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1 – 10 of over 1000Farrukh Akhtar, Nan Greenwood, Raymond Smith and Angela Richardson
Dementia cafés (also known as Alzheimer’s or memory cafés) have been running in the UK since 2000. The purpose of this paper is to report on the recommendations from recent…
Abstract
Purpose
Dementia cafés (also known as Alzheimer’s or memory cafés) have been running in the UK since 2000. The purpose of this paper is to report on the recommendations from recent research that interviewed family carers on their experiences of using the cafés.
Design/methodology/approach
The research was carried out in cafés in and around London, and focussed on informal, unpaid carers’ experiences of using them. In total, 11 carers from five different dementia cafés were interviewed, using semi-structured questionnaires. The results were thematically analysed.
Findings
The findings showed that carers had an overwhelming appreciation of the cafés and what they offered, but several of the findings led to the recommendations about the recruitment and training of café co-ordinators; how cafés present themselves and their services and how they can offer dedicated support to informal carers.
Originality/value
These recommendations will be of use to café organisers and commissioners, especially considering the dearth of information currently available in this area.
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The focus on innovation as a foundational element of enhanced organisational performance has led to the promoting and valuing of greater levels of employee participation in…
Abstract
Purpose
The focus on innovation as a foundational element of enhanced organisational performance has led to the promoting and valuing of greater levels of employee participation in innovation processes. An emergent concept of employee-driven innovation could be argued to have hindered understandings of the creative and transformative nature of work and the kinds of work and learning practices that all workers engage in as part of their routine occupational practices. The purpose of this paper is to propose that a stronger focus on work-learning as workers’ personal enactment of the collective activities that comprise their occupational practice and its circumstances can clarify the nature of innovation.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is based on an extended ethnographic study (18 months) of 12 employees from four different workplaces and who were engaged in a variety of different occupational practices.
Findings
The argument is advanced through discussion of four kinds of innovation that were identified through examining the work-learning practices of restaurant, gymnasium, computing and fire service workers. They are personal heuristics, test benching, efficiencies and shared needs.
Originality/value
These innovation forms illuminate personal work-learning practices and offer means of explaining innovation as a foundational factor of work, suggesting that work that supports these work-learning practices can enhance organisational innovation.
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Raymond Smith and Steven Hodge
This paper aims to report and discuss findings from the first exploratory phase of a research project that examined how and in what ways the practice of vocational student…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to report and discuss findings from the first exploratory phase of a research project that examined how and in what ways the practice of vocational student work-placement contributes to innovation in host organisations. The focus of the paper is on identifying and clarifying how innovation is understood in this context and outlines six different meanings of innovation variably used by those involved in the work-placement provision – vocational education students, training providers and host organisation staff. The paper suggests that these six meanings evidence the disparity of work-based understandings of innovation and the need to be more explicit and accurate about what the term means in specific work contexts if innovation is to be realised.
Design/methodology/approach
The qualitative first phase of the project interviewed 41 students, trainers and organisational staff about the nature of their work and learning practices and the kinds of changes and improvements to those practices that they experienced through the placement program. Through these interview conversations participants were asked to describe and explain their understandings and experiences of innovation in their work. The interviews were transcribed and thematically analysed.
Findings
Interview analysis gave rise to a set of six distinguishable meanings that operate as definitions of innovation. These six meanings highlight the range of meanings the term innovation carries within small business work-learning contexts and the need of those who promote and encourage innovation to be mindful of these various usages.
Research limitations/implications
The findings reported emerge from a small sample and are only one aspect of the overall project. Further larger scale research is needed.
Social implications
The term innovation should not be considered commonly understood and accepted by those who promote it and within workplaces and organisational practice. Clear, accurate and specific work context consideration of the term is needed.
Originality/value
The project reports the voices and understandings of those whose work and learning are foundational to the emergence and enactment of innovation in work. These voices are all too often seldom heard and heeded. The six meanings they articulate for innovation contrast markedly with typical innovation research literature.
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Anthropology was a late‐comer to the Caribbean and only after World War II did the study of Caribbean culture and societies become less exceptional. Early in this century when…
Abstract
Anthropology was a late‐comer to the Caribbean and only after World War II did the study of Caribbean culture and societies become less exceptional. Early in this century when anthropology was first making itself over as an ethnographic science, anthropologists concentrated on tribal peoples. For most of the post‐Columbian era, the Caribbean region, with a few minor exceptions, was without indigenous tribal societies. Even after anthropology turned its attention to the study of peasantries, Caribbean peasantries were ignored in favor of more stable and tradition‐oriented peasant societies in other parts of Latin America. When anthropologists began to study Caribbean peoples in a more serious and systematic fashion, they found that they had to develop new concepts to explain the variation, flexibility, and heterogeneity that characterized regional culture. These concepts have had a significant impact on social and cultural theory and on the broader contemporary dialogue about cultural diversity and multiculturalism.
Zhenreenah Muhxinga, Corrine Douglas, David Francis, Mark Laville, Sidney Millin, Juliana Pamfield, Peter Smith and Raymond Smith
A group of African and Caribbean people decided to tell mental health workers and others in east London about their struggles to achieve mental health. They wanted to show that…
Abstract
A group of African and Caribbean people decided to tell mental health workers and others in east London about their struggles to achieve mental health. They wanted to show that black people with mental health problems are individuals, with different histories and different talents. They wanted to show that it is possible for African and Caribbean service users to rebuild their lives after a mental health crisis and even after years in and out of hospital. In this article, Zhenreenah Muhxinga describes how they produced a book of stories to challenge the familiar assumption that recovery is not an option for black people.
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Paula Remoaldo and José Cadima Ribeiro
This chapter pinpoints a chronological and thematic literature review on the concept of Creative Tourism. Even if the concept emerged 21 years ago, its definition keeps being…
Abstract
This chapter pinpoints a chronological and thematic literature review on the concept of Creative Tourism. Even if the concept emerged 21 years ago, its definition keeps being discussed, and different approaches are available. Born in the late 1990s, it developed rapidly due to a very open, flexible and local context design, enabling the development of personal capacity, authentic experiences and involving local culture and communities. This new approach to tourism envisages bringing together local people, their habits and practices in real and everyday contexts to the heart of the tourism experience provided to visitors. Therefore, it looks to be a promising path towards sustainability. Keeping this in mind, one can wonder if Creative Tourism can be a lever for territories' economic, social, cultural and environmental sustainability. In particular, can Creative Tourism's growing importance in Southern Europe be considered a major contribution to the sustainability of those territories? The literature review concludes that most of the studies on Creative Tourism take positive impacts on territories as a kind of ‘belief’. Such an effect is not granted as a beneficial impact on a communities' well-being; it does not result just from the type of resources explored or from the participation of members of the community on the products/services supplied.
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The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of key issues and concepts related to discussions of the internet, its governance, and its multi-stakeholder model.…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of key issues and concepts related to discussions of the internet, its governance, and its multi-stakeholder model.
Design/methodology/approach
The method adopted is to discuss definitions of internet, to identify the key characteristics of internet, to define the multi-stakeholder approach, and to discuss the results it has achieved.
Findings
The article finds that the internet is different from other networks, albeit not exactly in the ways that are commonly mentioned, and it finds that the internet's current governance mechanisms can be improved, in particular by increasing the role of more traditional governance mechanisms such as intergovernmental organizations.
Originality/value
The analysis and conclusions are not found in previous literature, and they are meant to provoke further research and discussion.
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1. To talk on London collections is a most ambitious project if construed in its widest terms, since there is hardly a library of any size anywhere which would not include some…
Abstract
1. To talk on London collections is a most ambitious project if construed in its widest terms, since there is hardly a library of any size anywhere which would not include some books or other material on London. I am, however, taking a much more restricted view. I propose to confine myself to collections in this country whose primary interest is London or a geographical part of it. By London I mean the administrative area of the County of London. And by collection I mean a systematic assemblage of books, &c., adequately arranged, catalogued, classified, and so on, with a trained and knowledgeable staff to exploit it.
Bell Atlantic has been virtually a laboratory for the development of business strategies and new approaches to cultural change since it became independent of AT&T. Today, there's…
Abstract
Bell Atlantic has been virtually a laboratory for the development of business strategies and new approaches to cultural change since it became independent of AT&T. Today, there's more change in a month in my business than in any five‐year period in the early days of my career with AT&T. When I joined the telephone business in the early 1960s, there were certain articles of faith that every new AT&T manager learned by heart: Monopolies are forever; employment is for life; and telephones are black.
Rodney McAdam, Shirley-Ann Hazlett and Brendan Galbraith
Market deregulation in the utilities sector has led to increased competition and rising customer expectations in both established and new markets. This, in turn, has forced…
Abstract
Purpose
Market deregulation in the utilities sector has led to increased competition and rising customer expectations in both established and new markets. This, in turn, has forced organisations such as electricity and telecoms to make rapid, enterprise-wide changes on an increasingly frequent basis which in turn has led to problems with alignment. Misalignment can occur at many levels and can result in misused resources, loss of competitiveness, excessive cycle times, higher costs and loss of agility. The purpose of this paper is twofold. Given the lack of overarching theory, the paper begins by borrowing from contingency, dynamic capability and organisational learning constructs, to explore the role that performance measurement models can bring to improve the alignment between business strategy and functional strategy (level 1 alignment). Second, the paper analyses the role of performance measurement models in developing functional practices aligned with supply chain management (SCM) strategies (level 2 alignment).
Design/methodology/approach
The study adopts an exploratory theory-building approach using four case studies. These are used as key supply chains in both established and new business areas within two longitudinal university-industry research partnerships (each of three years duration). Data from repeat interviews (n=42), focus groups (n=10), documentation and observations is analysed and forms the basis for the development of a conceptual framework and a set of related propositions. The data analysis followed Radnor and Boaden's (2004) method for analysing interpretive research.
Findings
The findings show the role and impact of performance measurement models and methods on alignment at two levels, i.e. level 1 alignment – between business strategy and functional (SCM) strategy, and level 2 alignment – between the functional strategy (SCM) and SCM routines and practices.
Originality/value
To date, there are few studies which explore the development of theory and practice in relation to the role and impact of performance measurement models and methods in improving organisational alignment. This exploratory theory building study makes a contribution to this gap through the development of the conceptual framework and propositions.
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