Forrest C. Lane and Natasha H. Chapman
The social change model of leadership (SCM) is a widely used leadership model in higher education. StrengthsQuest is conceptually similar to the individual values of the SCM in…
Abstract
The social change model of leadership (SCM) is a widely used leadership model in higher education. StrengthsQuest is conceptually similar to the individual values of the SCM in its aim to identify and grow individual talents. This model is based on the idea that individuals perform at higher levels when they build upon their identified talents (Clifton & Harter, 2003). Prior studies have not examined the relationship of hope or one’s belief in their identified StrengthsQuest talents to the individual values of the SCM. This study examines that relationship using the adult-trait hope and strengths self-efficacy scales. The relationship between these constructs along and other predictors of social change capacity were explored using canonical correlation analysis. Strengths self-efficacy, hope, and student engagement were statistically significant (73% of the variability among the individual values of the SCM). Gender, race, and community service were not statistically significant in this study.
Social studies research has long advocated inquiry as a desired instructional practice, but the increasing emphasis on the role students’ questions should play in inquiry requires…
Abstract
Social studies research has long advocated inquiry as a desired instructional practice, but the increasing emphasis on the role students’ questions should play in inquiry requires research into what social studies teachers can do to elevate the place of student questioning in classrooms. This study examined the attitudes and actions of two secondary social studies teachers who self-identified as advocates of student questioning and who desired to incorporate more student questioning into their instruction. This study used qualitative research methods and generated data through multiple interviews and classroom observations with each participant along with content analysis of classroom materials. Findings suggest that even though the participants approached student questioning in unique ways, they shared a need for curricular control, often triggered by the pressures of standardized assessments, which influenced how they incorporated student questioning into their classrooms. This study provides valuable insight into the promise of student questioning and factors that must be addressed if teachers are to incorporate student questioning in ways that foster meaningful inquiry.
Details
Keywords
In this chapter, I examine stories that foster care youth tell to legislatures, courts, policymakers, and the public to influence policy decisions. The stories told by these…
Abstract
In this chapter, I examine stories that foster care youth tell to legislatures, courts, policymakers, and the public to influence policy decisions. The stories told by these children are analogized to victim truth testimony, analyzed as a therapeutic, procedural, and developmental process, and examined as a catalyst for systemic accountability and change. Youth stories take different forms and appear in different media: testimony in legislatures, courts, research surveys or studies; opinion editorials and interviews in newspapers or blog posts; digital stories on YouTube; and artistic expression. Lawyers often serve as conduits for youth storytelling, translating their clients’ stories to the public. Organized advocacy by youth also informs and animates policy development. One recent example fosters youth organizing to promote “normalcy” in child welfare practices in Florida, and in related federal legislation.
Details
Keywords
Farah Y. Shakir and Yih-teen Lee
Global leadership involves the ability to connect with individuals from different cultures. Connecting is an actionable process that creates mutual understanding, positive…
Abstract
Global leadership involves the ability to connect with individuals from different cultures. Connecting is an actionable process that creates mutual understanding, positive feeling, and a common approach to collaborate. Forming interpersonal connections can be an effective way for global leaders to cut across cultural differences as it is based on a universal human need for belonging. Our study aims to understand the specific actions global leaders engage in to connect with people across cultures. Furthermore, we examine how identity experiences of multicultural individuals contributed to their capabilities of connecting with people from different cultures in their role of global leader. Through a qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews with multicultural individuals in global leadership positions, we develop a model of connecting across cultures involving specific leadership actions that lead to emotive, cognitive, and behavioral dimensions for connection. Our model also illustrates how multicultural identity experiences equip global leaders with qualities such as empathy, perspective-taking, and integration, which enable them to engage in actions for connecting to people across cultures. The research in this chapter contributes to a better understanding of global leadership with novel insights into how global leaders connect to people and sheds light on the advantages of multicultural identity experiences in this process.
Details
Keywords
This study examines the discursive accounts of civil society in a rural English village to understand what these reveal about contemporary political discourses. It employs a…
Abstract
This study examines the discursive accounts of civil society in a rural English village to understand what these reveal about contemporary political discourses. It employs a critical discourse analysis of the conversational interactions of Ambridge residents. The sample comprised all recorded conversations referencing charities, volunteering and civic action drawn from the two-week period corresponding with the change in UK Prime Minister (July 2019). Using three analytical tools derived from extant theory, it considers the salient political ideology underpinning these social interactions. These tools are illustrated with earlier examples of individual civil activities such as the oat-based civil disobedience of a respected older resident. This analysis scrutinises the philanthropic nature of Peggy Woolley's Ambridge Conservation Trust. The fraught process of village fete planning is cited as exemplifying conventional decision-making mechanisms. Problems of staffing a community shop are considered in the light of an increasing political reliance on community volunteers replacing paid staff. Thus, the relative impact of Thatcher, Blair, Cameron and May are considered in exchanges between Ambridge residents from Lynda and Robert Snell to Jazzer McCreery and Jill Archer. The aim is to explore what Ambridge's civil society tells us about Boris Johnson's Britain.
Details
Keywords
Christos Begkos and Katerina Antonopoulou
In the current digital era where online content is riddled with fabricated metrics and rankings, this research aims to investigate the underpinning mechanisms of the calculative…
Abstract
Purpose
In the current digital era where online content is riddled with fabricated metrics and rankings, this research aims to investigate the underpinning mechanisms of the calculative practices which actors engage with to evaluate digital platform content in the absence of well-defined performance measures.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper focuses on the online, photo-sharing platform Instagram which is devoid of common performance measures such as rankings, ratings and reviews. The authors applied netnographic methods to capture users' actions and interactions at the Greek Instagram community. The authors adopt a practice lens as informed by Schatzki's ‘site ontology’ to capture actors' calculative practices as organised by rules, teleoaffective structures and general and practical understandings.
Findings
Platform actors engage in aesthetic and palpable evaluations of other user profiles and their posted content. They employ permissible (e.g., using third-party apps) and illicit (e.g., lobbying and procuring engagement) tactics to measure and manage digital platform performance, fabricate metrics and blur others' evaluations, in pursuit of prestige and material teleologies. Their calculative practices are conditioned by an implicit social etiquette, which permeates the platform both horizontally and vertically.
Originality/value
First, the paper captures and theorises the mechanisms which underpin actors' calculative practices for performance measurement in the absence of robust judgement devices. Second, it demonstrates how ambiguous assemblages of material and prestige teleologies, aesthetic and palpable evaluative regimes and implicit rules and practical expertise collectively invoke platform actors' calculative practices and the construction of performance measures. In doing so, it contributes to performance measurement literature via demonstrating how management accounting is implicated in the evaluation of digital platform outputs.
Practical implications
The paper provides insight on how platform actors fabricate performance metrics, what they perceive as ‘good’ online content and what constitutes an ‘impactful’ user account or a ‘successful’ social media campaign. Such findings are valuable to management accountants, entrepreneurs and practitioners who seek to evaluate digital platform performance.
Details
Keywords
Kassa Woldesenbet Beta, Natasha Katuta Mwila and Olapeju Ogunmokun
This paper seeks to systematically review and synthesise existing research knowledge on African women entrepreneurship to identify gaps for future studies.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper seeks to systematically review and synthesise existing research knowledge on African women entrepreneurship to identify gaps for future studies.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper conducted a systematic literature review of published studies from 1990 to 2020 on women entrepreneurship in Africa using a 5M gender aware framework of Brush et al. (2009).
Findings
The systematic literature review of published studies found the fragmentation, descriptive and prescriptive orientation of studies on Africa women entrepreneurship and devoid of theoretical focus. Further, women entrepreneurship studies tended to be underpinned from various disciplines, less from the entrepreneurship lens, mostly quantitative, and at its infancy stage of development. With a primary focus on development, enterprise performance and livelihood, studies rarely attended to issues of motherhood and the nuanced understanding of women entrepreneurship’s embeddedness in family and institutional contexts of Africa.
Research limitations/implications
The paper questions the view that women entrepreneurship is a “panacea” and unravels how family context, customary practices, poverty and, rural-urban and formal/informal divide, significantly shape and interact with African women entrepreneurs’ enterprising experience and firm performance.
Practical implications
The findings and analyses indicate that any initiatives to support women empowerment via entrepreneurship should consider the socially constructed nature of women entrepreneurship and the subtle interplay of the African institutional contexts’ intricacies, spatial and locational differences which significantly influence women entrepreneurs’ choices, motivations and goals for enterprising.
Originality/value
The paper contributes to a holistic understanding of women entrepreneurship in Africa by using a 5M framework to review the research knowledge. In addition, the paper not only identifies unexplored/or less examined issues but also questions the taken-for-granted assumptions of existing knowledge and suggest adoption of context- and gender-sensitive theories and methods.
Details
Keywords
Natasha Saqib and Mir Shahid Satar
Emerging markets are witnessing rapid changes in their economy owing to the ongoing liberalization and globalization. India, as one of the emerging markets in south Asia, is also…
Abstract
Purpose
Emerging markets are witnessing rapid changes in their economy owing to the ongoing liberalization and globalization. India, as one of the emerging markets in south Asia, is also experiencing a dramatic change in its business ecosystem. This poses huge opportunities to the companies, both start-ups and established ones. In this direction, the business model innovation offers a strategic renewal mechanism. The study aims to explore the practices of an online transport network company (OLA) creating a distinctive place for itself in Indian taxi service sector.
Design/methodology/approach
Methodologically, an exploratory case study of an India-based online transport company (OLA) business model innovation is reported.
Findings
This paper reveals that OLA has been able to gain competitive advantage in the Indian emerging market by developing an innovative business model with its distinctive features of personalised customer service, asset sharing, usage-based pricing, collaborative ecosystem, agile and adaptive organising and successful expansion strategies.
Research limitations/implications
This study adds to current knowledge concerning the theoretical foundations and antecedents of business model innovation as a competitive advantage. The paper is explorative in nature because the analysis is mostly based on literature review. Furthermore, in consideration of the analysis of business model of a single company, further research is required to generalize the results.
Practical implications
The understanding of the intricacies of business model innovation can be of great concern to existing and prospective managers and entrepreneurs of emerging markets.
Originality/value
The paper discusses the features of innovative business models and how firms can make their business models more relevant to the competitive markets. As such, the study is hopeful to aid practitioners engaged in the pursuit of beating the competition with innovation driven business models.
Details
Keywords
Throughout American industry, there is more evidence now than ever before of the need for change. Many analysts are pointing to the traditional leadership style used in the vast…
Abstract
Throughout American industry, there is more evidence now than ever before of the need for change. Many analysts are pointing to the traditional leadership style used in the vast majority of American companies as a major obstacle to growth and improvement. Sixty‐eight per cent of college educated women reported job discrimination, especially at the upper corporate level, because of their sex (The New York Times, 1982). The relationship between what will be required for corporate survival and the innate talents of women managers has not been recognised enough by corporate leadership (Loden, 1985). It seems that women managers possessing certain distinct feminine talents and characteristics may be better prepared to cope with the challenges of the future than many traditional males. The skills they were encouraged to leave behind when they entered the world of management are finally being recognised as critical to their companies' long‐term health and viability.
Martyn Robertson, Amanda Collins, Natasha Medeira and James Slater
The importance of new business start‐ups cannot be over‐emphasised. The UK government has taken actions designed to stimulate the growth of new businesses and aid their survival…
Abstract
The importance of new business start‐ups cannot be over‐emphasised. The UK government has taken actions designed to stimulate the growth of new businesses and aid their survival. The identification of barriers to entry is important, together with strategies to minimise their impact. The UK continues to lag behind the USA in its levels of entrepreneurship. The removal of barriers to start‐up is key to rectifying this situation and stimulating the new business aspect of the economy. The paper highlights the government’s position in furthering entrepreneurship, draws on initial primary research into student barriers to start‐up and makes recommendations for how higher education institutions can assist in breaking down the barriers identified.