Caroline L. Davey, James A. Powell, Ian Cooper and Jennifer E. Powell
Action learning is intended to enable a group of professionals (a SET) to tackle work problems, develop solutions and reflect upon the success and failure of their actions. As…
Abstract
Action learning is intended to enable a group of professionals (a SET) to tackle work problems, develop solutions and reflect upon the success and failure of their actions. As part of the UK construction industry's drive to improve learning and performance, four SETs of small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) were established. This paper evaluates the capacity of action learning to promote innovation and use of technologies within a CIOB‐funded SET located in Watford. Construction companies were unable to address real problems related to their day‐to‐day activities due to competition. Instead, they identified an industry‐wide issue – a lack of quality recruits – and marshalled resources to provide better careers advice and promote opportunities for builders. The role of action learning in empowering construction SMEs to contribute to industry change programmes is explored.
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Lauren T. Meaux, Stephanie C. Doran and Jennifer M. Cox
Unconscious biases against certain groups aid in forming assumptions which may be promulgated in the USA via popular news media linking rare but memorable violent acts with…
Abstract
Purpose
Unconscious biases against certain groups aid in forming assumptions which may be promulgated in the USA via popular news media linking rare but memorable violent acts with specific groups. However, the relationship between marginalized group association, assumptions regarding the motive for violent acts and individual media consumption has never been directly examined. This study aims to directly examine this relationship.
Design/methodology/approach
In the present study, individuals read a vignette of a mass shooting in which the perpetrator’s implied religion (i.e. Islam or unknown religion) was manipulated. Participants then indicated their assumptions regarding motive (i.e. terrorism or mental illness) and personal media consumption habits.
Findings
Contrary to hypotheses, differences in assumed motive based on implied religion were not found; participants were not more likely to associate an assumed Muslim perpetrator with terrorism as a motive or consider the assumed non-Muslim perpetrator to be mentally ill.
Originality/value
These unexpected findings are discussed in the context of the data-collection period, which coincidentally overlapped with a well-publicized act of domestic terrorism that led to a unique national debate regarding biased news coverage and associations between religion, ethnicity, terrorism and mental illness.
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Owen P. O'Sullivan, Anita Bignell, Jennifer Powell, Sandra Parish, Lloyd Campbell, Hannah Iannelli, Chris Attoe and Grégoire Billon
During COVID-19, Maudsley Simulation successfully pivoted to fully online delivery of simulation-based education (SBE) in mental health. In migrating digitally, the simulation…
Abstract
Purpose
During COVID-19, Maudsley Simulation successfully pivoted to fully online delivery of simulation-based education (SBE) in mental health. In migrating digitally, the simulation faculty experienced a range of new phenomena and challenges. The authors’ experiences may be transferable to other specialities and for other educator groups. By sharing the authors’ experiences, this study aims to support others adapt to online SBE.
Design/methodology/approach
This piece represents the authors’ collective reflections on the challenges of adapting their facilitation skills to the online environment. It also offers various suggestions on how to improve the learner experience in view of these challenges.
Findings
Beyond merely platform orientation and operating procedure familiarisation, the team gained insights into ensuring optimal learning, engagement and participant experience during online deliveries. Delivery of online SBE brings several potential barriers to psychological safety and these warrant careful consideration by experienced simulationists.
Practical implications
Optimising participant engagement and psychological safety remain key considerations despite this novel medium. Facilitators must be willing to adapt accordingly to begin delivering high-quality online SBE.
Originality/value
From their experience, facilitators must reframe their debriefing expectations and adjust how they engage participants and manage group dynamics given the inherently different nature of this new learning environment.
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Jennifer Dusdal, Mike Zapp, Marcelo Marques and Justin J.W. Powell
Informed by multiple disciplines, theories, and methods, higher education scholars have developed a robust and diverse literature in many countries. Yet, some important…
Abstract
Informed by multiple disciplines, theories, and methods, higher education scholars have developed a robust and diverse literature in many countries. Yet, some important (organizational) sociological perspectives, both more established and more recent, are insufficiently linked. In particular, we identify two theoretical strands – institutional and relational – that, when joined, help to explain contemporary developments in global higher education and yield new organizational insights. We review relevant literature from each perspective, both in their general formulations and with specific reference to contemporary higher education research. Within the broad institutional strand, we highlight strategic action fields, organizational actorhood, and associational memberships. Within the relational strand, we focus on ties and relationships that are especially crucial as science has entered an age of (inter)national research collaboration. Across these theories, we discuss linkages between concepts, objects, and levels of analysis. We explore the methodological approach of social network analysis as it offers great potential to connect these strands and, thus, to advance contemporary higher education research in a collaborative era.
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Justin J. W. Powell, Frank Fernandez, John T. Crist, Jennifer Dusdal, Liang Zhang and David P. Baker
This chapter provides an overview of the findings and chapters of a thematic volume in the International Perspectives on Education and Society (IPES) series. It describes the…
Abstract
Purpose
This chapter provides an overview of the findings and chapters of a thematic volume in the International Perspectives on Education and Society (IPES) series. It describes the common dataset and methods used by an international research team.
Design/methodology/approach
The chapter synthesizes the results of a series of country-level case studies and cross-national and regional comparisons on the growth of scientific research from 1900 until 2011. Additionally, the chapter provides a quantitative analysis of global trends in scientific, peer-reviewed publishing over the same period.
Findings
The introduction identifies common themes that emerged across the case studies examined in-depth during the multi-year research project Science Productivity, Higher Education, Research and Development and the Knowledge Society (SPHERE). First, universities have long been and are increasingly the primary organizations in science production around the globe. Second, the chapters describe in-country and cross-country patterns of competition and collaboration in scientific publications. Third, the chapters describe the national policy environments and institutionalized organizational forms that foster scientific research.
Originality/value
The introduction reviews selected findings and limitations of previous bibliometric studies and explains that the chapters in the volume address these limitations by applying neo-institutional theoretical frameworks to analyze bibliometric data over an extensive period.
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Emmanuel Economou, Edwina Luck and Jennifer Bartlett
Big data and analytics make digital communications more effective, but little is known about how institutional pressures shape data-driven communications. These pressures…
Abstract
Purpose
Big data and analytics make digital communications more effective, but little is known about how institutional pressures shape data-driven communications. These pressures determine and constrain how, what, when and to whom practitioners should communicate. This empirical study explores how institutional forces influence the use of data in guiding digital communications. The paper identifies factors that impact communications and shape practitioner views on particular tools in their day-to-day work.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses a qualitative exploratory approach with in-depth interviews of 15 Australian communication practitioners through the lens of neo-institutional theory. Thematic analysis was applied to identify three main themes.
Findings
Communications professionals disclosed how they were influenced by coercive institutional forces such as ambiguous data privacy regulations, normative forces that shaped ethical concerns, professionalism and various challenges, and mimetic forces that determined shared methods and implementation of digital communications technologies such as analytics. Furthermore, the authors reveal how analytics – tools typically associated with uncertainty and mimetic influences – exert coercive pressures that could lead to misguided decision-making.
Research limitations/implications
This study’s findings highlight the need for practitioners to learn more about the inner workings of analytics tools and for managers to determine if the perceived benefits of these solutions outweigh any undesirable effects.
Practical implications
The study contributes to extant research on digitalization in strategic communication by providing new insights into practitioner views and challenges with digital communications technologies.
Originality/value
Despite the considerable effects of institutional pressures, this study is the first to explore the impacts of data-driven communications at the level of individual practitioners. The paper advances neo-institutional theory in public relations (PR), strategic communication and corporate communications at the micro level.
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Paul Paolucci, Micah Holland and Shannon Williams
Machiavelli's dictums in The Prince (1977) instigated the modern discourse on power. Arguing that “there's such a difference between the way we really live and the way we ought to…
Abstract
Machiavelli's dictums in The Prince (1977) instigated the modern discourse on power. Arguing that “there's such a difference between the way we really live and the way we ought to live that the man who neglects the real to study the ideal will learn to accomplish his ruin, not his salvation” (Machiavelli, 1977, p. 44), his approach is a realist one. In this text, Machiavelli (1977, p. 3) endeavors to “discuss the rule of princes” and to “lay down principles for them.” Taking his lead, Foucault (1978, p. 97) argued that “if it is true that Machiavelli was among the few…who conceived the power of the Prince in terms of force relationships, perhaps we need to go one step further, do without the persona of the Prince, and decipher mechanisms on the basis of a strategy that is immanent in force relationships.” He believed that we should “investigate…how mechanisms of power have been able to function…how these mechanisms…have begun to become economically advantageous and politically useful…in a given context for specific reasons,” and, therefore, “we should…base our analysis of power on the study of the techniques and tactics of domination” (Foucault, 1980, pp. 100–102). Conceptualizing such techniques and tactics as the “art of governance”, Foucault (1991), examined power as strategies geared toward managing civic populations through shaping people's dispositions and behaviors.
Stephanie A. Andel, Derek M. Hutchinson and Paul E. Spector
The modern workplace contains many physical and interpersonal hazards to employee physical and psychological health/well-being. This chapter integrates the literatures on…
Abstract
The modern workplace contains many physical and interpersonal hazards to employee physical and psychological health/well-being. This chapter integrates the literatures on occupational safety (i.e., accidents and injuries) and mistreatment (physical violence and psychological abuse). A model is provided linking environmental (climate and leadership), individual differences (demographics and personality), motivation, behavior, and outcomes. It notes that some of the same variables have been linked to both safety and mistreatment, such as safety climate, mistreatment climate, conscientiousness, and emotional stability.
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Mark Julien, Karen Somerville and Jennifer Brant
The purpose of this paper is to examine Indigenous perspectives of work-life enrichment and conflict and provides insights to better support Indigenous employees.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine Indigenous perspectives of work-life enrichment and conflict and provides insights to better support Indigenous employees.
Design/methodology/approach
Interviews were conducted with 56 Indigenous people from six Canadian provinces. In total, 33 of the respondents were female and 23 were male. The interview responses were transcribed and entered in NVivo10. Thematic analysis was used.
Findings
The authors’ respondents struggled with feeling marginalized and felt frustrated that they could not engage in their cultural and family practices. The respondents spoke of putting family needs ahead of work and that many respondents paid a price for doing so.
Research limitations/implications
The results are not generalizable to all Indigenous peoples, however these results do fill a void in the literature.
Practical implications
Employers must consider revising policies including providing more supervisor support in the form of educating supervisors on various Indigenous cultural practices and examine ways of providing more flexibility with respect to cultural and family practices.
Social implications
Indigenous peoples have been marginalized since the advent of colonialism. This research addresses a gap in the literature by presenting how a group of Indigenous respondents frames work-life enrichment and conflict.
Originality/value
Very few studies have examined Indigenous perspectives on work-life enrichment and conflict using a qualitative research design. It also aligns with one of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s calls to action.
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Justin J. W. Powell and Jennifer Dusdal
Growth in scientific production and productivity over the 20th century resulted significantly from three major countries in European science – France, Germany, and the United…
Abstract
Purpose
Growth in scientific production and productivity over the 20th century resulted significantly from three major countries in European science – France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Charting the development of universities and research institutes that bolster Europe’s key position in global science, we uncover both stable and dynamic patterns of productivity in the fields of STEM, including health, over the 20th century. Ongoing internationalization of higher education and science has been accompanied by increasing competition and collaboration. Despite policy goals to foster innovation and expand research capacity, policies cannot fully account for the differential growth of scientific productivity we chart from 1975 to 2010.
Approach and Research Design
Our sociological neo-institutional framework facilitates explanation of differences in institutional settings, organizational forms, and organizations that produce the most European research. We measure growth of published peer-reviewed articles indexed in Thomson Reuters’ Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE).
Findings
Organizational forms vary in their contributions, with universities accounting for nearly half but rising in France; ultrastable in Germany at four-fifths, and growing at around two-thirds in the United Kingdom. Differing institutionalization pathways created the conditions necessary for continuous, but varying growth in scientific production and productivity in the European center of global science. The research university is key in all three countries, and we identify organizations leading in research output.
Originality/value
Few studies explicitly compare across time, space, and different levels of analysis. We show how important European science has been to overall global science production and productivity. In-depth comparisons, especially the organizational fields and forms in which science is produced, are crucial if policy is to support research and development.