The UK Marine and Freshwater Sciences Libraries Group is a small group of librarians who have been meeting regularly since 1969 and represents an informal network of cooperating…
Abstract
The UK Marine and Freshwater Sciences Libraries Group is a small group of librarians who have been meeting regularly since 1969 and represents an informal network of cooperating libraries and information centres willing to offer services within their respective fields in the marine sciences. The organisations from three main Government Agencies form the nucleus of the Group namely:
Pauline Simpson and Jessie Hey
To provide an overview of how open access (OA) repositories have grown to take a premier place in the e‐research knowledge cycle and offer Southampton's route from project to…
Abstract
Purpose
To provide an overview of how open access (OA) repositories have grown to take a premier place in the e‐research knowledge cycle and offer Southampton's route from project to sustainable institutional repository.
Design/methodology/approach
The evolution of institutional repositories and OA is outlined raising questions of multiplicity of repository choice for the researcher. A case study of the University of Southampton research repository (e‐Prints Soton) route to sustainability is explored with a description of a new project that will contribute to e‐research by linking text and data.
Findings
A model for IR sustainability.
Originality/value
The TARDis project was one of the first IRs to achieve central university funding in the UK. Combined with increased visibility and citation, the research assessment exercise route has become the “hook” on which a number of IRs are basing their business models.
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Describes the development and activities of BIASLIC, the Britain and Ireland Association of Aquatic Science Libraries, including the formation of EURASLIC, the European…
Abstract
Describes the development and activities of BIASLIC, the Britain and Ireland Association of Aquatic Science Libraries, including the formation of EURASLIC, the European Association of Aquatic Sciences Libraries and Information Centres, and the provision of UK input into the Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts (AFSA). BIASLIC maintains links with several international agencies as well as providing its members with a support network and a collective voice. At a recent conference, concern was voiced about changes in the structure and funding of aquatic science research and the adverse effect this is having on library staffing. BIASLIC’s new Web site aims to become a focal point for disseminating information about its activities and about developments in the UK and Irish information sector.
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Reports on papers presented at the 11th Ticer Summer School, 27‐31 August 2007 at the University of Tilbury, The Netherlands.
Abstract
Purpose
Reports on papers presented at the 11th Ticer Summer School, 27‐31 August 2007 at the University of Tilbury, The Netherlands.
Design/methodology/approach
Reports from the viewpoint of a participant on the modular course; and gives insight into the themes covered.
Findings
Found the modular format worked well, especially the end of lecture question‐and‐answer sessions and the opportunity for discussion with the lecturers. Summarises the content of several of the lectures and finds them to be relevant and thought‐provoking on current library issues and themes in a digital age.
Originality/value
Of interest as a summary of the content of the Ticer Summer School and of current themes.
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Lilith Arevshatian Whiley and Gina Grandy
The authors explore how service workers negotiate emotional laboring with “dirty” emotions while trying to meet the demands of neoliberal healthcare. In doing so, the authors…
Abstract
Purpose
The authors explore how service workers negotiate emotional laboring with “dirty” emotions while trying to meet the demands of neoliberal healthcare. In doing so, the authors theorize emotional labor in the context of healthcare as a type of embodied and emotional “dirty” work.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors apply interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) to their data collected from National Health Service (NHS) workers in the United Kingdom (UK).
Findings
The authors’ data show that healthcare service workers absorb, contain and quarantine emotional “dirt”, thereby protecting their organization at a cost to their own well-being. Workers also perform embodied practices to try to absolve themselves of their “dirty” labor.
Originality/value
The authors extend research on emotional “dirty” work and theorize that emotional labor can also be conceptualized as “dirty” work. Further, the authors show that emotionally laboring with “dirty” emotions is an embodied phenomenon, which involves workers absorbing and containing patients' emotional “dirt” to protect the institution (at the expense of their well-being).
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This paper aims to examine how the work of Ruth Simpson and the subsequent collaborations have contributed to understanding of the gendered constructions of meritocracy, as they…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine how the work of Ruth Simpson and the subsequent collaborations have contributed to understanding of the gendered constructions of meritocracy, as they apply in organizations.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper is a personal analysis of the work of Ruth Simpson and her colleagues and the way in which her work has resonated with me and influenced our joint collaborations. The key questions our work has addressed, both when we work together and with others, include how merit is constructed. Is it gendered? How does it influence organizational outcomes? How is merit recognized? Is merit “performed”? Key theoretical constructs and frameworks are used to address these issues; including, gendered organizational structures and regimes (Acker, 1990; Ely and Meyerson, 2000; Gherardi and Poggio, 2001), the gendered nature of meritocracy (Thornton, 2007; Sommerlad, 2012, Brink van den and Benschop, 2012) and the performance and “stickiness” of meritocracy (Ashcraft, 2013, Bergman and Chalkley, 2007).
Findings
The paper reveals alternative ways of interrogating the discourse of meritocracy. Usually taken for granted, as an objective and fair mechanism for the allocation of scarce resources, the concept is examined and found to be much more contingent, unstable and subjective than had previously been considered. The gender-based implications of these findings are assessed.
Research limitations/implications
The implications of the work are to broaden the field and develop frameworks within which we can understand more clearly the way in which merit is understood. Through the work we have done, we have highlighted that merit far from being an objective measure of ability is deeply rooted in contextual and we argue, gendered understandings of contribution, worth and desert.
Practical implications
The practical implications are that firms can no longer rely on discourses of meritocracy to evidence their commitment to equality and fairness. They will need to go further to show a direct link between fairness in the design of processes as well as fairness in the outcomes of these processes. Until these objectives are more clearly articulated, we should continue to shine a light on embedded inequalities.
Social implications
The social implications are that a call for wider societal understanding of meritocracy should be made. Rather than simply accepting discourses of merit, key constituent groups who have not benefitted from the prevailing orthodoxy should seek to examine the concept and draw their own conclusions. In this manner, the author develops societal mechanisms that do not just purport to ensure equality of outcome for all; they achieve it.
Originality/value
This paper offers an examination of the development of ideas, how we can learn from the work of influential scholars within the field and, in turn, through collaboration, advance understanding.
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Anna Milena Galazka and Sarah Jenkins
Drawing on interviews with two types of essential workers – wound clinicians and care workers – the chapter examines stigma management in dirty care work through the lens of…
Abstract
Drawing on interviews with two types of essential workers – wound clinicians and care workers – the chapter examines stigma management in dirty care work through the lens of emotion management. The study combines two dimensions of dirty work: physical taint in relation to bodywork and social taint linked to working in close proximity to socially stigmatized clients. Hence, stigma management extends to dealing with the physically and socially dirty features of essential care work. In addition, the authors’ assessment of social stigma includes how essential care workers also sought to alleviate the social stigma encountered by their clients. In so doing, the authors extend the literature on dirty work to identify how emotion management skills are central to the stigma management strategies of the essential care workers in this study. The authors demonstrate how both groups deal with their stigma by emphasizing the emotion management skills in ‘doing’ dirty work and in the ‘purpose’ of this work, which includes acknowledging how the authors attempt to address the social taint encountered by their clients. Additionally, by comparing two occupations with different contexts and conditions of work, the authors show how complex emotion management skills are gendered in care work to expand the understanding of gender and stigma management. Furthermore, these emotion management skills emanate from the deep relational work with clients rather than through occupational communities. The authors argue that by focussing on emotion management, the hidden skills of dirty work in gendered care work are illuminated and contribute to contemporary debates about whether stigma can be overcome.
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Consuelo Vásquez, Boris H.J.M. Brummans and Carole Groleau
Shadowing is becoming an increasingly popular method in management and organization studies. While several scholars have reflected on this technique, comparatively few researchers…
Abstract
Purpose
Shadowing is becoming an increasingly popular method in management and organization studies. While several scholars have reflected on this technique, comparatively few researchers have explicated the specific practices that constitute this method and discussed their implications for research on processes of organizing. The purpose of this article is to address these issues by offering a conceptual toolbox that defines shadowing in terms of a set of framing practices and provides in‐depth insight into the methodological choices and challenges that organizational shadowers may encounter.
Design/methodology/approach
In this article, the authors explicate the specific framing practices in which researchers engage when taking an intersubjective approach to organizational shadowing. To demonstrate the value of viewing shadowing as framing, the paper grounds the theoretical discussion in actual fieldwork experiences, taken from three different ethnographic studies.
Findings
Based on a systematic and critical analysis of fieldwork experiences, the paper argues that organizational shadowing is constituted by three interrelated framing practices: delineating the object of study; punctuating the process/flow of a given organizing process; and reflecting on the relationship between researcher and the object(s) or person(s) being observed. These analytical constructs highlight specific activities with which shadowers are confronted in the field, namely foregrounding and backgrounding particular aspects in defining a given object of study, trying to keep this object in focus as the fieldwork unfolds, and making decisions about the degree to which the relationship with shadowees should be taken into account in understanding this object.
Originality/value
This article provides an in‐depth reflection on the subtle practices that constitute organizational shadowing. It offers a useful conceptual toolbox for researchers who want to use this method and demonstrates its operational value to help them understand how knowledge construction is the outcome of a coconstructive process that depends on a series of decisions negotiated in ongoing interactions with the actors under study.
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SEPTEMBER sees the holiday season waning and the summer irrevocably over. It sees the progressive librarian, as one of our correspondents suggests, making plans for the winter…
Abstract
SEPTEMBER sees the holiday season waning and the summer irrevocably over. It sees the progressive librarian, as one of our correspondents suggests, making plans for the winter. Possibly it may be said that the really alert one has had them made for some time, because it is immediately on return from holidays, when there is a hint of winter in the air, and daylight saving is over, that the average man thinks of how he will spend his leisure in the darker days. That, at least, is the theory and many librarians have already set up their displays of suggestions to would‐be Students.