DeWitt Wallace Library Annual Report 2014-2015

Summary of library and media services activities for 2014-201

Practitioner accounts and knowledge production: an analysis of three marketing discourses

Responding to repeated calls for marketing academicians to connect with marketing actors, we offer an empirically-sourced discourse analysis of the ways in which managers portray their practices. Focusing on the micro-discourses and narratives that marketing actors draw upon to represent their work we argue that dominant representations of marketing knowledge production present a number of critical concerns for marketing theory and marketing education. We also evidence that the often promoted idea of a need to close the gap between theory - as a dominant discourse - and practice, as a way of doing marketing, is problematic to pursue. We suggest that a more fruitful agenda resides in the development of a range of polyphonic and creative micro-discourses of management, promoting context, difference and individual meaning in marketing knowledge production

Against the Tide. A Critical Review by Scientists of How Physics and Astronomy Get Done

Nobody should have a monopoly of the truth in this universe. The censorship and suppression of challenging ideas against the tide of mainstream research, the blacklisting of scientists, for instance, is neither the best way to do and filter science, nor to promote progress in the human knowledge. The removal of good and novel ideas from the scientific stage is very detrimental to the pursuit of the truth. There are instances in which a mere unqualified belief can occasionally be converted into a generally accepted scientific theory through the screening action of refereed literature and meetings planned by the scientific organizing committees and through the distribution of funds controlled by "club opinions". It leads to unitary paradigms and unitary thinking not necessarily associated to the unique truth. This is the topic of this book: to critically analyze the problems of the official (and sometimes illicit) mechanisms under which current science (physics and astronomy in particular) is being administered and filtered today, along with the onerous consequences these mechanisms have on all of us.\ud \ud The authors, all of them professional researchers, reveal a pessimistic view of the miseries of the actual system, while a glimmer of hope remains in the "leitmotiv" claim towards the freedom in doing research and attaining an acceptable level of ethics in science

RBE2001 Virtual Study Aid

The undergraduate robotics courses at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) present a unique challenge in that they are the first of their kind. There is therefore no appropriate textbook that specifically addresses the material taught in the Unified Robotics I: Actuation (RBE 2001) class at WPI. When the idea to develop a virtual study aid for this class arose, the question that was asked was: “In the development and implementation of a virtual study aid, specific to the content of RBE 2001; ­­what would be the most effective method of presenting the material?” This study will seek to answer this question, and complete the steps to creating a virtual study aid

Marketing in SMEs: assessing the contribution of a business school to the development of competent managers

The purpose of this paper is to assess the contribution that a business school can make to the development of marketing competencies in SME managers. Literature reveals that in comparison to undergraduate marketing learning, less attention is paid to the SME manager. The primary research here is based on workshops run by tutors from the University of Lincoln’s Business school marketing group. Workshops were organised around an entrepreneurial marketing theme and based on a philosophy of participative learning. Course member’s responses to the workshops were gathered via a questionnaire that allowed for the collection of qualitative and quantitative data. The results of both tutor and course participant evaluation suggests that models from entrepreneurial marketing, as opposed to traditional marketing, provide a sound basis for the development of SME managers skills. The positive course evaluation also suggests a good degree of satisfaction with the learning methods used in the workshops. Further research should be undertaken to assess the degree to which workshop thinking has become embedded in the actual practices of managers who attended the course. Finally, it is posited that there exists considerable scope for future workshops of this nature at both a national and local level

The Co-operative Model in Practice : International Perspectives

Published with the support of the Scottish Government and the Economic & Social Research CouncilPublisher PD