Claire McDonald, Fiona Seaman-Thornton, Che Ling Michelle Mok, Hanne Jakobsen and Simon Riches
Negative attitudes towards “personality disorder” are common among mental health professionals. This study aims to design a psychoeducational training targeting attitudes to…
Abstract
Purpose
Negative attitudes towards “personality disorder” are common among mental health professionals. This study aims to design a psychoeducational training targeting attitudes to “personality disorder” for staff working in a London psychiatric hospital. Its impact on staff attitudes was evaluated.
Design/methodology/approach
Mental health clinicians were recruited from five acute psychiatric wards. Feasibility of implementing the training was measured. A free-association exercise explored baseline attitudes to “personality disorder” and visual analogue scales assessed staff attitudes pre- and post-training. Content analysis of staff feedback was carried out.
Findings
Psychoeducational training was found to be feasible, well-attended and highly valued by ward staff (N = 47). Baseline results revealed negative perceptions of “personality disorder”. Post-training, significant improvements in understanding, levels of compassion and attitudes to working with service users with a diagnosis of a “personality disorder” were observed. Staff feedback highlighted desire for further training and support.
Research limitations/implications
The sample size was relatively small and there was no control group, so findings should be interpreted with caution.
Practical implications
The findings highlight the need for support for staff working with service users with diagnoses of “personality disorder” on acute psychiatric wards. Providing regular training with interactive components may promote training as a resource for staff well-being. Planning to ensure service users’ and carers’ views are incorporated into the design of future training will be important.
Originality/value
This study is innovative in that it investigates the impact of a brief psychoeducational training on “personality disorder” designed for mental health staff on acute psychiatric wards.
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Amy Mellow, Anna Tickle, David M. Gresswell and Hanne Jakobsen
Nurses working in acute mental-health services are vulnerable to occupational stress. One stressor identified is the challenging behaviour of some service users (Jenkins and…
Abstract
Purpose
Nurses working in acute mental-health services are vulnerable to occupational stress. One stressor identified is the challenging behaviour of some service users (Jenkins and Elliott, 2004). The purpose of this paper is to discuss the discourses drawn on by nurses to understand challenging behaviour and talk about its management.
Design/methodology/approach
Nurses working on acute and psychiatric intensive care unit (PICU) wards were interviewed, and data were analysed using discourse analysis.
Findings
Biomedical and systemic discourses were found to be dominant. Alternative psychosocial and emotional discourses were drawn on by some participants but marginalised by the dominant biomedical construction of challenging behaviour.
Originality/value
Existing studies have not considered how discourses socially construct challenging behaviour and its management in inpatient mental-health services.
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Harpreet Sanghara, Eugenia Kravariti, Hanne Jakobsen and Chike Okocha
On average, the National Health Service (NHS) loses annually £360 million in opportunity costs due to non‐attendance of outpatient appointments (Stone et al, 1999). In addition to…
Abstract
On average, the National Health Service (NHS) loses annually £360 million in opportunity costs due to non‐attendance of outpatient appointments (Stone et al, 1999). In addition to draining healthcare resources, failure to attend clinical appointments incurs personal costs. Mobile phone technology has been applied successfully to reducing appointment non‐attendance and improving clinical outcomes for patients with physical illnesses. However, it is unclear whether these applications can be extended to patients with severe and enduring mental disorders. We conducted a trust‐wide survey of 141 psychiatric inpatients of the Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust (82% of the Trust's total inpatient population) to establish how many respondents owned a mobile phone (62%), could use text‐messaging services (62%) and were willing to use the latter as a means of communication with the Trust (80%). Compared to patients with psychotic illnesses, those with non‐psychotic illnesses reported higher rates of mobile phone ownership (78% versus 55%, p=0.01), ability to use text messaging (76% versus 56%, p=0.03) and willingness to receive text messages from the Trust (90% versus 76%, p=0.05). The results of the survey were used to inform the planning of a pilot study aimed at reducing non‐attendance rates of outpatient appointments in Oxleas.
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Morten Jakobsen and Rainer Lueg
This paper aims to analyse how the inherent design of the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) violates the controllability principle. The management control literature provides convincing…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to analyse how the inherent design of the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) violates the controllability principle. The management control literature provides convincing examples of actors who breach controllability without intention. This discussion was extended by the example of the BSC. This paper focusses on the breaches that occur when actors lack the awareness or the skills to re-enforce controllability.
Design/methodology/approach
Taking a pragmatic-constructivist position, analytical and empirical evidence was included on controllability to analyse the normative literature on the BSC.
Findings
It was found that the BSC causes several unintended breaches of the controllability principle at the level of middle managers, both ex ante (control rationale) and ex post (fairness rationale). These breaches are not only situational or induced by how managers in the field design a BSC. They appear to be inherent in the BSC due to the way Kaplan and Norton have conceptualised it.
Practical implications
Practitioners are alerted that the intuitive appeal of popular management fashions such as the BSC covers their conceptual flaws. It was also proposed that failed implementations and dysfunctional applications can be due to the inherent characteristics of the concepts themselves.
Originality/value
This paper contributes by uncovering the unintended violations of the controllability principle by the inherent characteristics. The authors suggest using our conceptual contribution to conduct empirical research on the issues of controllability and management control systems in general. Thereby, the theory-based discussion on the BSC is advanced (Nørreklit, 2000, 2003; Nørreklit et al., 2012a).
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Oana Alexandra Albertsen and Rainer Lueg
This paper aims to review the literature on the balanced scorecard (BSC) system. The BSC may well be one of the most popular performance measurement systems, but this is not…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to review the literature on the balanced scorecard (BSC) system. The BSC may well be one of the most popular performance measurement systems, but this is not synonymous with successful. The inventors of the BSC, Kaplan and Norton, actually emphasize that a BSC can only really impact the organizational performance if it is linked to the actors’ intrinsic and extrinsic incentives. As BSC has existed for more than 20 years, the authors find it relevant to survey the extant literature which elaborates on the BSC-incentives link within organizations.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper identifies 117 empirical studies from leading academic journals published between 1992 and 2012 and then assesses 30 of these studies, which present the BSC-compensation link within the BSC literature. The authors analyze both research design (authors’ perspective) and the actual findings in the field (organizations’ perspective).
Findings
First, it was found that only 30 of 117 empirical studies have a research design that is comprehensive enough to capture a full BSC as suggested by Kaplan and Norton, and only six of these studies elaborate on the link between the BSC and compensation. Second, extant research lacks valid constructs for the BSC and focuses too much on planning (ex-ante) with the BSC and not sufficiently on evaluation and control (ex-post). Third, the authors demonstrate that empirical BSC literature relies very strongly on field research in small and medium enterprises compared to similar research. Overall, the authors claim that the “relevance” of the BSC remains unproven.
Originality/value
The authors synthesize the empirical BSC literature and derive a future research agenda.
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Morten Jakobsen, Falconer Mitchell, Hanne Nørreklit and Mihaela Trenca
The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate a paradigmatic foundation for educators to prepare students of management accounting for the new demands of the role of trusted…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate a paradigmatic foundation for educators to prepare students of management accounting for the new demands of the role of trusted business partner in practice.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper argues for the use of pragmatic constructivism as a basis for development of a paradigmatic foundation for educating advanced students of management accounting. Furthermore, it contains an empirical insight through a case example of how pragmatic constructivism can be used as a pedagogical tool in different management accounting educational situations.
Findings
The analysis shows how pragmatic constructivism can be used as a less reductionist paradigm than realism to tackle the research-teaching-practice deficiencies found in conventional thinking on accounting education. Pragmatic constructivism is shown to provide important methodological and conceptual elements in developing, understanding and guiding the application of management accounting techniques in dynamic business practices. Placing an emphasis on teaching methodological skills relevant for management accountants is shown to have an important impact on students and their ability to act as business partners.
Research limitations/implications
The analysis is exploratory in the sense that a new paradigmatic framework for educating students of management accounting to be business partners is outlined and illustrated through its implementation in a specific master’s degree programme. However, this analysis should be viewed as only a first step towards developing pragmatic constructivism as a paradigmatic foundation for teaching management accounting as a basis for a business partner role.
Originality/value
The proposed use of research on pragmatic constructivism as a basis for management accounting education to support a future business partner role is novel in the literature on management accounting. The value of its application lies in its potential to create successful utilisation of the practices of management accounting.
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Falconer Mitchell, Hanne Nørreklit, Lennart Nørreklit, Lino Cinquini, Frederik Koeppe, Fabio Magnacca, Sara Giovanna Mauro, Morten Jakobsen, Tuomas Korhonen, Teemu Laine and Jakob Mathias Liboriussen
The study aims to assess the COVID-19 event in three European countries (Germany, Italy and the UK) by investigating the quality of their performance management of it.
Abstract
Purpose
The study aims to assess the COVID-19 event in three European countries (Germany, Italy and the UK) by investigating the quality of their performance management of it.
Design/methodology/approach
Pragmatic constructivism (PC) is employed as a lens through which the performance management of each country can be examined and compared over a period encompassing the first wave of COVID-19.
Findings
Official statistics show that one of the countries has a significantly lower death rate. It developed and operated a more detailed and precise system of performance management. From the perspective of PC, this system supported efforts to build a functioning reality construction integrating facts, possibilities, values and communication.
Originality/value
The evaluation of different national approaches to the performance management of the COVID-19 reality is novel to the literature on management accounting. PC is used as a diagnostic tool to pinpoint strengths and weaknesses of the performance management of public sector activities in different countries.
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The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how the quality of Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management (QRAM) is manifested through the conceptualization of knowledge…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how the quality of Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management (QRAM) is manifested through the conceptualization of knowledge about functioning actions that are applicable for local management accounting practices.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on language game theory and pragmatic constructivism, the paper analyzes the “practice doing” embedded in key language games of the case descriptions of three articles on intra-organizational buyer-supplier relations published in QRAM with the aim of revealing how they contribute to the development of a performativity in management accounting topos that integrates facts, possibilities, values and communication.
Findings
The analysis documents that the three QRAM articles on inter-organizational cost management make a common contribution to the knowledge related to what to do to make functional actions within the practice of inter-organizational cost management. Together, the articles provide conceptual rigour with a complexity in content that can encompass the four dimensions of integration.
Research limitations/implications
In providing a framework for analyzing practice relevance, the paper has implications for contemporary discussions on doing research that is relevant for practice.
Originality/value
The paper provides novel insight into the analysis of quality in management accounting research. Additionally, it provides a framework for reflecting on the accumulation of practice-relevant knowledge and identifying areas requiring more research.
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Hanne Nørreklit and Robert W. Scapens
The purpose of this paper is to contrast the speech genres in the original and the published versions of an article written by academic researchers and published in the US…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to contrast the speech genres in the original and the published versions of an article written by academic researchers and published in the US practitioner-oriented journal, Strategic Finance. The original version, submitted by the researchers, was rewritten by a professional editor in the USA before it was published.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper analyses the “persuasive” speech genre of the original version and the “authoritative” speech genre of the published version.
Findings
Although it was initially thought that the differences between the two versions were due to differences in the forms communication used by academics and practitioners, as the analysis progressed it became clear that the differences the authors were observing could be traced to more profound differences in philosophical assumptions about the “way of understanding and constructing a world”.
Research limitations/implications
The choice of language and argumentation should be given careful attention when the authors craft the accounting frameworks and research papers, and especially when the authors seek to communicate the findings of the research to practitioners. However, the authors have focused on just one instance in which a text written by academics was re-written for publication in a practitioner journal.
Originality/value
The paper contrasts the rationalism of the persuasive speech genre and the pragmatism of the authoritative speech genre. It cautions academic researchers against uncritically adopting specific speech genres, whether they are academic or practitioner speech genres, without carefully reflecting on their relevance and implications for understanding the nature of the phenomenon being discussed.