Graham F. Moore, Lawrence Raisanen, Laurence Moore, Nafees Ud Din and Simon Murphy
Primary-care referral to community-based exercise specialists (exercise referral) is common in the UK despite limited evidence of effectiveness. A recent pragmatic randomised…
Abstract
Purpose
Primary-care referral to community-based exercise specialists (exercise referral) is common in the UK despite limited evidence of effectiveness. A recent pragmatic randomised trial of the Welsh National Exercise Referral Scheme (NERS), demonstrated promising impacts upon physical activity and mental health. This paper presents a mixed-method process evaluation exploring how outcomes were achieved.
Design/methodology/approach
Structured observation, implementer interviews and routine data assessed the extent to which NERS was implemented as intended. Baseline trial data were combined with routine monitoring data for the purposes of profiling uptake and adherence. Semi-structured patient interviews explored processes of change and the emergence of social patterning in responses to the scheme.
Findings
NERS offered patients a programme of supervised, group-based discounted exercise. However, motivational interviewing, goal-setting and patient follow-up protocols were delivered poorly. The high degree of professional support was perceived as helping patients to build confidence and assimilate into exercise environments. Patient-only classes provided social contacts, a supportive context and realistic models. Patterning in uptake emerged from access issues, with uptake lower among non-car owners. Adherence was poorer among mental health patients, younger patients and those who were least active prior to referral to NERS.
Originality/value
In practice, although the NERS RCT demonstrated positive impacts on physical activity and mental health, process evaluation data indicate that the intervention was not entirely delivered as intended. Mixed-method process evaluation served crucial functions in understanding implementation and functioning, offering insights into the roles of professional support and exercise classes in promoting activity and mental health, and the emergence of social patterning in responses to an ERS.
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Sari Räisänen, Riitta-Liisa Korkeamäki and Mariam Jean Dreher
To reflect what a teacher’s inner voice mediated by a video observation and discussion revealed about the process of change in literacy practices.
Abstract
Purpose
To reflect what a teacher’s inner voice mediated by a video observation and discussion revealed about the process of change in literacy practices.
Methodology/approach
Nexus Analysis (NA) (Scollon & Scollon, 2004) was used in studying the teacher’s self-reflective dialogue for identifying the teacher’s (the first author) ways of being in the nexus of old and new literacy practices – in the process of change in the context of literacy practices. These ways of being were reflected on further in the study in the collaboration with the other authors.
Findings
The teacher’s ways of being balanced between “not knowing” and “knowing” connected both personal and professional aspects of learning.
Practical implications
Inner states of professional learning processes imply that both personal and professional support is needed in educational changes, such as the change in literacy practices. Video observations and discussion should thus not only concentrate on practical or theoretical issues of professional learning, but on promoting and offering safe spaces for reflection on subjective learning experiences.
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Inger Bergman, Sven Gunnarson and Christine Räisänen
The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyse the change trajectory in a large, global, project‐oriented company, with focus on standardization of project work, and on how…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyse the change trajectory in a large, global, project‐oriented company, with focus on standardization of project work, and on how the company's structure, processes and employment‐base changed in line with the company's increasing volume of projects.
Design/methodology/approach
The stance taken is to define firm‐based projects as temporary organisations embedded in, and coupled to their parent company. Narratives of employees' working history were combined with historical company data. The outcome is a trajectory of the company's history from four different perspectives, shown in parallel with the development of the company's project operations.
Findings
The projectification history was found to be connected with two parallel movements: a push towards project decoupling countered by a pull towards standardization of project management practices to tighten the coupling. The direction of the movements was influenced from current project management trends.
Research limitations/implications
The model of a projectified company as a loosely‐coupled system provides a novel way of analysing an organisation and its interfaces to its projects. Even though the work focuses on a unique company's projectification history, the intention is to provide a means to better understand the forces impacting the transformation of organisations increasingly using projects as a work‐form.
Originality/value
Adding the notion of coupling gives a new dimension to the transformation of project‐oriented companies. The model for analysing projects by means of their patterns of loose and tight coupling provides arguments for the shift in focus from the individual project to the interplay between structure, people and processes in the project‐oriented company.
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Peter Björk, Hannele Kauppinen-Räisänen and Erose Sthapit
This study aims to examine how cruise ship dinescapes, as a specific type of organized and staged service environment, influence customers’ attitudes, on-board behaviour…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to examine how cruise ship dinescapes, as a specific type of organized and staged service environment, influence customers’ attitudes, on-board behaviour, satisfaction and behavioural intentions.
Design/methodology/approach
Data was collected using a cross-sectional survey from 552 passengers on-board one of the big cruise ships with a Caribbean itinerary.
Findings
Cruise ship dinescape, as an on-board food experience platform, is built on three dimensions: restaurant atmospherics, interactions with other guests and restaurant staff. The findings show how these dimensions influence passengers’ emotional experiences and quality perceptions. The results also show how travellers’ cruise ship dinescape satisfaction affect their overall vacation satisfaction and future travel behaviour.
Practical implications
The findings imply that cruise companies should pay extra attention to organised food service environments like dinescapes staged for passengers. Through these scapes cruise companies may provide favourable platforms enabling dining satisfaction, but also social interaction and co-creation of memorable experiences.
Originality/value
This study builds a comprehensive model in cruise ship context, which links dinescape experiences to overall cruise ship dining experiences and dining behaviour mediated by emotional and perceived quality outcomes with further consequences.
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Djamel Toudert and Nora L. Bringas-Rábago
The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of cognitive destination food image in food expectation, satisfaction and visit outcomes within a local context of the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of cognitive destination food image in food expectation, satisfaction and visit outcomes within a local context of the USA–Mexico border. The differences between tourists and excursionists were also assessed for their possible implications in strengthening an active market strategy in the framework of the same objective.
Design/methodology/approach
Four hypotheses were examined through Squares SEM techniques. The model validation was carried out assessing the measurement and structural model. Additionally a multi-group analysis was performed to test the tourists and excursionists moderation effect. The study used 518 questionnaires completed by US visitors in three important gastronomic regions of the coast of Baja California, Mexico.
Findings
The results suggest that tourists and excursionists obey different dimensions when structuring cognitive destination food image which showed a significant impact on visitor satisfaction and future intentions.
Originality/value
The moderation function of tourists and excursionists in the causal relationships of the research model was analyzed as one of the first explorations in food tourism marketing. In conjunction with other findings, this paper offers specific theoretical and practical implications on how to stimulate gastronomic consumption in these two segments of visitors.
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Sangeeta Tripathi and Muna Al Shahri
The main objective of this chapter is to examine the country's internal communication environment that helps create community awareness and improve public–private tourism…
Abstract
Purpose
The main objective of this chapter is to examine the country's internal communication environment that helps create community awareness and improve public–private tourism partnerships to achieve Oman Vision 2040. This chapter also attempts to understand the efforts of the National Tourism Organization (NTO) in building community relationships and empowering them by capitalizing on available resources within the community.
Methedology
The study is based on qualitative and quantitative methods. A purposive sampling technique has been applied, and the data collection has been done through surveys and interviews from the Ministry of Heritage and Tourism, Salalah, Oman, to reach out to the findings.
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Hannele Kauppinen‐Räisänen, Richard A. Owusu and Bylon Abeeku Bamfo
The changing health care market is affecting consumers who are now expected to take greater responsibility for their health. Their means for doing this include purchasing…
Abstract
Purpose
The changing health care market is affecting consumers who are now expected to take greater responsibility for their health. Their means for doing this include purchasing self‐medication and medical self‐service, which coincides neatly with an increase in the number of over‐the‐counter (OTC) pharmaceuticals. Additionally, OTC pharmaceuticals are progressively becoming available in a wider range of stores, where the pharmacists' knowledge of the OTC products is absent. This study aims to examine packaging as media that conveys the product message at the point of purchase, and to explore the impact of its extrinsic verbal and visual product cues.
Design/methodology/approach
An exploratory conjoint analysis was conducted in Finland, the USA, and Ghana. In total, 89 respondents conducted conjoint tasks for two product types, i.e. a painkiller and sore throat medicine.
Findings
The results showed differences and similarities in the impact of the packaging product cues across Finland, the USA, and Ghana. Differences and similarities were also detected across the two different, but related, product types. The study found that the impact of product cues is contextual, varying across the samples and product types.
Practical implications
The results are limited by the exploratory nature of the conjoint analysis. They highlight that medical marketers should recognize the varying impact of salient cues on consumers' product preferences and choices.
Originality/value
The study deals with a mostly unexplored issue and provides exploratory insights into the phenomenon.
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The purpose of this paper is to add to the emerging literatures on organizational learning and strategic management by developing a practice perspective on strategic…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to add to the emerging literatures on organizational learning and strategic management by developing a practice perspective on strategic organizational learning (SOL). While the literature on SOL has been growing, much of it has targeted exclusively practitioners and has not yet elaborated the mechanics and the micro‐dynamics of SOL. This paper is an initial attempt at exploring two important aspects of SOL: deep‐structure politics, and sensegiving.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper reports a qualitative case study of a major construction project undertaken by a mid‐size urban university as a part of its strategic change initiative.
Findings
Several ways in which deep‐structure politics shaped SOL at the research site are highlighted. The findings suggest that deep‐structure politics and sensegiving can shape identity processes in the context of SOL in important ways, such as dramatically altering the identity of the project team and symbolically separating it from the host institution.
Originality/value
The paper enriches the predominantly practitioner literature on SOL with empirical examination of the practices of SOL.
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Michael Volgger and Dieter Pfister
This introduction to the volume Atmospheric Turn in Culture and Tourism: Place, Design and Process Impacts on Customer Behaviour, Marketing and Branding (Emerald) positions the…
Abstract
This introduction to the volume Atmospheric Turn in Culture and Tourism: Place, Design and Process Impacts on Customer Behaviour, Marketing and Branding (Emerald) positions the atmospheric turn in the context of recent paradigmatic turns such as the linguistic turn, iconic turn, cultural turn, spatial turn, mobility turn and design turn. The specific contribution of the atmospheric turn is its profoundly holistic interest in overarching connections which are perceived with all senses and include both matter and idea. With its 22 chapters, this volume sets out to sharpen the atmospheric gaze and perception in research and beyond.