Chase Ochrach, Kathryn Thomas, Brian Phillips, Ngonidzashe Mpofu, Tim Tansey and Stacie Castillo
Employers increasingly seek a competitive advantage through inclusive hiring practices and recruitment of persons with disabilities. Early research indicates when employers…
Abstract
Purpose
Employers increasingly seek a competitive advantage through inclusive hiring practices and recruitment of persons with disabilities. Early research indicates when employers consider individuals for their strengths rather than solely for their needs, the organization prospers. However, details about how companies pursue a disability inclusive workplace and the effect of those efforts are poorly understood.
Design/methodology/approach
An inductive qualitative case study approach was utilized to understand one biotechnology corporation and their approach to recruiting, hiring, and retaining employees with disabilities. Individual and focus group interviews were conducted.
Findings
Results suggest that when the company lives its mission around wellness and inclusivity, they benefit from working with and learning from a range of perspectives, furthering their growth. Placing equal emphasis on hiring a diverse workforce and prioritizing supports and wellness practices lead to greater productivity and innovation.
Practical implications
This study illustrates how one company successfully recruits and hires persons with disabilities, resulting in benefits to their financial bottom line and to the organizational culture.
Originality/value
This paper offers insights for other companies intentionally hiring persons with disabilities, providing accommodations in the workplace, and creating an organizational culture where all employees feel valued and supported. These steps have a direct impact on employee engagement, productivity, and retention.
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This paper aims to evidence the perspectives of information professionals in the UK in relation to environmental sustainability and climate action to catalyse collaborative action.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to evidence the perspectives of information professionals in the UK in relation to environmental sustainability and climate action to catalyse collaborative action.
Design/methodology/approach
This study takes an interpretivist stance. Research into archive and record management literature was conducted to establish key themes on climate change within the information sector. These themes informed research questions included in a survey cascaded to UK archivists, conservators, records managers and cultural heritage professionals via national mailing lists. The results were then codified and analysed. The study had research ethics and data protection approval from University College London.
Findings
Using professional ethics as a framework, this paper argues that climate action can protect records from the impact of climate change, ensuring future access. The information professionals surveyed were motivated by duties to preservation and access to mitigate the impact of the information sector on the environment. However, sector-specific climate action, such as introducing passive storage conditions or decreasing collection sizes, is limited by insufficient resources, organisational hierarchies and cultures, sector support and a perceived conflict with the duty to preservation.
Originality/value
To date, there is a growing body of literature from other countries on archival practices and the natural environment. However, the UK in general and the records management sector in particular, have not yet fully engaged in the discussion. This study reviews these knowledge gaps for the UK information sector to appropriately respond to climate change.
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Tim Knowles, Richard Moody and Morven G. McEachern
This paper aims to chart the wide range of food scares reported throughout the EU over the period 1986‐2006 and explores their impact on EU policy.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to chart the wide range of food scares reported throughout the EU over the period 1986‐2006 and explores their impact on EU policy.
Design/methodology/approach
There is much extant research that solely investigates the occurrences of specific food scares, however; little emphasis is given to the responses of policy makers. This research aims to narrow this gap in the literature by reviewing the major food scares, which have occurred throughout the EU and the subsequent policy responses.
Findings
A number of food scares have dominated media reports over the last two decades, but this study reveals the increasing emergence of rare serotypes of foodborne pathogens, as well as a rising trend of EU‐wide contaminant and animal disease‐related food scares. Simultaneously, there is evidence of evolution from a product‐focused food policy to a risk‐based policy, which has developed into a tentative EU consumer‐based food policy. Inevitably, in a market of 25 member‐states the concept of food quality varies between countries and therein justifies the need for responsive policy development, which embraces the single market philosophy.
Research limitations/implications
A typology of EU food scares is advanced and discussed in detail, with comments being made on their impact. In addition, the paper highlights the complexity of a EU consumer, which has led to a need for research into the maximisation of the satisfaction of purchasers by reinsuring their individual “right to choose”.
Originality/value
This paper provides a unique insight into a wide range of European food scares (e.g. microbiological, contaminants, animal disease‐related) and EU policy makers' responses to such food scares.
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Cristian Gherhes, Tim Vorley and Chay Brooks
Despite their economic significance, empirical evidence on the growth constraints facing micro-businesses as an important subset of small and medium enterprises remains scarce. At…
Abstract
Purpose
Despite their economic significance, empirical evidence on the growth constraints facing micro-businesses as an important subset of small and medium enterprises remains scarce. At the same time, little consideration has hitherto been given to the context in which entrepreneurial activity occurs. The purpose of this paper is to develop an empirically informed contextual understanding of micro-business growth, beyond firm-level constraints.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper draws on 50 in-depth interviews with stakeholders and micro-business owner–manager entrepreneurs (OMEs henceforth) in a peripheral post-industrial place (PPIP henceforth).
Findings
The paper shows that, beyond firm-level constraints generated by their OME-centric nature, there are “additional costs” for micro-businesses operating in PPIPs, specifically limited access to higher-skilled labour, a more challenging, “closed” business environment and negative outward perceptions stemming from place stigmatisation. All of these “additional costs” can serve to stymie OMEs' growth ambition.
Research limitations/implications
The paper is based on a limited number of interviews conducted in one region in England. However, the contextualisation of the findings through a focus on PPIPs provides valuable insights and enables analytical generalisation.
Originality/value
The article develops a context-sensitive model of micro-business growth constraints, one that goes beyond the constraints inherent in the nature of micro-businesses and is sensitive to their local (socio-institutional) operating context. The implications serve to advance both how enterprise in the periphery is theorised and how it is addressed by policymakers and business intermediaries to support the growth of micro-businesses.
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Wolff-Michael Roth, Tim Mavin and Sidney Dekker
The purpose of this paper is to theorize the theory-practice gap and to provide examples of how it currently expresses itself and how it might be addressed to better integrate…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to theorize the theory-practice gap and to provide examples of how it currently expresses itself and how it might be addressed to better integrate between the worlds of thought and praxis.
Design/methodology/approach
Two empirical examples exemplify how the theory-practice gap is an institutionally embodied social reality. Cultural-historical activity theory is described as a means for theorizing the inevitable gap. An example from the airline industry shows how the gap may be dealt with in, and integrated into, practice.
Findings
Cultural-historical activity theory suggests different forms of consciousness to exist in different activity systems because of the different object/motives in the world in which we think and the practical world in which we live. A brief case study of the efforts of one airline to integrate reflection on practice (i.e. theory) into their on-the-job training shows how the world in which pilots think about what they do is made part of the world in which pilots live.
Practical implications
First, in some cases, such as teacher education, institutional arrangements can be made to situate education/training in the workplace. Second, even in the training systems with high fidelity, high validity (transferability) cannot be guaranteed.
Originality/value
The approach proposed provides a theory not only for understanding the theory-practice gap but also the gap that exists even between very high-fidelity (“photo-realistic”) training situations and the real-world praxis full of surprises.
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This paper aims to explore progressive stakeholders' understandings about and activities for sustainable catering as socio‐cultural embodiments in the Nordic countries. The paper…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore progressive stakeholders' understandings about and activities for sustainable catering as socio‐cultural embodiments in the Nordic countries. The paper also seeks to highlight focal points for development.
Design/methodology/approach
A total of 46 structured telephone interviews with stakeholders within the food system were carried out during 2006 in the Nordic countries. The theoretical frame was established by Billig's idea of “ideological dilemmas” and the interview transcripts were coded into conceptual versus pragmatic speech regarding catering for sustainability. Thereafter, five subcategories were topically identified in each category representing variation in meanings.
Findings
Sustainable catering as conceptually understood corresponds to a holistic picture while the pragmatic view represents more everyday working orientation. The analysis delivered five topical categories of conceptual and pragmatic sustainability, which show how sustainability was dealt with in speech by mixing the conceptual ideal with the pragmatic on the “shop floor”, while evidently there seemed to be conceptualisations which do not have their proper counterpart within pragmatic action. The way sustainability was viewed suggests a translation of ideology into practice and to do that proper tools and support are needed, both within own activities and in the linking with other stakeholders.
Research limitations/implications
The participants represented progressive stakeholders as they were members of a Nordic network for healthy and sustainable catering.
Originality/value
The study includes progressive professional stakeholders in different positions within the food system. A system approach is used to better locate differences and similarities in understanding the concept and its translational potential within the food system.