The purpose of this paper is to chart a novel approach to customer‐service training at Origin Housing, using forum‐theater techniques in which the trainees can decide where the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to chart a novel approach to customer‐service training at Origin Housing, using forum‐theater techniques in which the trainees can decide where the action goes next.
Design/methodology/approach
Explains the background to the program, the form it takes and the results it has achieved.
Findings
Reveals that forum theater has two key differences from ordinary theatrical performances. First, the action periodically stops to give the audience the chance to discuss it. And second, a facilitator encourages the audience to speak to the characters in the play during these breaks, enabling them to attempt to influence the characters' behavior and change the outcome of the drama.
Practical implications
Explains that, because the audience watches a play in which characters struggle with the dilemmas of the trainees' everyday working life, they are able to think about and comment on those dilemmas in a free and unthreatening way. They relate closely to the experience of the drama, but without any feelings of exposure and nervousness which participating in a role‐play can bring.
Social implications
Highlights how such training is helping to ensure that Origin Housing serves its customers better.
Originality/value
Discusses an unusual form of theater training, in which the drama highlights many of the problems that employees encounter in their everyday work.
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Ye Zhang, Louise Scholes, Kun Fu, Mathew Hughes and Fangcheng Tang
This paper is about equity crowdfunding syndicates as a form of entrepreneurial finance and looks specifically at the lead investors' human capital and their ability to raise…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper is about equity crowdfunding syndicates as a form of entrepreneurial finance and looks specifically at the lead investors' human capital and their ability to raise funds.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors develop regressions on a unique hand-collected dataset of 178 lead investors taken from the US-based platform AngelList.
Findings
Results indicate that lead investors' specialized human capital has a positive effect on their syndicate fundraising performance. However, it does not find a significant effect of general human capital. It also finds that specialized human capital is mediated by the reputation of the lead investor on the platform.
Research limitations/implications
This study extends human capital theory in the crowdfunding context by providing a more comprehensive portrait of human capital and in doing so, shifts the focus from an entrepreneur to an investor perspective, an approach much neglected in the crowdfunding literature.
Originality/value
This study advances the current knowledge on crowdfunding as it is one of the first to understand syndicate investment as an innovative and alternative platform-based financial channel. It also contributes to the current debate on the role of human capital in crowdfunding and more generally to entrepreneurial finance.
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Louise Kelly and Marina Dorian
The purpose of this conceptual paper is to integrate two previously disparate areas of research: mindfulness and the entrepreneurial process. This present study conceptualizes the…
Abstract
The purpose of this conceptual paper is to integrate two previously disparate areas of research: mindfulness and the entrepreneurial process. This present study conceptualizes the impact of mindfulness on the choices entrepreneurs face. Specifically, the research theorizes the positive effects of mindfulness on the opportunity recognition process, including evaluation of entrepreneurs. Furthermore, we propose that metacognition mediates this relationship, and emotional self-regulation moderates it. This conceptual research also suggests that mindfulness is positively related to the ethical decision-making and opportunity recognition and evaluation. Finally, compassion is proposed as a factor that mediates the relationship between mindfulness and ethical choices in opportunity recognition.
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Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic condition with variable physical, cognitive, and quality of life impacts. Little research has investigated how MS outcomes vary by social…
Abstract
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic condition with variable physical, cognitive, and quality of life impacts. Little research has investigated how MS outcomes vary by social identity (race, gender, disability, age, sexual orientation, and nationality) and social location (place within systems of power and privilege). However, emerging evidence points to racial and ethnic group disparities in MS outcomes. This chapter integrates core concepts from the life course perspective and an intersectional feminist disability framework to interrogate the role of diagnosis pathways in determining differential MS outcomes. MS diagnosis pathways (the time from symptom onset to the point of diagnosis) are a logical place to begin this work given the varying nature of symptom onset and the importance of a quick diagnosis for optimal MS outcomes. Whereas the life course perspective provides a framework for understanding disability transitions and pathways across the life span, an intersectional feminist disability framework centers disability within an axis of overlapping social identities and locations. The combination of both frameworks provides an approach capable of examining how MS disparities and inequities emerge in different contexts over time. The chapter begins with an overview of MS and current knowledge on disparities (mainly racial) in MS prevalence, diagnosis, and outcomes. The chapter proceeds to describe the utility of key concepts of both the life course perspective and intersectional frameworks when researching health disparities. Finally, the chapter ends with a theoretical application of an intersectional feminist disability life course perspective to investigate disparities in MS diagnosis pathways.
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This paper serves to test the validity of Chatman’s theory of “Life Lived in the Round” within a modern prison context. In particular, it examines Propositions Five and Six of her…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper serves to test the validity of Chatman’s theory of “Life Lived in the Round” within a modern prison context. In particular, it examines Propositions Five and Six of her theory.
Design/methodology/approach
Data regarding the information-seeking practices of Australian adult female and male prisoners from maximum-, medium- and minimum-security facilities was gathered through 106 surveys and 27 semi-structured interviews. Participants’ information-seeking from sources internal and external to the “small world” of the prison was described. The information behaviours of the participants were examined against Chatman’s theory of “Life in the Round” to determine its applicability in the prison context.
Findings
The data gathered does not support Chatman’s theory of “Life Lived in the Round”, despite that theory being developed in a prison context. Neither Proposition Five nor Proposition Six of Chatman’s theory can be supported when examined in the light of the current data.
Research limitations/implications
The inability of the data to support Chatman’s theory requires a reassessment of the applicability of the theory, at least to the prison context. As the theory was generated in part from a prison study, the foundational understandings of the theory could be questioned as a result of this current research.
Originality/value
Although Chatman’s theory has been examined against the information behaviours of other “Small World” communities, none of these studies have taken the theory back to the prison context from which the theory was developed. This study is also novel as its findings do not support Chatman’s theory, in contrast to other previously published examinations.
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Kinga Kołodziej, Anna Kurowska and Anna Majda
The purpose of this study is to assess the intensity of perceived stress and measure the subjective control of anxiety, anger and depression in a group of women and men staying in…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to assess the intensity of perceived stress and measure the subjective control of anxiety, anger and depression in a group of women and men staying in Polish penitentiary institutions.
Design/methodology/approach
The research was carried out in two penitentiary institutions located in the Lesser Poland Voivodeship at the turn of 2019/2020. The study group consisted of 152 prisoners. In the cross-sectional study, two standardised research tools – the Perceived Stress Scale and the Emotional Control Scale – were used.
Findings
Over half of the prisoners (57.24%) presented a high level of stress. The intensity of the perceived stress did not depend on the gender and age of the convicted persons. The general indicator of emotional control among the respondents averaged 51.82 points (standard deviation = 14.52) and ranged from 22 to 83 points, which means that people detained in penitentiary institutions suppressed their negative emotions at an average level. The prisoners had the best control over fear (M = 18.68), less over anger (M = 16.86) and the least over depression (M = 16.27). Statistical analysis showed a correlation between the level of emotional control and the intensity of perceived stress.
Research limitations/implications
The small sample size of the group participating in the study and narrowing of the research area means that results can not be generalised across all isolated prison population.
Practical implications
The results obtained from the study can be used by a multidisciplinary team to develop therapeutic programmes for convicted persons, the aim of which is to evaluate strategies for coping with stress and controlling emotions.
Social implications
Popularising reliable information related to the issue of experiencing stress and varied emotions in those staying in penitentiary institutions may lead to the elimination of harmful stereotypes functioning in society, as well as reduce the phenomenon of marginalisation of prisoners, and thus contribute to the success of the social rehabilitation process.
Originality/value
Research on the level of stress intensity in prisoners is important because the rates of mental health disorders among prisoners consistently exceed the rates of such disorders in the general population.
Aaron Payne, Helen Proctor and Ilektra Spandagou
This article examines the educational decision-making of hearing parents for their deaf children born during a period (1970–1990s) before the introduction of new-born hearing…
Abstract
Purpose
This article examines the educational decision-making of hearing parents for their deaf children born during a period (1970–1990s) before the introduction of new-born hearing screening in New South Wales, where the study was conducted, and prior to the now near-universal adoption of cochlear implants in Australia.
Design/methodology/approach
We present findings from an oral history study in which parents were invited to recall how they planned for the education of their deaf children.
Findings
We propose that these oral histories shed light on how the concept, early intervention – a child development principle that became axiomatic from about the 1960s – significantly shaped the conduct of parents of deaf children, constituting both hope and burden, and intensifying a focus on early decision-making. They also illustrate ways in which parenting was shaped by two key structural shifts, one, being the increasing enrolment of deaf children in mainstream rather than separate classrooms and the other being the transformation of deafness itself by developments in hearing assistance technology.
Originality/value
The paper contributes to a sociological/historical literature of “parenting for education” that almost entirely lacks deaf perspectives and a specialist literature of parental decision-making for deaf children that is almost entirely focussed on the post cochlear implant generation. The paper is distinctive in its treatment of the concept of “early intervention” as a historical phenomenon rather than a “common sense” truth, and proposes that parents of deaf children were at the leading edge of late-20th and early-21st century parenting intensification.
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Nithicha Thamthanakoon, Iona Yuelu Huang, Jane Eastham, Shane Ward and Louise Manning
Since the end of the latest rice-pledging scheme, Thai rice farmers have had more freedom in selecting marketing channels. Understanding the determinants of farmers'…
Abstract
Purpose
Since the end of the latest rice-pledging scheme, Thai rice farmers have had more freedom in selecting marketing channels. Understanding the determinants of farmers' decision-making associated with these channels is of particular interest to multiple stakeholders in the rice value chain. This study aims to examine how economic, relational and psychological factors concurrently underpin Thai rice farmers' decision-making and influence their marketing channel choice.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on the theory of reasoned action and utility maximization of farmers’ decision making, this study used structural equation modeling to examine data collected from a nationwide sample of Thai rice farmers (n = 637), focusing on their past and intentional use of the three major marketing channels for paddy rice.
Findings
The determinants identified include four direct independent variables: attitude, subjective norm (social referents), transaction conditions and economic goals, and two indirect independent variables: past behavior and trust. Multi-group analysis suggests that rice co-operative users were more empowered to consider economic goals and attitude toward the channel, whilst rice miller and local collector users were more likely to be influenced by their social referents and the transaction conditions offered by the channel.
Practical implications
The findings highlight the need for policy to address trust and transparency issues with intermediaries and to empower farmers through the improvement of market access.
Originality/value
The study makes a unique and substantive contribution to the knowledge of farmers' decision-making about marketing channel choice in Thailand and theoretically contributes to the indirect role of past behavior in predicting prospective intention.