Gracia M. Bruscas, Gwyn Groves and John M. Kay
The most successful companies want to remain successful and are continuously trying to improve their manufacturing operations. How and why these changes are decided, upon and…
Abstract
The most successful companies want to remain successful and are continuously trying to improve their manufacturing operations. How and why these changes are decided, upon and driven through to implementation is of interest to all companies in any particular manufacturing sector. The research described in this paper looks at the drivers of change in UK clothing manufacturing companies. Clothing manufacturers face competitive pressures just as in other industries, but the sector has sonic particular characteristics. In the UK clothing industry, retailers rather than manufacturers dominate the list of key players. This concentration of retail buying power is coupled with intense competition in the home market from overseas and a highly negative balance of trade. The factors investigated as potential drivers of change included:
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At a meeting of the Hull Corporation Health Committee, on November 22nd, the Town Clerk referred to the decision in the recent case of milk, alleged to have contained dirt…
Abstract
At a meeting of the Hull Corporation Health Committee, on November 22nd, the Town Clerk referred to the decision in the recent case of milk, alleged to have contained dirt. Originally the justices dismissed the summons on a legal point. The Corporation, prosecuting, asked for a case to be stated in the High Court, and the latter decided in the Corporation's favour, and sent the case back to the Hull magistrates to be heard on its merits. The evidence of the prosecution was that the milk contained 3·9 parts of dirt per 100,000 parts of milk, the far greater part of the sediment present consisting of manure. In previous cases prosecutions were secured where the dirt was slightly less, but this summons was dismissed on the ground that there was no standard laid down by law as to what amount of dirt might be permitted. If this was a reason for dismissal, then milk might be half dirt. That was absurd. The question was “What was the Corporation going to do?” He suggested that they should go on exactly as they were doing, take the cases, and place the responsibility on the justices. Perhaps if they went on a little longer they would get some idea at to what the Bench considered was such a state of contamination as to justify the local authority in taking action.
This paper argues that a performance measurement system (PMS) is a prerequisite to the introduction of business process re‐engineering (BPR) based on the role it plays in the…
Abstract
This paper argues that a performance measurement system (PMS) is a prerequisite to the introduction of business process re‐engineering (BPR) based on the role it plays in the phases of introducing change. This hypothesis was tested by examining the relationship between the congruence of PMS and the concepts of empowerment, integration and strategic alignment. Data were collected from 301 respondents in 19 manufacturing and 30 financial companies in Bahrain. Analysis indicated that PMS and strategic alignment are strongly related, empowerment is moderately related and integration showed a weak relationship.
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In our last ‘Notes and News’ we made an unfortunate mistake. In writing on the poetry section of the School Library Association's book list Fiction, Verse and Legend we referred…
Abstract
In our last ‘Notes and News’ we made an unfortunate mistake. In writing on the poetry section of the School Library Association's book list Fiction, Verse and Legend we referred to the Bodley Head series of poetry for the young as ‘now regrettably out of print’. Before making this categorical statement we had referred to the Bodley Head's current catalogue ‘with complete back‐list’, and had failed to find any reference to the series, but we had also failed to notice the comparatively insignificant sentence on page ii of the cover: ‘Children's books are listed in a separate catalogue.’
Mark Leather, Gil Fewings and Su Porter
This paper discusses the history of outdoor education at a university in the South West England, starting in 1840.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper discusses the history of outdoor education at a university in the South West England, starting in 1840.
Design/methodology/approach
This research uses secondary sources of data; original unpublished work from the university archive is used alongside published works on the university founders and first principals, as well as sources on the developments of outdoor education in the UK.
Findings
Both founding principals were driven by their strong values of social justice and their own experiences of poverty and inequality, to establish a means for everyone to access high-quality education regardless of background or means. They saw education as key to providing a pathway out of poverty and towards opportunity and achievement for all. Kay-Shuttleworth, founder of St John's, wrote that “the best book is Nature, with an intelligent interpreter”, whilst Derwent Coleridge, St Mark's first principal, had a profound love of nature and reverence for his father's poetic circle. His father, the famous English Romantic poet Samuel Taylor–Coleridge, made the first recorded use of the verb “mountaineering”. Coleridge was using a new word for a new activity; the ascending of mountains for pleasure, rather than for economic or military purposes.
Originality/value
The Romantic influence on outdoor education, the early appreciation of nature and the outdoors for physical and psychological well-being and the drive for social justice have not been told in any case study before.
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Using Lundy's model (2007), this chapter adopts a child-centred approach to discuss decision-making in relation to designing a study which aimed to amplify childhood voices of…
Abstract
Using Lundy's model (2007), this chapter adopts a child-centred approach to discuss decision-making in relation to designing a study which aimed to amplify childhood voices of parental separation (Kay-Flowers, 2019). It examines the role of young people in designing and co-producing the research tools, specifically designed to give voice to childhood experiences of parental separation and divorce. It explains how the research findings were shared with different audiences and reflects on the effectiveness of the approaches taken.
The chapter starts by outlining the four elements of ‘space’, ‘voice’, ‘audience’ and ‘influence’ in Lundy's model (2007) before going on to identify the gap in existing research on children's experience of parental separation and divorce, explaining why their voices need to be heard.
A focus group of young people were involved in designing the study. Finding current methods unsuitable for addressing the research question, they co-produced new research tools specifically designed for the study, alongside the researcher, in a process known as bricolage. The chapter explains the processes involved in creating the bricolage and describes the newly created research tools which were an online questionnaire and Prompt Simulation Video (PSV).
The last part of the chapter explains how ‘audience’ and ‘influence’ informed decision-making about how the study's findings could be presented to amplify childhood voices of parental separation and divorce, to ensure they were heard by different audiences of academics, practitioners, parents, public and children. It concludes with consideration of the effectiveness of this approach.
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THE Reference Department of Paisley Central Library today occupies the room which was the original Public Library built in 1870 and opened to the public in April 1871. Since that…
Abstract
THE Reference Department of Paisley Central Library today occupies the room which was the original Public Library built in 1870 and opened to the public in April 1871. Since that date two extensions to the building have taken place. The first, in 1882, provided a separate room for both Reference and Lending libraries; the second, opened in 1938, provided a new Children's Department. Together with the original cost of the building, these extensions were entirely financed by Sir Peter Coats, James Coats of Auchendrane and Daniel Coats respectively. The people of Paisley indeed owe much to this one family, whose generosity was great. They not only provided the capital required but continued to donate many useful and often extremely valuable works of reference over the many years that followed. In 1975 Paisley Library was incorporated in the new Renfrew District library service.
Victoria Crittenden and William Crittenden
As a business executive and philanthropist, Mary Kay Ash is legendary as a glass-ceiling breaker. With the belief that Mary Kay Ash is both modern and relevant, while…
Abstract
Purpose
As a business executive and philanthropist, Mary Kay Ash is legendary as a glass-ceiling breaker. With the belief that Mary Kay Ash is both modern and relevant, while simultaneously legendary, the overall purpose of this paper is to explore the role of Mary Kay Ash as an influential entrepreneur. This research responds to the call by Cogliser and Brigham (2004) for an increased understanding of how entrepreneurial leaders influence, challenge, inspire and develop followers.
Design/methodology/approach
Following on research by Hoppe (2013), this objective was accomplished via a pentadic analysis of Mary Kay Ash’s rhetoric aimed to influence the mental mindset of readers (followers) over the course of generations. Burke’s pentad was the sense-making tool used for examining Ash’s rhetoric of influence as an entrepreneurial leader. The data used in the pentadic analysis were also analyzed via Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) and IBM Watson Emotion Analysis to see where analyses might converge or diverge.
Findings
Based on the analysis of her written work, Mary Kay Ash resided at the intersection of leadership and entrepreneurship and, in so doing, was an influencer. Her primary rhetorical approach to influencing was idealism. Interwoven in her writings, she also exhibited both pragmatism and realism. She knew that she had to start the business to have the future she desired and that she needed to train her team appropriately for success to be forthcoming. The motivation in Mary Kay Ash’s rhetoric was that of influencing people so they would be the best that they could be.
Research limitations/implications
Qualitative research brings with it an array of inevitable research problems. Pentadic analysis cannot be judged by the basic objective standards of reliability and validity because objective reality does not exist in personal interpretation. That is, one person as a critic cannot be impartial because the interpretation is only one personal way of viewing the data and another critic might view the same pentads and come up with different ratios. With this subjectivity in mind, however, the data used in the pentadic analysis were also analyzed via LIWC and IBM Watson Emotion Analysis to see where analyses might converge or diverge.
Practical implications
The findings from this research denote clearly that Mary Kay Ash was a forerunner of the modern day influencer. As a primogenitor of the influencer marketing phenomenon, Mary Kay Ash’s entrepreneurial legacy is expected to continue through generations of followers. This finding speaks to the importance of today’s entrepreneurs using the spoken and written word to influence others and create a lasting organizational legacy.
Originality/value
Countless scholars have used pentadic analysis, with a variety of artifacts, to examine the motives behind the rhetoric. However, rhetoric as a means of persuasion and influence has received little attention within the context of the written works by management gurus (Jones et al., 2009), and, aside from the exploration by Berglund and Wigren (2012), the narrative of entrepreneurial influence has not benefitted from close examination.
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Remarks on the parallel in the basis of the riches of thearistocracy and plutocracy. Illustrates the argument from the history ofthe development of the cotton textile industry…
Abstract
Remarks on the parallel in the basis of the riches of the aristocracy and plutocracy. Illustrates the argument from the history of the development of the cotton textile industry, the underpinnings for its growth being the inventions prior to and during the eighteenth century. Exemplifies the part of inventions as the begetter of plutocratic wealth. Sir Richard Arkwright, notably, was its salacious issue.