Search results

The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of environmental management initiatives in the furniture retail area. The specific aim is to present reflections of participants implementing environmental initiatives in an Australian furniture retailer, Living Edge, in alignment with a secondary snapshot of environmental initiatives from other furniture retailers.

Primary reflections from the retailer’s manager and external consultant, both involved in the implementation of environmental initiatives, are enriched with secondary review of environmental management system trends and examples from regions active in the designer furniture sector, including Europe, Southeast Asia and North America.

An integrated view has been distilled around environmental impact in the furniture supply chain and consumer pressure to minimise the impact. Stakeholders require furniture retailers to improve efficiency and profitability amid the countervailing market demand for environmental sustainability. Retailers may seek competitive advantage through effectively applied and communicated environmental management. The voluntary adoption of systems, international standards and innovative practices that conserve natural resources are amongst the key to success. A live case example of Australian experience is added to the knowledge base for the global retail furniture industry.

One Australian retailer is exemplified to highlight the lived experiences of implementing environmental initiatives. The secondary global review presents a cross-section rather than an in-depth analysis of furniture sector retailers.

There are limited Australian perspectives of designer furniture and its intersection with environmental issues, thus, the paper addresses this gap in the literature and adds to informed practice in a global industry.

Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS), as part of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (DoLS, 2007), was established to provide a legal framework for decision-making in respect of adults who lack capacity to make decisions in relation to their care and residence in England and Wales. The purpose of this study was to explore the DoLS decision-making process from the perspectives of health and social care practitioners when working with individuals with an acquired brain injury (ABI).

A total of 12 health and social care practitioners were interviewed in 2019–2020 about their experiences of using and making or supporting decisions in the DoLS framework with ABI survivors. Data were analysed, and a tentative explanation of variations in DoLS decision-making was developed.

Three distinct approaches emerged capturing different decision-making styles (risk-averse, risk-balancing and risk-simplifying) which appeared to influence the outcome of DoLS assessments. A range of mediating factors seemed to account for the variability in these styles. The wider contextual challenges that impact upon practitioners’ overall experiences and use of DoLS processes in their ABI practice were noted.

The findings highlight a need for changes in practice and policy in relation to how DoLS or similar processes are used in decision-making practice with ABI survivors and may be relevant to the implementation of the Liberty Protection Safeguards that are replacing the DoLS system.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to explore accounts of DoLS decision-making practices in ABI service.

Background: the increased incidence of psychosis in African‐Caribbeans in the UK compared to the white British population has been frequently reported. The cause for this is unclear; social factors are said to account for this increase and one factor that is often cited is discrimination.Aims and method: we have looked at two groups of psychotic patients, blacks of Caribbean origin and white British, and present a qualitative comparison of the individual's experience of unfair treatment and its perceived cause.Results: the African‐Caribbean patients did not describe more perceived discrimination than their white counterparts but were more likely to claim that their distress was due to racial discrimination perpetrated by the psychiatric services and society in general. The white patients were more likely to attribute perceived discrimination to their mental illness.Conclusion: this mismatch of explanatory models between black patients and their doctors may account for some inequalities in their treatment, their relative non‐engagement and adverse outcome.Declaration of interest: none.

Participatory design involves users and other key stakeholders in processes that aim to ensure solutions generated meet their needs. This paper compares the processes and outcomes of two participatory design approaches (design thinking and co-design) to examine their utility in co-creating innovative service solutions for reducing household energy demand.

Design thinking and co-design were implemented in two independent convenience samples of household energy users in Queensland, Australia. Workshops were conducted online using Zoom and Padlet technology. Informed by the capability-practice-ability (CPA) portfolio, a critical analysis based on the research team's experiences with implementing the two participatory design approaches is presented.

The key distinguishing features that set design thinking apart from co-design is extent of user involvement, solution diversity and resource requirements. With a shorter duration and less intensive user involvement, co-design offers a more resource efficient means of solution generation. In contrast, design thinking expands the solution space by allowing for human-centred problem framing and in so doing gives rise to greater diversity in solutions generated.

Mapping the six constellations of service design outlined in the CPA portfolio to the research team's experiences implementing two different participatory design approaches within the same context reconciles theoretical understanding of how capabilities, practices and abilities may differ or converge in an applied setting.

Understanding the benefits and expected outcomes across the two participatory design approaches will guide practitioners and funding agencies in the selection of an appropriate method to achieve desired outcomes.

This paper compares two forms of participatory design (design thinking and co-design) for service innovation in the context of household energy demand offering theoretical and practical insights into the utility of each as categorised within the CPA portfolio.

It will be a momentous year, even if prophecies are not fulfilled in the sense in which they are so recklessly made. Threats of terrors at Christmas, especially for London, did not materialize. There are some readers who whisper that they do not believe in a Second Front at all. And so on: jade Rumour lies as earnestly today as ever in her unwholesome history. But much must happen before we can again utter the wish with which we begin. Our business, in addition to our imperative war duties, is to carry to conclusions of value the post‐war policies we have received from the Library Association. We have more than that to do. Some of our libraries, even those that have not suffered from direct bombing, are in a state which in peace conditions we should say was deplorable.

This paper aims to discuss the interview held with Professor John Bessant conducted by Professor Peter Totterdill. John Bessant has been active in research, teaching and consultancy in technology and innovation management for over 25 years. He currently holds the Chair in Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Exeter University where he is also Research Director.

This wide-ranging and insightful interview looks at the challenges of implementing workplace innovation and the realities involved in the process. It covers questions concerning the importance of innovation to businesses coming out of recession and the relationship between employee involvement and innovation.

Professor Bessant also discusses the challenge of releasing individual potential and how to harness random creativity. He looks at the “starter conditions” for workplace innovation as well as the factors that mitigate against sustaining it.

Key to sustaining workplace innovation, he argues, are a number of elements including momentum, self-belief and confidence, appropriate resource, leadership and empowerment. In addition, the implementation of workplace innovation does not occur as one big hit but a series of small steps which evolve and develop.

New technology via intranets and social media also help to mobilise a lot more participation. Technology now provides the potential to reach every employee and their involvement can be instantaneous. This can create a notion of shared creativity, the Facebook process of “good idea, I like that, why don’t you try that?”

This paper examines how entrepreneurship focused programs build capacities for disadvantaged groups to pursue more dignified lives. The struggles of disadvantaged entrepreneurs against pronounced structural constraints are well documented, but less is known about how targeted programs of entrepreneurship focused support change the status quo for disadvantaged communities.

The paper is grounded in a mainly inductive, interpretive study and explores the work of an entrepreneurship focused program targeted at refugee participants. The paper reports on intensive fieldwork and in-depth interviews with 23 program participants in London, UK.

The empirical sections elaborate three key mechanisms supporting greater self-determination and better opportunities: building entrepreneurial intention, building contextual legitimacy and building proximal ties. These mechanisms empower disadvantaged groups to pursue a wide variety of meaningful goals, including but not limited to starting a business.

This paper draws attention to problems of over-emphasizing the disadvantaged entrepreneurs' agency. It uses the vocabulary of self-determination theory (SDT) and offers a psychosocial perspective of the consequences of disadvantage and the potential for entrepreneurship focused programs to build key capacities and improve precarious lives.

Man has been seeking an ideal existence for a very long time. In this existence, justice, love, and peace are no longer words, but actual experiences. How ever, with the American preemptive invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and the subsequent prisoner abuse, such an existence seems to be farther and farther away from reality. The purpose of this work is to stop this dangerous trend by promoting justice, love, and peace through a change of the paradigm that is inconsistent with justice, love, and peace. The strong paradigm that created the strong nation like the U.S. and the strong man like George W. Bush have been the culprit, rather than the contributor, of the above three universal ideals. Thus, rather than justice, love, and peace, the strong paradigm resulted in in justice, hatred, and violence. In order to remove these three and related evils, what the world needs in the beginning of the third millenium is the weak paradigm. Through the acceptance of the latter paradigm, the golden mean or middle paradigm can be formulated, which is a synergy of the weak and the strong paradigm. In order to understand properly the meaning of these paradigms, however, some digression appears necessary.