of the case study organization. The authors draw on the literature on boundary objects, blogs and sociomateriality in order to provide a theoretical explication of the mutually constituted performance of the blog and organizational boundaries. The authors also invoke the notion of “extended chains of intra-action” to theorize changes in the wider organization.
Originality/value
Adoption of a sociomaterial lens provides a highly novel perspective of boundary objects and organizational boundaries. The study highlights the indeterminate and dynamic nature of boundary objects and boundaries, with both being in an intra-active state of becoming challenging conventional conceptions. The study demonstrates that specific material-discursive practices arising from the situated practice of the blog at the respective boundaries were performative, reconfiguring the blog and boundaries and being generative of further changes in the organization.
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Elizabeth Bray has prepared a radical proposal to change the benefit system based on the brilliant idea produced by Alastair and David for the last issue of Life in the Day…
Abstract
Elizabeth Bray has prepared a radical proposal to change the benefit system based on the brilliant idea produced by Alastair and David for the last issue of Life in the Day.Elizabeth has addressed each and every aspect of the problems created by the existing DSS regulations — her powerful arguments spell out the reasons for change.Tables of benefits, earnings and tax demonstrate with precision and clarity the bottom line takehome money. Anybody seeking change to our benefit system should get a copy of the 19‐page document without delay. To cover costs please send a cheque for £2.50 to E. Bray, at 21 Horn Lane, Linton, Cambridge CB1 6HT and an A4 SAE 39p postage.
“All things are in a constant state of change”, said Heraclitus of Ephesus. The waters if a river are for ever changing yet the river endures. Every particle of matter is in…
Abstract
“All things are in a constant state of change”, said Heraclitus of Ephesus. The waters if a river are for ever changing yet the river endures. Every particle of matter is in continual movement. All death is birth in a new form, all birth the death of the previous form. The seasons come and go. The myth of our own John Barleycorn, buried in the ground, yet resurrected in the Spring, has close parallels with the fertility rites of Greece and the Near East such as those of Hyacinthas, Hylas, Adonis and Dionysus, of Osiris the Egyptian deity, and Mondamin the Red Indian maize‐god. Indeed, the ritual and myth of Attis, born of a virgin, killed and resurrected on the third day, undoubtedly had a strong influence on Christianity.
Cognitive literary criticism is introduced as a bridge between cognitive approaches to the study of persuasion, and literary traditions in consumer research. As a successor to…
Abstract
Purpose
Cognitive literary criticism is introduced as a bridge between cognitive approaches to the study of persuasion, and literary traditions in consumer research. As a successor to reader-response theory, cognitive literary theory focuses on the cognitive processes of interpretation, while keeping an eye on the aesthetic properties of the text. Paradigmatically cautious researchers might shy away from attempts to marry positivist cognitive constructs to interpretivist cultural theory, but this chapter argues that these qualms also conceal missed opportunities for the study of persuasion.
Methodology/approach
Insights from cognitive literary criticism are demonstrated at the hand of a LEGO ad.
Findings
Theory of mind and conceptual blending are crucial cognitive skills involved in the interpretation of persuasive texts.
Originality/value
Most research to date has kept literary and cognitive approaches to persuasion separate, black-boxing the processes of persuasion. This chapter argues for a revitalization of interest in aesthetic detail, informed by insights from cognitive science.
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The purpose of this paper is to critique four marketing textbooks written during the Age of Enlightenment (sixteenth-eighteenth centuries) to understand the educational lessons…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to critique four marketing textbooks written during the Age of Enlightenment (sixteenth-eighteenth centuries) to understand the educational lessons they taught students of marketing at the time and the lessons they might hold for the present day.
Design/methodology/approach
The method entails critically examining several marketing textbooks within the context of the great social, religious, intellectual, political and economic changes taking place at the time.
Findings
Over the period, paralleling developments in the Enlightenment, the two earlier textbooks of the age have a heavier emphasis on religious and ethical concerns along with their discussions of business issues. The two later textbooks de-emphasize spiritual themes in favor of almost completely focusing on business matters. In addition to discussing themes relevant to their times, the books anticipate concepts found in marketing textbooks of today. Generally, there is also more stress placed on immediate facts rather than enduring business principles. Yet many principles are discussed, including the most fundamental and durable principle of merchandising: “buy cheape, sell deare”.
Originality/value
There is no other review of a collection of marketing textbooks during the Age of Enlightenment in the published literature.
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Michael Holquist (1990), one of the commentators on Mikhail Bakhtin’s monumental work, stated flatly that “human existence is dialogue,” and Ivana Markova (2003) declared that…
Abstract
Michael Holquist (1990), one of the commentators on Mikhail Bakhtin’s monumental work, stated flatly that “human existence is dialogue,” and Ivana Markova (2003) declared that “dialogism is the ontology of humanity.” Bakhtin (1985;1986) himself said that such dialogues are conducted by using “speech genres.” From another angle Kenneth Burke asked, “What is involved when we say what people are doing and why they are doing it?” and claimed – and showed – that this question can be best answered by using what he called the “grammar of motives,” which consisted of a hexad of terms: act, attitude, scene, agent, agency, and purpose. In this chapter, I examine, by using various examples, how the Burkean grammar is used in the construction of one speech genre or the other to achieve rhetorically effective dialogic communication.