Search results

The construction industry has a poor reputation for an unhealthy lifestyle and a high prevalence of health problems such as obesity, stress and hypertension among construction workers. The review examines the factors influencing the design and delivery of health promotion programs implemented by construction organisations to educate workers and promote a healthy lifestyle. It also identifies gaps in research and practices and proposes directions for future research.

A systematic review of 51 relevant journal articles published during 2010–2019 was undertaken to achieve the aim of the study.

The review reveals 46 different factors grouped into four major themes related to individuals, organisations, industry and the program, influencing the successful implementation of health promotion programs. The top ten most cited factors are cost, time, facilities and resources, transient workforce, delivery method, influence from managers, long working hours, masculine culture, production pressure and interest. The review also found a noticeable lack of studies on implementing health promotion programs in the context of developing countries, small and medium-sized construction organisations, residential sector workers, and construction professionals and female workers.

The review's scope is limited to research on health promotion programs, and it did not investigate the factors affecting the health of construction workers in construction projects.

A better understanding of various influencing factors present at different decision levels will inform the future implementation of targeted workforce health promotion strategies to foster construction workers' health and well-being.

The review reveals bottlenecks that need to be addressed to successfully implement health promotion programs in the construction industry. It provides new insights that can improve existing health and workplace policies and health promotion programs in the construction industry. Finally, it identifies new research directions in a neglected but crucial area of workers' health and safety management.

The present study is concerned with assessing the factors which affect principals' roles as change facilitators in the area of curricular innovation. It is designed to identify the prevailing modes of principals' change facilitator leadership styles in curricular related activities and to estimate the relative predictive ability of policy, strategy (i.e. values), organizational and background factors in explaining the variance of these leadership styles. A random sample of 69 principals from the school district of one of the largest cities in Israel participated in the study. Three mutually exclusive modes of principals' change facilitator leadership styles — Responder, Manager and Initiator — emerged from the analysis. The totality of the factors in the research model explained 20, 31 and 48 percent of the variance respectively in the three styles. Results indicate that background and organizational factors contribute relatively more in explaining the variance in these modes than policy and strategy factors.

We live in organizations addicted to problematic narratives. My purpose is to develop intelligent action understandings of how to care for organizations addicted to problematic elevator pitch narratives and one-sided stories by mapping quantum storytelling “Tamara-Land” forces ignored beneath and between them both (Boje, 1995). Tamara-land is the everyday activity of people in organizations chasing stories spatially distributed in different rooms, hallways, buildings that are temporally simultaneous, with materialities that are agential to the telling. For example, in this conference, the immersive theater into Tamara-Land is done in Steel Case open office spaces, as audience decides which actors to follow as they exit each scene. You cannot chase them all, and cannot be everywhere at once in this spacetimemattering. Quantum storytelling does not search for simple word or text messaging tag lines to explain open offices. Quantum storytelling uncovers deep behavior patterns of the spacetimemattering. “Quantum storytelling includes nondiscursive and behavioral aspects embodied in the storyteller’s life, in their living story behavioral-performative agentiality” (Boje, 1995, p. 114) and in nonhuman’s materialism featured in Karen Barad’s (2007) and Anete Strand’s material storytelling work. Quantum storytelling of Tamara-Land mapping at macro scale traces the interplay of people, planet, and profit (aka Triple Bottom Line, 3BL) but does not reduce it to imagined profitability metrics. I will critique 3BL for not proposing any method to measure people and planet first and by default reducing all dimensions to just bottom line profit measures. The consequence is that a runaway, maximizing fractal, known in socioeconomic work as the Taylor–Fayol–Weber rationality or “TFW virus” (Worley, Zardet, Bonnet, & Savall, 2015, pp. 23–24; Savall& Peron, 2015), attains functional structuralism (Alvesson & Spicer, 2012). In quantum storytelling fractal work, it’s “TFW fractal” profiteering that is destroying both planet and people, at an ever-accelerating rate (Boje & Henderson, 2014; Boje, 2015; Henderson & Boje, 2015). My contribution is to propose a different fractal pattern, the Mandelbrot fractal that actually sets limits on runaway fractal appetite. Both the 3BL and the VA techno-digital fractal narrative spiral more and more materials, energy, and people into the risk of an addictive TFW virus pattern, without limit.

As modes of scholarly communication change around us, will our old values endure? Deanna Marcum, dean of the School of Library and Information Science at the Catholic University of America, was asked to prepare a keynote essay to which other contributors were invited to both respond and elaborate. All participants reaffirm the importance of equal access to information. Hoekema worries that by diverting resources to keep the system of scholarly publication alive, the financial demands of new electronic services will serve in the end to impoverish many. Holoviak describes a risk that is of particular concern to those involved with scholarly societies, that of disenfranchising scholars not on the basis of their intellectual or economic means but on the basis of technological compatibility. Lyman urges libraries to redefine their mission. He argues that we cannot protect a system that is bankrupting us, and he calls for academic libraries to become the partner of students in learning and of the faculty in the search for knowledge.

Research ethics committees (RECs) and ethical standards govern research. To conduct research involving participants, researchers must first gain a favourable opinion on their protocol from a REC. This paper aims to promote researcher reflexivity and openness about applying agreed ethical protocols in practice.

Using examples from qualitative fieldwork in two care home studies, the authors critically reflect on the issues encountered when applying ethics committee agreed protocols in real-world situations.

Three areas of research practice are reflected on given as follows: recruitment and consent; approach to observations; and research processes, shared spaces and access to data. The interface between researcher and participant did not always mirror textbook scenarios. Ultimately, this left researchers accountable for taking ethically acceptable actions while conducting research.

Drawing on research experiences in care homes, the authors consider the reliance on the researcher to be authentic and morally driven over and above formal ethical approvals. The authors conclude that the researcher is the bridging agent between ethical protocols and ethical practice in the field. As such, researchers need to be open and reflexive about their practices in fieldwork.

This study aims to examine the phenomenon of self-perceived age (SPA) identity for Generation X (GenX) women in the UK. Squeezed between the more ubiquitous “boomer” and “millennial” cohorts, and now with both gender and age stigma-related challenges, this study looks to provide insights for understanding this group for marketing.

This study adopts an existential phenomenological approach using a hybrid structured/hermeneutic research design. Data is collected using solicited diary research (SDR) that elicits autoethnographic insights into the lived experiences of GenX women, these in the context of SPA.

For this group, the authors find age a gendered phenomenon represented via seven “age frames”, collectively an “organisation of experience”. Age identity appears not to have unified meaning but is contingent upon individuals and their experiences. These frames then provide further insights into how diarists react to the stigma of gendered ageism.

SDR appeals to participants who like completing diaries and are motivated by the research topic. This limits both diversity of response and sample size, but coincidentally enhances elicitation potential – outweighing, the authors believe, these constraints. The sample comprises UK women only.

This study acknowledges GenX women as socially real, but from an SPA perspective they are heterogeneous, and consequently distributed across many segments. Here, age is a psychographic, not demographic, variable – a subjective rather than chronological condition requiring a nuanced response from marketers.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first formal study into how SPA identity is manifested for GenX women. Methodologically, this study uses e-journals/diaries, an approach not yet fully exploited in marketing research.

This paper aims to explore the dynamic relationships between high-performance computing centres (HPC centres) and small-to-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) working in the automotive sector.

An empirical study was conducted in 14 European countries with a total of 92 participants, representatives of HPC centres and SMEs. Data were collected through focus groups.

Findings show there is a distinct manner of shaping collaboration and cooperation networks between both spheres. In shaping the relationships, cognitive frames play a role through specific values involved share. Institutions also play an important role.

Research into relationships between HPC centres and SMEs conducted was qualitative; therefore, limitations arise on data not being able to be generalized. The cultural aspect is to be taken into account when conducting further studies.

Findings of this study can be used by policymakers, especially those interested in regional innovation. The results can be of use when tailoring innovation policies, especially when it comes to enhancing the regional and extra-regional cooperation between HPC centres and SMEs.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this paper is one of the first research contributions to analyse the relationships between HPC centres and SMEs from the automotive sector in selected European countries.

Drawing on the “5Ms” gender cognizant framework, this study seeks to investigate how money, motherhood, management, the market and the macro/meso environment dimensions of the 5Ms may influence women's entrepreneurship in Jordan. A related aim is to offer in-depth insights and a fresh understanding of potential factors not included in the original 5Ms model.

The study takes a qualitative-inductive approach, using semi-structured interviews with 14 women entrepreneurs from various industries in Jordan.

The paper highlights the positive (or adverse) impact of the 5Ms factors (motherhood, macro/meso environment, the market, management and money) on women entrepreneurs in Jordan and introduces new emerging factors. The paper concludes with an extended view of the 5Ms model.

This study may help develop greater sensitivity and understanding about some of the adverse gender practices faced by women entrepreneurs. Policymakers in Jordan and other Arab countries may consider empowering women entrepreneurs in terms of offering more financial funds and facilities, social support, and managerial empowerment.

The study creates more sensitivity and awareness about the current dynamics, opportunities and impediments that affect women entrepreneurs; thus, it contributes to the extant literature by suggesting new propositions and a novel framework. This study extends Brush et al.'s (2009) 5Ms gendered framework by adding three important factors (Mental health, Maturity and Maintainability). The empirical update and contextual extension of Brush et al.'s (2009) 5Ms model highlight a theoretical contribution.

Based on the framework of Krylov subspace-based model order reduction (MOR), compact models of the piezoelectric energy harvester devices can be generated. However, the stability of reduced piezoelectric model often cannot be preserved. In previous research studies, “MOR after Schur,” “Schur after MOR” and “multiphysics structure preserving MOR” methods have proven successful in obtaining stable reduced piezoelectric energy harvester models. Though the stability preservation of “MOR after Schur” and “Schur after MOR” methods has already been mathematically proven, the “multiphysics structure preserving MOR” method was not. This paper aims to provide the missing mathematical proof of “multiphysics structure preserving MOR.”

Piezoelectric energy harvesters can be represented by system of differential-algebraic equations obtained by the finite element method. According to the block structure of its system matrices, “MOR after Schur” and “Schur after MOR” both perform Schur complement transformations either before or after the MOR process. For the “multiphysics structure preserving MOR” method, the original block structure of the system matrices is preserved during MOR. 

This contribution shows that, in comparison to “MOR after Schur” and “Schur after MOR” methods, “multiphysics structure preserving MOR” method performs the Schur complement transformation implicitly, and therefore, stabilizes the reduced piezoelectric model.

The stability preservation of the reduced piezoelectric energy harvester model obtained through “multiphysics structure preserving MOR” method is proven mathematically and further validated by numerical experiments on two different piezoelectric energy harvester devices.