Consolidation and fragmentation in environmental scanning: A review and research agenda

Environmental scanning is a broadly defined concept, having first received attention from scholars in the late 1960s. Over the years a number of similar and overlapping constructs have emerged in management literature. The aim of this study, via a systematic review and thematic analysis of relevant empirical research, is to consolidate foundation environmental scanning knowledge, demonstrate how scanning research has developed and fragmented over time, and propose an agenda for future research. The first contribution of our review is a new typology of environmental scanning research made up of five discrete research views, which provides a more comprehensive and contemporary overview of the field than previous studies. The second is a proposed agenda for future research that explicitly acknowledges the role of technology, an area that is presently underdeveloped in foundation scanning literature. The third contribution is to signpost future directions for research on scanning and organisational performance using a number of theoretical perspectives. The overall outcome of our review is to move scanning research on from increasingly incremental contributions concerned with context to a place where the changing role of technology and the mechanisms through which environmental scanning contributes to competitive advantage can be more thoroughly understood.     

A Literature Review of Organizational Behavior Management Interventions in Human Service Settings from 1990 to 2016

We reviewed the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis (JABA), Journal of Organizational Behavior Management (JOBM), and Behavior Analysis in Practice (BAP) from 1990 to 2016, to identify articles that evaluated organizational behavior management interventions in a human service setting. Of those articles, 75 articles met the inclusion criteria for the review, 44 from JABA (1990 to 2016), 22 from JOBM (1990 to 2016), and 7 from BAP (2008 to 2016). We categorized each selected article by setting, employee population, client population, assessment, dependent variable, independent variable, and outcome measures. Results from the review are discussed for all three journals. Recommendations are made to broaden the scope of population and dependent variable targets, include more assessments, and include outcome data when applicable.     

Myriad potential for mentoring: Understanding the process of transformational change through a gender equality intervention

This article contributes to understanding transformational change towards gender equality by examining the transformational change potential of a mentoring programme for women, a type of gender equality intervention both criticized and praised for its ability to bring about change. Drawing upon an empirical case study of a mentoring programme for women academics in a Dutch university, we explore three dimensions of transformational change: organizational members (i) discussing and reflecting upon gendered organizational norms and work practices; (ii) creating new narratives; and (iii) experimenting with new work practices. Our findings indicate five specific conditions that enable transformational change: cross‐mentoring, questioning what is taken for granted, repeating participation and individual stories, facilitating peer support networks and addressing and equipping all participants as change agents. We suggest that these conditions should be taken into account when (re)designing effective organizational gender equality interventions.     

Validation of the Australian Midwifery Standards Assessment Tool (AMSAT): A tool to assess midwifery competence

Background

There is no current validated clinical assessment tool to measure the attainment of midwifery student competence in the midwifery practice setting. The lack of a valid assessment tool has led to a proliferation of tools and inconsistency in assessment of, and feedback on student learning.

Public relations and artificial intelligence: It’s not (just) about robots

Organizations of all kinds, as well as their in-house or agency public relations teams, increasingly co-opt Artificial Intelligence (AI) to enhance their capabilities. This paper examines a relatively new topic that has received little scholarly attention: the growing relationship between AI and public relations. It outlines several key roles that AI may play in future, based on trends in other industries, and considers the implications for public relations practitioners, their clients and employers. It therefore launches a dialogue about the diversity and extent of AI’s uses in public relations practice. The paper argues that, to date, commentators have placed too much emphasis on AI’s potential for task automation; AI’s broader technological, economic and societal implications for public relations warrant greater critical attention. This does not imply that practitioners need become expert technologists; rather, they should develop a sufficient understanding of AI’s present and potential uses to be able to offer informed counsel.     

Mapuche education and situated learning in a community school in Chile

The article analyses the Mapuche language and culture teaching practices of a rural school in the Chilean Araucanía region run by Mapuche teachers, aimed at reinforcing the language, culture and identity of children. Based on a comparative study of two school ethnographies, the article shows and discusses the ways children learn to be Mapuche by participating of social and communitarian practices reproduced in school. While teaching of traditional core subjects is conducted in standard ways, Mapuche language and culture are taught through the recreation of modes of living, producing and reproducing indigenous traditional knowledge that normally occur in family and community. The maintenance of this ‘bicultural pedagogy’ is grounded on an epistemological claim on the indivisibility of contents from its forms of transmission.     

Professionalization through attrition? An event history analysis of mortalities in citizen journalism

ABSTRACT

Despite both scholarly and popular claims that citizen journalism (CJ) represents a growing democratizing force in the journalistic field, recent scholarship in the area has noted the decline of the organizational population of CJ. In this paper, we investigate how individual characteristics of sites and the dynamics of larger organizational population affect a CJ site’s risk of experiencing a mortality. Drawing on the largest sample to date of US-based English-language CJ sites, this study examines the risk of site mortality through an event history framework. Findings indicate that the strongest predictor of a site’s mortality is the age of the site, consistent with organizational population theory’s ‘liability of newness.’ We also find that for-profit and community-based sites have lower rates of site mortality, indicating that adopting legitimate conventions of journalism may serve as a protective buffer to site death. The results offer mixed evidence on whether CJ has become more professionalized via attrition.     

Doing gender in the ‘new office’

This paper investigates how gender is performed in the context of an office setting designed to promote intensive, fluid networking. We draw on an ethnographically oriented study of the move of staff into a new office building constructed primarily from glass, and incorporating open plan offices, diverse collective areas and walking routes. Although the designers aimed to invoke changes in the behaviour of all staff, they conceptualized these changes in masculine terms. We therefore analyse the gender norms materialized by the workspaces of the ‘new office’ and how women responded to these. We suggest that the new office encourages an image of the ideal worker which brings together ways of acting and interacting that have been characterized as both masculine and feminine — active movement and spontaneous encounters, but also intensive face‐to‐face interaction and deep relationship‐building. Women are driven into this mode of working in an uncompromising, almost aggressive way, but a straightforward gender‐based dynamic does not emerge in their responses, with conventional gender characteristics being reshuffled and recombined.     

No Mind Reading Necessary: Conducting Evidence-Based Electronic Resource Marketing and Outreach Using Marketing Research Assessment

Abstract

In her presentation entitled “No Mind Reading Necessary: Conducting Evidence-Based Electronic Resource Marketing and Outreach” at the North Carolina Serials Conference April 2019, Kate Hill discussed marketing research strategies and outreach tools used to increase online users’ access to electronic resources and primary resources. In an effort to connect users to seldom-used resources, Jackson Library collaborated with university partners to develop surveys to identify the information-seeking behavior of its users and apply the gathered marketing research to strategically plan outreach activities.     

Community-based arts research for people with learning disabilities: challenging misconceptions about learning disabilities

This article presents some of the community-based artwork of a group of men with learning disabilities, who aimed to challenge some of the misconceptions associated with learning disabilities. People with learning disabilities regularly face many forms of direct and indirect stigma. The consequences of such negative perceptions may affect individuals’ social relationships and ensure that barriers are strengthened which prevent their full inclusion. The men in this project used a series of visual and creative methods to challenge some of these misconceptions by telling stories through art, demonstrating skill through photography, using poetry to talk about sexual identity and improvising drama and filmmaking to challenge stigma, and through sculpture expressed their voices. Thus, by doing so, they were able to challenge some of the stigma associated with learning disabilities, indicating that community-based arts research is a valuable way in which to promote the voices of people with learning disabilities.