6,009 research outputs found

    Exploring the intranet as a change agent: On the sociomaterial entanglement of intranet technology, internal branding and everyday work

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    Internal and corporate branding have become prevalent strategies in the field of human resource management. They aim to promote employee commitment and identification with the company through its brand. However, scholars in critical management studies have highlighted the exercise of normative control through these measures. Using the example of an intranet implementation in the context of a company merger in the telecommunications industry, the article examines the branding strategies on the intranet and, furthermore, shows how it prompts employees to constantly reflect on and evaluate the different types of content and related work practices on the intranet. As becomes apparent, in the way the branding content competes with other, to employees more relevant information on the intranet, it is constantly being devaluated. In this manner, the intranet becomes an ambivalent carrier of branding practices, effectively resulting in employees undermining management’s call to identify with the new company brand through the intranet. Nevertheless, the article highlights the ability of employees to overlook irrelevant content as a positive quality of the intranet. It argues for a greater understanding of everyday work in addition to a further integration of employees into change management projects

    Governing ageing in Chile: from neoliberal hegemony to more hopeful demographic futures?

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    In this thesis, I explore how demographic ageing is regulated in Chile through the governing of older populations, with particularly close attention to how the ‘actually existing’ neoliberal context in Chile permeates and conditions diverse political projects and strategies implemented by central and local governments. I approach this shaping as a historical and conjunctural process realised through multiple central and local governing projects, as well as a legacy thrown into particularly sharp relief and retrospective political questioning by the unfolding of the COVID-19 pandemic and the anti-neoliberal social uprising of 2019. These intertwined conjunctural moments have unearthed the limitations of neoliberal strategies in addressing the needs of older people. To explore the governing of older populations in Chile, I undertook a hybrid on-site and online ethnography exploring a wide range of national and local policies and governing projects. In investigating local governing projects, I analysed –with different depths– the case of seven contrasting municipalities in the capital city of Santiago, Chile. With demographic ageing positioned as a risk to economic development, I suggest that the main rationale guiding Chilean policies and programs has been to avert the central state’s welfare and caregiving responsibilities toward a growing number of potentially dependent populations; economically, physically and cognitively. I argue that governing strategies directed to older populations are deeply neoliberal –sometimes deliberately and sometimes inadvertently– in that they pervasively have been designed to shift and devolve welfare and caregiving responsibilities to different (non-central state) scales such as families and charitable institutions, local governments, communities and older people themselves. In these explorations, I also consider more closely alternative governing projects that have contested, to differing extents, the central state's neoliberal neglect. Unpacking how progressive governing projects at central and local levels have sought to imprint a different common sense on state responsibility, I also consider how these alternative projects have themselves been reshaped by neoliberal ideas and strategies. In this case, I argue that neoliberal ideas and strategies, together with the material effects of Chile’s neoliberal context, are holding back the advances of progressive governing projects. Nonetheless, as hegemony is never final, I also consider how the intertwined moments of the COVID-19 pandemic and the anti-neoliberal social uprising of October 2019 also shed light on how the history of neoliberal policies directed at older populations in Chile continues to be contested. Scholarly understandings of neoliberalism as a political hegemonic project are central to this thesis’ argument. I draw on Gramsci’s notion of hegemony as a position of ‘leadership’ continuously constructed through the intertwined articulation of coercion and consent (Hall 1986, p.15), to unpack how neoliberal ideas and strategies have reached a position of leadership in the governing of demographic ageing amid opposition from alternative governing ideas and projects. Three crosscutting findings emerge from this research: 1) through a marked politics of devolution within Chilean governance, access to welfare and caregiving has been rendered deeply unequal with old age; 2) the hegemonising capacity of neoliberal ideas and strategies is revealed in the persistence of the central state’s politics of scalar devolution and ways in which would-be progressive local governing projects end up complying with neoliberal aims; 3) though neoliberal hegemony has been secured thus far in this case through multiple strategies, it continues to be subject to contestation. Such findings offer insights for building more hopeful demographic ageing futures

    Web-based platform to collect, share and manage technical data of historical systemic architectures: the Telegraphic Towers along the Madrid-Valencia path

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    Considering the variety of architectural Cultural Heritage typologies, systemic architectures require specific attention in the recovery process. The dimensions of "extension" and "recurrence" at geographic and technological levels affect the complexity of their knowledge process; they require systematic ways for their categorisation and comprehension to guarantee correct diagnosis and suitable rehabilitation. Recent applications involving Internet of Things (IoT) for the built Cultural Heritage have demonstrated the potentialities of three-dimensional (3D) geographic information system (GIS) models and structured databases in supporting complex degrees of knowledge for technicians, as well as management for administrators. Starting from such experiences, the work presents the setting up of a web-based platform to support the knowledge and management of systemic architectures, considering the geographical distribution of fabrics, natural and anthropic boundary conditions, and technical and administrative details. The platform takes advantage of digital models, machine and deep learning procedures and relational databases, in a GIS-based environment, for the recognition and categorisation of prevalent physical and qualitative features of systemic architectures, the recognition and qualification of dominant and recurrent decays and the management of recovery activities in a semi-automatic way. Specifically, the main digital objects used for testing the applied techniques and setting up the platform are based on Red-Green-Blue (RGB) and mapped point clouds of the historical Telegraphic Towers located along the Madrid-Valencia path, resulting from the on-site investigations. Their choice is motivated by the high level of knowledge about the cases reached in the last years by the authors, allowing them to test rules within the decision support systems and innovative techniques for their decay mapping. As the experience has demonstrated, the systematisation of technical details and operative pipeline of methods and tools allow the normalisation and standardisation of the intervention selection process; this offers policymakers an innovative tool based on traditional procedures for conservation plans, coherent with a priority-based practice

    A Critical Review Of Post-Secondary Education Writing During A 21st Century Education Revolution

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    Educational materials are effective instruments which provide information and report new discoveries uncovered by researchers in specific areas of academia. Higher education, like other education institutions, rely on instructional materials to inform its practice of educating adult learners. In post-secondary education, developmental English programs are tasked with meeting the needs of dynamic populations, thus there is a continuous need for research in this area to support its changing landscape. However, the majority of scholarly thought in this area centers on K-12 reading and writing. This paucity presents a phenomenon to the post-secondary community. This research study uses a qualitative content analysis to examine peer-reviewed journals from 2003-2017, developmental online websites, and a government issued document directed toward reforming post-secondary developmental education programs. These highly relevant sources aid educators in discovering informational support to apply best practices for student success. Developmental education serves the purpose of addressing literacy gaps for students transitioning to college-level work. The findings here illuminate the dearth of material offered to developmental educators. This study suggests the field of literacy research is fragmented and highlights an apparent blind spot in scholarly literature with regard to English writing instruction. This poses a quandary for post-secondary literacy researchers in the 21st century and establishes the necessity for the literacy research community to commit future scholarship toward equipping college educators teaching writing instruction to underprepared adult learners

    The Individual And Their World

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    Exploring the Predictors of Indonesian Reading Literacy based on PISA Data

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    Reading achievement in Indonesia has remained low since 2000 when it first participated in PISA. In Indonesia, reading is not a specific subject, but rather an essential skill integrated with other subjects like Bahasa Indonesia, English, Social Sciences, Natural Sciences, and Mathematics, and as such, it is assessed in the PISA test. Apart from the cognitive tests, PISA also collects additional information related to schools’, teachers’, parents’, and students’ characteristics and perceptions that are related to students’ cognitive ability. Thus, the main research topics in this field are reading literacy and the factors associated with reading ability. The research study examines student and school factors and their relationship impact o student reading literacy in Indonesia, considering paper-based (PISA 2000, 2009, and follow up 2020) and computer-based reading performance (PISA 2018). A quantitative research design is used based on the research problems addressed in general that fell within the factors of reading achievement based on PISA data. This approach is used to confirm the validity and reliability of the constructs included in this study and to examine the relationships that exist among those constructs. Data collection consists of primary and secondary data collection. The study uses secondary data from PISA, as well as primary data collected in 2020 concerning the reading questionnaire and cognitive test. Secondary data from PISA 2000, 2009, and 2018 student and school questionnaires are used to examine how schools and students interrelate, which affects student achievement. The study also uses primary data collected in 2020 in a follow-up study with questionnaires adopted from PISA 2018 as the latest test with additional variables from parents and teachers. In addition to taking account of school and student factors, the results of 2020 are compared with those taken in 2000, 2009, and 2018. Thus, the longitudinal study of reading literacy based on PISA data is attempted. All constructs except the demographic items are validated using the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and Rasch Analysis. An analysis of all constructs that have already been anchored to the weighted likelihood estimates is conducted using structural equation modelling (SEM) and hierarchical linear modelling (HLM). To examine the factors that significantly influence students’ reading literacy in Indonesia over the four cycles, the structural equation model (with single and path analysis) and hierarchical linear model are applied. The study hypothesises that school-level factors affect the reading literacy of students. The structural equation model is used to impose a theoretical model on student variables and school variables measured by observed variables. With this model, the study explains the interrelationships between construct and observed variables. Meanwhile, a hierarchical linear model is used since the data had students who are nested in schools or students who were nested in classrooms, and classrooms are nested in schools. With this model, the study examines the effects of group variables (school- and teacher-level) and individual variables (student-level) and seeks the interaction across levels. In the analysis of the hierarchical approach, it is determined that there are consistency and nonconsistency factors towards reading literacy throughout the four cycles of analysis. There is evidence of consistent predictors at the student level in the factors of gender, reading engagement, and time spent reading. At school-level, the significant factors are: school sector in the 2000, 2018 and 2020 cycles; school location in the 2018 and 2020 cycles; ICT in the 2020 cycle; resources and technology in the 2018 cycle; assessment in the 2000 and 2018 cycles; leadership in the 2018 cycle; and school climate in the 2000 cycle. It is surprising to find that no factor was significant at the teacher-level in the 2020 cycle but a direct effect is found between teacher professional and teacher lesson activities. At student-level, the significant factors are: gender in the 2000, 2009, and 2018 cycles; the number of books in the 2000 cycle; home and educational resources in the 2018 cycle; reading engagement in the 2000, 2009, and 2018 cycles; reading diversity in the 2000, 2009, and 2018 cycles; reading online in the 2018 cycle; reading strategies in the 2009 cycle, reading confidence in the 2018 cycle, and reading time in the 2000, 2009, and 2018 cycles. The predictors are consistently available in the factor of gender, reading engagement, and reading time. In addition, the results indicate that computer-based tests (2018 cycle) provided more predictors than text-based tests (2000, 2009, and 2020 cycles). This research is particularly valuable in terms of its contributions to the theoretical, practical, and methodological aspects of reading literacy in Indonesia. This study suggests that, in general, private schools and schools located in rural or village areas require more attention regarding ICT, technology, assessment, leadership, and school climate. This likewise suggest that males should receive greater attention to reading activities, such as reading engagement and reading diversity, as well as reading states, such as reading strategies, reading confidence, and reading time. Meanwhile, females should receive more attention when it comes to online reading. Teacher professional activities plays an important role in supporting the delivery of better lessons in the classroom. In addition, it is important not to underestimate parental support in terms of the income and education of the parents. It would be beneficial for the Indonesian government in the future to maintain a curriculum based on autonomy to increase student reading achievement. Likewise, the government should include teacher and parent survey in future PISA Tests so that a more comprehensive analysis of the factors influencing reading ability can be conducted.Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Education, 202

    Ypsilanti Histories: A Look Back at the Last Fifty Years

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    In commemoration of their city\u27s bicentennial, the people of Ypsilanti look back on the dramatic changes that the last fifty years brought to this small town in southeastern Michigan. Drawing on archival research, published sources, and personal recollections, Ypsilanti Histories explores the government, educational institutions, businesses, community organizations, neighborhoods, and individuals that have defined Ypsilanti since 1973. As befits the rich diversity of the community, Ypsilanti Histories captures a range of experiences. It explores the controversies that have rocked the city from the university mascot to school consolidation, while also celebrating the city\u27s oldest African American civic organization and the pioneering Ypsilanti Heritage Foundation. Beloved businesses like the Ypsilanti Food Coop and the Ypsilanti Thrift Shop are profiled here as are some of the city\u27s greatest heroes including a Medal of Honor recipient. The effects of deindustrialization are documented as are the challenges that this brought to Michigan Avenue, Depot Town, and various neighborhoods. Education has long been central to Ypsilanti\u27s history, and Ypsilanti Histories examines changes at the city\u27s high school and Eastern Michigan University. The authors of Ypsilanti Histories are amateur and professional historians who call Ypsilanti home. Many personally witnessed the events they describe, and some played a key role in the histories they tell. Ypsilanti Histories: A Look Back at the Last Fifty Years is edited by John McCurdy, Bill Nickels, Evan Milan, and Sarah Zawacki.https://commons.emich.edu/books/1011/thumbnail.jp
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