To offer a narrative account of an intervention to resolve a conflict and thus enable a community to mobilize against a threat to its Olmsted Park and, simultaneously, to showcase…
Abstract
Purpose
To offer a narrative account of an intervention to resolve a conflict and thus enable a community to mobilize against a threat to its Olmsted Park and, simultaneously, to showcase a participatory action research (PAR) approach to change.
Design/methodology/approach
A detailed description of the action from the inception of the conflict through the partnering behavior among some of the former adversaries. The narrative account, combined with reflections on the role of the researcher as both a stakeholder in the outcome and a leader of the action provides a complete picture of the PAR approach.
Findings
There were four main findings. First, the ultimate divide in this conflict was between the pragmatists and the ideologues. The former could finally compromise; the later could not. Second, personality clashes often masked substantive differences. Third, the PAR approach, which combined quantitative as well as qualitative techniques and which crossed political, organizational, and community change boundaries, was effective in bringing about the partnering. Finally, once the crisis was over, the PAR researcher could not continue in that role.
Practical implications
PAR practitioners have a role to play in situations where they share the stake that others have in the outcome of change.
Originality/value
Offers a contribution to the very sparse literature on PAR as well as some practical advice on community activism.
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Flows of ideas and paradigmatic wars are easier to trace through informal memoirs than methodological drill manuals. Sc’MOI’s emergence, flourishing, and decline are linked to a…
Abstract
Flows of ideas and paradigmatic wars are easier to trace through informal memoirs than methodological drill manuals. Sc’MOI’s emergence, flourishing, and decline are linked to a floating group of social scientists with the ambition to introduce managerial research into the humanist fold. Elective affinities linked David Boje and the undersigned to the Chicago economist Deirdre McCloskey, the Cardiff critical theory analyst Hugh Willmott, and the Lund organizational sciences guru Mats Alvesson. The drift from the International Academy of Business Disciplines to the Standing Conference on Management and Organizational Inquiry was accompanied by the Journal of Organizational Change Management. Marginal? Perhaps? But evolution picks up random cultural drifts and turns them into destinies of knowledge production. The narrative, humanist turn survived and kicks forward.
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– The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibility of doing more with writing and autoethnography as ethical, response-able and decolonizing practice.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibility of doing more with writing and autoethnography as ethical, response-able and decolonizing practice.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper is written in a playful, performative and poetic way and engages with the writings and ideas of Helene Cixous and Virginia Woolf as a conversation between them and the author.
Findings
This paper suggests that an autoethnographic writing practice which is at once affective, critical and performative, holds the possibilities to engage in decoloniality.
Originality/value
Engagement with the past and present legacy of colonial practice in education and ethnography is crucial if the author want to move beyond social justice and decoloniality as metaphor. The writing practice put forward is new and challenging in its push to do this.
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This chapter takes the form of an open feminist letter, a complaint and a manifesto presented to the Critical Management Studies (CMS) Academy. It is posted with urgency at a time…
Abstract
This chapter takes the form of an open feminist letter, a complaint and a manifesto presented to the Critical Management Studies (CMS) Academy. It is posted with urgency at a time when Patriarchy is resurging across the globe. My complaint is against the misogyny and the moral injury done to all of us and to our participants through our detached, disembodied, non-relation, pseudo-objective, masculine ways of becoming and being CMS scholars. Drawing on the thinking of Hélène Cixous, I offer five gifts as strategies to break with the masculine reckoning and open up our scholarship to féminine multiplicity and generativity: loving not knowing, return to our material bodies, rightsizing theory, knowledge made flesh-to-flesh and women’s writing. I visit, and suggest our scholarship will benefit from visiting, Cixous’s School of the Dead and her School of Dreams. I advocate for social theatre/performative auto/ethnography as a way to effect change in organisations. Finally, I present a manifesto for women’s writing that can help take our scholarship ‘home’ and contribute to the creation of flourishing organisations. This letter is a Call to Arms.
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Pierre-Luc Fournier and Marie-Hélène Jobin
The purpose of this paper is to study the factors influencing doctors’ involvement in Lean change initiatives in public healthcare organizations in Canada.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to study the factors influencing doctors’ involvement in Lean change initiatives in public healthcare organizations in Canada.
Design/methodology/approach
An inductive research was conducted over a three-year span studying Lean implementation across three healthcare organizations in Canada. Various interviews were conducted with healthcare actors. Through analytical induction, analysis of the data allowed for multiple factors to be triangulated from which a conceptual model was developed.
Findings
Fifty-four interviews with 18 Lean healthcare actors allowed for the identification of ten factors possibly influencing the commitment of doctors towards Lean change. These factors are categorized into pre-change antecedents and change antecedents. Also, the level of transformational leadership demonstrated by a project manager was shown to potentially moderate the effect of medical behavioral support for change on change outcomes. These findings allowed us to develop a conceptual model of medical commitment and its impact of Lean change outcomes.
Originality/value
The paper investigates the role doctors play in Lean implementation, currently an important issue discussed among healthcare actors and researchers. Yet, very little academic research has been published on this subject.
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Anne-Marie Cotton and Hélène Boulanger
The European External Action Service (EEAS) is a relatively new diplomatic service established in 2010. In previous analyses, the authors noted a dominance of security and foreign…
Abstract
Purpose
The European External Action Service (EEAS) is a relatively new diplomatic service established in 2010. In previous analyses, the authors noted a dominance of security and foreign policy messages emanating from the EEAS, demonstrating the European Union (EU)'s negotiating power. It was clear it had discovered the benefits of public diplomacy, but rather practised traditional diplomacy on public diplomacy specific platforms. The authors aim to pursue the monitoring of the EEAS’ strategy, covering 2019 and 2020, to understand how the use of Twitter supports the evolution of the EU foreign policy.
Design/methodology/approach
Questioning if the EEAS is entering the second phase of its life cycle (launched in 2010, its introduction phase was under Katherine Ashton, 2009–2014, followed by Federica Mogherini, 2014–2019, and Josep Borrell, 2019–2024), the authors carried out a content analysis on 765 tweets. The authors used the MARPE Diplo methodological framework to compare how the EU uses public diplomacy through its EEAS to negotiate its own interests with non-EU parties under the presidency of Federica Mogherini (period 1), during the transition period (period 2) and under the presidency of Joseph Borrell (period 3).
Findings
Based on the comparison with their previous studies, the authors demonstrate that, over the years, the overall discourse of the EEAS is much more oriented towards public diplomacy.
Research limitations/implications
The present study has two limitations. The first refers to the sampling of the participants involved in the citizen science experiment: they belong to a homogeneous age category and similar education level which might have biased their analysis. Second, the authors acknowledge the usual limitations linked to citizen science. However, the authors acknowledge a growing emphasis on the outcomes for society involving citizens and including partnerships between the public and scientists as well as an increased public engagement in policy processes.
Practical implications
The research leads into new insights regarding the European-centred translation of the EEAS messages, compared to the off-centred view of non-European contributors.
Social implications
The citizen science approach allows to integrate the targeted public to apply public diplomacy content analysis.
Originality/value
This case study is based on the principles of citizen science and demonstrates the importance of an off-centred approach in the analysis of the practices of public diplomacy.
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Sabine Gebert-Persson, Mikael Gidhagen, James E. Sallis and Heléne Lundberg
The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a theoretical framework explaining the adoption of online insurance claims characterised by infrequent interactions, inherent…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a theoretical framework explaining the adoption of online insurance claims characterised by infrequent interactions, inherent complexity and risk. It extends the technology acceptance model to include knowledge-related and trust-related beliefs.
Design/methodology/approach
The framework is tested with structural equation modelling using data from a survey of 292 customers who made online insurance claims. Findings are further explained through 30 telephone interviews conducted with online and offline claimants.
Findings
Previous research in financial services has shown trust to be equally or more important than perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use in forming attitudes towards adopting online insurance applications. The findings of this paper contradict this by showing, at best, a weak relationship between trusting attitude and intention to use the online service. Trust is somewhat meaningful; however, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness and technology attitude are substantially more important in an online insurance claims setting.
Research limitations/implications
Contradictory results always beg further research to assure their robustness. Nevertheless, they can also point to a developing trend where trust in the internet channel, per se, is of diminishing importance. Internet and product knowledge are not as pertinent to forming intentions as usefulness and ease of use.
Practical implications
To encourage customers to adopt online applications for a trusted company, all emphasis should be on user friendliness and perceived usefulness of the online interface.
Originality/value
Compared to other channels, consumers are no longer naïve or distrustful of the online channel for interacting with a firm. If they perceive usefulness and ease of use, they will adopt the offered service.
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Niklas P.E. Karlsson, Hélène Laurell, John Lindgren, Tobias Pehrsson, Svante Andersson and Göran Svensson
The purpose of this study is to compare and validate firms’ internal and external stakeholder considerations in sustainable business practices across business settings. It aims to…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to compare and validate firms’ internal and external stakeholder considerations in sustainable business practices across business settings. It aims to assess the validity and reliability of a stakeholder framework appearing in previous studies.
Design/methodology/approach
The study uses a questionnaire survey and a cross-industry sample consisting of the largest firms in corporate Sweden. Multivariate analysis tests the stakeholder framework. Each of the 294 key informants was initially identified and contacted by telephone, generating a response rate of 36.5 per cent.
Findings
The tested stakeholder framework appears valid and reliable across countries to assess the internal stakeholders of focal firms, as well as their up- and downstream, market and societal stakeholders. This study provides additional empirical support to categorize firms’ stakeholder considerations in sustainable business practices.
Research limitations/implications
This study validates previous findings in terms of Swedish firms’ considerations of internal and external stakeholders in sustainable business practices in relation to one similar country (Norway) and one different country (Spain). The study also shows how the three countries perceive the focal company and societal stakeholders differently.
Practical implications
The tested framework sheds light on focal firms’ stakeholder considerations in sustainable business practices and elucidates the extent to which firms’ account for their internal and external stakeholders in sustainable business practices.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the development of valid and reliable stakeholder theory across contexts and through time. In particular, it contributes to the development of a valid and reliable framework to categorize firms’ stakeholder considerations in sustainable business practices.
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Linzi J. Kemp, Norita Ahmad, Lucia Pappalardo and Alison Williams
The purpose of this study is to investigate career choices by female graduates from science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) to determine factors that influenced…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to investigate career choices by female graduates from science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) to determine factors that influenced their entry, abandonment or persistence of STEM careers.
Design/methodology/approach
Life history narratives were collected from a sample group of employed citizens and expatriate women (all STEM graduates) in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Content of interview transcripts was analyzed for emergent themes of influence on these participants career decisions.
Findings
Four significant themes of calling were found: gift of intellect, belief in a faith, shared community and meaning of work. A typology of calling was constructed to reflect these themes influences on the entry, abandonment or persistence of women in a STEM career.
Research limitations/implications
The results of this study were from a small sample of women in a particular country. The implication is to extend this study to a larger number of participants and to other countries to generalize the results.
Practical implications
Insight into career decisions of female STEM graduates impacts on employee recruitment and retention policies within those professions.
Originality/value
Research originality is evident, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, as this is the first study to explore the influence of calling for careers of STEM women working in the Middle East North Africa region.