‘In the name of capability’: a critical discursive evaluation of competency-based management development

This paper illustrates a number of ways in which competency or capability-based management development (CBMD) can work simultaneously both for and against the interests of organizational agents. It does so by demonstrating how CBMD might usefully be understood as both ideological and quasi-religiously faith-based. These features are shown to provide opportunities for resistance and micro-emancipation alongside those for repression and subordination. The study employs a combination of ‘middle range’ discourse analytical techniques. In the first instance, critical discourse analysis is applied to company documentation to distil the ideological stance of an international organization’s CBMD programme. Critical discursive psychology is then used to assess the ways in which employees’ evaluative accounts both support and resist such stance. The analysis builds upon previous insights from Foucauldian studies of CBMD by foregrounding processes of discursive agency. It also renders more visible and discussible the assumptions and dilemmas that CBMD might imply

Information and Design: Book Symposium on Luciano Floridi’s The Logic of Information

Purpose – To review and discuss Luciano Floridi’s 2019 book The Logic of Information: A Theory of Philosophy as Conceptual Design, the latest instalment in his philosophy of information (PI) tetralogy, particularly with respect to its implications for library and information studies (LIS). Design/methodology/approach – Nine scholars with research interests in philosophy and LIS read and responded to the book, raising critical and heuristic questions in the spirit of scholarly dialogue. Floridi responded to these questions. Findings – Floridi’s PI, including this latest publication, is of interest to LIS scholars, and much insight can be gained by exploring this connection. It seems also that LIS has the potential to contribute to PI’s further development in some respects. Research implications – Floridi’s PI work is technical philosophy for which many LIS scholars do not have the training or patience to engage with, yet doing so is rewarding. This suggests a role for translational work between philosophy and LIS. Originality/value – The book symposium format, not yet seen in LIS, provides forum for sustained, multifaceted and generative dialogue around ideas

Lucene4IR: Developing information retrieval evaluation resources using Lucene

The workshop and hackathon on developing Information Retrieval Evaluation Resources using Lucene (L4IR) was held on the 8th and 9th of September, 2016 at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, UK and funded by the ESF Elias Network. The event featured three main elements: (i) a series of keynote and invited talks on industry, teaching and evaluation; (ii) planning, coding and hacking where a number of groups created modules and infrastructure to use Lucene to undertake TREC based evaluations; and (iii) a number of breakout groups discussing challenges, opportunities and problems in bridging the divide between academia and industry, and how we can use Lucene for teaching and learning Information Retrieval (IR). The event was composed of a mix and blend of academics, experts and students wanting to learn, share and create evaluation resources for the community. The hacking was intense and the discussions lively creating the basis of many useful tools but also raising numerous issues. It was clear that by adopting and contributing to most widely used and supported Open Source IR toolkit, there were many benefits for academics, students, researchers, developers and practitioners - providing a basis for stronger evaluation practices, increased reproducibility, more efficient knowledge transfer, greater collaboration between academia and industry, and shared teaching and training resources

Music, movies and meaning: communication in film-markers' search for pre-existing music, and the implications for music information retrieval

While the use of music to accompany moving images is widespread, the information behaviour, communicative practice and decision making by creative professionals within this area of the music industry is an under-researched area. This investigation discusses the use of music in films and advertising focusing on communication and meaning of the music and introduces a reflexive communication model. The model is discussed in relation to interviews with a sample of music professionals who search for and use music for their work. Key factors in this process include stakeholders, briefs, product knowledge and relevance. Searching by both content and context is important, although the final decision when matching music to picture is partly intuitive and determined by a range of stakeholders

Dialogical Skirmishes

Tan was guest editor for 'And Now China?', a special print edition of the Ctrl+P journal, which critically responded to the celebratory rhetoric’s of ‘China Now’ and other celebratory markers of China's global ascent in 2008. As well as the introductory article 'Dialogical Skirmishes', Tan also interviewed Hans Ulrich Obrist

Explaining Levels of Customer Satisfaction with First Contact with Jobcentre Plus: results of qualitative research with Jobcentre Plus Staff

This report is a follow up to the First Contact Customer Survey (Research Report 504). As a result of ongoing difficulties accessing data for sampling purposes, the initial plan to undertake qualitative follow-up research with customers was abandoned in favour of research with staff to explore process-related issues which might explain customer responses. The research was undertaken in September and October 2008 and included telephone interviews with senior staff combined with face-to-face interviews and structured observations with staff in Contact Centres, Jobcentres and Benefit Delivery Centres in four Jobcentre Plus regions. Findings relate specifically to staff perceptions of customer satisfaction with first contact

Texas ScholarWorks: 14-15 Annual Report

UT Librarie

Are you an effective teacher of reading?

Reading occurs in our lives on a constant basis. Nevertheless, defining reading is not easy. Different people use the term reading for different purposes, which can cause much confusion. For the context of the language classroom this article will concern itself with the notion of reading as the extraction of meaning from a written text . In other words, the text is viewed as a vehicle of communication from the writer to the reader; Aebersold and Field (1997) acknowledge this by stating that it is the interaction between the text and reader that constitutes actual reading. However, simply stating that this is what constitutes reading is to risk forgetting that, in the reading class, the most important thing is that both the teacher and the student should understand the reading process