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An investigation into the role of leadership and knowledge sharing on enhancing innovation capability in manufacturing small medium enterprises (SMEs) in the UK food industry
No full textThis research investigates leadership roles as a dynamic phenomenon and explores its causative impact on knowledge sharing and innovation in the SME Food Industry (SMEFI). Knowledge sharing (KS) is recognised as a critical stimulator for extending and fostering innovative capabilities (IC) in firms. Although scholars assert that leaders need to engage and encourage this stimulation, there are few studies which have innovative leadership roles with combination of KS and innovation capability. Also, thesis utilises qualitative inquiry to delve into lived innovation experiences to capture professionals' perceptions about leadership roles in the SMEFI.
The interpretivist phenomenological approach (IPA) method was adopted as it could facilitate the researcher's ability to deeply study and understand these people’s lived experiences. As IPA required a collection of extensive data from everyone, the current study conducted sixteen in-depth interviews with five follow-up meetings. While the follow-up interviews have been used for enriching themes, the main interviews utilised for thematic data analysis.
Main Research Question is “How do leadership roles influence knowledge sharing within SMEFIs, and how does this, in turn, influence the innovation capability of these businesses?” SMEFI Leaders are found as an adaptive, which has been reflected in a nuanced “balanced approach,” empowering employees classified as a task autonomy, and developing an employee-centred orientation. The delicate interplay of assertiveness and social assertiveness reveals the complex dynamics leaders navigate to foster a culture of knowledge sharing.
The study informs the indispensable role of leadership in nurturing internal skills, fostering KS, and propelling innovation capability forward. The findings have contributed to KS and innovation capability in the SME’s literature that leaders expect employees to not retain or hoard their expertise and eventually willingly join KS. In this regard, they welcome new knowledge (knowledge migration) and ideas as part of KS that would cause improvement and development.
SMEFI leaders presented that they have inherited limitations due to being small businesses, having a burden of food regulations, and having a limited, capable workforce. However, they still aim to benefit the most from current employees’ capabilities and knowledge. Also, the realisation of new product, service and process with combination and reconfiguration of knowledge has been captured. However, when the case is learning from errors and risk taking, SMEFI leaders have not keen on tolerating. This could have been linked to exhaustion due to limitation and not having sufficient skills. Whereas SMEFI leaders have illustrated innovative leadership roles acutely taking on multiple roles, pursuing improvement, challenging comfort zones, shifting seamlessly between situational decision- makers, inclusive collaborators, transformational influencers, and innovative promoters.
SMEFI leaders serve as orchestrators by not only distinguishing specific employee' talents but also aiming them strategically with the help KS in order to generate new values to organisation. Although the study highlights their innovative leadership role as key actors in developing internal skills and guiding SMEs towards innovation capability, inclusion of specific employees is perceived as main consideration to realise innovation
Lived experiences of gaming and gambling related harm and implications for healthcare services
Get PDFChildren and young people (CYP) are high consumers of loot boxes,
raising concerns about the impact of a convergence of gaming and gambling-related harms and their potential negative developmental outcomes in adulthood.
Especially, given evidence that practitioners and parents/carers are lacking
awareness of the risks of converging gaming-gambling environments. Addressing
these risks necessitates understanding the experiences of gaming and gambling-related harm within healthcare systems. This study aimed to gain insights from
individuals with previous lived experience of gaming and/or gambling-related
harm in the context of CYP and healthcare systems. A qualitative design was
adopted using two semi-structured online focus groups, involving five participants
with previous lived experience of gaming and/or gambling-related harm. Focus
groups explored their experiences of healthcare services and barriers to support in
the journey through harm and recovery. Thematic analysis of the data revealed five
key themes: i) Escapism; ii) Identity; iii) Preventative Education; iv) Safer
Environments; v) Health-based Narratives. Results suggested a convergence of
gaming and gambling-related harm in terms of patterns of experiences of escapism
and internalising harm with identity, highlighting the need for safer environments
and preventative approaches to protect CYP against novel risks of harm through
healthcare systems. The results suggest that preventative approaches need to
understand the virtual worlds of CYP and the importance of digital resilience.
Implications for practitioners, services, policy makers, and regulators seeking to
protect CYP from the risks of gaming and gambling-related harm are discussed
Designing for a circular economy in the architecture, engineering, and construction industry: insights from Italy
Get PDFResource consumption in the construction industry is expected to increase globally in the coming years. Additionally, construction and demolition waste (CDW) remains a significant priority within numerous global policies due to its vast volume and the inefficiencies in its management. This situation results in substantial environmental repercussions, primarily due to the low rates of material recovery in the manufacturing processes for new building materials. In response, the concept of the circular economy (CE) emerges as a promising solution across various sectors. CE promotes more resource- and energy-efficient practices, reducing waste generation and mitigating the environmental impacts associated with product life cycles while also unlocking potential economic opportunities. The primary aim of this study is to identify and assess the design practices influencing the adoption of CE principles within the Italian architectural, engineering, and construction (AEC) sector. The study’s main contribution lies in a survey of 77 Italian designers to explore the core strategies driving the development of comprehensive circular approaches. This investigation seeks to understand the constraints and opportunities for CE implementation. The findings will assist in decision-making, inform policy, promote literacy around the CE topic, enable new quality standards, and serve as a baseline reference for businesses regarding sustainability investment indexes and markets
Circumventing plague: the spatial experience of women and men during the outbreak of 1630-31 Bologna
No full textThough managing early modern plague in northern
Italy necessitated regulations and restrictions of movement
in order to combat outbreaks, the factors resulting in
immobility at the same time created opportunities for
mobility. The ability to move and interact within the urban
environment was contingent on social factors such as age,
gender, class and occupational status and remained
essential in the shaping of the spatial experience. Moreover,
the ability to move across barriers, such as crossing the
threshold of the home, formulated possibilities for social
life to flourish during plague. This study investigates the
relationships between early modern people and places
during the period of plague in Bologna from 1630-31
through the lens of the new mobilities paradigm. This
model interrogates how places are continuously shaped
and reshaped by way of human and non-human
interaction. Adopting approaches emerging from the
mobility turn, this research places emphasis on the social
drivers that contributed to movement and asks: how did
mobility inform the various experiences of the plague of
1630-31 in Bologna? Building on the extensive studies on
seventeenth-century plague for the cities of Milan, Venice
and Florence, this study offers new insights into the early
modern experience and approaches to plague from the
perspective of the significant northern Italian centre of
Bologna. This study draws on a broad array of primary
documents including handwritten and printed records,
encompassing contemporary chronicles, manuscripts and
legal decrees. Historical sources including plague tracts
reveal contemporary understanding of combatting plague.
Visual sources, such as early modern paintings and
architectural plans, alongside digital maps of Bologna’s
network of plague hospitals, similarly play a crucial role in
uncovering the spatial experience during plague.
The research presented in this study contends that
the urban experience and the public health management of
early modern plague was informed by mobility.
Architecture, in combination with regulations and
disciplinary punishment, were used to contain, control and
limit the movement of people. Despite immobility, men and
women found ways to circumvent restrictions. They
crossed architectural divides by way of health passes or
illicit activities and traversed physical but also social
boundaries through professional opportunities. Bolognese
citizens continued to move by way of engaging with
devotional performances, such as processions. Ritualised
performance was enacted to counteract the moral causes of
the illness and ultimately served the social life of the
community. Mobility was also considered an asset for
plague management according to seventeenth-century
practice as demonstrated in the creation and employment
of a network of plague hospitals in Bologna. Moreover, this
study reveals how social dimensions contributed to varying
degrees of mobility as women, men, the nobility and the
poor each had diverse experiences of plague
Versions of the life-force 2 [the greyhound]; Lab sample 1: Espoliniq, controlled drug to suppress agitation, on entering the bloodstream
No full textEthico-racial positioning in campaigns for COVID-19 research and vaccination featuring public figures
Get PDFThis article analyses a set of videos which featured public figures encouraging racially minoritised people in the UK to take the COVID-19 vaccine or get involved in related research. As racially targeted health communication has both potentially beneficial and problematic consequences, it is important to examine this uniquely high-profile case. Using a purposive sample of 10 videos, our thematic content analysis aimed to reveal how racially minoritised people were represented and the types of concerns about the vaccine that were expressed. We found representations of racialised difference that centred on ‘community’ and invoked shared social experiences. The expressed concerns centred on whether ethnic difference was accounted for in the vaccine’s design and development, plus the overarching issue of trust. Our analysis adopts and develops the concept of ‘racialisation’; we explore how ‘mutuality’ underpinned normative calls to action (‘ethico-racial imperatives’) and how the videos ‘responsibilised’ racially minoritised people. We discuss two points of tension in this case: the limitations for addressing the causes of mistrust and the risks of reductivism that accompanied the ambiguous notion of community. Our analysis develops scholarship on racialisation in health contexts and provides public health practitioners with insights into the socio-political considerations of racially targeted communications
Essays
No full textThe Romantic essay took many different forms to strikingly different ends. Some versions of it appeared as book-length arguments that were designed to convince readers of a certain point of view, including Thomas Robert Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population and Hannah More’s Essay on the Character and Practical Writings of St Paul. But the vast majority of Romantic essays were shorter pieces first published in the periodicals, including the mordant reviews of Francis Jeffrey, the epistolary articles of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the raucous dialogues of John Wilson, and the dynamic sketches of Charles Dickens. Most notably, liberal-minded magazines like the London and the New Monthly fostered a new kind of personal essay that expanded and reworked eighteenth-century iterations of the form, and that reached its highest points in the writings of Thomas De Quincey, Leigh Hunt, Charles Lamb, and William Hazlitt
We are everywhere
No full text‘We Are Everywhere’ is a zine that was created as part of the disability activism and advocacy research project. It was produced using artwork made in online group sessions and quotes from conversations and an online survey. The zine contains content written in long form and easy read format
Consideration of the impact of a professional learning program to support the teaching and assessment of practical primary science in England
No full textIn England, primary science is often struggling for time in an increasingly crowded curriculum and schools are requesting stronger evidence of impact to justify the time and money that could be spent on any professional learning program. This means that programs like the one described in this paper need to be clearer than ever about their proposed impact on teacher practice. The Teacher Assessment in Primary Science (TAPS) Focused Assessment approach proposes
that one focus is selected within the context of a whole inquiry, to support teaching and assessment. A three-day Focus4TAPS professional learning program has been developed to support teachers to implement this approach in primary science. The course has been delivered face-to-face and online. It has been the subject of a large-scale Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) randomized control trial in England. The EEF independent evaluation found a statistically significant impact on pupil learning. This paper will explore teacher survey data from the EEF evaluation, together with qualitative surveys completed by the course attendees during the program, to consider the process of implementation and described impact on practice. It is proposed that the TAPS Focused Assessment approach provides a manageable way for teaching and assessment of primary science inquiry, but that a sustained professional development program is necessary to support teacher understanding and formative use of assessment information gained from interaction with the children. This study provides insights that can inform the implementation of a similar approach in other contexts