Vanessa di Paola, Arnaud Dupray and Stéphanie Moullet
The authors aim to explore the link between the gender composition of occupations and women's access to managerial positions in four societal contexts.
Abstract
Purpose
The authors aim to explore the link between the gender composition of occupations and women's access to managerial positions in four societal contexts.
Design/methodology/approach
Using EU-LFS data for 2015, the authors measure the relative gender equality performance of France, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK regarding women's access to managerial positions, defined as levels 1 and 2 of the 2008 ISCO classification coupled with the exercise of managerial responsibilities.
Findings
While gender-mixed working environments offer the largest number of managerial positions, they are also where women are least likely to reach such a position. Overall, except in Switzerland, women fare best in male-dominated occupations. Women do not appear to fare worse than men in female-dominated occupations, except in France.
Research limitations/implications
The findings question the relevance of policies aimed simply at reducing occupational gender segregation without providing safeguards against the deleterious effects that gender mixing may have on women's career advancement.
Originality/value
The disparities between countries found here show that individual career advancement towards a managerial position may be driven by the social policies, gender ideology and institutions of the societal context. Examining how the societal dimensions involved in the poor performance of women in France and Switzerland are likely to differ sheds light on mechanisms behind the gender gap in management.
Details
Keywords
Stuart William Flint, Daniel Plumley and Robert Wilson
The purpose of this paper is to highlight and encourage consideration of the ethical and in some instances legal implications of managerial change in the English Premier League…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to highlight and encourage consideration of the ethical and in some instances legal implications of managerial change in the English Premier League (EPL) which often gets overlooked and sidestepped by clubs.
Design/methodology/approach
Extant literature relating to managerial change is identified and discussed to provide the foundations of the discussion of whether managerial change in the EPL which is primarily focused on performance outcome, is neglecting ethical and legal issues.
Findings
The loophole that exists in the Employment Rights Act (1996) allows clubs to instantly dismiss a manager and consequently not see out their notice period as agreed in their contract or the statutory notice period. Whilst legally clubs are at will to act in this manner, the instability of EPL management evident today appears to have taken away the rights of an employee.
Research limitations/implications
Greater consideration of the current managerial change practices in EPL from an ethical and legal perspective appears warranted. The incomparable rights that a player and a manger have relating to their tenure at a club seem somewhat unfair.
Originality/value
Presents thought-provoking information relating to managerial change in the EPL which appears to have been overlooked in the literature to date which primarily focuses on the impact of change on performance.
Details
Keywords
Nikolaos Apostolopoulos, Vanessa Ratten, Stavros Stavroyiannis, Ilias Makris, Sotiris Apostolopoulos and Panagiotis Liargovas
The COVID-19 crisis has brought to the forefront the importance of rural health enterprises (RHEs), the peculiarity, in these terms, of rural areas, and the impact of rurality on…
Abstract
Purpose
The COVID-19 crisis has brought to the forefront the importance of rural health enterprises (RHEs), the peculiarity, in these terms, of rural areas, and the impact of rurality on health entrepreneurial activities. This paper aims to undertake a literature review regarding RHEs in the EU, identify research gaps and set future research directions.
Design/methodology/approach
A systematic literature review was conducted and the key aspects coded across four thematic areas – after examining 68 papers.
Findings
The findings reveal that more intense research should be conducted across four area which emerged; rural health providers vs urban health providers; RHEs and rural development; RHEs and quality of life; and social RHEs.
Research limitations/implications
Future research avenues were identified and suggestions for further research on RHEs were provided.
Practical implications
The paper provides insights into how rural areas can attract health enterprises and how health enterprises can operate in rural areas.
Originality/value
This research expands on the limited existing knowledge of RHEs and sets the foundations for further research.
Details
Keywords
Alessandro Graciotti and Morven G. McEachern
This study aims to investigate consumers’ construction of food localness through the politics of belonging in a regional context.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate consumers’ construction of food localness through the politics of belonging in a regional context.
Design/methodology/approach
Following a socio-spatial lens and considering the “realm of meaning” of place, this research focusses on local consumers’ lived meanings of “local” food choice, and hence adopts a phenomenological approach to the data collection and analysis of 20 in-depth interviews with residents of the Italian region of Marche.
Findings
Drawing on Trudeau’s (2006) politics of belonging, this study reveals three interconnected themes which show how local consumers articulate a local food “orthodoxy” and how their discourses and practices draw and maintain a boundary between local and non-local food, whereby local food is considered “autochthonous” of rural space. Thus, this study’s participants construct a local food landscape, conveying rural (vs urban) meanings through which food acquires “localness” (vs non-“localness”) status.
Research limitations/implications
There exists further theoretical opportunity to consider local consumers’ construction of food localness through the politics of belonging in terms of non-representational theory (Thrift, 2008), to help reveal added nuances to the construction of food localness as well as to the complex process of formulating place meaning.
Practical implications
The findings provide considerable scope for food producers, manufacturers and/or marketers to differentiate local food products by enhancing consumers’ direct experience of it in relation to rural space. Thus, enabling local food producers to convey rural (vs urban) meanings to consumers, who would develop an orthodoxy guiding future choice.
Social implications
The findings enable regional promoters and food policymakers to leverage the symbolic distinctiveness of food autochthony to promote place and encourage consumers to participate in their local food system.
Originality/value
By using the politics of belonging as an analytical framework, this study shows that the urban–rural dichotomy – rather than being an obsolete epistemological category – fuels politics of belonging dynamics, and that local food consumers socially construct food localness not merely as a romanticisation of rurality but as a territorial expression of the contemporary local/non-local cultural conflict implied in the politics of belonging. Thus, this study advances our theoretical understanding by demonstrating that food “becomes” local and therefore, builds on extant food localness conceptualisations.
Details
Keywords
Ferdinando Arzarello, Silvia Funghi, Carola Manolino, Alessandro Ramploud and Maria Giuseppina Bartolini Bussi
The aim of this paper is to describe teachers’ professional development in Lesson Study (LS) as processes situated in Semiosphere and generated by the unevenness due to different…
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of this paper is to describe teachers’ professional development in Lesson Study (LS) as processes situated in Semiosphere and generated by the unevenness due to different cultural traditions. The authors characterise teachers’ professional development in two LS experiments as processes generating new knowledge to point out their products, i.e. new professional frame teachers produce after these experiments. The authors use Hybridization, a particular form of Networking of Theories (NWT).
Design/methodology/approach
The authors collected video-registration of several Italian LS meetings. The authors analyse two LSs, where time emerged as a conflictual aspect. Through Hybridization components, the authors show how teachers make sense of LS and how teachers revise their professional frame.
Theoretical framework
In NWT different theories are deployed to study the same problem. To grasp the issue of unevenness in our LS, we use Hybridization of a Theory, a form of NWT characterised by a structural asymmetry. Itis given when a construct c is introduced coherently, operatively and productively into a theory T, obtaining a hybridized theory T'.
Findings
Hybridization lens allows to describe potentialities and limits of LS as a tool for teachers’ development. The two analysed LS are different: in one of them Hybridization process produced a new theory T', whilst in the second one it was limited to the awareness of a gap between LS and initial teachers’ professional frame.
Practical implications
Identifying links between different Hybridization components is a helpful tool for teacher educators/researchers to foster the shift from one another. For instance, through this tool, teacher educators could keep track of what happens in successive LS and mirror the dialogue between teachers, moving towards group-shared metareflections. This initiates the advancement of a new theory T', where asymmetries are interpreted.
Originality/value
In this approach teachers are protagonists of the construction of a new professional frame. LS is a tool for teachers’ professional development, allowing teachers to question their own educational intentionalities. Hybridization components provide a tool to analyse such a process.