34575 research outputs found
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Prisoner Leadership through Education in Prison
No full textThis chapter explores the dynamics of prisoner leadership within the context of prison education. Drawing on the experiences of our co-author, Femi, the chapter identifies three models of prisoner leadership in educational settings: leading from the front, leading from behind, and leading through advocacy. These models are framed by key values—empathy, integrity, and courage—which underpin effective leadership and which develop through leadership opportunities in prison. We frame prisoner leadership as a radical act of love, grounded in Paulo Freire’s concepts of good education leadership. Freire's Pedagogy of the oppressed (1997 emphasises that leadership rooted in empathy and dialogue is a powerful tool for challenging oppressive structures. Within the oppressive environment of prisons, prisoner leadership in education acts as a form of resistance, fostering autonomy and humanity. This radical love is expressed through the courage to lead in an environment designed to dehumanise, creating transformative potential for both the leaders and the communities they serve. The chapter also addresses significant barriers to prisoner leadership which hinder the development and expression of leadership within the prison environment. Despite these barriers, we argue that prisoner leadership, when nurtured within the educational spaces of prisons, can lead to meaningful change for individuals and the broader prison culture
Competing for Pixels: A Self-Play Algorithm for Weakly-Supervised Semantic Segmentation
No full textWeakly-supervised semantic segmentation (WSSS) methods, reliant on image-level labels indicating object presence, lack explicit correspondence between labels and regions of interest (ROIs), posing a significant challenge. Despite this, WSSS methods have attracted attention due to their much lower annotation costs compared to fully-supervised segmentation. Leveraging reinforcement learning (RL) self-play, we propose a novel WSSS method that gamifies image segmentation of a ROI. We formulate segmentation as a competition between two agents that compete to select ROI-containing patches until exhaustion of all such patches. The score at each time-step, used to compute the reward for agent training, represents likelihood of object presence within the selection, determined by an object presence detector pre-trained using only image-level binary classification labels of object presence. Additionally, we propose a game termination condition that can be called by either side upon exhaustion of all ROI-containing patches, followed by the selection of a final patch from each. Upon termination, the agent is incentivised if ROI-containing patches are exhausted or disincentivised if a ROI-containing patch is found by the competitor. This competitive setup ensures minimisation of over- or under-segmentation, a common problem with WSSS methods. Extensive experimentation across four datasets demonstrates significant performance improvements over recent state-of-the-art methods
Generative artificial intelligence in construction: A Delphi approach, framework, and case study
No full textThe construction industry plays a crucial role in the global economy, contributing approximately $10 trillion and employing over 220 million workers worldwide, but encounters numerous productivity challenges with only 1 % annual growth compared to 2.8 % for the global economy. These challenges span various processes, including design, planning, procurement, inspection, and maintenance. Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), capable of producing new and realistic data or content such as text, images, videos, or code from given inputs or existing knowledge, presents innovative solutions to these challenges. While there is an increasing interest in the applications of GenAI in construction, a detailed analysis of its practical uses, advantages, and areas ripe for development is still evolving. This study contributes to this emerging area by offering an insightful analysis of the current state of generative AI in construction. It has three objectives: (1) to identify and categorize the existing and emerging generative AI opportunities and challenges in the construction industry via a Delphi study; (2) to propose a framework enabling construction firms to build customized GenAI solutions; and (3) to illustrate this framework through a case study that employs GenAI model for querying contract documents. Through systematic review and expert consultation, the study identified 76 potential GenAI applications across construction phases and 18 key challenges distributed across domain-specific, technological, adoption, and ethical categories. The case study's findings show that retrieval augmented generation (RAG) improves the baseline large language model (LLM), GPT-4, by 5.2, 9.4, and 4.8 % in terms of quality, relevance, and reproducibility. The study recommends a structured approach to GenAI implementation, emphasizing the need for domain-specific customization, robust validation protocols, and careful consideration of ethical implications. This study equips academics and construction professionals with a comprehensive analysis and practical framework, facilitating the integration of GenAI techniques to enhance productivity, quality, safety, and sustainability across the construction industry
Anthropocentrism and climate change
No full textThis chapter discusses how Education for Sustainable Development Goals (ESDG) emphasizes the implications of climate change, which is an economic- and anthropo-centric view of sustainability issue. This approach sidelines the value of non-human species and biodiversity, foregrounding oxymoronic aims of combating climate change without drastically reducing production, consumption and population. For about a decade, ESDG has been dominating the international sustainable business curriculum (UNESCO 2017; Molina-Motos 2019). The application of ESDG to business education is often associated with the ubiquitous triple Ps of People, Profit, and Planet. The SGDs Agenda focuses more on the first two and not sufficiently on the last (Washington 2021), reinforcing the anthropocentric bias (Adelman 2018; Visseren-Hamakers 2020; Kopnina 2018a, 2020a, 2020b, 2021a, 2021b). In placing ESDG in the context of business education, the focal point of this chapter is: How can business education address a broader range of environmental problems beyond the dominant anthropocentric perspective? There is a need to shift business education toward more progressive solutions. Instead of prioritising the Planet, the SDGs Agenda advocates responses that balance across social, economic, and environmental issues, misleading us on the extent of real changes. Educators need to equip students with critical thinking skills to detect greenwashing
Internationalization of innovation practices: Actors and linkages in crowdfunding ecosystems
No full textDigitalization has disrupted society and academia, especially in international management with respect to resource exchange, value propositions, and innovation processes. The connection among actors in open platforms is an example of how this challenge can drive innovation and improve ecosystems’ viability. This research investigates how innovation practices have arisen from connectivity and actor engagement. We use a crowdfunding context to address how the linkages can be strategically designed to join actors and resources in service ecosystems. The paper describes how actors connect in crowdfunding ecosystems by highlighting three kinds of linkages that result in actor engagement, trigger innovation, and impact ecosystem viability. Managers in international settings can facilitate the design of engagement platforms, and craft strategies that increase resource exchange and integration, to engage actors in innovation practices in order to impact the service ecosystem’s viability
Mitigating Burnout: A Qualitative Exploration of Clinical Supervision's Impact on Novice Psychotherapists
No full textBurnout poses a recognized risk within the psychotherapy profession, potentially compromising the quality of care for clients and the overall well-being of practitioners. Clinical supervision emerges as a crucial component in psychological therapeutic practices, with research affirming its efficacy in alleviating burnout symptoms among psychotherapists. While numerous quantitative studies underscore the prevalence of burnout among psychotherapists due to the demanding nature of their work, there remains a paucity of literature focusing on novice practitioners. To address this gap, our study aimed to explore the lived experiences of burnout among novice psychotherapists practicing integrative therapy, and their perceptions regarding the role of supervision in managing burnout. Through analysis of nine semi-structured interviews using thematic analysis, two overarching themes emerged: (a) internal shifts and underlying influences, and (b) the strengths of supervision. Participants described experiencing physical and psychological implications, including instances of countertransference. Common triggers included elevated caseloads, personal challenges, and feelings of inadequacy. Furthermore, participants universally emphasized the positive impact of supervision in maintaining ethical practice, normalizing and managing burnout, alleviating anxiety, and fostering a growth mindset. The implications of our findings extend to various aspects of clinical practice, professional training, and organizational policies within the mental health field
A Macroeconomic Analysis of Insolvency in the UK Construction Industry
No full textPurpose: This paper examines macroeconomic factors affecting insolvency level in the UK construction industry.
Design/methodology/approach: A Lagged Dependent Variable (LDV) model is proposed which adequately addressed the serial
correlation and endogeneity problems commonly existed in time series data. Objective macroeconomic data from Q3 1997 to Q4 2023 are used to evaluate seven refutable hypotheses.
Findings: It is found that higher unemployment rate or annual interest burden leads to higher the number of insolvencies, while higher construction output value, or interest rate leads to lower insolvencies.Domino effect in construction insolvency is also confirmed.
Research limitations/implications: The proposed solutions to the missing data on 3 quarters and the changes in the industry breakdown methods during the study period might have affected the accuracy and consistency of data.
Practical implications: The paper provides objective insights to factors affecting construction insolvency, offering tools for future policy formulation.
Social implications: Knowing factors affecting insolvencies helps formulating solutions.
Originality/value: Previous studies on insolvency in construction industry have largely focused on prediction of insolvency of individual companies using firm level financial data, which are symptoms of failure rather than root causes. Studies using questionnaires could be subjective and the limited studies using macroeconomic factors often have methodological issues. This paper bridges the gap by analysing objective macroeconomic data with a sound methodology
Development of ACT+: A Novel, Person‐Centred Psychological Intervention Based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to Improve Quality of Life in Patients Living With and Beyond Cancer
No full textIntroduction
The need to improve the quality of life (QoL) and well-being of people living with and beyond cancer is well recognised. SURECAN (SUrvivors' Rehabilitation Evaluation after CANcer) is a multiphase study developing and evaluating a psychological intervention based on acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) for people who have completed hospital-based treatment for cancer but have low QoL. We describe the process by which we iteratively developed and refined ACT+, an intervention in which ACT is integrated with options to support exercise and work.
Methods
ACT+ development was guided by the theory of ACT while Normalisation Process Theory (NPT) was used as a sensitising tool at all stages. Evidence from several strands of research comprising a qualitative meta-synthesis, a qualitative study with stakeholders and pre-pilot testing was brought together to refine ACT+. Insights from patient and public involvement (PPI) consultations supported the development and refinement of ACT+ resources throughout.
Results
The qualitative study with stakeholders shed light on the ‘real world’ contexts in which the ACT+ intervention would be offered and accessed, as well as the appeal of ACT+ as a therapy for people living with and beyond cancer. People who had treatment for cancer (n = 31) and healthcare professionals (n = 16) provided overall support for the intervention. Subsequent pre-pilot testing of the intervention and qualitative work with cancer patients (n = 6) and therapists (n = 7) led to further refinements. Evidence collected from all strands of research and PPI was integrated in an iterative way to produce an intervention that was acceptable to all.
Conclusion
We adopted an iterative and evidence-based approach to the development of the ACT+ intervention, which was acceptable to patients and healthcare professionals. Future work will examine the effectiveness of ACT+
Investigating the key success factors within business models that facilitate long‐term value creation for sustainability‐focused start‐ups
No full textStart‐ups navigate complex challenges in today's business environment, requiring a delicate balance of economic, environmental, and social objectives for long‐term success. This study investigates the pivotal factors within business models that drive sustained value creation for sustainability‐focused start‐ups. Through a comprehensive literature review encompassing environmental, social, and performance dimensions, we identify resilience as a primary component of sustainable decision‐making, supported by adaptability and convenience. Emphasizing resilience and adaptability in decision‐making processes enables sustainable start‐ups to maintain competitive advantages while pursuing sustainability goals. We advocate for a collaborative decision‐making approach focused on long‐term value creation through sustainability measures, providing a framework for developing or refining sustainable business models. Future research may further explore the identified success factors within sustainable start‐ups
