Patrick Larsson, Russell Lloyd, Emily Taberham and Maggie Rosairo
The purpose of this paper is to explore waiting times in improving access to psychological therapies (IAPT) services before and throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper aims to…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore waiting times in improving access to psychological therapies (IAPT) services before and throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper aims to help develop a better understanding of waiting times in IAPT so that interventions can be developed to address them.
Design/methodology/approach
IAPT national data reports was analysed to determine access and in-treatment waiting times before, during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Time-series data was used to examine referral patterns, waiting list size and waiting times between the period of November 2018 and January 2022. The data covers all regions in England where an IAPT service has been commissioned.
Findings
There was a dramatic drop in referrals to IAPT services when lockdown started. Waiting list size for all IAPT services in the country reduced, as did incomplete and completed waits. The reduction in waiting times was short-lived, and longer waits are returning.
Practical implications
This paper aims to contribute to the literature on IAPT waiting times both in relation to, and outside of, COVID-19. It is hoped that the conclusions will generate discussion about addressing long waits to treatment for psychological therapy and encourage further research.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is no published research examining the performance of IAPT waiting times to second appointment. The paper also contributes to an understanding of how IAPT waiting times are measured and explores challenges with the system itself. Finally, it offers an overview on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on waiting time performance nationally.
Details
Keywords
The purpose of this paper is to establish that social determinants are vital contributing factors to mental health difficulties and that, similar to physical health, mental health…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to establish that social determinants are vital contributing factors to mental health difficulties and that, similar to physical health, mental health follows a social gradient. Despite this acknowledgement, there is a rhetoric/reality gap found in social determinants of mental health (SDMH). It will be argued in this paper that this rhetoric/reality gap is located on a number of levels, including theoretical, methodological, practical, political and policy based, which are proposed here to be interrelated.
Design/methodology/approach
The approach is a conceptual analysis of the rhetoric/reality gap found in SDMH using a critical perspective. It draws on a wide variety of theories in order to provide an analysis of the issues outlined.
Findings
The paper's central finding is that there is a dissonance between the dominant ontological, epistemological and methodological, or axiomatic, focus in contemporary mental health theory and practice and SDMH. This dissonance has led to a form of “analysis paralysis” on all levels, and the initiatives required to tackle SDMH have been marginalised in favour of a narrow interpretation of evidence-based research and its accompanying ideology centring on the individual, which has established itself as a primary position on what constitutes valid knowledge to the detriment of other views.
Originality/value
The paper offers a critical perspective on an area of SDMH which is often alluded to but never explicitly explored, and questions the underlying assumptions inherent to mental health theory and practice. The paper's value is that it draws attention to this particular dilemma on a wider scale, including on a political and policy-based level, which is often neglected in mental health theory, and it makes some recommendations on how to move forward.
Details
Keywords
Rikard Larsson, Kenneth R. Brousseau, Katarina Kling and Patrick L. Sweet
The purpose of the present paper is to offer a career concept and culture framework for measuring and managing the alignment between people, strategy and culture and especially…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of the present paper is to offer a career concept and culture framework for measuring and managing the alignment between people, strategy and culture and especially the motivational capital as the fit between people's motives and the organization's reward and appraisal systems.
Design/methodology/approach
A survey of 312 respondents in a multinational manufacturing firm using two questionnaires about their individual career concepts, motives, and their views about the organizational strategy and culture.
Findings
The results suggest that the career‐ and culture‐based motivational capital is positively associated with how effective the people view the strategy, how well‐functioning the structure is experienced, how relevant the performance appraisal is considered, how satisfied the people feel, and how long they stay in the organization.
Research limitations/implications
Future research should add more multi‐item‐dependent variables, use more translated questionnaires into the respondents' own languages, and study more organizations in different industries to make further use of the career concept and culture model's ability to capture the fit between different persons and their organizations and the importance of this alignment.
Practical implications
Career and organizational development can improve the fit between individual career concepts and motives as well as organizational career culture and thereby contribute in several ways to higher performance, such as greater motivation, more positive views of the organization, and higher retention.
Originality/value
The paper provides a unique approach to understand and manage the alignment of different persons, HR systems, and organizational culture with greater precision.
Details
Keywords
Ann-Carita Evaldsson and Johanna Svahn
Purpose – In this chapter, we examine an extended gossip dispute event, in which a peer group of 11-year-old girls take action against a girl who has reported about school…
Abstract
Purpose – In this chapter, we examine an extended gossip dispute event, in which a peer group of 11-year-old girls take action against a girl who has reported about school bullying to the teacher by examining how the accused girls construct their own sociopolitical order away from the adults.
Approach – The analysis draws on ethnographic fieldwork within a Swedish multiethnic school setting combined with detailed analysis (conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis) of children's language practices.
Findings – It is found that the school's bullying intervention practice sets the stage for a trajectory of a gossip dispute event in which the accused girls work out their own version of the telling as snitching, reallocate blame, and project the future consequences for the girl being accountable for the telling. A moral order emerges via the organization of social actions, alignments, occasion-specific identities, and pejorative person descriptors, rendering the event of telling the teacher a disastrous move for the targeted girl. The micro-politics of the extended gossip dispute is pervasive in terms of how the accused girls strengthen social alignments of power, depict the transgressor by categorizing her as insane, and remedy the norm breaches through justifying their own actions.
Social implications – The success with which the girls here manage to turn the school's bullying intervention practice into a system of retaliation emphasizes the need for highlighting the micro-politics, of children's everyday practices away from adults.
Details
Keywords
Anna Karin Olsson, Iréne Bernhard, Tobias Arvemo and Ulrika Lundh Snis
The purpose is to develop a work-integrated learning (WIL) model for university-society research collaboration facilitating societal impact toward short lag yet sustainable…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose is to develop a work-integrated learning (WIL) model for university-society research collaboration facilitating societal impact toward short lag yet sustainable societal impact for local innovation.
Design/methodology/approach
The methodology applied was engaged scholarship based on a WIL approach involving a network of collaborating partners from different sectors of society and cross-disciplinary university researchers. Mixed data collection methods were applied.
Findings
Conceptualization of university-society research collaboration for local innovation is presented as a WIL model including the elements of continuity and commitment, coordination, communication and relationships, trust, courage and creativity and co-creation opportunities. Short lag societal impact as local innovation was identified as product and process innovations.
Research limitations/implications
Further validation of the model is encouraged for the model to be viable in various contexts and to generate different kinds of societal impact.
Practical implications
The model may act as a governing tool for project management to facilitate co-creative and short lag societal impact for local innovation to ensure that engaged and learning activities are embedded in the collaborative process.
Social implications
The model has implications for inclusiveness and co-creation fostering transparency, respect and mutuality in university-society research collaboration and to equate both academic and practice knowledge.
Originality/value
The conclusions drawn support the understanding of a WIL approach practicing engaged scholarship in research collaborations. The main theoretical and practical contributions of the article are the conceptual model for university-society research collaboration generating short lag societal implications and local innovation.
Details
Keywords
Small businesses are dominant in most economies and their owners likely experience high levels of distress. However, we have not fully explored how these common businesses…
Abstract
Small businesses are dominant in most economies and their owners likely experience high levels of distress. However, we have not fully explored how these common businesses meaningfully differ with respect to the stress process. Understanding the meaningful variations or subgroups (i.e., heterogeneity) in the small business population will advance occupational health psychology, both in research and practice (e.g., Schonfeld, 2017; Stephan, 2018). To systematize these efforts, the author identifies five commonly appearing “heterogeneity factors” from the literature as modifiers of stressors or the stress process among small business owners. These five heterogeneity factors include: owner centrality, individual differences, gender differences, business/ownership type, and time. After synthesizing the research corresponding to each of these five factors, the author offers specific suggestions for identifying and incorporating relevant heterogeneity factors in future investigations of small business owners’ stress. The author closes by discussing implications for advancing occupational health theories.
Details
Keywords
Patrick Strobl, Katharina Voelkel, Thomas Schneider and Karsten Stahl
Industrial drivetrains use wet disk clutches for safe and reliable shifting. Advances over the past decades regarding the formulation of lubricants and the composition of friction…
Abstract
Purpose
Industrial drivetrains use wet disk clutches for safe and reliable shifting. Advances over the past decades regarding the formulation of lubricants and the composition of friction materials have led to reliable clutch systems. In this context, the friction behavior is crucial for the correct operation of the clutch. Nevertheless, the friction behavior and its influencing factors are still the object of modern research. The purpose of this study is to investigate how the choice of the steel disk influences the noise vibration and harshness (NVH) behavior of wet industrial clutches.
Design/methodology/approach
To investigate the influence of the steel disk on the friction and NVH behavior of industrial wet disk clutches, experimental investigations with relevant friction systems are conducted. These tests are performed at two optimized test rigs, guaranteeing transferable insights. The surface topography of the steel disk and the friction lining are measured for one friction system to identify possible relations between the surface topography and the friction behavior.
Findings
The steel disk can influence the friction behavior of wet disk clutches. Using a different steel disk surface finish, corresponding results can show differences in the shudder tendency, leading to a nonfavorable NVH behavior – different gradients of the coefficient of friction over sliding velocity cause this phenomenon.
Originality/value
This work gives novel insights into the friction and NVH behavior of industrial wet disk clutches. It supports engineers in the optimization of modern friction systems.
Peer review
The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/ILT-02-2024-0054/
Details
Keywords
Kian Yeik Koay, Patrick Chin-Hooi Soh and Kok Wai Chew
Cyberloafing has been reported as a prevalent practice among employees and has been called the hidden epidemic killing business productivity. Given the importance of this issue…
Abstract
Purpose
Cyberloafing has been reported as a prevalent practice among employees and has been called the hidden epidemic killing business productivity. Given the importance of this issue, this study aims to propose and empirically test a research model to investigate the relationships between private demands, job stress and cyberloafing, premised on border theory, conservation of resources theory and general strain theory.
Design/methodology/approach
A total of 301 usable data were collected from employees who work in the ICT sector, using self-reported questionnaires that are subsequently analysed using Partial Least Square (PLS) structural equation modelling.
Findings
The results of this study have revealed that both private demands and job stress are positively related to cyberloafing. In addition, job stress is positively related to private demands and also partially mediates the relationship between private demands and cyberloafing. Therefore, the findings are suggestive of employee’s job resources being depleted when they cross between work and non-work domains as they attempt to satisfy their private demands. As a result, insufficient job resources channelled towards handling job-related demands results in job stress, followed by their engagement in cyberloafing behaviour as a coping mechanism.
Originality/value
The main theoretical contribution of this research is to expand upon the existing knowledge of the relationship between private demands and cyberloafing by demonstrating the mediating effect of job stress. Interestingly, the findings revealed that employees’ non-work domain can have a significant influence on both emotions and behaviours at work.
Details
Keywords
Health scientists and urban planners have long been interested in the influence that the built environment has on the physical activities in which we engage, the environmental…
Abstract
Health scientists and urban planners have long been interested in the influence that the built environment has on the physical activities in which we engage, the environmental hazards we face, the kinds of amenities we enjoy, and the resulting impacts on our health. However, it is widely recognized that the extent of this influence, and the specific cause-and-effect relationships that exist, are still relatively unclear. Recent reviews highlight the need for more individual-level data on daily activities (especially physical activity) over long periods of time linked spatially to real-world characteristics of the built environment in diverse settings, along with a wide range of personal mediating variables. While capturing objective data on the built environment has benefited from wide-scale availability of detailed land use and transport network databases, the same cannot be said of human activity. A more diverse history of data collection methods exists for such activity and continues to evolve owing to a variety of quickly emerging wearable sensor technologies. At present, no “gold standard” method has emerged for assessing physical activity type and intensity under the real-world conditions of the built environment; in fact, most methods have barely been tested outside of the laboratory, and those that have tend to experience significant drops in accuracy and reliability. This paper provides a review of these diverse methods and emerging technologies, including biochemical, self-report, direct observation, passive motion detection, and integrated approaches. Based on this review and current needs, an integrated three-tiered methodology is proposed, including: (1) passive location tracking (e.g., using global positioning systems); (2) passive motion/biometric tracking (e.g., using accelerometers); and (3) limited self-reporting (e.g., using prompted recall diaries). Key development issues are highlighted, including the need for proper validation and automated activity-detection algorithms. The paper ends with a look at some of the key lessons learned and new opportunities that have emerged at the crossroads of urban studies and health sciences.
We do have a vision for a world in which people can walk to shops, school, friends' homes, or transit stations; in which they can mingle with their neighbors and admire trees, plants, and waterways; in which the air and water are clean; and in which there are parks and play areas for children, gathering spots for teens and the elderly, and convenient work and recreation places for the rest of us. (Frumkin, Frank, & Jackson, 2004, p. xvii)
This chapter examines the teaching practice of the author in the Faculty of Education, University of Malta, taking sessions in smart learning as part of technology-enhanced…
Abstract
This chapter examines the teaching practice of the author in the Faculty of Education, University of Malta, taking sessions in smart learning as part of technology-enhanced learning (TEL) study units in Bachelors of Education and Masters in Teaching and Learning degree programs between 2017 and 2019. My teaching sessions ran concurrent with undertaking separate doctoral research investigating how participants experience “smart learning journeys.” Smart learning journeys in the research were conceptualized as real-world journeys, with geo-spatially relevant points of interest forming a journey of locations related to a topic of learning, providing context-aware content via digital interactions. Research was not connected to teaching practice, though students who took TEL units also participated in the same smart learning journey activity as part of their syllabus.
Though teaching sessions were not part of my research, my classroom practice modified as a result of emerging research findings, and my teaching benefited as I gained deeper understanding about smart learning activities and the role of the learner in them. Using dialogic learning methods and techniques inspired from my research interview methodology, class sessions became noticeably more effective as students engaged directly in discovering their own learning from having participated in the smart learning journey.