Managing the delivery of iconic football stadiums in England

The English football premier league has become the most popular sports league in the world; with ardent fans and audiences all over the world. The potential business opportunities that this growth holds have therefore attracted investors who are keen to buy shares in the clubs and sign up the best footballers that money can buy. Underpinning the growth in all of the premier league clubs is a desire to make a distinct statement of identity as part of a competitive strategy. One way to achieve this is through the design and construction of iconic football stadiums. This paper explores the specific project management challenges associated with delivery of iconic football stadiums in England and draws lessons for the management of similar iconic infrastructure projects. A study of project management best practice and some case studies shows that key issues which are common to these projects are centred on design management; choice of procurement route; client management; and stakeholder expectation management. These issues are not necessarily unique to the project management of iconic football stadiums but are amplified by the context of these projects. The emphasis on iconic status in a competitive market also means that stadium projects should be conceived and delivered in the context of other strategic projects which should be clearly understood by the project management team

Dairy farmers' responses to water quality interventions : a case study in the Manawatu-Wanganui region of New Zealand : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Agriculture and Environment, Palmerston North, New Zealand

New Zealand freshwater quality has declined, and dairy farming is one identified contributor to this decline. This research provides insight into dairy farmers responses to the water quality interventions introduced to mitigate diffuse pollution, and the socio-cultural dynamics that shaped their responses. Putnam’s (2000) social capital theory was the theoretical framework used to explore how and why New Zealand dairy farmers responded to water quality interventions and the role of social capital in shaping dairy farmers’ responses. A single qualitative case-study research design was undertaken in one Water Management Zone of the Manawatu-Wanganui Region. Data was drawn from semi-structured interviews with dairy farmers and key informants, and from documents. Farmer response is identified as a multi-dimensional rather than a uni-dimensional phenomenon. The dairy farmers responded to water quality interventions as individuals and collectively, and these responses were linked and interwoven. Individual farmer awareness and understanding, emotion and behaviour changed. Collectively, resistance, social learning, formation of a farmer-led action group and changes in accepted farming practices occurred. In addition, social interactions through social networks, trust, social norms and being a ‘good’ farmer that uses ‘best’ farm practice (farmer identity) emerged as key influencers of the dairy farmers’ individual and collective responses to water quality interventions. The socially constructed collective agreements on accepted behaviour, or cultural, personal and practice norms, influenced farmers’ individual and collective responses to interventions. The identified cultural norms associated with private property ownership, equity and fairness, social responsibility and relationships, and personal norms associated with the stewardship of land and water, reflected the farming culture of the farmers interviewed and the broader group to which they belong. A broad collective change in what farmers believe are the expected farm management practices around farming and water quality (practice norms) influenced individual farm practice change. In addition, informal farmer sanctioning of practice norm violation was found to be a key part of the process by which farm practices that had a negative effect on water quality were challenged, and new practice norms were fostered. The collective farmer resistance to regulation and the actions of a farmer-led collective action group were in fact resistance to an intervention that was perceived to challenge their social norms, their identity as ‘good farmers’ and to disregard their local knowledge; not resistance to practice changes that will improve water quality. Dairy farm management practice change is a social process of exchanging information and knowledge, questioning, challenging current practice and reinforcing what is considered accepted practice around farming and water quality. This understanding provides a valuable contribution to the design and implementation of environmental policy interventions

The iPlant Collaborative: Cyberinfrastructure for Enabling Data to Discovery for the Life Sciences

The iPlant Collaborative provides life science research communities access to comprehensive, scalable, and cohesive computational infrastructure for data management; identity management; collaboration tools; and cloud, high-performance, high-throughput computing. iPlant provides training, learning material, and best practice resources to help all researchers make the best use of their data, expand their computational skill set, and effectively manage their data and computation when working as distributed teams. iPlant's platform permits researchers to easily deposit and share their data and deploy new computational tools and analysis workflows, allowing the broader community to easily use and reuse those data and computational analyses

Influence of Organization-Public Relationship Practices on Organization Effectiveness in Jordanian Public Hospitals

Nowadays, public relations is seen as an important part which helps an organization in bridging the gap with its public so that the mutual relationship is established. Most previous research on Organization-Public Relationship (O-PR) investigate the relationship from an organizational perspective, where as this research investigate from the customers’ perspectives. Previous research done in the western world show that the practices of trust, commitment, community involvement, openness, and customers’ satisfaction are attributes towards types of O-PR practice (personal, professional and community). However, literature seems to suggest that much research work is needed to better understand such attributes especially from the public relations practices in Arab country. This study is pursued to elicit the importance of O-PR and it type of practices towards organizational effectiveness in sustaining organizational image, identity, and reputation. The questionnaires were distributed to 600 patients at a major hospital in Jordan with 94.8% response rate. The research findings show significant relationships between O-PR practices and type of relationships with organizational effectiveness (image, identity and reputation). In predicting best practice of O-PR, the study elicited that commitment and patient satisfaction were shown to have the strongest contributions in O-PR as compared to previous research in western countries. Based on the type of relationships practices, personal relationship practice provides the strongest contribution towards organizational image, identity and reputation. The finding of this research will help public relation practitioners in the planning of strategic relationship management in developing best practices of O-PR. The need for improvement in this area requires serious attention especially the practices of commitment and satisfying customer satisfaction. Conclusions as to the impact of public relations as relationship management of organisation-public are offered, as well as suggestions for future areas of research

I’M ACTUALLY AN ARTIST TOO… Artists who are arts managers

This research investigates how artists might resolve their dual professional identities and continue to be artists when also working in arts management in order to earn a more secure living than is usually possible from art alone. In doing so, it asks how arts organisations could benefit more greatly from the creative practice of the artists they employ as arts managers. The study questions the assumption that artists who work as arts managers must have ‘failed’ in their artistic ambitions and argues that a more nuanced approach is necessary. Rather than artists abandoning their creative practice, and necessitating their identity as an artist being kept ‘invisible’ in the workplace, this thesis argues for both their art and artistic identity to be a visible part of their practice as managers. If this were to happen, it is argued artists and arts management would both stand to gain. The study adopted a qualitative methodology and involved a multi-method, three-phase approach. The first phase recorded data about the lived experiences of 30 participants working primarily as arts managers across a range of creative sectors. The second phase took the form of an intervention into their professional practice and asked a smaller group to make at least one artwork in the context of their work as arts managers. This included several individuals who work in a single arts organisation. The third phase investigated the data generated from an online group discussion attended by a smaller group of participants. As a former artist, arts manager and maker of contemporary jewellery, I took part in all three phases as a participant-researcher. The thesis concludes by arguing that arts organisations, and the artist-managers who work in them, need to bring about change through incremental steps, and by consensus. This change is not only to enable artist-managers to retain their creative practices and identity, but in order for the arts organisations where they work to benefit from the particular skills and knowledge artist-managers can bring. It is argued that this is best achieved through dialogue, rather than by keeping the two different, but interdependent practices separate. In this way, through the recognition and visibility of creative practice in the arts workplace, both would be strengthened

Navigating Occupation and Identity in Parkinson\u27s Disease: A Qualitative Exploration of Lived Experience

Evidence-based practice requires that health care providers interpret the best research evidence in the context of their clinical experience, while at the same time considering client knowledge and experiences. Although health care providers are becoming increasingly skilled at the evaluation of research evidence, client values and self-identified health issues are often neglected within the evidence-based practice process. Ignoring these key aspects of person-centered practice may lead to interventions that fail to target implications of a client’s disease that are important to occupational participation and quality of life. A focus on person-centeredness is particularly important in progressive neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s disease where there are no known curative treatments, and interventions must instead focus on symptom management. The purpose of this research therefore was to deepen the current understanding of the experience of life with Parkinson’s disease, and to use these understandings to inform health care practices for this group. Following a review of the lived experience literature, a primary study was conducted wherein six individuals with Parkinson’s disease were asked to take photographs and share verbal narrative accounts to illustrate their experience of living with Parkinson’s disease. Results highlight the interrelationship between occupation and identity, as many of the participants’ stories were interpreted as foregrounding the negotiation of occupation, and how such negotiation shaped their sense of identity. Overall, three major themes were identified: (1) Framing the meaning of Parkinson’s disease; (2) Negotiating engagement in occupation; (3) Being ready to accept changes that impact personal or social identity. These findings were used to make suggestions on how health care providers can enhance the level of person-centredness in their care

Subjectivity and reflexivity in an 'exemplary' virtual team

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University, 15/10/2003.This thesis discusses the findings of a 'virtual' ethnography of a 'virtual team' of teleworkers called 'FlexiTeam'. The concept of teleworking refers to workers who use Information and Communication Technologies to work flexibly in time and space. A 'virtual team' is a group of teleworkers organised into a 'team'. There are three substantive findings of this research. First, the discourses of virtual teamwork as 'effortless' and 'flexible' are subject to critique through a description of the forms of labour and (self-)discipline enacted on the part of FlexiTeam members in order to implement 'best practice'. Second, the analysis examines how team members' commitment to this 'best practice' can be understood in relation to their identity at work. This is explored using a theory of subjectivity as constructed through social relationships at work. The analysis focuses on FlexiTeam's social relationship with clients, their employing organisation and within the team. The client relationship is highlighted in particular because FlexiTeam are interesting in their role as 'teleworking consultants'. FlexiTeam not only practice but also sell the concepts of teleworking and virtual teams. Unlike existing studies of 'top-down' change imposed by management upon the workforce, FlexiTeam are active in the production of the very same discourse they also consume. It is argued that this production/consumption relationship constructs a reflexive dynamic for team members' subjectivity, as they strive to be 'experts', 'exemplars' and 'embodiments' of the 'best practice' discourse they sell. However, the third finding suggests that, for some team members, their relationship to the 'best practice' consultancy discourse is characterised less by 'internalisation' and more by ambiguity, ambivalence and instrumentality. This exposes the limits to the 'normalising' power of discourse, even in the case of a team who produce the discourse in question, thereby helping to develop a more sophisticated theory of the subjectivity/discourse relationship.ESR

Learning systemic management practice

Systems thinking has been proposed as an answer to the question of how management practitioners can best equip themselves to tackle the complexity of management practice. As a body of work intended to transcend disciplinary silos, systems thinking pursues the ideal of generating comprehensive descriptions of real situations. It seeks to do this by embracing a variety of systems approaches and ideas to explain patterns and hypothesise causes of observable empirical events. As systems thinking is a diverse field, there are many knowledge areas and perspectives available to programme designers to facilitate teaching and the learning of systems thinking for management practice. The purpose of this study is to examine students' experience of learning events in the context of an interdisciplinary course designed for the development of management practice through systems thinking. Data was collected from three cohorts of students by observing lectures and class-based group work; and conducting interviews using conversational repertory grid techniques. The interview responses were analysed using grounded theory principles. Based on the findings derived from this qualitative analysis, the process of learning of systems thinking is outlined as a practice involving the selection and interpretation of events which evolve from the starting out phase, where students become interested in learning, and then outlines progress through the phases of assimilation and, changes in knowledge, culminating in more complex learning phases described as integration and adaptation. The synthesis of these phenomena as a theory provided an answer to the primary research objective of investigating how students experience learning events designed to develop systemic management practice. Critical realism, following Bhaskar's philosophy, is used to frame explanations to extend the grounded theory analysis, seeking to account for generative mechanisms that enable and constrain student experience with respect to systems thinking development. As a secondary contribution, this informed the identification of possible mechanisms and emergent properties at the level of the course through an analytical separation of the academic and work environments. These included the discourse of the context of application, academic discourse and professional identity. In combination, these findings make a contribution to understanding the learning of systemic management practice. In addition, applications for this research are suggested for educators, managers and organisations. These applications include: 1) a framework to help educators design meaningful experiences for learners; 2) a basis for understanding what constitutes systemic management practice and explaining differential development; 3) establishment of a basis for understanding what is needed for organisations to support the development of systemic management practice

A Phenomenological Study of Tenure-Track Faculty Serving in Dual Roles as Administrators

This qualitative, phenomenological study explores the lived experiences of tenure-track faculty serving in dual roles as administrators at Carnegie classified R2 and R3 higher education institutions within the United States. Fourteen participants completed one-on-one, semi-structured interviews about their lived experiences as tenure-track faculty members serving in dual roles. Participants discussed rewards and motivations as well as challenges. Additionally, participants discussed perceptions of their academic identities. Key themes emerged during data analysis. Rewards and motivations included the following: Community change agent and student advocate, a “seat at the table,” collegiality, flexibility, confidence from prior experience and clear tenure procedures, and job security and potential for career advancement. Challenges included workload and time management, research, operational confusion, politics including power dynamics and bureaucratic or hierarchical obstacles, changing conditions in higher education, professional invisibility, untenured stress and anxiety, and personal obstacles such as family and health issues. Themes related to academic identities included self-identity in relation to audience, perceptions from others based on interaction, and metaphors of identity. The findings from this study led to recommendations for best practice concerning tenure processes and policies as well as recommendations for dual role processes and policies. The findings from this study also revealed a need for more research concerning dual roles to aid in the creation of more equitable policy and practice for faculty serving in dual roles both pre- and post-tenure