Julie Gosselin and Katherine Rousseau
Difficulties in defining stepfamily roles remain an important issue for its members. A potentially important factor in defining roles in the family is the identification with a…
Abstract
Purpose
Difficulties in defining stepfamily roles remain an important issue for its members. A potentially important factor in defining roles in the family is the identification with a particular gender type and how it relates to one's expectations about one's place in the family system. The purpose of this paper is to explore how gender typing processes inform our understanding of the stepmother role construction process, and its link with stepfamily adjustment.
Design/methodology/approach
Semi‐structured interview data from six androgynous and six feminine stepmothers were selected based on gender type identification.
Findings
Results from this analysis were analyzed using a phenomenological approach, and are presented with the intent to explore how gender typing processes inform our understanding of the stepmother role construction process, and its link with stepfamily adjustment.
Originality/value
Gender typing has not been studied in the context of stepmother families, even though research on stepmothers’ adjustment has highlighted the ambiguous nature of their role in the stepfamily. Additionally, while qualitative inquiry continues to represent the favoured paradigm in the emerging area of stepmother research, studies of this type remain limited in scope.
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Kristian F. Braekkan and Katherine A. Tunheim
Psychological contracts are subjective perceptions about exchange agreements between employees and employers. Through surveys of 256 graduating college seniors with recently…
Abstract
Psychological contracts are subjective perceptions about exchange agreements between employees and employers. Through surveys of 256 graduating college seniors with recently accepted job offers, beliefs regarding employment obligations were investigated. Consistent with findings by Rousseau (1990), new hires’ perceptions of employee and employer obligations were interrelated and consistent with either transactional or relational contracts. Further, while expected tenure with the first employer was related to relational contracts, “careerism” was negatively related to new hires’ beliefs in a relational contract and positively related to a transactional contract with an employer. The results also revealed that goal orientations moderate the relationship between relational contracts and careerism. Specifically, the results indicate that the relationship was more strongly negative in individuals with high mastery orientation. The findings in this study therefore indicate that new hires' attitudes are shaped by both explicit and implicit promises and by individual characteristics such as goal orientations.
Katherine Tyler and Edmund Stanley
The purpose of this article is to investigate trust in financial services business markets.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this article is to investigate trust in financial services business markets.
Design/methodology/approach
The article provides qualitative research, based on 147 in‐depth interviews with corporate bankers and their clients.
Findings
The article finds that perceptions of trust and the operationalisation of trust were asymmetrical across the dyads and segments. Small companies were more trusting than large corporates. Bankers used calculative and operational trust and were cynical about their counterparts' trustworthiness. Bankers were quick to eliminate clients from their portfolio who did not, in their view, provide full disclosure of pertinent facts.
Research limitations/implications
There may be different findings for other cultural contexts and financial service industries. The article encourages research in other contexts and industries and provides a platform to encourage this.
Practical implications
The article provides guidelines for bankers and their clients to understand the importance of trust in their relationships, and to understand how it is operationalised differently by the counterparts.
Originality/value
There are few studies of trust in either services business markets, or financial services business markets. Therefore, this article makes a valuable contribution. It also provides a critical review and integrates the literature on trust as applied to financial services business markets.
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The early childhood education classroom space is intrinsic to developing localized youth culture. Through a four-month-long qualitative research project in a space that focused on…
Abstract
The early childhood education classroom space is intrinsic to developing localized youth culture. Through a four-month-long qualitative research project in a space that focused on meeting the most rudimentary child needs due to staffing and fund restrictions, young children’s creativity through the arts was stunted. In a classroom setting focused on structure and strict routine at the forefront, children’s creative expression was observed through independent action and creative twists on order, instead of through activities deliberately designed to nurture creativity and expression. Since the children at the site did not seem to regularly participate in any kind of art making, or unstructured creative expression, my focus instead became the fundamentals of creativity and how young children in the classroom demonstrated choice making and agency. The objective of this study was how to understand the space from a child-centered approach to better project how to include art making, creative education, and creative expression within early childhood education sites that do not currently employ it in their curriculum. This chapter aims to situate how young children created a culture of creative expression within the boundaries of a structured early education classroom when top-down teacher interaction was at a minimum, and open-ended, non-directive materials were provided.
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This chapter addresses research on worker skill, technology, and control over the labor process by focusing on routine immaterial labor or knowledge work. Based on participant…
Abstract
This chapter addresses research on worker skill, technology, and control over the labor process by focusing on routine immaterial labor or knowledge work. Based on participant observation conducted among analytics workers at a digital publishing network, I find that analytics workers appear paradoxically autonomous and empowered by management while being bound by ever-evolving, calculative cloud-based information and communication technologies (ICTs). Workers appear free to “be creative,” while ever-evolving ICTs exert unpredictable control over work. Based on this finding, I argue that sociology’s tendency to take organizational boundaries and technological stability for granted hampers analyses of contemporary forms of work. Thus, sociologists of work must extend outward – beyond communities of practice, labor markets, and the state – to include the ever-evolving, infrastructural, socio-technical networks in which work and organizations are embedded. Additionally, research on the experience of immaterial labor suggests that ICTs afford pleasurably immersive experiences that bind workers to organizations and their fields. Complicating this emerging body of research, I find workers acutely frustrated by these unpredictable, ever-evolving, cloud-based ICTs.
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Ali Akbar Khasseh, Faramarz Soheili and Afshin Mousavi Chelak
This research aims to examine the intellectual structure of iMetrics through author co-citation analysis.
Abstract
Purpose
This research aims to examine the intellectual structure of iMetrics through author co-citation analysis.
Design/methodology/approach
This research uses common techniques in bibliometrics and social network analysis. It analyses 5,944 records from the Web of Science in the field of iMetrics that are published between 1978 and 2014.
Findings
Findings indicated that researchers including “Garfield”, “Egghe”, “Glanzel”, “Leydesdorff” and “Price” have received many co-citations. The author co-citation analysis in iMetrics resulted in eight thematic clusters, including “theoretical foundations and citation analysis”, “sociology of science”, “science mapping and visualization”, “network analysis”, “classic laws of bibliometrics”, “webometrics”, “technometrics” and “miscellaneous”. “Theoretical foundations and citation analysis” is the biggest cluster which comprises 59 authors. The results suggest the crucial role of price medallists in shaping the intellectual structure of knowledge in iMetrics.
Originality/value
Extracting the patterns embedded in the knowledge structure of iMetrics studies provides beneficial information for both researchers and policymakers. This research study is valuable that used an appropriate set of records regarding both recall and precision. Furthermore, this study helps us better understand the characteristics of iMetrics, its subject areas, and the prominent authors in those areas.
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Tracy Anderson and Martine R. Haas
How is the performance of a knowledge worker affected by the departure of a colleague? While prior research has highlighted the aggregate impact of knowledge worker mobility on…
Abstract
How is the performance of a knowledge worker affected by the departure of a colleague? While prior research has highlighted the aggregate impact of knowledge worker mobility on firms, in this chapter we look inside the firm, to explore the individual-level impact of a coworker's departure on the performance of a remaining employee. We propose that the departure of a coworker can change the remaining employee's access to knowledge, but the implications of such changes will depend on the nature of the coworker's relationship with the employee: the employee's performance will be negatively affected to the extent that the relationship is collaborative, but it will be positively affected to the extent that the relationship is competitive. Moreover, these effects will be magnified to the extent that the employee was dependent on the coworker for knowledge access prior to the move, but weakened to the extent that the relationship persists after the move. Our knowledge-based perspective on coworker departures advances research on employee mobility and knowledge flows by highlighting the variety of changes in knowledge access that may result when a colleague leaves the firm, and illuminating the implications of these changes for the performance of employees who remain behind.
Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Tenn. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are…
Abstract
Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Tenn. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.
Carolin Plewa and Pascale Quester
The purpose of the paper is to analyse empirically research‐oriented university‐industry relationships based on the incorporation of relationship marketing (RM) and technology…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of the paper is to analyse empirically research‐oriented university‐industry relationships based on the incorporation of relationship marketing (RM) and technology transfer theory.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper is based on an extensive literature review and initial qualitative research, a conceptual model is presented and tested using structural equation modelling methods. Analysis was conducted, and is reported, in three steps, including path analysis and hypothesis testing, model re‐specification and a multi‐group analysis comparing university and industry respondents.
Findings
Trust, commitment and integration were found to positively influence satisfaction and were confirmed as key drivers of successful university‐industry relationships. While trust was the strongest driver of satisfaction, commitment emerged as the strongest predictor of intention to renew. The results also confirmed the proposed interrelationships between the relationship characteristics. Organisational compatibility emerged as positively influencing all relationship characteristics, indicating its relevance for university‐industry relationships and suggesting its potential importance for other relationships crossing essentially different organisational environments. Surprisingly, only a weak influence of staff personal experience on commitment was found.
Research limitations/implications
The results are limited to Australian relationships and by their cross‐disciplinary nature. Furthermore, a potential bias towards positive relationships might exist in the data.
Originality/value
The primary contribution of this paper lies in the development of a foundation for research in a new services business context by combining the established theory of RM with the emerging area of technology transfer. Building a thorough empirical basis for future research, the researchers anticipate the development of a comprehensive university‐industry relationship research stream.
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Enlightenment philosophers profoundly influenced the emergence of democracy. Enlightenment ideas underlie much of the theory and practice of public procurement today. Economic…
Abstract
Enlightenment philosophers profoundly influenced the emergence of democracy. Enlightenment ideas underlie much of the theory and practice of public procurement today. Economic theory, dating from the writings of Adam Smith and his mentor Frances Hutcheson, assumes that suppliers will act in their own self interest. Knowing this, public buyers seek to fashion incentives to align the private interests of suppliers with public needs. But Hutcheson and others argued that civic duty and benevolence should guide public servants in seeking value for their fellow citizens. That argument is the basis of our codes of ethics. The clams of public procurement to being a profession will be greatly bolstered when it is recognized that our knowledge base is rooted in the same Enlightenment thinking that undergirds other professions and academic disciplines.