Search results

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how three communication interventions commonly used during discharge planning and care transitions enable inter-professional knowledge sharing and learning as a foundation for more integrated working. These interventions include information communication systems, dedicated discharge planning roles and group-based planning activities.

A two-year ethnographic study was carried out across two regional health and care systems in the English National Health Service, focussing on the discharge of stroke and hip fracture patients. Data collection involved in-depth observations and 213 semi-structured interviews.

Information systems (e.g. e-records) represent a relatively stable conduit for routine and standardised forms of syntactic information exchange that can “bridge” time–space knowledge boundaries. Specialist discharge roles (e.g. discharge coordinators) support personalised and dynamic forms of “semantic” knowledge sharing that can “broker” epistemic and cultural boundaries. Group-based activities (e.g. team meetings) provide a basis for more direct “pragmatic” knowledge translation that can support inter-professional “bonding” at the cultural and organisational level, but where inclusion factors complicate exchange.

The study offers analysis of how professional boundaries complicate discharge planning and care transition, and the potential for different communication interventions to support knowledge sharing and learning.

The paper builds upon existing research on inter-professional collaboration and patient safety by focussing on the problems of communication and coordination in the context of discharge planning and care transitions. It suggests that care systems should look to develop multiple complementary approaches to inter-professional communication that offer opportunities for dynamic knowledge sharing and learning.

The aim of this paper is to examine the benefits of undertaking mixed methods social network analysis (SNA) to investigate patterns of interpersonal relationships in healthcare delivery. Although SNA has roots in anthropological and ethnographic research, recent emphasis has been on the mathematical properties of social networks utilising graph theory and statistical analysis. While such studies may present interesting data on the structure of ties, this paper argues that they sidestep other important elements of patterns of social relationships; their meaning and their implications for network members. The paper identifies how SNA survey can be employed alongside ethnographic data within a qualitative framework.

The paper reports on a study that investigated how knowledge sharing in social networks can contribute to patient safety in surgical care involving a social network survey, qualitative interviews and ethnographic observations.

Results describe how each research method illuminated different elements of professional practice networks. These focus on the additional elements of networks identified through qualitative methods. The discussion examines how qualitative and quantitative findings relate to each other and could be combined within an overall qualitative methodology.

The paper answers the call for a greater utilisation of network methods in healthcare studies; demonstrates the benefits of qualitative research on social networks; and presents data on the contribution of health professionals’ interpersonal relationships in the production of safe patient care.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of recent outsourcing and public‐private partnership (PPPs) arrangements on the consistency of professional employment in health care.

A case study methodology is applied.

The paper finds that multiple arrangements for employment within the ISTC creates numerous sources for inconsistency in employment: across the workplace, within professional groups and with national frameworks for health care employment. These are identified as having implications for organisational outcomes, threatening the stability of current partnerships, and partially stymieing intended behavioural change.

The study is a single case study of an independent sector treatment centre. Future research is required to investigate wider trends of employment in heterogeneous outsourcing and PPP arrangements.

The paper informs both managers and clinical professionals of the unanticipated complexities and practical challenges that can arise in partnerships and outsourcing arrangements.

The paper presents a unique in‐depth investigation of employment within recently established ISTCs, and highlights important employment changes for the core health care workforce and high‐status professionals in the evolving health care organisational landscape.

This paper seeks to identify the instances of informal knowledge sharing at the “backstage” of the clinical environment and to demonstrate their contribution to organisational learning and patient safety.

The approach takes the form of an ethnographic study in two Day Surgery Units in the UK National Health Service undertaken over three months in various clinical and non‐clinical settings. The observations recorded the instances of communication and knowledge sharing, as well as taking into account the wider socio‐cultural and organisational context.

The study identified situations of informal knowledge sharing. These were characterised by degrees of homogeneity/heterogeneity and patency/privacy. Focusing on three sites – staff lounge, storeroom, and theatre corridor, the paper elaborates the context and content of knowledge sharing, and the contributions to clinical practice, service function and learning.

Backstage knowledge sharing is premised on shared understanding, trust and mutuality and situational opportunity. This contrasts with more formal models of learning advocated in policy. Services managers might embrace, rather than replace, these relationships, whilst emphasising the need for knowledge to be shared more widely amongst peers and service leaders.

To date, little research in the area of patient safety has considered the contribution of informal learning at the “backstage”. This is an important, if taken‐for‐granted, part of everyday practice and makes a “hidden” contribution to organisational learning.

It is to be noted that there is prevalent widespread opposition, specially by the left parties towards FDI in retail trade in India. May be in the early 1990s employing safeguards to protect domestic retailers was the need of the day. Almost more than one and a half decades down the line there is a need for Foreign Direct Investment in retail trade. It is a flawed argument that the Wal‐Marts’, Tescos’ and Asdas’ will lead to the winding up of the small scale domestic retailers. Instead it is going to provide a stiff competition to the Pantaloons’ and the Westsides’. This paper starts by stressing the need of FDI in India. It uses the argument that FDI is allowed in multiple sectors and the effects have been quite good without harming the domestic economy tries to stress on the fact that FDI in retail sector must be allowed.

Monetary incentives have been widely adopted by brands to promote consumer engagement in their brand communities on social networking sites. This paper aims to explore how the interactions triggered by an emerging monetary incentive, red packets, affect consumers’ brand attitude in the context of WeChat brand groups (WCBGs).

According to whether brands ask for commercial returns from consumers, two types of interactions were identified, namely, exchange red packet interaction (ERPI) and communal red packet interaction (CRPI). The corresponding influences on brand attitude were examined in three experiments.

Compared to CRPIs, ERPIs elicit greater normative community pressure, inducing a less favorable brand attitude. Moreover, this impact is moderated by the time frame of brand communities. In the long-term WCBGs, a significant difference exists between ERPIs and CRPIs, while such difference attenuates or even disappears in short-term WCBGs.

When using red packets as an engagement strategy, brand managers should be alert to their potential negative influence. Specifically, in short-term brand communities, ERPIs enable managers to acquire commercial returns without hurting brand attitude. In long-term brand communities, managers are advised to implement CRPIs to foster a positive brand attitude.

This study investigates red packet interactions in brand communities, which have been widespread but unexplored. The results expand the literature by addressing the undermining effect of ERPI and the moderating effect of the time frame.

The purpose of this study is to identify the different research strands concerning studies related to human resource management (HRM) and ageing employees. More specifically, the paper analyses how age and gender are understood and conceptualized in these studies.

An integrative literature review concerning ageing employees and HRM with special reference to gender is the approach taken in this paper.

Recent studies relating to HRM and ageing employees were categorized and analysed. The paper concludes that there is a need for a more holistic understanding of the concept of age in studies related to ageing employees and HRM and also argues that the intersection of age and gender is under-researched in the field of HRM.

Based on literature review the paper outlined directions for how gender-neutral age management studies may be extended. A pluralist understanding of age and gender would help to understand the different needs and expectations that ageing employees may have in terms of HR practices and policies. Institutional practices and legislation can promote equality, but organizational contexts, both internal and external, should be scanned in order to recognize possible ageist or age-blind practices. Ageing women in particular have the burden of being recognized in terms of chronological stereotyped changes that might damage their work and career.

Research on ageing employees and HRM with special reference to gender is limited and therefore an integrative literature review is needed.

When the Catholic bishops of the United States prepared the first draft of their pastoral letter on the US economy, they deliberately kept its contents confidential until after the presidential election of that year. They did not want it to intrude upon the campaign then under way. It was not made public until 11 November, 1984. The Lay Commission, chaired by William E. Simon, issued its document, Toward the Future: Catholic Social Thought and the US Economy, before the bishops' first draft but also after the presidential election. It was not a response to the bishops' then unseen document but an advisory counter‐proposal from a different perspective. The Lay Commission presumed that the two documents would be different certainly in the area of policy recommendations and in the evaluation of the performance of the American economy; they probably anticipated differences also in the understanding of Christian and Catholic tradition and principles. They were not wrong.

A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balance economics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary to man′s finding the good life and society enduring as a civilized instrumentality. Looks for authority to great men of the past and to today′s moral philosopher: man is an ethical animal. The 13 essays are: 1. Evolutionary Economics: The End of It All? which challenges the view that Darwinism destroyed belief in a universe of purpose and design; 2. Schmoller′s Political Economy: Its Psychic, Moral and Legal Foundations, which centres on the belief that time‐honoured ethical values prevail in an economy formed by ties of common sentiment, ideas, customs and laws; 3. Adam Smith by Gustav von Schmoller – Schmoller rejects Smith′s natural law and sees him as simply spreading the message of Calvinism; 4. Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon, Socialist – Karl Marx, Communist: A Comparison; 5. Marxism and the Instauration of Man, which raises the question for Marx: is the flowering of the new man in Communist society the ultimate end to the dialectical movement of history?; 6. Ethical Progress and Economic Growth in Western Civilization; 7. Ethical Principles in American Society: An Appraisal; 8. The Ugent Need for a Consensus on Moral Values, which focuses on the real dangers inherent in there being no consensus on moral values; 9. Human Resources and the Good Society – man is not to be treated as an economic resource; man′s moral and material wellbeing is the goal; 10. The Social Economist on the Modern Dilemma: Ethical Dwarfs and Nuclear Giants, which argues that it is imperative to distinguish good from evil and to act accordingly: existentialism, situation ethics and evolutionary ethics savour of nihilism; 11. Ethical Principles: The Economist′s Quandary, which is the difficulty of balancing the claims of disinterested science and of the urge to better the human condition; 12. The Role of Government in the Advancement of Cultural Values, which discusses censorship and the funding of art against the background of the US Helms Amendment; 13. Man at the Crossroads draws earlier themes together; the author makes the case for rejecting determinism and the “operant conditioning” of the Skinner school in favour of the moral progress of autonomous man through adherence to traditional ethical values.