Search results
1 – 10 of 29Abigail Breen, Sophie Brock, Katrina Crawford, Mary Docherty, Gavin Drummond, Lucy Gill, Sophie Lawton, Vivienne Mankarious, Andrea Oustayiannis, Gemma Rushworth and Kevin G. Kerr
Food‐borne infection remains a major public health concern and it is important that healthcare professionals in training understand the epidemiology of gastro‐intestinal infection…
Abstract
Purpose
Food‐borne infection remains a major public health concern and it is important that healthcare professionals in training understand the epidemiology of gastro‐intestinal infection and strategies for its prevention. This article describes a student selected component (SSC), i.e. an element which supplements the core curriculum for undergraduate medical students and its use as an educational tool.
Design/methodology/approach
The SSC incorporated a refrigerator safari in which students examined a number of domestic refrigerators for factors which might affect adversely the microbiological quality of the food within them as well as determining refrigerator temperatures with a sensitive thermometer.
Findings
The refrigerator safaris, although small in number (n=25) highlighted a number of frequently occurring factors such as unacceptable refrigerator temperatures and foods which had passed their use by/best before dates. Student feedback indicated that the safari was much appreciated as a practical way of learning about food safety.
Originality/value
The refrigerator safari is a novel method for the teaching of undergraduate students about food hygiene in the domestic setting and emphasises that consumers have important roles and responsibilities in protecting themselves from food‐borne infection.
Details
Keywords
Mary Docherty, Qi Cao and Hufeng Wang
The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the organisational and procedural arrangements for healthcare reform in China, and describe the role of social values in the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the organisational and procedural arrangements for healthcare reform in China, and describe the role of social values in the relevant decision‐making process.
Design/methodology/approach
An analysis of recent developments aimed at achieving universal coverage in China was undertaken in the context of describing the influence of underlying social values.
Findings
The key underlying social value was found to be social solidarity. Other values were implicit rather than explicitly stated, and were subservient to the overall aim of comprehensive coverage.
Originality/value
The paper shows that China is embarking on the largest‐scale health reforms in the world. There is an eagerness to share experiences with other countries in an attempt to ensure the success of the reforms. There is an increasing understanding of the need to make the values underpinning the reforms more explicit and, in particular, those concerned with efficiency and appropriateness.
Details
Keywords
The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the impact of the marketisation of the English HE sector on academic staff and the nature of their professional work is felt to…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the impact of the marketisation of the English HE sector on academic staff and the nature of their professional work is felt to the same degree in different English universities. The study was conducted between November 2015 and April 2017.
Design/methodology/approach
Using the interpretivist paradigm, a qualitative, inductive approach is adopted. In total, 12 semi-structured interviews of 60-90 min each were conducted with academics of six English university types (ancient, old and new civics, plate-glass, technological and post-1992). Participants who were identified by non-probability sampling included professors, principal, senior and lecturers and associate lecturers.
Findings
Six key themes emerged regarding the impact on academic staff and their work: efficiency and quantity over effectiveness; autocratic, managerialist ideology over academic democracy and debate; instrumentalism over intellectualism; de-professionalisation and fragmentation of the academy; increased incidence of performativity, bullying and workplace aggression; and work intensification. The ancient university is least impacted by marketisation in terms of academic staff and the nature of their work. Next are the old and new civic universities, followed by technological, plate-glass universities. The most impact is felt by academics (and the nature of their work) in the post-1992 universities.
Research limitations/implications
There is a relatively small number of interviews in this study; therefore, it is difficult to categorically correlate an academic biography with their opinion in the context of their university type. More male than female participants were interviewed. International staff were not interviewed, and this could bring a varying perspective to the narrative found in this study. A mixed approach in further research would aid this objective. Some of the questioning in the pilot study was not as focused as any further primary research would have to be.
Originality/value
A further area of study, which could have practical implications, add originality and value would be to investigate how good practice in “employee engagement” in the university context might pave the way forward. This has the potential to benefit academic staff directly and the institution, a win–win solution for all stakeholders.
Details
Keywords
Susan Albers Mohrman and Stu Winby
We argue that in order to address the contemporary challenges that organizations and societies are facing, the field of organization development (OD) requires frameworks and…
Abstract
We argue that in order to address the contemporary challenges that organizations and societies are facing, the field of organization development (OD) requires frameworks and skills to focus on the eco-system as the level of analysis. In a world that has become economically, socially, and technologically highly connected, approaches that foster the optimization of specific actors in the eco-system, such as individual corporations, result in sub-optimization of the sustainability of the natural and social system because there is insufficient offset to the ego-centric purposes of the focal organization. We discuss the need for OD to broaden focus to deal with technological advances that enable new ways of organizing at the eco-system level, and to deal with the challenges to sustainable development. Case examples from healthcare and the agri-foods industry illustrate the kinds of development approaches that are required for the development of healthy eco-systems. We do not suggest fundamental changes in the identity of the field of organizational development. In fact, we demonstrate the need to dig deeply into the open systems and socio-technical roots of the field, and to translate the traditional values and approaches of OD to continue to be relevant in today’s dynamic interdependent world.
Details
Keywords
Using sex education at Shepparton South Technical School (South Tech) as a prism, the purpose of this paper is to analyse the Victorian Technical Schools Division policies and…
Abstract
Purpose
Using sex education at Shepparton South Technical School (South Tech) as a prism, the purpose of this paper is to analyse the Victorian Technical Schools Division policies and practices during the 1970-1980s.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper draws on a documented history of South Tech by using a blended methodology consisting of interviews, media-centred debates and a range of documentary sources.
Findings
The Technical Director, Edward “Ted” Jackson's 1970 policy empowered principals as educational leaders, in partnership with their community, to develop courses responding to student needs. This paper analyses a controversy concerning sex education in 1980 that brought such courses under the scrutiny of the Victorian public.
Social implications
Identifying the policies and practices of a sex education course that proved successful in the past enhances the development of contemporary courses.
Originality/value
Victoria's former secondary technical schools provide an important insight into current social and vocational problems.
Details
Keywords
Filicide, the killing of a child by a parent, is one of the only crimes committed by women and men in roughly equal numbers. Women's violence against their children, however, more…
Abstract
Filicide, the killing of a child by a parent, is one of the only crimes committed by women and men in roughly equal numbers. Women's violence against their children, however, more profoundly confounds common understandings of the links between gender and family violence, leading to its ambivalent treatment within the media. When men kill their children, they are usually characterised as either monsters or as sad, failed men. When women kill their children, they are usually represented as bad mothers or mad mothers suffering under the burdens of the pathological female body. In both cases, a mental illness/distress lens is common, though how it manifests is inflected by gender. This chapter examines recent Australian news representations of maternal filicide-suicide. Focussing on the mental illness/distress frame in news, it examines the ideological work this frame does in decontextualising and de-gendering maternal filicide, framing women's mental illness/distress in ‘psychocentric’ terms that strip it of political or social significance and subjecting it to an individualised lens that obscures the gendered aetiologies of women's use of violence.
Details
Keywords
Tobias Fredberg and Johanna Pregmark
A reason why industry incumbents seldom survive technology transitions is their strong reliance on an efficient, but inflexible organizational system. We studied three digital…
Abstract
A reason why industry incumbents seldom survive technology transitions is their strong reliance on an efficient, but inflexible organizational system. We studied three digital transformation initiatives that created fast progress in a struggling newspaper group by working against the industry logic and established thinking in the area. This chapter argues that management succeeded in introducing a new strategic practice through these transformation initiatives. We focus on three factors contributing to the success: complexity management, short time development of a long-term vision, and the introduction of impossible goals.
Details
Keywords