Justin Avery Aunger, Ross Millar, Joanne Greenhalgh, Russell Mannion, Anne Marie Rafferty and Hugh McLeod
The National Health Service (NHS) is facing unprecedented financial strain. These significant economic pressures have coincided with concerns regarding the quality and safety of…
Abstract
Purpose
The National Health Service (NHS) is facing unprecedented financial strain. These significant economic pressures have coincided with concerns regarding the quality and safety of the NHS provider sector. To make the necessary improvements to performance, policy interest has turned to encouraging greater collaboration and partnership working across providers.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a purposive search of academic and grey literature, this narrative review aimed (1) to establish a working typology of partnering arrangements for improvement across NHS providers and (2) inform the development of a plausible initial rough theory (IRF) of partnering to inform an ongoing realist synthesis.
Findings
Different types of partnership were characterised by degree of integration and/or organisational change. A review of existing theories of partnering also identified a suitable framework which incorporated key elements to partnerships, such as governance, workforce, leadership and culture. This informed the creation of an IRF of partnerships, which proposes that partnership “interventions” are proposed to primarily cause changes in governance, leadership, IT systems and care model design, which will then go on to affect culture, user engagement and workforce.
Research limitations/implications
Further realist evaluation, informed by this review, will aim to uncover configurations of mechanisms, contexts and outcomes in various partnering arrangements and limitations. As this is the starting point for building a programme theory, it draws on limited evidence.
Originality/value
This paper presents a novel theory of partnering and collaborating in healthcare with practical implications for policy makers and practitioners.
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The purpose of this study is to explore the role of formal religion in the early years of Outward Bound, a significant outdoor education organisation in Britain, from the 1940s to…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to explore the role of formal religion in the early years of Outward Bound, a significant outdoor education organisation in Britain, from the 1940s to the 1960s.
Design/methodology/approach
This article is based on archival and other documentary research in various archives and libraries, mostly in the United Kingdom.
Findings
The article shows that religious “instruction” was a central feature of the outdoor education that Outward Bound provided. The nature and extent of this aspect of the training was a matter of considerable debate within the Outward Bound Trust and was influenced by older traditions of muscular Christianity as well as the specific context of the early post–Second World War period. However, the religious influences at the schools were marginalised by the 1960s; although formal Christian observances did not disappear, the emphasis shifted to the promotion of a vaguer spirituality associated with the idea that “the mountains speak for themselves”.
Originality/value
The article establishes the importance of organised Christianity and formal religious observances in the early years of Outward Bound, a feature which has generally been overlooked in the historical literature. It contributes to wider analyses of outdoor education, religious education and secularisation in the mid-twentieth century.
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Life studies are a rich source for further research on the role of the Afro‐American woman in society. They are especially useful to gain a better understanding of the…
Abstract
Life studies are a rich source for further research on the role of the Afro‐American woman in society. They are especially useful to gain a better understanding of the Afro‐American experience and to show the joys, sorrows, needs, and ideals of the Afro‐American woman as she struggles from day to day.
Robert Crawford and Matthew Bailey
The purpose of this paper is to explore the value of oral history for marketing historians and provide case studies from projects in the Australian context to demonstrate its…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the value of oral history for marketing historians and provide case studies from projects in the Australian context to demonstrate its utility. These case studies are framed within a theme of market research and its historical development in two industries: advertising and retail property.
Design/methodology/approach
This study examines oral histories from two marketing history projects. The first, a study of the advertising industry, examines the globalisation of the advertising agency in Australia over the period spanning the 1950s to the 1980s, through 120 interviews. The second, a history of the retail property industry in Australia, included 25 interviews with executives from Australia’s largest retail property firms whose careers spanned from the mid-1960s through to the present day.
Findings
The research demonstrates that oral histories provide a valuable entry port through which histories of marketing, shifts in approaches to market research and changing attitudes within industries can be examined. Interviews provided insights into firm culture and practices; demonstrated the variability of individual approaches within firms and across industries; created a record of the ways that market research has been conducted over time; and revealed the ways that some experienced operators continued to rely on traditional practices despite technological advances in research methods.
Originality/value
Despite their ubiquity, both the advertising and retail property industries in Australia have received limited scholarly attention. Recent scholarship is redressing this gap, but more needs to be understood about the inner workings of firms in an historical context. Oral histories provide an avenue for developing such understandings. The paper also contributes to broader debates about the role of oral history in business and marketing history.
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Kate Sansome, Jodie Conduit and Dean Charles Hugh Wilkie
Escalating uncertainty surrounding brand communications has intensified consumer demands for transparency. Many definitions link transparency to the quantity of shared…
Abstract
Purpose
Escalating uncertainty surrounding brand communications has intensified consumer demands for transparency. Many definitions link transparency to the quantity of shared information, yet more information might not alleviate consumer uncertainty. The purpose of this paper is to develop a consumer-based conceptualisation of brand transparency that recognises the subjectivity in how transparency manifests for consumers.
Design/methodology/approach
This research adopts a qualitative approach, leveraging 10 exploratory interviews with experts and 20 in-depth interviews with consumers.
Findings
Confronted with information asymmetry, consumers rely on cues (openness, clarity, timeliness, evidence-based, explanatory) to evaluate a brand’s intentions to provide accurate information about focal domains in a way that establishes brand transparency. Focal domains of brand transparency (pro-social values, processes and product and service offerings) evolve in line with changing consumer expectations. Both consumer relationships and brand experiences influence brand transparency perceptions.
Research limitations/implications
This study challenges an inherent assumption that access to more information informs brand transparency perceptions; instead, consumers require transparency about salient and focal topics. By delineating the observable signals consumers use to infer transparency and highlighting how consumers’ biases towards certain brands and product categories influence their perceptions of brand transparency, this study contributes to customer–brand relationship literature.
Practical implications
The authors identify challenges for evoking brand transparency perceptions when information is salient. The authors stress the importance of open dialogue across all touchpoints to address consumer queries.
Originality/value
By challenging some assumptions of brand transparency literature, which have evolved from accounting and governance disciplines, this research introduces a distinctive perspective on consumer-based brand transparency.
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Christopher Rosin and Hugh Campbell
Purpose – This chapter examines the evolution of new audit and traceability systems in New Zealand horticultural export industries. Identified as one trajectory in New Zealand…
Abstract
Purpose – This chapter examines the evolution of new audit and traceability systems in New Zealand horticultural export industries. Identified as one trajectory in New Zealand agriculture partly resulting from neoliberal reform, the arrival of audit culture in food export industries has significantly repositioned these export sectors, particularly in relation to how they might respond to new energy and climate change challenges.
Design/methodology/approach – The chapter reviews the neoliberalisation of New Zealand agriculture in the 1980s and then examines the emergence of specific industry, audit and regulatory responses to new challenges around energy and climate change. Horticultural export sectors are used to demonstrate these responses and then compared with other, more productivist-oriented sectors in New Zealand.
Findings – The argument presented at the end of this chapter is that those food export sectors that have embraced the new audit approaches rather than taking a more productivist pathway will be better positioned to cope with the shocks of new energy costs and climate change requirements.
Originality/value – This chapter demonstrates the variable outcomes of neoliberal reform in agriculture. It identifies new audit and governance technologies as both an essential contributor to understanding the nature of global food chains and a potentially important contributor to achieving greater agri-food resilience in the face of future shocks like climate change.
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Stephanie von Hinke, Jonathan James, Emil Sorensen, Hans H. Sievertsen and Nicolai Vitt
This chapter shows the prevalence, trends and heterogeneity in maternal smoking around birth in the United Kingdom (UK), focussing on the war and post-war reconstruction period in…
Abstract
This chapter shows the prevalence, trends and heterogeneity in maternal smoking around birth in the United Kingdom (UK), focussing on the war and post-war reconstruction period in which there exists surprisingly little systematic data on (maternal) smoking behaviours. Within this context, the authors highlight relevant events, the release of new information about the harms of smoking and changes in (government) policy aimed at reducing smoking prevalence. The authors show stark changes in smoking prevalence over a 30-year period, highlight the onset of the social gradient in smoking as well as genetic heterogeneities in smoking trends.
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Jack A. Lesser and Lakshmi K. Thumurluri
Much of human behaviour is viewed as a process, which begins with early childhood experience, and develops into later life emotions, values, beliefs, and behaviours. Described…
Abstract
Much of human behaviour is viewed as a process, which begins with early childhood experience, and develops into later life emotions, values, beliefs, and behaviours. Described below, considerable interdisciplinary attention has been given to the role of childhood, and more specifically, to the relevance of different types of parental influence on children as they later become adults. Within marketing, selected scholarly consideration has been devoted to the roles of parents on their children's existing consumer behaviour. The unique contribution of this article is to examine the role of different types of parental influence on later adulthood shopping behaviours.
Hugh Campbell, Geoffrey Lawrence and Kiah Smith
New Zealand and Australian agri-food industries are being restructured both as a consequence of the extension of neoliberal policy settings and as a result of the increasing…
Abstract
New Zealand and Australian agri-food industries are being restructured both as a consequence of the extension of neoliberal policy settings and as a result of the increasing influence of the global supermarket sector. In the EU, supermarkets have sought to standardise and harmonise compliance, with their influence being felt well beyond European boundaries. EurepGAP (a European standard for ‘Good Agricultural Practices’) is an example of an emerging ‘audit culture’ where strict adherence to set rules of operation emerges as the basis for accreditation of goods and services. It represents the trend towards private sector standardization and assurance schemes, and provides an example of the growing importance of the supermarket sector in sanctioning the on-ground activities that occur in the production and processing of farm-derived outputs.
This chapter highlights the influence of EurepGAP protocols in the reorganisation of the agri-food industries of New Zealand and Australia. It argues that – for industries such as vegetable and fruit production, where Europe is the final destination – compliance with EurepGAP standards has largely become essential. In this sense, EurepGAP has emerged as the standard among producers who wish to export their products. The chapter concludes with an assessment of EurepGAP as a form of global agri-food governance that demonstrates a strong relationship between new audit cultures and neoliberal forms of trade regulation. In both Australia and New Zealand, some production sectors have rapidly adopted EurepGAP – despite extra costs, reduced choices over crop management and a lingering sense of resentment at the internal imposition of yet another production audit – primarily as a solution to the politics of risk in the context of high levels of exposure to market requirements under neoliberalism. The implications of this for Antipodean farming are considered in detail.