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Article
Publication date: 13 March 2017

Judith Sixsmith, Mei Lan Fang, Ryan Woolrych, Sarah L. Canham, Lupin Battersby and Andrew Sixsmith

The provision of home and community supports can enable people to successfully age-in-place by improving physical and mental health, supporting social participation and enhancing…

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Abstract

Purpose

The provision of home and community supports can enable people to successfully age-in-place by improving physical and mental health, supporting social participation and enhancing independence, autonomy and choice. One challenge concerns the integration of place-based supports available as older people transition into affordable housing. Sustainable solutions need to be developed and implemented with the full involvement of communities, service organizations and older people themselves. Partnership building is an important component of this process. The purpose of this paper is to detail the intricacies of developing partnerships with low-income older people, local service providers and nonprofit housing associations in the context of a Canadian housing development.

Design/methodology/approach

A community-based participatory approach was used to inform the data collection and partnership building process. The partnership building process progressed through a series of democratized committee meetings based on the principles of appreciative inquiry, four collaboration cafés with nonprofit housing providers and four community mapping workshops with low-income older people. Data collection also involved 25 interviews and 15 photovoice sessions with the housing tenants. The common aims of partnership and data collection were to understand the challenges and opportunities experienced by older people, service providers and nonprofit housing providers; identify the perspectives of service providers and nonprofit housing providers for the provision and delivery of senior-friendly services and resources; and determine actions that can be undertaken to better meet the needs of service providers and nonprofit housing providers in order to help them serve older people better.

Findings

The partnership prioritized the generation of a shared vision together with shared values, interests and the goal of co-creating meaningful housing solutions for older people transitioning into affordable housing. Input from interviews and photovoice sessions with older people provided material to inform decision making in support of ageing well in the right place. Attention to issues of power dynamics and knowledge generation and feedback mechanisms enable all fields of expertise to be taken into account, including the experiential expertise of older residents. This resulted in functional, physical, psychological and social aspects of ageing in place to inform the new build housing complex.

Research limitations/implications

The time and effort required to conduct democratized partnerships slowed the decision-making process.

Originality/value

The findings confirm that the drive toward community partnerships is a necessary process in supporting older people to age well in the right place. This requires sound mechanisms to include the voice of older people themselves alongside other relevant stakeholders. Ageing well in a housing complex requires meaningful placemaking to include the functional, physical, psychological and social aspects of older people’s everyday life in respect to both home and community.

Details

Working with Older People, vol. 21 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1366-3666

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Article
Publication date: 29 April 2014

Hugo Canham

The purpose of this paper is to foreground non-conformity in organisational life as it relates to black female managers. My intervention here is to problematise organisational…

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to foreground non-conformity in organisational life as it relates to black female managers. My intervention here is to problematise organisational theory in relation to its limited ability to engage with affect and to point to a more generative framework. Through centering the body, the author also seeks to offer a counter narrative to the field of Positive Organisation Scholarship and its drive to primarily engage with happy feelings and harmony.

Design/methodology/approach

The author gives a close reading of four black women's interview-based narratives to engage with the ways in which they refuse to conform to organisational scripts of happiness. The author makes a case for using both critical discourse-based and affective readings of everyday experience which social science readings cannot readily account for.

Findings

Non-conformity has a number of local effects including negotiating the present from a position of alternative histories of struggle and cultural values, and holding different and conflicting realities and subject positions. Moreover, a reading of these women's accounts suggests that affect is both personal and social and can manifest in multiple, embodied, transformative, and potentially destructive ways. The author comes to new ways of understanding organisations and resistance when the author uses affect as an investigative lens.

Research limitations/implications

By virtue of the close reading necessitated by the nature of the study, the sample of this research is small. While the intention is not generality, the findings of the research have to be understood in context and applied within different settings with caution. The implications of this research are that there remains an urgent need for critical-orientated research which centers affect in order to counter the growing positive psychologies which relegate asymmetries to the margins.

Social implications

In South Africa where black women constitute the numerical majority, there is an urgent need to understand and reverse their status as a minority in management and social life. This research goes some way in explicating this process.

Originality/value

While there is well-developed body of feminist research which seeks to study black women in South Africa, there is a dearth of research into black women in the workplace. This paper therefore presents an original look at black female managers by applying international theoretical tools to a context that is under theorised. This research presents new methodological and theoretical tools and analysis to the South African workplace.

Details

Gender in Management: An International Journal, vol. 29 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1754-2413

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Article
Publication date: 29 April 2021

Essam Mansour

The purpose of this study is to investigate the information-seeking behavior of Egyptian parents of autistic children.

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to investigate the information-seeking behavior of Egyptian parents of autistic children.

Design/methodology/approach

The study sample consists of 61 parents across Egypt, divided into six focus groups, as equal as possible, to represent Northern, Middle and Southern Egypt.

Findings

Dmographically, of the 61 parents, 32 (52.5%) were fathers, and 29 (47.5%) were mothers. A large number of parents' ages ranged from 31 to 45 years old. The highest percentage of them was holding a BA, followed by a high school/diploma, and the highest percentage was found to be married. The parents of autistic children followed many methods and channels to obtain supportive information related to their children's disease. They used many types of information, which varied between formal and informal sources. While just over a quarter of Egyptian parents prefer to use formal sources (books, newspapers, magazines, health publications, pamphlets, as well as specialized libraries), more than three-quarters of them used informal sources, such as mobile/smartphones, the Web, social media and social networking sites. The information related to the search for institutions supporting autistic people came in the first place, then that information related to searching for specialized centers in treating autistic children, then information related to rehabilitation, integration and psychological support centers for these children and then information related to the search for financial aid provided by charitable or even government agencies. Some parents were found to have limited awareness of their children's treatment mechanism, as some of them do not consider the need to treat their children in a systematic, continuous, and systematic manner. Similarly, the lack of basic services and shortage of government centers specializing in the treatment of these children. Parents also emphasized the lack of government support, as well as the lack of curative research centers. Some also pointed out that there was a shortage of workshops for the rehabilitation of their children and themselves as well.

Originality/value

This research is considered to be the first research of its kind at the local and Arab levels, which is also one of the few studies at the regional level that is interested in this community of information seekers. The findings of this research can raise awareness about the information behavior of Egyptian parents of autistic children among those who are interested in the role of the information and its use by specific groups of the information society, as well as decision makers.

Peer review

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-11-2020-0494

Details

Online Information Review, vol. 45 no. 7
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1468-4527

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