Claire Greaves, Judy Gilmore, Lizelle Bernhardt and Lisa Ross
The aim of this paper is to explain how University Hospitals of Leicester's Nuclear Medicine service managers needed to reduce waiting times to comply with internal clinical…
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of this paper is to explain how University Hospitals of Leicester's Nuclear Medicine service managers needed to reduce waiting times to comply with internal clinical requirements and with external local primary care trust (PCT) and national Department of Health targets.
Design/methodology/approach
The team undertook a comprehensive service review to identify problem areas and potential improvements, including: process mapping; data gathering (activity and demand, equipment and staff availability/utilisation); external practice reviews, searching evidence bases; and financial implications. This case study describes how an inter‐disciplinary team redesigned the service and used new working methods to reduce waiting times. Their aim was to discuss a service's practical elements and show how innovation leading to sustainable change can be implemented effectively.
Findings
The review highlighted service delivery bottlenecks for myocardial perfusion imaging, which were linked to medical staff shortages, staff use and equipment between hospital sites, and a silo approach to referrals rather than a coordinated organisation‐wide approach.
Practical implications
Introducing enhanced roles allowed nurses, radiographers and technologists to undertake work previously performed by medical staff thus removing a key service bottleneck. Modifications to service delivery and a cultural change in nuclear medicine resulted in a service that was more efficient, flexible and able to cope with increased demand.
Originality/value
These changes meant that minimum waiting‐time targets were achieved, in particular waiting for myocardial perfusion imaging (reduced from 42 weeks in 2005 to two weeks by 2009). Changes allowed service managers to maintain short waiting times in the current, challenging healthcare climate.
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Film provides an alternative medium for assessing our interpretations of cultural icons. This selective list looks at the film and video sources for information on and…
Abstract
Film provides an alternative medium for assessing our interpretations of cultural icons. This selective list looks at the film and video sources for information on and interpretations of the life of Woody Guthrie.
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Far from being ‘a great equaliser’, the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated existing inequities and produced new ones. Yet, in the face of the multiple crises which the COVID-19…
Abstract
Far from being ‘a great equaliser’, the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated existing inequities and produced new ones. Yet, in the face of the multiple crises which the COVID-19 pandemic amplified, including a crisis of care, novel imaginaries and practices emerged to navigate the instability it wrought. For instance, although children were largely out of focus during the pandemic, when they appeared in discussions it was often along well-worn paths bound up in the chameleon-like figure of the child as the risk and at-risk. Yet by paying close attention to children's own experiences, we can see multiple examples of their care for and about Others. I make the case that this care was radical in the context of Coronavirus, not least because the tropes of the risky or at-risk child threatened to fracture possibilities of intergenerational solidarities necessary for navigating the pandemic and important for addressing widespread injustices.
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Judy Zolkiewski, Victoria Story, Jamie Burton, Paul Chan, Andre Gomes, Philippa Hunter-Jones, Lisa O’Malley, Linda D. Peters, Chris Raddats and William Robinson
The purpose of this paper is to critique the adequacy of efforts to capture the complexities of customer experience in a business-to-business (B2B) context using input–output…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to critique the adequacy of efforts to capture the complexities of customer experience in a business-to-business (B2B) context using input–output measures. The paper introduces a strategic customer experience management framework to capture the complexity of B2B service interactions and discusses the value of outcomes-based measurement.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a theoretical paper that reviews extant literature related to B2B customer experience and asks fresh questions regarding B2B customer experience at a more strategic network level.
Findings
The paper offers a reconceptualisation of B2B customer experience, proposes a strategic customer experience management framework and outlines a future research agenda.
Research limitations/implications
This paper is conceptual and seeks to raise questions surrounding the under-examined area of B2B customer experience. As a consequence, it has inevitable limitations resulting from the lack of empirical evidence to support the reconceptualisation.
Practical implications
Existing measures of customer experience are problematic when applied in a B2B (services) context. Rather than adopting input- and output-based measures, widely used in a business-to-consumer (B2C) context, a B2B context requires a more strategic approach to capturing and managing customer experience. Focussing on strategically important issues should generate opportunities for value co-creation and are more likely to involve outcomes-based measures.
Social implications
Improving the understanding of customer experience in a B2B context should allow organisations to design better services and consequently enhance the experiences of their employees, their customers and other connected actors.
Originality/value
This paper critiques the current approach to measuring customer experience in a B2B context, drawing on contemporary ideas of value-in-use, outcomes-based measures and “Big Data” to offer potential solutions to the measurement problems identified.
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Writing performance is an international issue and, while the quality of instruction is key, features of the context shape classroom practice. The issues and solutions in terms of…
Abstract
Purpose
Writing performance is an international issue and, while the quality of instruction is key, features of the context shape classroom practice. The issues and solutions in terms of teacher practice to address underachievement need to be considered within such a context and the purpose of the chapter is to undertake such an analysis.
Design/methodology/approach
Data from five different research projects (national and regional) of the author and colleagues, and two studies of the author’s doctoral students, are synthesized to identify both common and specific elements of primary/elementary (years 1–8, ages 5–13) teacher practice in writing. These data provide an indication of the practices which appear to be the most powerful levers for developing writing and for accelerating student progress in the context in which the teachers work. These practices are discussed.
Findings
The identified practices are: (1) acquiring and applying deep knowledge of your writers; (2) making connections with, and validating, relevant cultural and linguistic funds of knowledge; (3) aligning learning goals in writing with appropriately designed writing tasks and ensuring that students understand what they are learning and why; (4) providing quality feedback; (5) scaffolding self-regulation in writers; (6) differentiating instruction (while maintaining high expectations) and (7) providing targeted and direct instruction at the point of need. A discussion and a description of writing-specific instantiations of these help to illustrate their nature and the overlaps and interconnections.
Practical implications
As much of the data are drawn from the practices of teachers deemed to be highly effective, classroom practices associated with these teachers can be targeted as a means to improve the quality of instruction more widely in the particular context.
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This paper aims (1) to create a sense of resonance with Maida Herman Solomon and her ideas, (2) to inspire a reconsideration of current management history (the unquestioned block…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims (1) to create a sense of resonance with Maida Herman Solomon and her ideas, (2) to inspire a reconsideration of current management history (the unquestioned block box of dominant figures, dominant foci and dominant practices), (3) to bring Solomon’s contributions to clinical social work into present discourse in management and organizational studies and (4) to foster recognition for Solomon in her own field of social work, as forerunner in a developing profession. Guiding this study is the question: “What are Solomon’s key contributions and why is she overlooked?”
Design/methodology/approach
This paper features a novel methodology, ficto-feminism. The feminism in ficto-feminism is presented as ontology, epistemology, method and mode of writing. Ficto-feminism combines polemical (or prowoman writing) with aspects of collective biography, autoethnography and fictocriticism. As such, the paper contributes to the emerging feminist tradition of writing differently. The approach is an embodied and reflexive approach that engages with history to investigate the absence of women.
Findings
Maida Solomon was an educator, researcher, practitioner and advocate. Her contributions to the development and practice of clinical social work spanned over 60 years, and yet, she is little more than a footnote in the history of the field. Her contributions include authoring and implementing graduate programming, which continues to be the taken for granted training; penning some of the most seminal works and advancing theory; introducing academic and scientific approaches, which saw the field professionalize and adopt new standards; and helping to change the way that society thought about mental health and sexual health. A confluence of factors contributes to her marginalization and neglect: gender, ethnicity, the feminized field of social work and the stigmatized focus for her practice.
Originality/value
The paper combines assertive autobiographical and literary strategies to foreground an overlooked female leader in the field of clinical social work, namely, Maida Solomon. Drawing on biographical material, literature, media and archival material, this paper features a fictional but truthful conversation between the present-day author/writer/historian and the posthumous, historical protagonist (Maida Solomon). In so doing, the engagement with history is both one that deconstructs while reconstructing a historical account with both aesthetic and political implications.
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Eleonora Pantano and Alessandro Gandini
The purpose of this paper is to devise a comprehensive framework of the emergent shopping experience as the result of the combination of store access and the use of communication…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to devise a comprehensive framework of the emergent shopping experience as the result of the combination of store access and the use of communication technologies, particularly social media.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper builds on a set of 20 semi-structured interviews to London-based young consumers aged 18-23 and adopts an exploratory approach aimed at understanding the broad relationship between retailing and social media use.
Findings
The findings highlight how an intensive use of social media and digital communication technologies emerges as an integral part of the shopping experience inside and outside the store.
Research limitations/implications
Drawing upon the notion of the “experience economy,” scholars and practitioners are actually pushed to reconsider the role of traditional shopping as in-store experience that is evolving fast as an effect of the continuous progress into communication technologies. This concept contributes to knowledge development by linking research in retail with work in the area of consumer culture.
Practical implications
Marketers and retailers should consider that the shopping experience is no longer limited to the physical point of sale. This means that retailers should be able to provide a shopping experience that is natively networked.
Originality/value
The authors identify the emerging “networked experience” of shopping, which derives from the consumers’ widespread usage of new communication technologies to collect information, their willingness to share part of this information with others, while creating new digitally mediated relationships with retailers.
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Pre-existing music has been used to underscore the moving image since the days of ‘silent’ film, and this practice is still commonplace today in Hollywood and beyond. Such music…
Abstract
Pre-existing music has been used to underscore the moving image since the days of ‘silent’ film, and this practice is still commonplace today in Hollywood and beyond. Such music may be ‘classical’ or ‘popular’ and can feature within the narrative of a movie diegetically, non-diegetically, or both. With regard to art music in film, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is often the composer of choice, given the popularity and familiarity of many of his compositions. However, his music is employed cinematically in a range of different situations and for a variety of purposes.
In this chapter, I focus on ways in which compositions by Mozart are used to manifest the music and death nexus present in the narrative of three films that were released in different decades. ‘Là ci darem la mano’ from Don Giovanni (1787) features in the first film I analyse, The Picture of Dorian Gray (Albert Lewin, 1945), with the aria being linked to the symbolic death of the moral compass of the protagonist. I then consider the inclusion of music from one of Mozart's symphonies in the storyline of the film Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958), the narrative of which includes the themes of deception and murder. The final film I examine is I am David (Paul Feig, 2003), in which one of the characters sacrifices his life to save that of his friend. Each example encapsulates death as embodied affect, with Mozart's music specifically impacting upon the emotions of the protagonists.