RSS 1.0Research from April 2016
This area brings together all research published after April 2016.
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Family firms and regional development: evidence from ChinaThis chapter provides an overview of family business and regional development in the Chinese context. Motivated by the line of “contextualizing” family business studies, this chapter begins by discussing the Chinese context and regional development, and how these contribute to the unique challenges faced by Chinese family firms. The chapter discusses the historical development, current status, and future prospects of family firms in China. Finally, we conclude by exploring the theoretical and practical implications of this study and its limitations, which provide opportunities for future research aimed at extending knowledge about family business and regional development.
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Endogeneity issues in family business research: current status and future recommendationsAlthough the family business research field and related disciplines are paying increasing attention to improvements in methodology, there is still insufficient attention being paid to endogeneity issues. We therefore raise awareness of endogeneity and suggest ways to reduce biased results in family business studies. We review publications in the family business literature in terms of (1) the consideration of endogeneity issues, (2) sources of endogeneity for different research topics, and (3) various methods that researchers have used to control for endogeneity. We discuss important lessons learned from the review and offer methodologically oriented recommendations for future family business studies.
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Exploring the relationship between digital initiatives, dynamic capabilities and market performance: a conceptual frameworkThis chapter delves into the impact of digital initiatives on firms and sheds light on how they can be explained through market reactions and the resource/capabilities mechanism. By providing a novel conceptual framework that reflects the potential impact of digital initiatives on the sensing, seizing and transforming capabilities of dynamic capabilities, this chapter reveals the tremendous potential of digital initiatives to help firms become more adaptive to their environment and create sustainable competitive advantages that elicit positive market responses. This conceptual framework represents an original contribution to the literature. It enhances the understanding of the resource-based view and efficient market hypothesis, providing a fresh perspective on the influence of digital initiatives on firm performance and the dynamic capabilities mechanism that has hitherto been overlooked. As a result, this chapter enables researchers to develop testable hypotheses that examine the causal relationships between digital initiatives, dynamic capabilities and market performance using robust quantitative research methods. Furthermore, this chapter offers valuable insights for managers seeking to develop a more focused approach to digital transformation and enhance their competitive advantage. By exploring the impact of digital initiatives on sensing, seizing and transforming capabilities, managers can gain a deeper understanding of how they can leverage digital initiatives to improve their organisational performance and respond more effectively to the demands of an ever-changing landscape.
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Transforming faces for the screen: horror and romance in the 1920s* Shows how 1920s culture addressed facial disfigurement in the genres of horror and romance * Shows the legacy of medical advances in World War 1 in the Hollywood films of Lon Chaney and Elinor Glyn * Draws together cross-disciplinary case studies with illustrated film analysis
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Risk of low birthweight and late antenatal care initiation in an ethnically diverse maternal cohortBackground Babies born with low birthweight (LBW,< 2500 g) are vulnerable to infant mortality, restricted growth, poorer development, and long-term health complications. Antenatal care (ANC) can improve maternal and infant outcomes; women are recommended to have first antenatal visit by 10 weeks’ gestation. Ethnic minority women are significantly more likely to initiate ANC later than recommended gestational week compared to white women. This study examined associations between late ANC initiation (first appointment >10 weeks gestation) and LBW in an ethnically diverse maternal cohort in the UK. Methods A retrospective cross sectional study using routinely collected anonymous data of singleton births during April 2015 - October 2022 from a large UK National Health Service maternity unit in an ethnically diverse area. Logistic regression models were used to examine associations between late ANC initiation and prevalence of low (<2500 g); very low (VLBW, <1500 g) and extremely low (ELBW, <1000g) birth weight. Results Of 39,785 singleton births recorded, more than one third (34.6%) were to mothers from Black African, Black Caribbean, Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi backgrounds. Birthweight was reported for 39,698 (99.78%) neonates; among them 8.9% had LBW, including 1.0% VLBW and 1.1% ELBW. More than one third (34.8%) of mothers had first appointment at > 10 weeks, including 26% during 11-19 weeks and 8.8% at > 20 weeks. Late ANC initiation was associated with increased risk of LBW for neonates: OR = 1.15 [95% CI: 1.07, 1.23] and 1.60 [1.44, 1.78] for ANC initiation at > 10 weeks and ≥20 weeks respectively (vs ≤ 10 weeks). Mothers who started care at ≥ 20 weeks were 5.37 times (95% CI: 4.31, 6.70) more likely to have a baby born with ELBW (vs ≤ 10 weeks). Conclusions Neonates born to mothers who started antenatal care late in ethnically diverse neighborhoods are more likely to have low birthweight, highlighting the need for targeted primary and secondary interventions.
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Fly green: environmentally specific servant leadership and its impact on green performance outcomesA careful examination of the pertinent literature denotes that no empirical study has tested the consequences of environmentally specific servant leadership (ESS) among cabin crew so far. This is surprising because the airline industry has long been at the forefront of green debate for its significant environmental problems (e.g., climate change, CO2 emission, and waste). With this realization, drawing on the stimulus-organism-response framework and social learning theory, our paper explores climate for green creativity (CGC) and green creativity (GC) as the serial mediators linking ESS to green recovery performance (GRP). Data came from cabin crew in major European low-cost carriers. The results from the PROCESS plug-in for statistical package for social sciences reveal that CGC or GC mediates the influence of ESS on GRP. More importantly, CGC and GC mediate the positive association between ESS and GRP in a sequential manner. The presence of ESS results in the establishment of the climate where cabin crew can offer novel green ideas and feedback that in turn enables them to display better GRP. Theoretical implications are discussed and implications for managers are given in the paper.
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Developing a climate-resilient investment protocol: lessons from the final draft protocol on investment to the agreement establishing the African Continental Free Trade AreaThis article explores the draft Protocol on Investment under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AFCFTA) agreement, with a view to examining the Protocol’s implications for climate change objectives in Africa. It explores how the Phase II Protocol on Investment under the AFCFTA could draw from the Paris Agreement. In particular, it suggests that the Protocol on Investment under the AFCFTA can incorporate arrangements to address state and direct investor rights and obligations in relation to climate change action. However, the article proposes that climate change objectives should be addressed in the Protocol in more detail. The article also proposes a strong mechanism of liability and accountability of states and investors under the Investment Protocol, embracing liability for parent multinational corporations (MNCs) in their home states even when such liability is not the law of the investor’s home state.
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Boosting smarter digital healthcare with 5G and beyond networksWith 5G and beyond on the horizon, ultra-fast and low latency data transmission on the cloud and via the Internet will enable more intelligent and interactive medical and health-care applications. This paper presents a review of 5G technologies and their related applications in the health-care sector. The introduction to 5G technology includes software defined network, 5G architecture and edge computing. The second part of the paper then presents the opportunities provided by 5G to the health-care sector and employs medical imaging applications as central examples to demonstrate the impacts of 5G and the cloud. Finally, this paper summarize the benefits brought by 5G and cloud computing to the health-care sector.
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Steps towards decolonising contact improvisation in the universityTo begin the work of anti-oppression and anti-racism is to start from an acknowledgment of positionality and privilege, or oppression. Mine is a privilege of a mobile life lived in many countries as well as the complexity of a multi-lineage family, with traumatic histories of migration and displacement, as well as arrival and settlement. I am of Scottish, English, Portuguese and South Asian descent, and my pronouns are she/her. I am a dancer, teacher, researcher, yoga and somatic practitioner, with degrees from universities in the UK and USA. I have focused my work in somatic practice, contact improvisation, yoga, bodywork and contemporary dance through the lenses of critical pedagogy and ecological justice for over twenty years. I have been interested in how oppressions intersect and how harm is perpetuated across minorities and marginalised populations as well as the planet itself. As a teacher, I also believe that practices such as contact improvisation, provide contexts in which critical, activist and reflective processes of individual and social transformation can occur through the engagement with the form itself. Decolonising the practice of such a form is a logical extension of a critically engaged pedagogy and becomes essential to an ethical anti-racist teaching practice when it is acknowledged how racism permeates every aspect of social, cultural and political life.
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Promoting a global culture of respectful maternity careRespectful maternity care (RMC) - a fundamental human right for all women - prioritizes autonomy and rights of pregnant and birthing women throughout the entire childbirth journey. Despite increasing acknowledgment of the importance of RMC for optimal maternal and new-born outcomes, women often experience disrespectful and abusive practices during pregnancy and childbirth. This Editorial points to the need for development of international guidelines for the implementation of RMC programs globally.
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Exploring the dynamic relationship between Dr. GEPT feedback and learners’ L2 motivationFeedback is an important means to bridge assessment and learning, but its usefulness ultimately depends on whether and how learners engage with and act on the feedback. Learners’ L2 learning motivation may interact with feedback in meaningful and consequential ways, yet there is relatively little research to date that explores such a dynamic relationship, particularly among language learners in secondary education. This study aimed to fill this gap by exploring the relationship between learners’ motivation and assessment feedback offered by Dr. GEPT – automated personalised feedback provided to GEPT each test-taker alongside their test scores, including an analysis of their strengths and weaknesses, learning advice, and vocabulary and sentence patterns for further study. Taking a mixed-methods approach, Phase 1 of this study involved a large-scale questionnaire survey (n = 635) to explore L2 motivation among senior high school learners of English in Taiwan and their general perceptions towards assessment feedback. The questionnaire was developed based on the L2 Motivational Self System model (Dörnyei, 2005, 2009). Phase 2 used learning logs (n = 14) and interviews (n = 10) for an in-depth qualitative inquiry into how learners engaged with Dr. GEPT feedback and how the feedback might have shaped the developments in learners’ learning journeys. The report concludes with a discussion of how Dr. GEPT helps learners develop a positive orientation towards assessments and cultivates learner autonomy, as well as making some suggestions for enhancing the effectiveness of Dr. GEPT feedback.
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Exploring the speaking construct in academic settings in a digital ageThis study explored language functions and skills utilised in technology-mediated academic speaking contexts, which is timely given the increasing prevalence of digitally-mediated communication in higher education settings and the recent introduction of IELTS Indicator featuring a video-call mode in the Speaking Test. Using an embedded mixed-methods approach, the research involved: 1. language function analysis of spoken communication and simultaneous written chat contributions in online taught classes and supervision meetings 2. thematic analysis of students’ and lecturers’ understandings of distinctive features of online academic speaking and what constitutes successful online speaking interaction in those contexts. We analysed a total of over 40 hours of recordings, consisting of 17 video-recorded classes from four undergraduate and postgraduate units in an Australian University, and 23 video/audio recordings of online PhD supervision meetings from a UK university. This was followed by the administration of a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews with selected participants. In order to examine the construct of online academic communication, we adapted O’Sullivan et al.’s (2002) language function checklist for our purposes. Following the identification of language functions and skills observed in real-life online academic settings, we explored the synergy between the functions observed in online teaching and learning contexts and those elicited in the video-call IELTS Speaking Test (Nakatsuhara et al., 2021). Analyses of questionnaire and interview data helped us understand the skills perceived to be important for successful online interaction. The report concludes with a discussion on the multimodal construct of speaking in digitally-mediated academic contexts and the ways in which the findings of this study can be useful in informing the future development of IELTS Speaking Test tasks so that they remain representative of the reality of academic speaking in the digital age.
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International investment law and indigenous peoples: a methodology for the analysis of the rights of indigenous peoplesThis article will set out to highlight some of the important aspects of a methodology regarding the rights and interests of indigenous peoples in the context of analysing the rules of international investment law. The approach to the rights of indigenous peoples that will be adopted here is a legal positivist approach, although such an approach, it will be argued, is also based upon the standing and the importance of the rights and interests of indigenous peoples to lands and natural resources in international law. Of particular importance in the context of the rules of international investment law, it will be pointed out that a methodology for approaching the rights of indigenous peoples must be based on equal concern for the protection and promotion of the rights and interests of indigenous peoples to land and resources.
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Security and trust issues in BYOD networksCompanies are striving for increased productivity as well as reduced costs in today's corporate environment. Both capital and operational expenditure can impact cost significantly, accordingly there is a drive to bring your own device (BYOD) networks as a solution. However, security and trust issues in BYOD networks are increasingly becoming a risk from small to large businesses. This introduces challenges for IT Professionals when it comes to the security of the network, as well as while trying to achieve compliance with data security standards set out by the governing bodies of the particular industry. This article aims to discuss a how organizations can introduce trust into BYOD networks a both by using existing and developing technologies. The overall outcome will be a clear understanding of common technologies that are either currently used or being developed, which can help organizations create trust between the corporate network and the BYOD.
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Language assessment accommodations: issues and challenges for the future [editorial]In this concluding piece to the special issue, we attempt to tease out and comment on some themes that have emerged from the six published papers. Some of these themes highlight potential avenues for further theoretical and empirical investigation, and may assist in mapping out a coherent research agenda on the topic for language testers and assessment specialists in the future.
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Researching sensitive topics with children and young people: ethical practice and blurry boundariesDespite representing a vast and global concern, the narratives of children who experience child sexual exploitation (CSE) and access associated services are marginalised within research. As an outcome, relatively little is known about how children cope with the impact and consequences of their experiences. This paper draws together methodological insights from researchers reflecting upon three distinct pieces of qualitative fieldwork conducted with children and young people considered ‘vulnerable’ to, and ‘at risk of’, CSE. In doing so, we seek to recognise the challenges encountered when conducting research with vulnerable populations and explore the ‘blurry boundaries’ that researchers tread in order to balance competing power dynamics. This paper will discuss potential safeguarding concerns that arise when conducting sensitive research and will share our experiences of supporting young people to take part in research around child sexual exploitation. We will reflect upon the research process to highlight some of the strategies adopted to enable young people to engage in data collection safely. We consider the dynamic ethical practices that take place in the moment of research encounters, alongside the framework of procedural ethics, to conclude that both are fundamental to enable meaningful participation in research.
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UE admittance and contention free resource allocation for interference mitigation in HetNet cognitive femtocellsFemtocells are designed to co-exist alongside macrocells providing higher spectrum efficiency, spatial frequency reuse, to name a few. However, when deployed in the two-tier architecture with macrocells, interference is imminent thereby it is necessary to mitigate the inherent co-tier and cross-tier interference. The integration of cognitive radio (CR) in femtocells introduces the ability of femtocells to dynamically adapt to varying network conditions through learning, adapting, and reasoning leading to informed decisions. This paper proposes a joint threshold power based admittance and contention free resource allocation scheme (known as Proposed SA) for interference mitigation in HetNet cognitive femtocells (CF). In the proposed SA, a CF sets a threshold value on the mutual interference between itself and a close-by mobile user equipment (MUE). To mitigate cross-tier interference, a CF classifies MUEs which fall above this threshold value (high interference value) as Undesired MUEs (UMUEs), whereas MUEs which fall below this threshold are classified as Desired MUEs (DMUEs). To mitigate co-tier interference, proposed SA introduces a scheduling engine which employs matching policy attributes and assigns resource blocks (RBs) of unique DMUEs to CFs to avoid any possible contention problems, thus providing improved co-tier interference. System level simulations have been performed to demonstrate working and effectiveness of proposed SA. Key performance indicators including choice of maximum transmit power for MUE, co and cross tier interference mitigation, as well impact of MUE mobility has been investigated. Performance analysis of the Proposed SA has also found that the scheme performs much better in relation to a random spectrum assignment (Random SA) scheme. The proposed SA caters the mobility of the MUEs very well allowing more and more admittance thereby providing improved interference results and making it a viable candidate for Femtocell Access points (FAPs) implementation.
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Non-party access to court documents and the open justice principleOn the 29th July 2019, the UK Supreme Court rendered a unanimous, eagerly awaited, judgement in the case of Cape Intermediate Holdings Ltd v Dring. Broadly speaking, the case concerned the scope and operation of the constitutional principle of open justice. More precisely, the questions before the Court were how much of the written material placed before a court in a civil action should be accessible to persons other than the parties to the proceedings, and how such access should be facilitated. The judgment is significant for at least two reasons. On the one hand, it provides an extensive analysis of the court’s power to allow third parties access to court documents under the constitutional principle of open justice. In so doing, the judgment revisits the contents of the open justice principle and its application in the context of modern, predominantly written-based, civil proceedings. On the other, the judgment provides certain guidance on the circumstances in which a third party may obtain access to court documents and, to some extent, clarifies the type of documents that may in principle be obtained. As a result, the judgment largely opens third party access to the court files that have been under the exclusive purview of the court and the parties.
