Steven Stagg, Fathima Kodakkadan and Santhosh Kareepadath Rajan
This study aims to examine the levels of stress and resilience in a sample of British Indian parents bringing up a child with autism.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to examine the levels of stress and resilience in a sample of British Indian parents bringing up a child with autism.
Design/methodology/approach
A total of 52 British Indian parents took part in a survey that included measures of stress, resilience, support and child adaptive functioning. Results were compared to a sample of white British (n = 120) and Indian parents (n = 120).
Findings
The British Indian parents recorded higher levels of stress and less perceived social support than their white British counterparts. British Indian parents took longer to register concern about their child’s development and sought a diagnosis at a later age than the white British group. The delay in concern and diagnosis was similar to that found in the India group.
Originality/value
The research suggests that British Indian parents are disadvantaged in social support and mental well-being compared to white British parents and may face similar community pressures to parents bringing up a child in India.
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How parents experience school governance is increasingly shaped by its changing requirements as well as their positioning by leaders and policy makers within a marketised…
Abstract
How parents experience school governance is increasingly shaped by its changing requirements as well as their positioning by leaders and policy makers within a marketised education system. In order to make sense of these experiences, they are situated within a wider policy context in which both neoliberalism and increased centralisation are juxtaposed. Policy has a significant influence on leadership, yet the relationship between them is complex, and while the impact of the former on the latter is clearer, this is less so in terms of the extent to which governance (as a form of leadership) shapes policy, and this is explored further in this chapter. It considers the prescriptive nature of current policy and how this not only hinders the ability of governance to influence policy but facilitates and reproduces the neoliberal ideology underpinning it. The implications of neoliberalism and increased centralisation, with their associated policy technologies, such as performance management and accountability for school governance are considered, including the underrepresentation of certain parents and the ‘professionalisation’ of governing boards. Through a critical exploration of this professionalisation of governance, this chapter makes an original contribution to our understanding of the complex relationship between leadership and policy. It uses Foucault’s work as a conceptual framework, drawing on his tools of governmentality, discipline and surveillance. It has significance not only in terms of governance in the school system in England, but within the wider global policy context in which the influence of both market-oriented policies and centralised policies is evident.
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Graham Benmore, Steven Henderson, Joanna Mountfield and Brian Wink
The impact of bullying and undermining behaviours on the National Health Service on costs, patient safety and retention of staff was well understood even before the Illing report…
Abstract
Purpose
The impact of bullying and undermining behaviours on the National Health Service on costs, patient safety and retention of staff was well understood even before the Illing report, published in 2013, that reviewed the efficacy of training interventions designed to reduce bullying and harassment in the outputs. The purpose of this paper is to provide an example of a good programme well evaluated.
Design/methodology/approach
The methodology follows a broad realist approach, by specifying the underlying programme assumptions and intention of the designers. Three months after the event, Q-sort methodology was employed to group participants into one of three contexts – mechanism – output groups. Interviews were then undertaken with members of two of these groups, to evaluate how the programme had influenced each.
Findings
Q-sort identified a typology of three beneficiaries from the Stopit! workshops, characterised as professionals, colleagues and victims. Each group had acted upon different parts of the programme, depending chiefly upon their current and past experiences of bullying in hospitals.
Research limitations/implications
The paper demonstrates the effectiveness of using Q-sort method to identify relevant CMOs in a realist evaluation framework.
Practical implications
The paper considers the effectiveness of the programme to reduce bullying, rather than teach victims to cope, and how it may be strengthened based upon the research findings and Illing recommendations.
Social implications
Workplace bullying is invariably implicated in scandals concerning poor hospital practice, poor patient outcomes and staff illness. All too frequently, the sector responds by offering training in resilience, which though helpful, places the onus on the victim to cope rather than the employer to reduce or eliminate the practice. This paper documents and evaluates an attempt to change workplace practices to directly address bullying and undermining.
Originality/value
The paper describes a new programme broadly consistent with Illing report endorsements. Second, it illustrates a novel evaluation method that highlights rigorously the contexts, mechanisms and outcomes at the pilot stage of an intervention identifies contexts and mechanisms via factor analysis using Q-sort methodology.
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As a result of education and business partnerships, there is general consensus that career and employability skills should be taught in high schools, since many students leave…
Abstract
As a result of education and business partnerships, there is general consensus that career and employability skills should be taught in high schools, since many students leave education without the requisite skills to succeed in the adult work world. This leads to the question of whether teachers are competent to provide instruction on employability skills, and whether teacher training programs are preparing teachers to do so. As an example of how to rectify this situation, one US university has developed and implemented a new course on teaching career and employability skills for its technical teacher preparation program. The case describes how the course was developed and how it is being delivered, as well as the content and process skills students are learning. The potential impact of the new course is discussed in terms of the extent to which new teachers are using the skills, the capability of their students, and ultimately, how local organizations view the graduates.
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Bristol Voss and Michael Winkleman
For some planners, it seems, the play's the thing.
Develops an original 12‐step management of technology protocol and applies it to 51 applications which range from Du Pont’s failure in Nylon to the Single Online Trade Exchange…
Abstract
Develops an original 12‐step management of technology protocol and applies it to 51 applications which range from Du Pont’s failure in Nylon to the Single Online Trade Exchange for Auto Parts procurement by GM, Ford, Daimler‐Chrysler and Renault‐Nissan. Provides many case studies with regards to the adoption of technology and describes seven chief technology officer characteristics. Discusses common errors when companies invest in technology and considers the probabilities of success. Provides 175 questions and answers to reinforce the concepts introduced. States that this substantial journal is aimed primarily at the present and potential chief technology officer to assist their survival and success in national and international markets.
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The purpose of this paper is to review the semantics of the language of management in order to seek clarification of the terminology and how it is used and misused in the strategy…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to review the semantics of the language of management in order to seek clarification of the terminology and how it is used and misused in the strategy literature.
Design/methodology/approach
An extensive review of the literature was undertaken.
Findings
Managerial language has been used to obfuscate and politicise the managerial process, especially the strategic process. In order to develop the ideas of the strategy specialty the use and misuse of the words in the strategy lexicon must be understood. The problem that the lack of consistency creates is, that in trying to assess the strategic process in the literature and in practice, it is often impossible to know exactly what strategic methodology is being expressed.
Practical implications
Rather than concentrate on definitions of strategy it is necessary to seek to understand how the terminology is applied and then allocate the meaning of the terms to the school of strategic ideas that the writer/scholar espouses in each relevant paper that is published.
Originality/value
It is necessary to recognise how the words in the strategy literature have subtle, different meanings and the way to understand the usage is to apply the terminology to a school of thought.
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The purpose of this paper is to develop a coherent model for small business principals to understand the strategic process and to be able to create and implement strategy for…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to develop a coherent model for small business principals to understand the strategic process and to be able to create and implement strategy for their own business.
Design/methodology/approach
Action research (AR) was undertaken to develop a system of questions, utilising the concepts developed in papers one to four of this series, especially the concepts that businesses are best understood as complex self‐adapting systems rather than cybernetic systems.
Findings
A model was developed and implemented in approximately 260 businesses. The model utilised the ideas of the strategy scholars but took a Socratic approach rather than a more traditional prescriptive approach. A total of 11 questions were posited to the business principals in a seminar series. The questions were designed to initiate a process of thinking about the business that was both deep and rich enough to allow the phenomena of emergence to occur.
Practical implications
Hamel has suggested that the strategy discipline should be embarrassed by the fact that a subject that is the cornerstone of an entire discipline has no theory of strategy creation. Mintzberg suggests that strategy emerges but provided no mechanism for this process. In this paper the development of a series of questions is described that will allow for the creation of an environment for emergent strategic processes to occur and small business principals create their own strategies.
Originality/value
Small business principals can now create their own business strategies without the need to understand the wide and often conflicting theories of the strategic process that is found in the strategy literature.
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Paula R. Dempsey, Glenda M. Insua, Annie R. Armstrong, Holly Joy Hudson, Kristyn Caragher and Mariah McGregor
This analysis of chat reference transcripts assesses differences in how librarians and graduate assistants (GAs) incorporate teaching strategies in responding to chat reference…
Abstract
Purpose
This analysis of chat reference transcripts assesses differences in how librarians and graduate assistants (GAs) incorporate teaching strategies in responding to chat reference inquiries in social sciences, health sciences, humanities, STEM and business/economics at a large, public R1 university in the United States.
Design/methodology/approach
Researchers with disciplinary assignments in five different subject domains conducted qualitative analysis of a purposive sample of 982 transcripts of chat interactions during four semesters in 2021 and 2022.
Findings
Some form of information literacy instruction (ILI) occurred in 58% of the transcripts, with slightly less teaching occurring in social sciences inquiries than in other subject areas. Of transcripts that included teaching strategies, search procedures predominated, followed by a mix of concepts and procedures, and the least with concepts only. Chat providers taught concepts specific to social sciences, health sciences and humanities, but not to STEM or business.
Research limitations/implications
The study compares transcripts at one institution; findings may be most applicable to large, research institutions that seek to incorporate ILI in online reference services.
Practical implications
Chat reference training should include best practices for ILI relevant to specific subject domains for providers without background in those disciplines and recommendations for referrals to subject specialists.
Originality/value
Existing ILI literature does not address the question of how chat providers teach concepts rooted in a specific subject domain or offer a comparison of teaching strategies employed in different disciplines, by librarians versus GAs or staff.