Alastair W. Watson, Babak Taheri, Steven Glasgow and Kevin D. O’Gorman
Augmenting employees’ commitment is of important interest to hospitality managers, particularly in the branded restaurant industry where the workforce is often transient. This…
Abstract
Purpose
Augmenting employees’ commitment is of important interest to hospitality managers, particularly in the branded restaurant industry where the workforce is often transient. This paper aims to identify and analyse if levels of personal motivation and flow are drivers of commitment, and if the relationship between the variables is moderated by length of service, age and gender.
Design/methodology/approach
The study is a large-scale empirical investigation of hospitality staff in the UK branded restaurants through 1,133 survey responses, measuring levels of personal motivation, flow and commitment, as well as the moderating effects of multi-group differences among age, gender and length of service. Partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) is used for analysis of data.
Findings
Using PLS-SEM found personal motivation to be important in determining employees’ level of flow and, in turn, employees’ commitment. Using multi group analysis, results revealed that relationship among personal motivation, flow and commitment played superior role for older employees and working for a long time in a hospitality organisation than those younger and working less than five years. No significant differences between male and female staff are found.
Research limitations/implications
Through finding flow and personal motivations to be drivers of commitment, branded restaurant practitioners can focus on emphasising these elements in their employees to increase commitment. Further, part-time roles are often taken by people likely to be non-committal in their job needs, e.g. students funding their studies. By focussing on extending lengths of service to meet the optimum years identified, managers can fortify their businesses.
Originality/value
The paper is one of few large-scale quantitative studies to examine personal motivation, flow and commitment in the context of UK branded restaurants. It identifies that employees exhibit higher levels of commitment through intrinsic values over time, and establishes relationships between the constructs of flow, personal motivation and commitment.
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Katherine J. C. Sang and Steven Glasgow
This chapter explores the potential for the classroom to be a space for activism and hope within the contemporary business school. Drawing on the extant literature, a reflexive…
Abstract
This chapter explores the potential for the classroom to be a space for activism and hope within the contemporary business school. Drawing on the extant literature, a reflexive account of our own teaching and learning practice, and a small number of interviews with academics using feminist material in their teaching in business schools, we explore the challenges, opportunities and joys experienced in the feminist classroom. We suggest that engaging in feminist teaching practice and theory can offer an opportunity for academics to engage in the critical management studies practice which is often said to be lacking within management research. We begin by setting out the extant positioning of Critical Management Studies, moving to an analysis of the educational context. Interwoven through this are our own perspectives. Our own reflections do not reveal the identities of students.
Katherine Loudon, Steven Buchanan and Ian Ruthven
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the everyday life information seeking behaviours of first-time mothers, as they encounter new, significant and pressing information…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the everyday life information seeking behaviours of first-time mothers, as they encounter new, significant and pressing information needs which arise alongside their new responsibilities.
Design/methodology/approach
A qualitative approach combined narrative interviews with participatory methods to facilitate engagement and remain sensitive to the social context.
Findings
Mothers particularly valued the experiential nature of information received from peers or family members. However, fear of judgement influenced their use of interpersonal sources, both on- and off-line. Their accounts of information seeking contained instances of confusion, tension, conflict and information overload. Feeling under pressure to be “good mothers”, they withheld information needs from others, including healthcare professionals.
Research limitations/implications
There was a notable absence of younger ( < 20 year old) and/or less educated mothers in the study. This corresponds to previous findings which report that very young mothers are reluctant to participate in support groups with older mothers. They remain an understudied and potentially marginalised group.
Practical implications
The findings show how social support groups can mitigate for societal pressures which impact upon mothers’ information behaviour, allowing them to connect and share information within a trusted environment. The study highlights the importance of healthcare and information services professionals remaining sensitive to such pressures. Relatedly, the finding that public libraries are used very little has implications for audience engagement and service provision.
Originality/value
Focused upon first-time mothers’ information behaviours during the early stages of parenthood, the study provides insight into how relationships and experiences with others influence information seeking behaviours. It provides evidence that fear of judgement can influence information seeking behaviour, helping us to understand why some information sources, although considered important and useful, can be used very little.
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Steven Cummins and Sally Macintyre
During the late 1990s there has been an increasing interest in the concept of “food deserts” (populated areas with little or no food retail provision). It has been suggested that…
Abstract
During the late 1990s there has been an increasing interest in the concept of “food deserts” (populated areas with little or no food retail provision). It has been suggested that they are more likely to be found in deprived areas; however there has been little systematic research on their prevalence and distribution. This paper describes a preliminary analysis of the location of food outlets in the Greater Glasgow Health Board Area. Data were collected as part of a project on spatial variations in the price and availability of food. Based on all 79 multiple stores, and a 1 in 9 sample (n = 246) of all non‐multiple stores in the area, we did not find any evidence for the existence of food deserts, and found that food stores were more numerous in the more deprived localities and postcode districts in the study site.
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Monica Landoni and Steven Bell
The objective of this paper is to highlight the importance of a scientifically sounded approach to search engine evaluation. Nowadays there is a flourishing literature which…
Abstract
The objective of this paper is to highlight the importance of a scientifically sounded approach to search engine evaluation. Nowadays there is a flourishing literature which describes various attempts at conducting such evaluation by following all sort of approaches, but very often only the final results are published with little, if any, information about the methodology and the procedures adopted. These various experiments have been critically investigated and catalogued according to their scientific foundation by Bell [1] in the attempt to provide a valuable framework for future studies in this area. This paper reconsiders some of Bell‘s ideas in the light of the crisis of classic evaluation techniques for information retrieval and tries to envisage some form of collaboration between the IR and web communities in order to design a better and more consistent platform for the evaluation of tools for interactive information retrieval.
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Lijia Guo, Tine Van Bortel, Chiara Lombardo, Steven Martin, David Crepaz-Keay, Shari McDaid, Oliver Chantler, Lucy Thorpe, Susan Solomon, Alec Morton, Antonis Kousoulis and Gavin Davidson
The COVID-19 pandemic and associated restrictions created a range of potential additional stressors for families, particularly for parents living with children. This study aims to…
Abstract
Purpose
The COVID-19 pandemic and associated restrictions created a range of potential additional stressors for families, particularly for parents living with children. This study aims to explore whether there were any differences in the mental health and emotional experiences of those living with children, and those who were not, during the pandemic and related lockdowns; and whether there were any specific risk factors associated with these mental health outcomes and emotional experiences.
Design/methodology/approach
Regression analyses of ten-wave repeated cross-sectional surveys between May 2020 and November 2021 on a total sample of 42,529 UK adults, which measured mental health with a range of pleasant and unpleasant emotional experiences. The interaction effects of living with children and age as well as marital status were tested.
Findings
During the pandemic, individuals who were living with children were more likely to feel hopeful (OR: 1.1) and grateful (OR: 1.163), less likely to feel hopeless (OR: 0.918) and lonely (OR: 0.799), while more likely to feel guilty (OR: 1.185), unprepared (OR: 1.195) and pressurised (OR: 1.14), than those not living with children. More nuanced findings and diverse emotional experiences were also found in people of different age groups and marital statuses.
Originality/value
This study has highlighted that being parents and living with children could be important factors of emotional distress, especially during the special circumstances of the pandemic and lockdowns, drawing on the large-scale national data.