Monica Lemos and Fernanda Liberali
The purpose of this paper is to explore a formative intervention project that was developed for the Municipal Secretariat of Education in São Paulo, Brazil for the broad…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore a formative intervention project that was developed for the Municipal Secretariat of Education in São Paulo, Brazil for the broad development of all levels of educational management (teacher educators, coordinators, principals, teachers and students). Thus, the creative chain of activities is a key theoretical framework for promoting critical collaboration in order to cross the boundaries of educational management organization.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors use data from the Management in Creative Chains Project (Liberali, 2012), as a way to enable the wide development of all levels of educational management. Data comprise formative meetings in which different educational managers system take part in two settings, the regional board with 25 schools and one of the participating schools. The analysis is based on thematic content and argumentative organization, and on critical situations and the potentials they entailed.
Findings
The study guides to the conclusions of the process of creative chain as a possibility to expand management in the educational system and its community.
Research limitations/implications
Every time there is a change in the mayors, there are changes in the way of addressing school management in the city. However, after the project, considerations about the needs of the communities became part of the public policy regardless of who is in charge of the city and its educational system.
Practical implications
This study can be used for transformation in the management and teaching and learning activities and improvement of the school-community relation.
Social implications
Socially this study can lead to improvement in the quality of life in the community and at school.
Originality/value
Differently from a top down educational management, which enables a reproductive chain, educational management in a creative chain, considering the community needs, enables subjects to become interdependent to expand and transform the activities in the educational system and hence the communities’ reality.
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Educational management's main task is to achieve learning quality outcomes in acquiring knowledge, scientific skills and social values. This study aims to provide a background on…
Abstract
Purpose
Educational management's main task is to achieve learning quality outcomes in acquiring knowledge, scientific skills and social values. This study aims to provide a background on Egyptian thought development in educational management from 1990 to 2020.
Design/methodology/approach
In this study, we used the descriptive method to collect and interpret data. This method aims to describe an object of phenomena after data collection, analyze it, identify the conditions and relationships between variables and monitor the challenges arising from Egypt's educational system's problems.
Findings
The results showed the following: (1) the trend toward decentralization of educational management is not fulfill during that period and (2) the district and directorate administration continued to receive administrative instructions from the managerial ladder's highest authorities. The Ministry of Education was in control of policy decision-making processes and administrative and financial responsibilities. Many decisions and laws hinder decentralization, such as centralizing examinations, curricula and teachers' recruitment and transfer.
Originality/value
The challenges of developing educational management are related to the shortage of modern management methods in administrative leadership, organizational behavior and decision-making, such as human relations and decentralized administration. Also, the insufficient material resources, managerial competencies and educational, intellectual stagnation among many leaders and administrators.
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Charlotte Dixon, David John Edwards, Monica Mateo-Garcia, Joseph Lai, Wellington Didibhuku Didibhuku Thwala and Mark Shelbourn
This study aims to investigate the behaviour of building users and how this impacts upon building energy performance. Specifically, the work examines the behavioural traits of…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate the behaviour of building users and how this impacts upon building energy performance. Specifically, the work examines the behavioural traits of able-bodied users of a large higher education building who erroneously access and egress the building using doorways intended for disabled users.
Design/methodology/approach
An inductive methodological approach is adopted that uses grounded theory to devise new insights into building users’ access and egress habits. Structured interviews are conducted to collect primary data from 68 building users of a large educational building over a four-week period. Responses to questions posed provide the basis for a tabularisation of behavioural traits.
Findings
Reasons for able-bodied building users’ preferences to using disabled access are identified and discussed; these are thematically grouped under the headings of apathy, convenience, emergency, ergonomics, ignorance and phobia. Building upon these findings, the research then offers insights into the approaches that could be adopted to change the erroneous behaviours. These approaches include education of building users on the impact their behaviour has upon building performance and environmental pollution, more stringent regulation to penalise repeat offenders and changes to building entrance design using obtrusive (i.e. radio frequency identification tags) and unobstrusive control measures (i.e. a second entrance doorway or slower opening mechanism).
Originality/value
To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is the first of its kind to investigate the rationale for able-bodied building users erroneously using disabled persons’ access and egress doorways within a building, which as a consequence, inadvertently reduces the building’s environmental performance.
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Domitilla Magni, Roberto Chierici, Monica Fait and Kelly Lefebvre
Building upon the insights of the resource-based view and internationalization theories, the purpose of this paper is to examine the role networks play in SMEs' readiness for…
Abstract
Purpose
Building upon the insights of the resource-based view and internationalization theories, the purpose of this paper is to examine the role networks play in SMEs' readiness for internationalization. By investigating three different types of knowledge sharing, namely economic-setting, market-specific and customer-specific, the study analyzes their effect on SMEs' readiness for internationalization.
Design/methodology/approach
The four research hypotheses derived by from the analysis of the literature have been investigated by applying the multiple regression technique. By means of an online survey, 300 valid questionnaires were collected and information from a sample of Italian SMEs belonging to 11 agro-food consortia have been analyzed.
Findings
The results suggest that SMEs' readiness for internationalization could be supported by sharing customer-specific, market-specific and economic-setting knowledge with other firms operating within the same agro-food consortium. Additionally, data analysis highlights a negative relation between the risk perception in the process and readiness for internationalization, suggesting the importance of knowledge sharing in reducing the criticality issues of being a newcomer entering international markets.
Originality/value
From a theoretical perspective, this study aims to fill the gap in knowledge management and international relationship marketing literature. Since proposes a combination of different kinds of knowledge that contribute to reducing the criticalities SMEs must face by identifying useful information to be conveyed within the network. From a managerial perspective, the study provides useful insights for the agro-food sector, highlighting how experiential and network knowledge constitutes a pre-condition for managing internationalization complexity and discovering opportunities on foreign markets.
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Mónica Haro-González, Raquel Pérez-Ordás, Alberto Grao-Cruces, Román Nuviala and Alberto Nuviala
The purpose of this paper is to determine how an instrument – designed to assess quality, value, and satisfaction – works, and compare results obtained in female users of unisex…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to determine how an instrument – designed to assess quality, value, and satisfaction – works, and compare results obtained in female users of unisex sports services and fitness centres and female users of exclusively female sports services and fitness centres.
Design/methodology/approach
A total of 745 women belonging to 62 sports services and fitness centres took part in this study; 36.60 per cent were members of female-exclusive centres. The average age was 32.97±14.11 years. In total, 38.70 per cent of the women surveyed used the sports services and fitness centres twice a week for 66.37±32.87 minutes on average. The EPOD2 questionnaire was used. This instrument is made up of 25 items and measures quality, value, and satisfaction. The invariance of the factorial structure in the two groups was verified and regression coefficients were calculated for the relationships in the model.
Findings
The model is stable in both of the groups. Quality is a predecessor of value and satisfaction. Value is related to a large extent to Satisfaction. The dimensions of quality (activity, sports instructors, service personnel, and space) are directly related to value and/or satisfaction. There are significant differences in the standardised values that relate quality and its dimensions with the value and satisfaction between women users of female-exclusive centres and women users of unisex centres.
Originality/value
This paper is important because the findings of this study can be applicable to help sports services and fitness centres, whether unisex centres or female-exclusive centres, obtain better assessments from female users.
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Jorge Luiz Valença Mariz, Rodrigo de Lemos Peroni, Ricardo Martins de Abreu Silva, Mohammad Mahdi Badiozamani and Hooman Askari-Nasab
The mine sequencing problem is NP-hard. Therefore, simplifying it is necessary. One way to do this is to employ clusters as input instead of individual blocks. The mining cut…
Abstract
Purpose
The mine sequencing problem is NP-hard. Therefore, simplifying it is necessary. One way to do this is to employ clusters as input instead of individual blocks. The mining cut clustering problem has been little addressed in the literature, and the solutions used are almost always heuristic. We solve the mining cut clustering problem, which is NP-hard, through single- and multi-objective optimization, finding results that are local optima in acceptable computational time.
Design/methodology/approach
We first elaborate an ILP-based model to address the mining cut clustering problem. We employ a mono-objective approach and two multi-objective approaches, solving all these models by constraint programming. To choose the best solutions generated by multi-objective approaches, we employ two multi-criteria decision analysis approaches, considering different weight configurations. We developed a case study using real data.
Findings
We verified that the approaches based on multi-objective optimization performed better than the mono-objective approach for the economic return criterion. The weighted-sum multi-objective approach presented the best results considering all objective functions used. Once viable solutions were obtained through multi-objective optimization, multi-criteria decision analysis approaches almost always selected the same solution. We obtained solutions that are local optima in acceptable computational time.
Research limitations/implications
This study solves an instance with 80 blocks. Consequently, it is aimed at short-term mine planning. The methodology has not yet been evaluated in large instances related to medium- and long-term mine planning.
Originality/value
This is the first time that multi-objective optimization has been employed to solve the mining cut custering problem. Even other problems related to mine planning were, at most, solved by goal programming, so that multi-objective optimization is a knowledge that is not widespread among mining researchers. The results are consistent, and the study achieves the objective of finding quality solutions to an NP-hard problem in an acceptable computational time.
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This paper explores perspectives on social justice, equity and agency when schools address health, wellbeing and sustainability challenges.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper explores perspectives on social justice, equity and agency when schools address health, wellbeing and sustainability challenges.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper draws on a literature review of educational research. The analysis is narrative, highlighting how binary conceptions of equity, social justice and agency are explicitly or implicitly evident in the studies included in the review, distinguishing between as well as noting the interplay between the different conceptions.
Findings
Perspectives on social justice and equity are emphasizing the need to address (1) a more equal sharing of resources in education, (2) dominance in education, and (3) community/ies and education as a common good. Perspectives on agency are framed as situated (1) between people (2) between people and structures or social contexts, and (3) between people and nature or the more-than-human. The paper furthermore highlights tendencies and experiences regarding the possibility of addressing these perspectives in different forms of educational practices.
Research limitations/implications
A potential limitation in this review is that 17 out of the 23 included studies are by authors with an Anglo-Saxon background, while a further 3 have a European background. As such, the review mainly represents “Western” perspectives on social justice, equity and agency.
Originality/value
The findings in the paper indicate that despite the fact that social justice, equity and agency are concepts that have been discussed in educational research for a very long time, they cannot be seen as taken-for-granted concepts, and that the research contains a diverse range of perspectives on these concepts — also within research authored by researchers with an Anglo-Saxon or European background.
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Sean Peter Hennessey and Laurene Rehman
This study proposes a new model, called the Integrated Human Health Model (IHHM), to improve the design and effectiveness of Workplace Health Promotion (WHP) interventions.
Abstract
Purpose
This study proposes a new model, called the Integrated Human Health Model (IHHM), to improve the design and effectiveness of Workplace Health Promotion (WHP) interventions.
Design/methodology/approach
Eighteen participants were purposefully selected from 44 participants in a 2.5-day WHP intervention targeting multiple health behaviours (MHB). The intervention has shown to improve quality of life and health-related behaviours in rigorous studies. Qualitative data collection methods were observations, repeat semi-structured interviews and weekly e-journals collected over three months. Template analysis was used to develop the IHHM describing participants' experiences.
Findings
The IHHM describes the health behaviour change process using eight themes: facilitation, assessment, desired life, barriers, knowledge and skills, insights, action planning, and monitor and support.
Practical implications
With the paucity of evidence informing WHP intervention effectiveness, this study provides a preliminary model serving practitioners to design more effective interventions and scholars to improve evidence.
Originality/value
This study proposes a practical comprehensive model for practitioners and leaders to more effectively design and evaluate successful MHB WHP interventions compared to existing models.