Attempts to introduce multi‐skilled “hotel services” workers in several NHS trusts have been studied using Scott‐Morgan’s Unwritten Rules of the Game methodology. In‐depth…
Abstract
Attempts to introduce multi‐skilled “hotel services” workers in several NHS trusts have been studied using Scott‐Morgan’s Unwritten Rules of the Game methodology. In‐depth interviews reveal that, even for staff traditionally regarded as “marginal” and low paid, pride in helping patients is a powerful motivator, one which frequently ensures services are maintained, especially during periods of compulsory competitive tendering (CCT). A traditional “command and control” style of management and the fear engendered by CCT produced powerful barriers to different performance levels from multi‐skilling. We contrast this approach with a more emergent exercise fostered in a group of wards where responsibility for the ancillary workers was transferred to the wards’ director of nursing. These wards have now developed more highly motivated, confident support workers and demonstrate a number of resulting performance gains. We interpret the results in terms of the cultivation of a new pattern and a systemic positive feedback.
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Liz Clark and David Rees
The authors refer to their research into the role of facilities management (FM) within the National Health Service and local government in England and Wales. They compare the…
Abstract
The authors refer to their research into the role of facilities management (FM) within the National Health Service and local government in England and Wales. They compare the levels of FM awareness within these public bodies, the ability of FM managers to influence the decision‐making process, the relationship between these factors and the delivery of effective facilities management services and the relative importance given to FM in recent Government guidelines on best value in these two public services. Based on the findings of five research projects the authors have conducted in both sectors it illustrates how FM is not just a business opportunity but a rapidly expanding function that is gaining status as an important profession that warrants a high status in the strategic make‐up of both NHS Trusts and local government authorities.
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The purpose of this paper is to identify and investigate the contribution made from the estates services to the quality of the patient experience from the perspective of all…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to identify and investigate the contribution made from the estates services to the quality of the patient experience from the perspective of all estates staff ranging from front‐line staff to directors of estates and facilities. The work is exploratory in nature owing to no known earlier studies in this area.
Design/methodology/approach
A postal questionnaire is distributed to a non‐random self‐selecting group of National Health Service (NHS) estates staff – therefore those staff working in the areas of maintenance, engineering, building, gardening and general office estates management. A total of 920 questionnaires are distributed to the 46 NHS trusts. There are 202 responses, which is a return rate of 22 per cent.
Findings
It is clear that overall estates staff consider their job/service to be important to the patient experience, 94 per cent of respondents indicate they did. This is further confirmed by 82 per cent of estates line managers considering their job to be important to the patient experience. In terms of how estates feel they contribute to the patient experience, there is a range of responses, however the main reason highlighted is the recognition that the hospital could not function without the service being provided, i.e. the maintenance of essential services, water, power and the general infrastructure. Estates departments perhaps need on patient awareness of the services they provide and the importance of them in making the hospital function.
Research limitations/implications
The results presented provide a useful insight into how estates departments in the NHS perceive their contribution to the patient experience. However, they are not without limitations. First, the sample size is relatively small; and second non‐random sampling techniques are used.
Originality/value
The findings suggest a number of avenues for future work. The most obvious would be to investigate the level of awareness from patients regarding estates services in the NHS.
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Elizabeth M. Pope and Stephanie Anne Shelton
Qualitative research is well-established and widely adopted across a range of disciplines; however, there is little discussion of the teaching of qualitative research methods…
Abstract
Purpose
Qualitative research is well-established and widely adopted across a range of disciplines; however, there is little discussion of the teaching of qualitative research methods. What engagements there are primarily focus on methods rather than core concepts that inform ethical and effective use of those approaches. “Subjectivity” and “reflexivity” are pervasive concepts taken up in numerous textbooks, handbooks, and journal guidelines. But, despite being an expected and critical aspect of qualitative methodologies, few scholars consider how researchers might learn to engage with these necessary aspects effectively.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a conceptual paper written from the authors' experiences teaching qualitative research to graduate students at the master's and doctoral levels.
Findings
This conceptual paper offers an andragogical discussion of how novice and student researchers might learn to consider the concepts of reflexivity and subjectivity. Additionally, it considers how the deep and critical reflection inherent in both subjectivity and reflexivity are valuable aspects in extending discussions and applications of qualitative research in various disciplines.
Originality/value
This paper offers a fresh and unique consideration of teaching novice researchers how to practice reflexivity and examine their subjectivities using the work of Alan Peshkin as a model.
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The cycle of external indebtedness of dependent countries has become a huge constraint on any strategy for radical social change.Argentina has recently entered a new process of…
Abstract
The cycle of external indebtedness of dependent countries has become a huge constraint on any strategy for radical social change.
Argentina has recently entered a new process of debt overhang and renegotiation with the International Monetary Fund and private global creditors. The dominant debate around the country's foreign debt revolves around the conditions that can guarantee the sustainability of repayment. The underlying objective is to remain in the debt system that produces and reproduces dependency.
This chapter will seek to analyze the question of debt sustainability from another point of view: Is it possible to guarantee the (financial) sustainability of the debt at the same time as guaranteeing the sustainability of life? Our argument is that by remaining in the global debt system, Argentina creates conditions that violate the requirements for the sustainability of human and nonhuman life. Drawing on a discussion from Marxist dependency theory and the traditions of Marxist feminism and environmentalism, we will discuss how the debt sustainability argument presupposes the impossibility of reproducing life. In particular, we will show how the conditions required to guarantee debt sustainability in Argentina entail the deepening of the superexploitation of the “productive” and “reproductive” labor force, and the exacerbation of extractivism, putting social reproduction in crisis.
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Kevin Magill and Liz Harrelson Magill
The purpose of the study was to explore and articulate how Socratic seminar might be considered more completely as part of justice-focused social studies classroom disciplinary…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of the study was to explore and articulate how Socratic seminar might be considered more completely as part of justice-focused social studies classroom disciplinary practices.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors reviewed the literature on Socratic seminar and developed a model for its practical use. The authors used the model to demonstrate its use in teaching civil rights history, as an example for implementation.
Findings
Socratic seminar is an instructional method that layers several disciplinary literacy skills within social studies that have the combined potential to create a transformative dialogue within the classroom and communities, especially when leveraged in more complex multi-text ways. Through the seminars, students can better understand what the authors name horizontal historical analysis, the perspective on concurrent social justice movements and vertical curricular analysis or how social justice movements experience continuity and change over time.
Practical implications
The authors provided an accessible model for teachers and students to use Socratic seminars as part of transformational social studies practices.
Social implications
The authors demonstrate how the Socratic seminar model can provide students with the intellectual foundation for considering social action as more critically informed civic agents.
Originality/value
The authors examine and offer a model of how Socratic seminar can engage students in vertical and/or horizontal historical analysis for transformational purposes. Further, the authors identify how Socratic seminar can build the skills and dispositions of social studies, provide space for knowledge creation through critical historical inquiry and help reframe how teachers and students understand learning and human relationships by shifting the classroom power and promoting student agency through dialogue.
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Yossi Gavish, Aviv Shoham and Ayalla Ruvio
The purposes of this research are to examine the extent to which daughters view their mothers as consumption role models, the extent to which daughters serve as consumption role…
Abstract
Purpose
The purposes of this research are to examine the extent to which daughters view their mothers as consumption role models, the extent to which daughters serve as consumption role models for their mothers, and the extent to which external role models are shared by mothers and their adolescent daughters.
Design/methodology/approach
Two qualitative studies focused on mothers‐adolescent daughters‐vicarious role models interactions as drivers of consumption behaviors in Western cultures. Study 1 included 20 in‐depth interviews with mothers and their adolescent daughters (conducted separately). Study 2 included five of the original dyads interviewed jointly and observed in fashion stores.
Findings
Regarding adolescent daughters' use as role models and fashion markers for their mothers, most mothers confirmed that their adolescent daughters' fashion opinion was very important. Second, based on consumer socialization arguments, mothers served as role models for their adolescent daughters. Most dyads shop for fashion items together and in the same stores. Regarding the issue of cognitive versus chronological ages, the studies suggest that there is a gap between mothers' cognitive and chronological ages in support of cognitive age theory and the youthfulness ideal of Western cultures. Notably, such a gap mostly failed to materialize for adolescent daughters. Hence, consumption similarity appears to be driven more by the gap for mothers than the gap for daughters. Finally, external role models such as celebrities did not have a great influence on mothers or their adolescent daughters.
Originality/value
The research used in‐depth interviews with and in‐store observation of mothers and adolescent daughters. Future research might use similar interviews with younger daughters. Another extension of the work reported here that can provide triangulation for the findings is to change from a qualitative to a quantitative methodology.
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Jill Clark, Charlotte Haines Lyon, Tim Jay and Karen Laing
Ethics work in research is often conceived of as a process of research governance. The case study chapters, however, provide evidence of a much more sophisticated engagement with…
Abstract
Ethics work in research is often conceived of as a process of research governance. The case study chapters, however, provide evidence of a much more sophisticated engagement with ethical dilemmas arising in research and an enactment of ‘everyday ethics’, in other words, a concern with our relationships with, and responsibilities to, other people (Banks, 2016). This emphasis on relationality can often lead to what Cook (2009) describes as ‘mess’ in research, which needs to be made sense of. This is in contrast to the notion of ‘well-ordered’ research, which underpins many of the ethical frameworks, principles and guidelines that are produced for research. The chapters also indicate the opening up of new spaces for research that raise new challenges in respect of ethical practice, including, for example, digital spaces (Case Study 4 – Minecraft Club). Case Study 8 – Democratic Engagement also demonstrates that both researchers and participants in the research process find ways in which to challenge conformity and research norms in order to access knowledge, and this is not always a harmonious process. The following sections try to make sense of the implications of these issues for the ethical practice of research. This chapter pulls together three key themes emerging from the case studies of research governance, ethical relationality and ethical spaces, presenting an analytical overview of all three areas using the concept of ‘willful subjects’.
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Stefan Groseschl and Liz Doherty
Discusses some key issues arising when attempting to conceptualize culture. Aims to identify common areas among researchers’ culture approaches. Reviews ways culture has been…
Abstract
Discusses some key issues arising when attempting to conceptualize culture. Aims to identify common areas among researchers’ culture approaches. Reviews ways culture has been expressed by writers in varying disciplines. Uses tables and a figure to further explain comparisons. Closes by stating culture is a very complex term – difficult to define – but greater clarity in communication between academics and practitioners can only assist.