Aleksandra Webb and James Layton
The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the need to embrace digital ways of producing work and reaching audiences in the hard-hit sectors such as performing arts. In the context of…
Abstract
Purpose
The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the need to embrace digital ways of producing work and reaching audiences in the hard-hit sectors such as performing arts. In the context of post-pandemic recovery, this paper explores the notion of digital performance and proposes a framework for categorisation of digital skills currently associated with the digital making and sharing of performance work. It also aims to review the current digital skills offering in the performing arts training at Scottish universities and suggests strategies to drive accelerated digital skills development in performance education.
Design/methodology/approach
Literature on digitalisations, digital skills and digital performance have been reviewed to provide the context and inform the proposed Digital Skills for Performance Framework. Subsequently, a pilot desk-based study selected 15 Scottish Higher Education Institutions in the area of performance and analysed their publicly available programme documentation for the presence of digital skills.
Findings
While all of the programme specifications mentioned the use of “digital portfolios” and “digital performance”, there was little specific detail concerning “baseline” (transferable) and “specific” (technical) digital skills such as competency in the use of specific technologies. More notably, there was a complete absence of content relating to digital aesthetic identity.
Originality/value
Upskilling future performance makers in digital competencies seems particularly important at present. This paper offers a useful categorisation of the digital skills in performing arts context, which higher education programmes can use to update their curricula, prepare the work-ready graduates and explore technological opportunities for the sector's long-term post-pandemic recovery.
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Month after month we bring forward additional evidence of the injury resulting from the use of chemical “preservatives” in food, while the Authorities feebly hesitate to give…
Abstract
Month after month we bring forward additional evidence of the injury resulting from the use of chemical “preservatives” in food, while the Authorities feebly hesitate to give specific legal effect to the recommendations of the Departmental Committee which made such a complete inquiry into this question. The evidence upon which those recommendations were based has been fully corroborated by a number of different observers. FERE and others have shown that, as regards boric acid and borax, even when administered in the smallest medicinal doses, there is always the risk that these drugs may aggravate, or even produce, renal diseases. These observations have been confirmed by the work of Dr. CHARLES HARRINGTON, an account of which has been recently published. Twelve cats were fed on the same food; six were treated with borax, one had no preservative, and five were given a preservative which had no apparent effect. The experiment extended over a period of 133 days, the quantity of borax given averaging about 0.5 grms, per diem. Three of the borated cats soon became ill, and one died at the end of six weeks. On the termination of the experiment the cats were all killed, and upon examination it was found that the organs of the six cats which had not taken borax were in perfectly sound and healthy condition, while the others, with one exception, were all suffering from nephritis. Of course, instances are recorded in which patients have been treated with borax and boracic acid with apparently no injurious result, but as a general rule these experiments have been of too short duration to allow of the desired information being arrived at, and the results must therefore be regarded as inconclusive and unreliable. It is perfectly evident that the kidneys may be for a short time quite capable of eliminating many objectionable substances, but the long‐continued use of such bodies, as Dr. HARRINGTON'S researches clearly indicate, sets up an inflammatory condition of the kidneys which, of course, interferes with the effective performance of their proper functions, and lays the foundations for complications of the most serious nature.
Martyn Gosling, James Richard and Yuri Seo
The paper contributes to the debate on a general theory of markets. The purpose of this paper is to develop a market practice model based on social practice theories, and explore…
Abstract
Purpose
The paper contributes to the debate on a general theory of markets. The purpose of this paper is to develop a market practice model based on social practice theories, and explore new ways of describing market boundaries.
Design/methodology/approach
A conceptual analysis of contemporary marketing directions and market theorizations provides a basis for defining markets and market boundaries in terms of social practices and their performances by market actors.
Findings
Based on the market performances held in place by institutional practices that define, contextualize and stabilize a market, this paper defines market boundaries by nine specific categories of practices, described here as parameters.
Research limitations/implications
This is a conceptual paper. Future research using empirical evidence derived from situated investigations should endeavor to refine the model and practices that define market boundaries.
Originality/value
The paper provides a new conceptualization of markets and market boundaries from the social practice perspective, and advances contemporary market theorizing that puts services at the center of exchange. The paper offers managerial implications by describing alternative means for analyzing markets and developing corresponding competitive strategies. Furthermore, the conception of market boundaries as nine parameters provides insights beyond the geographic and price boundaries typically used to describe market limits and exchange processes when developing policy.
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Shoaib M. Farooq Padela, Ben Wooliscroft and Alexandra Ganglmair-Wooliscroft
This paper aims to conceptualise and characterise brand systems and outline propositions and research avenues to advance the systems’ view of branding.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to conceptualise and characterise brand systems and outline propositions and research avenues to advance the systems’ view of branding.
Design/methodology/approach
A conceptual synthesis approach is adopted to integrate the extant branding research perspectives. The conceptual framework is grounded in the theoretical foundation of marketing systems theory.
Findings
The conceptual framework delineates brand inputs, throughputs, outcomes and feedback effects within a brand system. It configures the complexity and dynamics of brand value formation among brand actors within the branding environment.
Research limitations/implications
This paper contributes to systems thinking in branding and brand value co-creation research. It extends marketing systems theory into the branding context and provides research directions for exploring the structural and functional configurations, cause–consequence processes and outcome concerns of brand value formation.
Practical implications
This conceptual framework informs brand development, management and regulation at a macro level. Managers can apply the brand system concept to identify and manage conflicting expectations of brand actors and alleviate adverse brand outcomes such as negative brand externalities, enhancing overall brand system health and societal value.
Originality/value
This research expands the scope of brand actor agency and identifies the likelihood of disproportionate brand outcomes. It provides methodological guidelines for analysis and intervention in brand systems.
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Kaitlin Wynia Baluk, Ali Solhi and James Gillett
In 2021, a public library in Ontario, Canada established a branch in an affordable housing building. Using interviews with library and support workers who work in the building (n…
Abstract
In 2021, a public library in Ontario, Canada established a branch in an affordable housing building. Using interviews with library and support workers who work in the building (n = 8) and an analysis of media that describes the partnership (n = 16), this chapter explores how their partnership may create social infrastructure for tenants. Social scientists have positioned strengthening social infrastructure, a community’s network of systems and spaces that facilitate social relationships, as an antidote to many of society’s most pressing social issues, such as social inequity. An understanding of this partnership, its purpose, and how it intends to serve neighborhood members provides insight into how public libraries and non-profit and community organizations together provide social infrastructure for those living in affordable housing. Strengthening a community’s social infrastructure may be a vital step toward building socially sustainable communities in the twenty-first century.
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Roslyn Layton and Mark Jamison
The COVID-19 pandemic provides an opportunity to review net neutrality and the notion that bright light rules are necessary to hold broadband providers from exercising market…
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic provides an opportunity to review net neutrality and the notion that bright light rules are necessary to hold broadband providers from exercising market power. The 2015 Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Open Internet Order asserted that broadband providers have the capability and incentive to harm their customers and third-party service providers. It imposed a set of rules to control broadband providers’ offers, prices, and traffic management. The 2017 FCC vacated all but the transparency provisions of the OIO, restoring the oversight of broadband to the FTC.
This paper offers a review of the evidence regarding the effects of net neutrality regulation, including an investigation of the incidence of violations, or lack thereof, during the 2020 pandemic in the United States. It provides a review of the net neutrality literature and the international research on broadband provider behaviour during COVID-19. The paper presents original research conducted with FCC and FTC reports and a survey of news stories. Brief reviews of federal data on network performance and broadband adoption provide additional context. Given the limited incidence of violations that could be uncovered for the period, the paper suggests why broadband providers behaved opposite to regulatory advocates’ predictions. Contrary to many policy assertions, broadband providers did not block or throttle service, nor did they increase prices arbitrarily or decrease quality. Broadband providers appeared to expand availability, lower broadband prices, and make more networks available, frequently without customer charge. The paper suggests how policy could be updated to reflect the actual behaviour of broadband providers.
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This paper is focused on my search over nearly 60 years for an understanding of marketing – not just as a management technology, but as a social discipline which gives meaning and…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper is focused on my search over nearly 60 years for an understanding of marketing – not just as a management technology, but as a social discipline which gives meaning and purpose to the technology.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper illustrates my life as an academic in context, which began with a strong focus on marketing in contemporary management and went on to conclude that marketing is much more than management. It was my travels across the world to widely differing markets and marketplaces that led me to this conclusion. I saw individuals, groups and organizations linking with each other in the voluntary exchange of economic and social value, self-organizing into increasingly complex networks that in the end become the institutions that frame marketing action.
Findings
I gradually came to see marketing in a much wider, intensely human setting, and to realize some of the complexities of the networks that marketing activities generate.
Practical implications
My story may be of assistance to younger scholars beginning a career in marketing.
Social implications
Marketing is much more than management and if re-framed should/could stand alongside other social sciences in considering social and economic policy.
Originality/value
To build on my recollections of an unplanned life spent in search of marketing to highlight the need for younger scholars to think about marketing in a dynamic ever-changing systems setting.
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The purpose of this paper is to consider why Richard Dawes (1793-1867) academic, college business manager and Church of England priest developed a curriculum in a nineteenth…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to consider why Richard Dawes (1793-1867) academic, college business manager and Church of England priest developed a curriculum in a nineteenth century English village school with which he sought to modify differences in social class and achieved outstanding results in student engagement and educational attainment.
Design/methodology/approach
The approach is documentary. It uses books and internet scans of original documents. It locates Dawes's work in the social movements of early nineteenth century Britain and associates Dawes's activities with those of Kay-Shuttleworth who was administrator of the British government's first move to provide education for poor children.
Findings
Dawes emphasised tolerance and secular teaching within a school system devoted to instilling Church of England doctrine. He based classroom teaching on things familiar to children and integrated subject content. He used science to encourage parents of “that class immediately above that of labourers” to send their children to his school to overcome class differences. For his system to be widely adopted he needed science teachers trained in his practical teaching methods. Initial government support for science in elementary schools was eroded by Church of England opposition to state intervention in education.
Originality/value
Dawes's pedagogic achievements are well known in the history of science education; his secular teaching in a church school and his valiant attempt to use science as an instrument of social change, perhaps less so.