Search results

This paper explores some psychological aspects of community vulnerability following the 1995 and 1996 eruptions at Ruapehu volcano, New Zealand. A model comprising three psychological factors (sense of community, coping style and self‐efficacy) is used to investigate this issue. The results suggest that self‐efficacy and problem‐focused coping reduce vulnerability and that this model has a role to play in identifying vulnerable communities. The differential implications of physical and economic hazard consequences for community vulnerability were also examined. Data is presented that reinforces the view that the salience of volcanic hazard consequences is a result of their implications for community functions and resources. The implications for mitigation, threat communication and the development of resilient communities are discussed.

The following is an annotated list of materials dealing with orientation to library facilities and services, instruction in the use of information resources, and research and computer skills related to retrieving, using, and evaluating information. This review, the fifteenth to be published in Reference Services Review, includes items in English published in 1988. A few are not annotated because the compiler could not obtain copies of them for this review.

Managing a library instruction program at a small liberal‐arts college has many challenges. Programs at such institutions often have limited financial resources and are maintained under difficult staffing conditions. This study examines the effectiveness of an instruction program offered at a four‐year liberal‐arts college with fewer than 3,000 students. The research was designed to assess the effectiveness of the current program and measure it against a pilot group of students exposed to enhanced information literacy opportunities based on the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. Working with five faculty members, information literacy goals were clearly articulated and implemented into nine sections of first‐year writing and speaking courses. Bibliographic analysis, an information literacy questionnaire, and an in‐class writing exercise were used to determine whether students in the pilot groups performed better than students receiving the program’s customary library training.

The study aims to explore how the collective representations of stakeholders associated with an Executive MBA (EMBA) apprenticeship are conceptualised, and what value elements are perceived as relevant for personal, professional and organisational development.

Forty stakeholders participated in a mixed methods-based group concept mapping (GCM) approach, representing the tripartite relationship of an EMBA apprenticeship. This approach allowed the deconstruction and shared understanding of the value proposition of higher degree apprenticeships.

Analysis identified seven conceptualised value clusters around an eight central cluster “Professional Development”. Two regions of meaning were identified: the personal dimensions of apprentices and their contribution within and to their organisation. Findings showed that a work-based designed curriculum improves confidence and communication skills and that much of the value proposition is personal and self-managed by the apprentices. The tripartite relationship was shown to be incomplete and inconsistent, particularly regarding mentoring and reflective practice.

The pandemic has brought about significant changes in business practice. This study identifies several areas for improving higher degree apprenticeship pedagogy in readiness for the new business landscape, as well as identifying limitations of the tripartite relationship.

The study addresses a gap in the literature by exploring the value proposition an EMBA apprenticeship programme. The interrelatedness of cluster concepts has identified value elements missing from previous apprenticeship delivery. Deconstructing the senior leader apprenticeship enables educators to redesign and refine models of engagement for improving the apprenticeship experience.

Life studies are a rich source for further research on the role of the Afro‐American woman in society. They are especially useful to gain a better understanding of the Afro‐American experience and to show the joys, sorrows, needs, and ideals of the Afro‐American woman as she struggles from day to day.

Externalities influence the career trajectories of self-initiated expatriates (SIEs) and their respective career crafting. This study aims to explore the international career crafting of SIEs (encompassing their proactive career reflection and construction), taking the combined external influences of complexity, chance and change into consideration.

The authors employ a qualitative (interpretative) approach, combining career crafting and the chaos theory of careers (CTC) to further understand, from an individual standpoint, the impact of externalities on the career crafting strategies of 24 SIEs who have relocated within the European Union.

The authors show that SIEs' proactively craft their careers to varying degrees and with varying frequency. The CTC – incorporating complexity, chance and change – allows for a more nuanced understanding of SIEs' career crafting.

This paper applies the concept of career crafting to an international context, exploring the impact of externalities on SIEs' careers. In this way, the authors combine two previously separate theories, extend the application of career crafting to an international career context and emphasise the role of temporality and the whole-life view of career in SIEs’ career crafting approach.

What happens when leaders are unable to keep leading? Leaders are often expected to be enthusiastic, innovative and help lead their organization forward. However, sometimes they can find themselves so emotionally and physically depleted that they are unable to function, even at the most basic level. Years of stress, heavy responsibilities, personal issues and unhealthy work hours can take a toll in the form of ‘burnout’. The battery is flat and the car cannot start. There are many contributing factors to burnout. It comes at a high cost to the leader, his family and his organization. This chapter will look at the nature of burnout and examine how the leader’s personality, work role, leadership style and life experiences can all contribute to the development of this condition. The impact of burnout, pathways to recovery and some preventative measures will also be examined combining current research findings with the author’s own experience of burnout. This chapter aims to highlight the need for leaders to look after themselves and for organizations to help support their leaders in an effective way. Although recovery from burnout may be a difficult and long journey, leaders can regain their strength and motivation and return to the role stronger and with more effective coping strategies.

Skilled migrants' careers are heterogeneous, with existing theories capturing only some of their diversity and dynamic development over time and circumstance. This paper aims to draw out the multilevel (macro, meso and micro levels) influences impacting skilled migrants' careers by using the lens of the intelligent career framework. Furthermore, structuration theory captures the agency of skilled migrants facing different social structures at and across levels and explains the idiosyncratic nature of skilled migrants' careers.

Following an abductive approach, this paper examines the career influences for a sample of 41 skilled migrants in three different host countries. Individual career stories were collected through qualitative interviews. Important career influences from these narratives are categorised across the intelligent career competencies (knowing why, how and whom) at the macro, meso and micro levels.

Findings illustrate the lived reality for skilled migrants of these interrelated multilevel career influences and go some way in elucidating the heterogeneity of skilled migrants' careers and outcomes. The interplay of individual agency in responding to both facilitating and challenging social structures across the multilevels further explains the idiosyncratic nature of skilled migrants' careers and how/whether they achieve satisfying career outcomes. Some potential policy implications and options arising from these findings are suggested.

By considering multilevel themes that influence skilled migrants' career capital, the authors were able to better explain the complex, relational and idiosyncratic shaping of their individual careers. As such, the framework informs and guides individuals, practitioners and organisations seeking to facilitate skilled migrants' careers.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate corporate financial disclosure via Twitter among the top listed 350 companies in the UK as well as identify the determinants of the extent of social media usage to disclose financial information.

This study applies an unsupervised machine learning technique, namely, Latent Dirichlet Allocation topic modeling to identify financial disclosure tweets. Panel, Logistic and Generalized Linear Model Regressions are also run to identify the determinants of financial disclosure on Twitter focusing mainly on board characteristics.

Topic modeling results reveal that companies mainly tweet about 12 topics, including financial disclosure, which has a probability of occurrence of about 7 percent. Several board characteristics are found to be associated with the extent of Twitter usage as a financial disclosure platform, among which are board independence, gender diversity and board tenure.

The extensive literature examines disclosure via traditional media and its determinants, yet this paper extends the literature by investigating the relatively new disclosure channel of social media. This study is among the first to utilize machine learning, instead of manual coding techniques, to automatically unveil the tweets’ topics and reveal financial disclosure tweets. It is also among the first to investigate the relationships between several board characteristics and financial disclosure on Twitter; providing a distinction between the roles of executive vs non-executive directors relating to disclosure decisions.

This study explores how thinking infrastructures can orchestrate collective sensemaking in unstable and socially contested environments, such as large-scale humanitarian crises. In particular, drawing from recent interest in the role of artifacts and infrastructures in sensemaking processes, the study examines the evaluative underpinnings of prospective sensemaking as groups attempt to develop novel understandings about a desired but ambiguous set of future conditions. To explore these theoretical concerns, a detailed case study of the unfolding challenges of managing a large-scale humanitarian crisis response was conducted. This study offers two contributions. Firstly, it develops a theorization of the process through which performance evaluation systems can serve as thinking infrastructures in the collaborative development of new understandings in unstable environments. Secondly, this study sheds light on the practices that support prospective sensemaking through specific features of thinking infrastructures, and unpacks how prospective and retrospective forms of sensemaking may interact in such processes.