Faith-based organisations (FBOs) and secular NGOs provide important services to victims of trafficking, exploitation, and those involved in sex work, yet comparative analysis of…
Abstract
Purpose
Faith-based organisations (FBOs) and secular NGOs provide important services to victims of trafficking, exploitation, and those involved in sex work, yet comparative analysis of their approaches to care has lacked attention in the literature. The purpose of this paper is to examine these two types of organisations, exploring the extent to which faith influences the ways FBOs work with their clients.
Design/methodology/approach
In total, 41 interviews were conducted with leaders of 13 Christian FBOs and 12 secular NGOs in Cambodia, and organisational mission statements were reviewed. An input-output conceptual model was used as a framework to gather and analyse data.
Findings
While all FBOs maintained a high regard for their clients’ spiritual needs and operated with a faith-related approach to care, secular NGOs also, at times, included culturally embedded religious elements into their programming. The nature of FBOs’ faith-related programming, however, clearly distinguished these organisations from their secular counterparts. Despite such distinctions, similarities were maintained among both types of organisations in the behavioural or recovery outcomes they sought in their clients.
Research limitations/implications
Limitations include the study’s focus on organisations that serve a specific clientele in one development context. Research implications include the study pointing to the necessity of acknowledging the development context as critical to the ways in which religion may or may not influence the approaches to care of both FBOs and secular NGOs. The paper also contributes insight into the relationship between the non-resource input of faith, and services provided by FBOs.
Practical implications
Given that both types of organisations sought change in their clients, practitioners should ensure that their organisational approaches to care are conducive to the outcomes they seek. Though organisational policy may stipulate that clients are free to choose whether or not to participate in faith-related programming, FBOs should always ensure a care environment in which clients feel free not to participate in such programming.
Originality/value
Though FBOs and secular NGOs sought many similar behavioural or recovery outcomes from their clients, the development context in which these organisations worked – unlike some other contexts – and the role of faith “infusing” FBOs, led to clear, observable differences in their approaches to care. The study highlights the importance of taking into account these factors when seeking to decipher differences that may or may not exist between faith-based and secular non-state social policy actors.
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Ammar Abdellatif Sammour, Weifeng Chen and John M.T. Balmer
This paper aims to study the corporate heritage brand traits and corporate heritage brand identity by concentrating on developing key dimensions for the corporate heritage brand…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to study the corporate heritage brand traits and corporate heritage brand identity by concentrating on developing key dimensions for the corporate heritage brand dimensions in the retailing industry in the UK. This study advances the corporate brand heritage theory and introduces the theory of corporate heritage brand identity, which is developed from the case study of John Lewis – one of the most respected and oldest retails in the UK established in 1864.
Design/methodology/approach
This empirical study has adopted a theory-building case study using qualitative data. It uses semi-structured interviews that were organised and managed by John Lewis Heritage Centre in Cookham. A total of 14 participants were involved in this study. We have used Nvivo.11 software to set the main themes and codes for this study framework.
Findings
This study identifies Balmer’s (2013) corporate heritage brand traits that are essential to be considered for the corporate heritage brands in the retailing industry to sustain their innovativeness and competitiveness. The findings of the case study informed the four dimensions of corporate heritage brand identity, which include price, quality, symbol and design. The findings are incorporated into a theoretical framework of corporate heritage brand identity traits.
Practical implications
The discussed traits of this study can help brand senior management to enhance their corporate heritage reputation and sustainability through maintaining these (four) traits over their brand, and inform their brand stakeholders about their brand heritage success.
Originality/value
This is one of the few attempts to develop a research framework of corporate heritage brand identity. This framework suggests four dimensions of corporate heritage brand identity traits including brand price, quality, design and symbol. This is one of the first attempts to study corporate heritage branding management traits in the retailing industry sector.
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Orla Feeney and Bernard Pierce
The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of accounting information in new product development (NPD) using Strong Structuration Theory. NPD is a complex social action…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of accounting information in new product development (NPD) using Strong Structuration Theory. NPD is a complex social action involving a wide range of different actors and clusters of actors. Strong Structuration Theory allows the authors to take a broad view of this social system in order to develop a complete picture of the clusters of actors involved, to comprehensively examine the relevant structures, both internal and external, and to understand how these are formed, reformed or modified through the actions of agents.
Design/methodology/approach
A field study of the manufacturing division of a large group was conducted which explored how managers use accounting information during NPD. Examining how these managers draw upon their conjuncturally specific structures of signification, legitimation and domination, and how these are affected by their external structural conditions and their general dispositional frames of meaning, allowed the authors to develop an in-depth understanding of the managers’ behaviour during NPD.
Findings
These findings suggest that the managers’ use of accounting information is determined as much by the subjective nature of the managers themselves as it is by the objective characteristics of the structures with which they interact. By using Stones’ composite research strategy, which encourages the authors to conceive of internal structures as always looking outwards and external structures as always looking inwards, the findings help the authors to understand the “connecting tissue” between the different elements of the quadripartite of structuration which has been lacking in previous research in the area. This understanding of the connecting tissue between structures was facilitated by the micro-analysis of six managers within a given conjuncture. Using the concept of the agent-in-focus as a tool with which to switch lenses from manager to manager acknowledged the web-like interdependencies between different processes of structuration. This allowed an exploration of the relationships between the various agents and structures.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the understanding of Stones’ Strong Structuration Theory at both an ontological and methodological level by operationalising Stones’ model in a case study setting.
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The purpose of this paper is to explore twentieth century sportscapes and their role in the development of urban arenas as places of sport.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore twentieth century sportscapes and their role in the development of urban arenas as places of sport.
Design/methodology/approach
Utilizing frame theory and sport business history scholarship, the author examines entrepreneurs' development of six‐day bicycle races at Madison Square Garden. The main primary sources include autobiographies, morgue files, and newspapers.
Findings
In this paper, it is argued that entrepreneurs' shaping and marketing of six‐day races and their sportscapes resulted in a popular sporting spectacle and helped to promote arenas as spaces and places of sport.
Originality/value
The paper demonstrates the process and development of “frame management” in urban arenas and their transition to spaces and places of sport. By exploring six‐day bicycle races at Madison Square Garden, the paper shows the importance of a now‐forgotten cultural event to the development of the multi‐billion dollar sport industry and to one of the world's most iconic arenas. The paper adds to scholarship on bicycle racing and marketing history, as well as the historiography of the sport industry.
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Purpose: One of the objectives of this research was to identify whether “mad”, “bad” and “sad” frames, identified in modern news reporting in other Western nations, are also…
Abstract
Purpose: One of the objectives of this research was to identify whether “mad”, “bad” and “sad” frames, identified in modern news reporting in other Western nations, are also evident in historical newspapers in New Zealand, a nation geographically distant. Methodology/approach: Qualitative content analysis was used to analyze reporting of multiple-child murders in New Zealand between 1870 and 1930. Content was sourced from a digitized newspaper database and identified media frames were analyzed under the categories of “mad”, “bad” and “sad”. Findings: Historical New Zealand media constructed “mad,” “bad,” and “sad” frames for the killers, however, instead of being classified with a single frame many killers were portrayed using a combination of two or even three. In some cases, media ignored facts which could have provided an alternative portrayal of the killers. In other cases, no obvious frames were employed. Research limitations: This research does not include analysis of media frame building in modern news reporting. Originality/value: Media construction of frames for multiple-child killers in historical New Zealand news reporting has not been explored before.
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With precursor software dating to 1972, multi‐LIS became the first commercially available, fully integrated library system in North America to run on the Unix operating system. In…
Abstract
With precursor software dating to 1972, multi‐LIS became the first commercially available, fully integrated library system in North America to run on the Unix operating system. In 1988, multiLIS developers, Sobeco Ernst & Young Inc. (SEY), ported multiLIS software to the MIPS Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) processor, making it the First fully integrated software program to be available on a RISC platform. multiLIS fully supports both CAN/MARC and USMARC as well as the monographs specifications of UNIMARC. As the multiLIS software was developed in a resource‐sharing environment, consortiums are a natural market for the multiLIS product.
Purpose – This paper extends research on social movement media by focusing on the use of a literary genre – realist fiction – namely, the labor problem novel in the context of the…
Abstract
Purpose – This paper extends research on social movement media by focusing on the use of a literary genre – realist fiction – namely, the labor problem novel in the context of the labor movement and countermovement in late 19th-century America.
Methodology – I do a close reading of a significant early dialogical cluster of such novels to address three key questions: (1) Field position of authors – What was the position of these labor problem authors in relation to the movement field and literary field and how did that positioning matter? (2) Genre selection – What was it about the realist novel that attracted labor problem partisans to it? (3) Internal content – How did authors shape the internal structure and content of their stories?
Findings – As literary activists, authors pivoted between the movement field and literary field selecting the novel for the special powers that it possessed relative to other historically available media. Authors produced stories with a good/evil binary attached to characters that stood for emerging social categories in young industrial America. During the Gilded Age (and beyond) the novel played an important role as medium for the labor movement and its opposition – characterizing collective actors, dramatizing forms of action, providing materials for claims of injustice or threats, solutions to social problems, and new categories and collective identities – all with powerful emotional appeal and entertainment value.
Implications – This study suggests that social movement scholars might expand their purview of cultural media used by movements and also take genre and its selection by activists seriously.
Originality – This study demonstrates how literature – realist fiction – has been shaped by movement agents and played an important, but under-appreciated, role in the struggle over cultural supremacy in the context of movement–countermovement dynamics.
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Eng Chew and Kenneth Anthony Dovey
This paper aims to report on case-study research that explores the role of leadership practices, in particular, in enhancing the capacity of an enterprise to learn to create new…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to report on case-study research that explores the role of leadership practices, in particular, in enhancing the capacity of an enterprise to learn to create new value from a diverse range of sources. The capacity to sustain value creation over time, and across turbulent environments, increasingly differentiates enterprise performance. Under the umbrella term of “dynamic capabilities”, a range of practices have been identified in the literature as contributing to an enterprise’s ability to learn to perform this task successfully.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is based on case studies of three enterprises whose founders have sustained the creation of new value for customers over decades. Through a series of unstructured interviews with each founder, the tacit knowledge gained from years of learning how to create, and re-create, value, is made explicit through hermeneutic analysis of the interview transcripts.
Findings
The data identify four key areas of leadership practice that underpin the capacity to learn to continuously create new value over significant periods of time. The most important of these are the social practices that generate and leverage the intangible capital resources (in particular, the resource of trust) that underpin the collaborative learning on which value creation processes depend.
Research limitations/implications
As interpretive research, the knowledge accessed through this research is context-dependent and cannot be readily generalised. The validity of the knowledge is high, however, as the epistemological and ontological assumptions of the interpretive research paradigm recognise the political nature of organisations and, thus, of learning and value creation. As such, the knowledge generated by the case analyses offers a rich alternative perspective on the issue under research.
Practical implications
The cases illuminate the nature of learning that supports continuous value creation in enterprises. Such learning is framed by several leadership practices that enable the self-reflexivity that underpins the continuous conversion of action-generated tacit knowledge into more strategically useful explicit knowledge. At the core of these leadership practices is stakeholder collaboration and intellectual humility.
Social implications
The results show that learning to create sustainable value over time and diverse contexts, has a socio-political dimension in that it depends heavily on generating and leveraging the intangible resources (such as trust, commitment, ideas) that reside within social relationships.
Originality/value
The research is located within the interpretive research paradigm and thus offers an alternative view to that of conventional positivist research. Furthermore, the results indicate that learning is a strategic priority in rapidly changing environments and, thus, is a key leadership responsibility. Furthermore, the results show that value creation is a collaborative stakeholder achievement.
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Matsushita leads a number of companies coming into the robots business, while Yamaha installs over 100 arc welding robots, and international ventures increase.
Víctor M. González, Bonnie Nardi and Gloria Mark
An ensemble is an intermediate unit of work between action and activity in the hierarchical framework proposed by classical activity theory. Ensembles are the mid‐level of…
Abstract
Purpose
An ensemble is an intermediate unit of work between action and activity in the hierarchical framework proposed by classical activity theory. Ensembles are the mid‐level of activity, offering more flexibility than objects, but more purposeful structure than actions. The paper aims to introduce the notion of ensembles to understand the way object‐related activities are instantiated in practice.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper presents an analysis of the practices of professional information workers in two different companies using direct and systematic observation of human behavior. It also provides an analysis and discussion of the activity theory literature and how it has been applied in areas such as human‐computer interaction and computer‐supported collaborative work.
Findings
The authors illustrate the relevance of the notion of ensembles for activity theory and suggest some benefits of this conceptualization for analyzing human work in areas such as human‐computer interaction and computer‐supported collaborative work.
Research limitations/implications
The notion of ensembles can be useful for the development of a computing infrastructure oriented to more effectively supporting work activities.
Originality/value
The paper shows that the value of the notion of ensembles is to close a conceptual gulf not adequately addressed in activity theory, and to understand the practical aspects of the instantiation of objects over time.