This paper discusses the use of appraisal and performance‐related pay practices for academic staff in higher education in the UK. This discussion is based on the reports of heads…
Abstract
This paper discusses the use of appraisal and performance‐related pay practices for academic staff in higher education in the UK. This discussion is based on the reports of heads of personnel in universities, with the aim of portraying the pattern of such practices across the sector as a whole, and of investigating the extent to which these activities parallel institutional characteristics and are part of a strategic approach to employment management. It finds some evidence for a continued binary divide in practice between pre‐1992 and post‐1992 universities, but also a great diversity of practice which can support a convergence thesis for the sector. The paper concludes that such diversity may have a place within the requirements of the higher education system, but it may need to be managed in a more proactive and strategic way in the future.
Details
Keywords
Abstract
Details
Keywords
Markus Wohlfeil, Anthony Patterson and Stephen J. Gould
This paper aims to explain a celebrity’s deep resonance with consumers by unpacking the individual constituents of a celebrity’s polysemic appeal. While celebrities are…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explain a celebrity’s deep resonance with consumers by unpacking the individual constituents of a celebrity’s polysemic appeal. While celebrities are traditionally theorised as unidimensional semiotic receptacles of cultural meaning, the authors conceptualise them here instead as human beings/performers with a multi-constitutional, polysemic consumer appeal.
Design/methodology/approach
Supporting evidence is drawn from autoethnographic data collected over a total period of 25 months and structured through a hermeneutic analysis.
Findings
In rehumanising the celebrity, the study finds that each celebrity offers the individual consumer a unique and very personal parasocial appeal as the performer, the private person behind the public performer, the tangible manifestation of either through products and the social link to other consumers. The stronger these constituents, individually or symbiotically, appeal to the consumer’s personal desires, the more s/he feels emotionally attached to this particular celebrity.
Research limitations/implications
Although using autoethnography means that the breadth of collected data is limited, the depth of insight this approach garners sufficiently unpacks the polysemic appeal of celebrities to consumers.
Practical implications
The findings encourage talent agents, publicists and marketing managers to reconsider underlying assumptions in their talent management and/or celebrity endorsement practices.
Originality/value
While prior research on celebrity appeal has tended to enshrine celebrities in a “dehumanised” structuralist semiosis, which erases the very idea of individualised consumer meanings, this paper reveals the multi-constitutional polysemy of any particular celebrity’s personal appeal as a performer and human being to any particular consumer.
Details
Keywords
Heidi Julien and Shelagh K. Genuis
Library staff are experiencing increased work role complexity as they move from being service providers towards greater instructional roles, providing bibliographic instruction…
Abstract
Purpose
Library staff are experiencing increased work role complexity as they move from being service providers towards greater instructional roles, providing bibliographic instruction, user education, and information literacy instruction. The purpose of this paper is to explore how library staff relate to their instructional roles and the implications of those self‐understandings for instructional outcomes.
Design/methodology/approach
Data collected from qualitative interviews with library staff in Canadian academic and public libraries and diary entries written over a three‐month period were analyzed using NVivo software and an open‐coding, grounded‐theory approach. The study took a phenomenological perspective and was influenced by constructivist sociological role theory.
Findings
Data analysis revealed the central place of affect in the experiences of librarians engaged in instructional work, and brought focus to the relational aspects of this work and the affective impact of visibility/invisibility of instructional outcomes. A prominent theme was the expression of “emotional labour”; participants used a variety of methods to manage this occupational stressor as they experienced it within the context of instructional work.
Practical implications
Individuals and organizations will benefit from considering the influence of affect on library staff. Those who educate librarians should seek to improve understanding of affect and its impact on instruction; organizations will benefit from addressing the emotional labour performed as a part of the teaching role.
Originality/value
The study draws attention to the affective experiences of library staff. This is the first research article in the LIS literature to explore emotional labour as it relates to librarians.
Details
Keywords
The Youth Training programme (YT), formerly known as the YouthTraining Scheme, has been in existence for over 11 years. During thattime the objectives and content of the programme…
Abstract
The Youth Training programme (YT), formerly known as the Youth Training Scheme, has been in existence for over 11 years. During that time the objectives and content of the programme have changed, and so too has the institutional framework within which the school‐to‐work transition takes place. Provides a detailed account of the historical development of the YT programme, and highlights a number of structural characteristics of the programme that raise implications for the econometric assessment of the programme′s impact on employment probabilities and wages. Presents a review and assessment of the UK literature on the econometric evaluation of YT. Concludes by raising a number of implications for future research.