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Reflecting on a call centre workers’ inquiry. Contradictions, tensions, and the role of the researcher
No full textThis article considers the ethnography of a call centre published as Working the Phones. It was conducted as part of a PhD project, during which the author worked in a call centre in London. The project was inspired by the critical Marxist approach of workers’ inquiry, combining auto-ethnographic methods while organising and working in a call centre. The article considers the findings of the project, particularly the embodied nature of the work and role of technology, as well as exploring its method and methodology, mainly focusing on the role of intervention. The strengths and weakness of the original project are considered as part of a critical reflection on what workers’ inquiry and workplace ethnography can contribute to understanding and changing work
#StopAsianHate: A call for support, a call for equality
Full text linkEvery May, Google celebrates the contributions made by Asian and Pacific Islander Americans. However, over the past year, “Asian hate crimes” have increased around the world, and “Asian hate crimes” have become the most searched type of hate crime in the USA. In the past year, during the pandemic, there has been a troubling increase in the reports of violence against the Asian community. There are many reports of violence against Asian senior
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Challenging the old ways: a call to rethink behavioral methods
No full textWhile conducting systematic reviews of one of the most popular behavioral tests for assessing depression in laboratory rats, we came to recognize that tradition might be working against us. Researchers, in the spirit of getting reproducible results, have opted to follow methods that have remained mostly unchanged over the years. Some of these methods, initially developed with practicality and ease-of-use in mind, may have prioritized convenience over solid biological grounds. As a result, these methods might confound the results of experiments by introducing critical, and easily overlooked, methodological biases. In our systematic reviews, we found that such faithful compliance to tradition led to a decrease in the reliability of the test and undermined the confidence in the body of evidence derived from studies using it. We would like to bring awareness to the detrimental effect that abiding to tradition might have on the quality of animalbased research. It is a call to go back to basics, to rethink and refine behavioral methods, because if tradition comes at the cost of validity, maybe it is time to challenge tradition
Lean six sigma in a call centre : a case study
No full textThis paper, a case study, aims to illustrate the application of lean six sigma in a call centre of a service industry corporation. The study draws on process information and primary data from a real project. The study describes improvements in the operation of the call centre attributable to lean six sigma: increase in first-call resolution ratio, reduction in operator turnover and streamlining of processes. The introduction of lean six sigma into the call centre daily operations' management may have organizational benefits. Although lean six sigma has been extremely successful in the last two decades in the manufacturing sector, its applicability to the service sector has been a controversial topic. This study illustrates its application to a fast-growing area of the service sector, assisting companies in identifying areas of development for their call centres
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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