Steve Brown, Donald Getz, Robert Pettersson and Martin Wallstam
The purpose of this paper is to define event evaluation, develop a conceptual model of its process and elements, review pertinent literature, and draw conclusions pertaining both…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to define event evaluation, develop a conceptual model of its process and elements, review pertinent literature, and draw conclusions pertaining both to the discourse on evaluation and its praxis.
Design/methodology/approach
General review of literature and development of a conceptual model of the evaluation process.
Findings
The review suggests that impact assessments have dominated, but are only one type of evaluation; research and papers on evaluating the worth of events has been minimal, while those on the evaluation of various management and marketing functions is fragmented.
Research limitations/implications
It is concluded that little has been written about evaluation paradigms and systems, although the discourse on sustainability and triple bottom line accountability has led to a greater emphasis on non-economic considerations.
Originality/value
The conceptual model of the evaluation process and its components offers a systematic approach to shaping evaluation discourse and methods. Conclusions are drawn on how to advance evaluation research and methods applied to events.
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Marcia Håkansson Lindqvist and Fanny Pettersson
Digitalization has permeated society and schools. In this process, focus has turned to the importance of school leaders in their leadership for digitalization. The purpose of this…
Abstract
Purpose
Digitalization has permeated society and schools. In this process, focus has turned to the importance of school leaders in their leadership for digitalization. The purpose of this paper is to explore how school leaders understand digitalization and the digital competencies needed in leading for digitalization in Swedish schools.
Design/methodology/approach
Open questions from reflective learning journals (n=32) and interviews (n=8) conducted with school leaders were used to explore how school leaders understand digitalization and the digital competencies needed in leading for digitalization.
Findings
The findings show that school leaders see digitalization as a wide and complex concept including technical, pedagogical, administrational and organizational challenges at all levels of the school organization.
Practical implications
It appears that the role of the school leader, as a complex task, has become more complex as a result of digitalization. How time, resources and professional development are made available to support school leaders in their work with leadership for digitalization in order to support teachers’ and students’ learning.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to the area of school leadership and digitalization. The research contribution is of interest for school leaders and school organizers striving to implement and advance digitalization in schools. This also concerns the prioritization of digitalization as one of many important areas in schools as organizations.
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Violina P. Rindova, Santosh B. Srinivas and Luis L. Martins
The assumption of wealth creation as the dominant motive underlying entrepreneurial efforts has been challenged in recent work on entrepreneurship. Taking the perspective that…
Abstract
The assumption of wealth creation as the dominant motive underlying entrepreneurial efforts has been challenged in recent work on entrepreneurship. Taking the perspective that entrepreneurship involves emancipatory efforts by social actors to escape ideological and material constraints in their environments (Rindova, Barry, & Ketchen, 2009), researchers have sought to explain a range of entrepreneurial activities in contexts that have traditionally been excluded from entrepreneurship research. We seek to extend this research by proposing that entrepreneurial acts toward emancipation can be guided by different notions of the common good underlying varying conceptions of worth, beyond those emphasized in the view of entrepreneurial activity as driven by economic wealth creation. These alternative conceptions of worth are associated with specific subjectivities of entrepreneurial self and relevant others, and distinct legitimate bases for actions and coordination, enabling emancipation by operating from alternative value system perspectives. Drawing on Boltanski and Thévenot’s (2006) work on multiple orders of worth (OOWs), we describe how emancipatory entrepreneurship is framed within – and limited by – the dominant view, which is rooted in a market OOW. As alternatives to this view, we theorize how the civic and inspired OOWs point to alternate emancipatory ends and means through which entrepreneurs break free from material and ideological constraints. We describe factors that enable and constrain emancipatory entrepreneurship efforts within each of these OOWs, and discuss the implications of our theoretical ideas for how entrepreneurs can choose among different OOWs as perspectives and for the competencies required for engaging with pluralistic value perspectives.
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Leah Watkins and Robert Aitken
The purpose of this study is to understand the nature of children’s consumer competence and the role that parents play in its development.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to understand the nature of children’s consumer competence and the role that parents play in its development.
Design/methodology/approach
A total of 15 parent/children dyads provided a novel and participatory approach. Children were accompanied to their local supermarket to conduct a grocery shop for their families and asked to explain the reasons for each consumption choice. Parents were interviewed separately to discuss their role in the development of their children’s consumer competence. Both sets of responses were analysed thematically to identify commonalities.
Findings
The research identified four themes comprising children’s consumer competence: decision-making; advertising, brands and promotion; financial awareness and shopping knowledge. The themes are the result of an intentional process of parental socialization that enable children to move from simple to complex and contingent shopping scripts as an essential stage in the development of their consumer competence.
Research limitations/implications
Although the study comprised a mixed sample of participants, its small size prevents extrapolation of the results to inform wider conclusions. It should also be noted that the influence of social desirability bias needs to be acknowledged.
Originality/value
Results show that children are highly aware of the competing demands of individual and family needs and able to make the consumption decisions necessary to meet them. These decisions are underpinned by parental values and attitudes that are explicit in the socialization of their children’s consumption. The authors define children’s consumption competence as the ability to make informed, independent, contingent, complex and values-based consumption decisions.
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Maarit Kinnunen and Antti Haahti
– The purpose of this paper is to unfold factors anchored in visitors’ experiences possibly determinant of the success or failure of cultural festivals.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to unfold factors anchored in visitors’ experiences possibly determinant of the success or failure of cultural festivals.
Design/methodology/approach
The studied data included 931 experience descriptions, 23 interviews and 51 empathy-based stories collected from 17 cultural festivals around Finland during the summers of 2012 and 2013. The nature of the study was exploratory, the theoretical framework was social constructionism, and the analysis was done using Foucauldian discourse analysis. The Method of Empathy Based Stories, a non-active role-playing technique, was used in the data collection.
Findings
The identified success factors were the programme, good quality food, sense of community, chill-out opportunities and building blocks of one’s identity. The factors that might cause failures were commercialised and low-quality programme, the low quality of services, commercialism demonstrated by elevated ticket and service pricing, VIP services confronting egalitarianism, crowd control and queueing and anti-social behaviour.
Practical implications
Three areas of particular interest were: how to nurture identity construction and personal well-being, how to enhance egalitarianism within the festival community, and how to promote the desired code of conduct without applying unnecessary rules and restrictions. If successful in these, the festival could boast of features that are not easy to replicate and that could create a competitive edge.
Originality/value
Empathy-based stories combined with discourse analysis contributed new insights on the issues of the success and failure of festivals. The empathy-based stories were particularly useful in retrieving informants’ perceptions of the future and for identifying factors that might cause failures.
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Abiodun I. Ibraheem and Christopher Devine
This study was intended to identify and assess the extent and impact of the emigration of professional librarians on every university library in Anglophone Africa as well as the…
Abstract
Purpose
This study was intended to identify and assess the extent and impact of the emigration of professional librarians on every university library in Anglophone Africa as well as the attitudes of library administrators toward national and international programs that have been or might be designed to make use of the skills of librarians in the African diaspora.
Design/methodology/approach
The research was conducted by use of an online survey that was sent to 121 African academic libraries.
Findings
The study conclusively demonstrated that African academic libraries have been impacted – both positively and negatively – by the effects of the “brain drain”. It also revealed that the administrators of these libraries are highly receptive to the possibility of working with African emigrant librarians in various forms (i.e. permanent, temporary, virtual) of structured “return programs”.
Research limitations/implications
The survey's relatively low response rate precluded precise determination as to the degree to which the brain drain has penetrated African academic libraries. Additional study will be necessary to clarify the range of its impact and any differences between regions that might exist.
Practical implications
The study's findings strongly suggest that academic libraries in English‐speaking Africa offer a promising environment for return programs designed to ameliorate the effects of the brain drain.
Originality/value
This paper is an original study that fills a gap in the literature of African library administration. It is of value to practicing librarians and researchers as well as individuals involved with international development projects.
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Hannah R. Marston, Linda Shore, Laura Stoops and Robbie S. Turner
Robert Kwame Dzogbenuku, Joshua Kofi Doe and George Kofi Amoako
This study evaluates the mediating role of social media entertainment on social information (content) and social media performance, during the COVID-19 era.
Abstract
Purpose
This study evaluates the mediating role of social media entertainment on social information (content) and social media performance, during the COVID-19 era.
Design/methodology/approach
Primary data were randomly gathered from 373 students from two top universities (public and private) in Ghana, a sub-Saharan African economy. Data analysis was achieved utilizing the partial least square–structural equation model (PLS-SEM).
Findings
Social media (SM) entertainment partly mediates the link between social media content and social media performance of students, suggesting that social media entertainment is almost indispensable in creating social media content to achieve optimum performance among tertiary students.
Research limitations/implications
The use of cross-sectional data alone for this study does not give us the opportunity to observe the social media activities of respondents over a longer period. Future studies could, therefore, include longitudinal data.
Practical implications
The findings in this study suggest that faculties can modify their pedagogical activities to include social media and reflect some entertainment content, since it has an influence on student performance within the social media space.
Social implications
SM has a great influence on students' performance socially and academically; therefore, educational stakeholders like university authorities, faculties, parents and guardians, and the government should consider social media as a tool for attaining educational goals.
Originality/value
The study extends the use of UTAUT2, in understanding students' learning and behavior processes, by linking antecedents of adoption to the post-adoption effect.
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Jacques Defourny and Victor Pestoff
There is still no universal definition of the third sector in Europe, but it can be seen as including all types of non-governmental not-for-profit entities such as non-profit…
Abstract
There is still no universal definition of the third sector in Europe, but it can be seen as including all types of non-governmental not-for-profit entities such as non-profit organizations, mutuals, cooperatives, social enterprises and foundations. This article attempts to make sense of the current shifting conceptualization of the third sector in Europe. It is based on short country summaries of the images and concepts of the third sector in 13 European countries by EMES Network’s members, first presented in 2008 (Defourny and Pestoff, 2008; nine of them were recently revised and are found in the appendix to this article.). The perception and development of the third sector in Europe is closely related to the other major social governance institutions/mechanisms, like the market, state and community and through the third sector’s interaction with them. Moreover, many third sector organizations (TSOs) overlap with these other social institutions, resulting in varying degrees of hybridity and internal tensions experienced by them. TSOs can generate resources from their activities on the market, by providing services in partnership with the state and/or by promoting the interests of a given community or group. The country overviews document a growing professionalization of TSOs in most countries and a growing dependency of public funds to provide services. This has important theoretical and practical implications for orienting the articles included in this book. Thus, it can provide a key for better understanding the discussion and analysis in the remainder of this volume.