6,049 research outputs found

    An exploration of the language within Ofsted reports and their influence on primary school performance in mathematics: a mixed methods critical discourse analysis

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    This thesis contributes to the understanding of the language of Ofsted reports, their similarity to one another and associations between different terms used within ‘areas for improvement’ sections and subsequent outcomes for pupils. The research responds to concerns from serving headteachers that Ofsted reports are overly similar, do not capture the unique story of their school, and are unhelpful for improvement. In seeking to answer ‘how similar are Ofsted reports’ the study uses two tools, a plagiarism detection software (Turnitin) and a discourse analysis tool (NVivo) to identify trends within and across a large corpus of reports. The approach is based on critical discourse analysis (Van Dijk, 2009; Fairclough, 1989) but shaped in the form of practitioner enquiry seeking power in the form of impact on pupils and practitioners, rather than a more traditional, sociological application of the method. The research found that in 2017, primary school section 5 Ofsted reports had more than half of their content exactly duplicated within other primary school inspection reports published that same year. Discourse analysis showed the quality assurance process overrode variables such as inspector designation, gender, or team size, leading to three distinct patterns of duplication: block duplication, self-referencing, and template writing. The most unique part of a report was found to be the ‘area for improvement’ section, which was tracked to externally verified outcomes for pupils using terms linked to ‘mathematics’. Those required to improve mathematics in their areas for improvement improved progress and attainment in mathematics significantly more than national rates. These findings indicate that there was a positive correlation between the inspection reporting process and a beneficial impact on pupil outcomes in mathematics, and that the significant similarity of one report to another had no bearing on the usefulness of the report for school improvement purposes within this corpus

    Corporate Social Responsibility: the institutionalization of ESG

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    Understanding the impact of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) on firm performance as it relates to industries reliant on technological innovation is a complex and perpetually evolving challenge. To thoroughly investigate this topic, this dissertation will adopt an economics-based structure to address three primary hypotheses. This structure allows for each hypothesis to essentially be a standalone empirical paper, unified by an overall analysis of the nature of impact that ESG has on firm performance. The first hypothesis explores the evolution of CSR to the modern quantified iteration of ESG has led to the institutionalization and standardization of the CSR concept. The second hypothesis fills gaps in existing literature testing the relationship between firm performance and ESG by finding that the relationship is significantly positive in long-term, strategic metrics (ROA and ROIC) and that there is no correlation in short-term metrics (ROE and ROS). Finally, the third hypothesis states that if a firm has a long-term strategic ESG plan, as proxied by the publication of CSR reports, then it is more resilience to damage from controversies. This is supported by the finding that pro-ESG firms consistently fared better than their counterparts in both financial and ESG performance, even in the event of a controversy. However, firms with consistent reporting are also held to a higher standard than their nonreporting peers, suggesting a higher risk and higher reward dynamic. These findings support the theory of good management, in that long-term strategic planning is both immediately economically beneficial and serves as a means of risk management and social impact mitigation. Overall, this contributes to the literature by fillings gaps in the nature of impact that ESG has on firm performance, particularly from a management perspective

    A Decision Support System for Economic Viability and Environmental Impact Assessment of Vertical Farms

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    Vertical farming (VF) is the practice of growing crops or animals using the vertical dimension via multi-tier racks or vertically inclined surfaces. In this thesis, I focus on the emerging industry of plant-specific VF. Vertical plant farming (VPF) is a promising and relatively novel practice that can be conducted in buildings with environmental control and artificial lighting. However, the nascent sector has experienced challenges in economic viability, standardisation, and environmental sustainability. Practitioners and academics call for a comprehensive financial analysis of VPF, but efforts are stifled by a lack of valid and available data. A review of economic estimation and horticultural software identifies a need for a decision support system (DSS) that facilitates risk-empowered business planning for vertical farmers. This thesis proposes an open-source DSS framework to evaluate business sustainability through financial risk and environmental impact assessments. Data from the literature, alongside lessons learned from industry practitioners, would be centralised in the proposed DSS using imprecise data techniques. These techniques have been applied in engineering but are seldom used in financial forecasting. This could benefit complex sectors which only have scarce data to predict business viability. To begin the execution of the DSS framework, VPF practitioners were interviewed using a mixed-methods approach. Learnings from over 19 shuttered and operational VPF projects provide insights into the barriers inhibiting scalability and identifying risks to form a risk taxonomy. Labour was the most commonly reported top challenge. Therefore, research was conducted to explore lean principles to improve productivity. A probabilistic model representing a spectrum of variables and their associated uncertainty was built according to the DSS framework to evaluate the financial risk for VF projects. This enabled flexible computation without precise production or financial data to improve economic estimation accuracy. The model assessed two VPF cases (one in the UK and another in Japan), demonstrating the first risk and uncertainty quantification of VPF business models in the literature. The results highlighted measures to improve economic viability and the viability of the UK and Japan case. The environmental impact assessment model was developed, allowing VPF operators to evaluate their carbon footprint compared to traditional agriculture using life-cycle assessment. I explore strategies for net-zero carbon production through sensitivity analysis. Renewable energies, especially solar, geothermal, and tidal power, show promise for reducing the carbon emissions of indoor VPF. Results show that renewably-powered VPF can reduce carbon emissions compared to field-based agriculture when considering the land-use change. The drivers for DSS adoption have been researched, showing a pathway of compliance and design thinking to overcome the ‘problem of implementation’ and enable commercialisation. Further work is suggested to standardise VF equipment, collect benchmarking data, and characterise risks. This work will reduce risk and uncertainty and accelerate the sector’s emergence

    TOWARDS AN UNDERSTANDING OF EFFORTFUL FUNDRAISING EXPERIENCES: USING INTERPRETATIVE PHENOMENOLOGICAL ANALYSIS IN FUNDRAISING RESEARCH

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    Physical-activity oriented community fundraising has experienced an exponential growth in popularity over the past 15 years. The aim of this study was to explore the value of effortful fundraising experiences, from the point of view of participants, and explore the impact that these experiences have on people’s lives. This study used an IPA approach to interview 23 individuals, recognising the role of participants as proxy (nonprofessional) fundraisers for charitable organisations, and the unique organisation donor dynamic that this creates. It also bought together relevant psychological theory related to physical activity fundraising experiences (through a narrative literature review) and used primary interview data to substantiate these. Effortful fundraising experiences are examined in detail to understand their significance to participants, and how such experiences influence their connection with a charity or cause. This was done with an idiographic focus at first, before examining convergences and divergences across the sample. This study found that effortful fundraising experiences can have a profound positive impact upon community fundraisers in both the short and the long term. Additionally, it found that these experiences can be opportunities for charitable organisations to create lasting meaningful relationships with participants, and foster mutually beneficial lifetime relationships with them. Further research is needed to test specific psychological theory in this context, including self-esteem theory, self determination theory, and the martyrdom effect (among others)

    Data management and sharing for collaborative science: lessons learnt from the Euromammals initiative

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    2openInternationalItalian coauthor/editorThe current and future consequences of anthropogenic impacts such as climate change and habitat loss on ecosystems will be better understood and therefore addressed if diverse ecological data from multiple environmental contexts are more effectively shared. Re-use requires that data are readily available to the scientific scrutiny of the research community. A number of repositories to store shared data have emerged in different ecological domains and developments are underway to define common data and metadata standards. Nevertheless, the goal is far from being achieved and many challenges still need to be addressed. The definition of best practices for data sharing and re-use can benefit from the experience accumulated by pilot collaborative projects. The Euromammals bottom-up initiative has pioneered collaborative science in spatial animal ecology since 2007. It involves more than 150 institutes to address scientific, management and conservation questions regarding terrestrial mammal species in Europe using data stored in a shared database. In this manuscript we present some key lessons that we have learnt from the process of making shared data and knowledge accessible to researchers and we stress the importance of data management for data quality assurance. We suggest putting in place a pro-active data review before data are made available in shared repositories via robust technical support and users’ training in data management and standards. We recommend pursuing the definition of common data collection protocols, data and metadata standards, and shared vocabularies with direct involvement of the community to boost their implementation. We stress the importance of knowledge sharing, in addition to data sharing. We show the crucial relevance of collaborative networking with pro-active involvement of data providers in all stages of the scientific process. Our main message is that for data-sharing collaborative efforts to obtain substantial and durable scientific returns, the goals should not only consist in the creation of e-infrastructures and software tools but primarily in the establishment of a network and community trust. This requires moderate investment, but over long-term horizons.openUrbano, F.; Cagnacci, F.Urbano, F.; Cagnacci, F

    Industry 4.0: product digital twins for remanufacturing decision-making

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    Currently there is a desire to reduce natural resource consumption and expand circular business principles whilst Industry 4.0 (I4.0) is regarded as the evolutionary and potentially disruptive movement of technology, automation, digitalisation, and data manipulation into the industrial sector. The remanufacturing industry is recognised as being vital to the circular economy (CE) as it extends the in-use life of products, but its synergy with I4.0 has had little attention thus far. This thesis documents the first investigating into I4.0 in remanufacturing for a CE contributing a design and demonstration of a model that optimises remanufacturing planning using data from different instances in a product’s life cycle. The initial aim of this work was to identify the I4.0 technology that would enhance the stability in remanufacturing with a view to reducing resource consumption. As the project progressed it narrowed to focus on the development of a product digital twin (DT) model to support data-driven decision making for operations planning. The model’s architecture was derived using a bottom-up approach where requirements were extracted from the identified complications in production planning and control that differentiate remanufacturing from manufacturing. Simultaneously, the benefits of enabling visibility of an asset’s through-life health were obtained using a DT as the modus operandi. A product simulator and DT prototype was designed to use Internet of Things (IoT) components, a neural network for remaining life estimations and a search algorithm for operational planning optimisation. The DT was iteratively developed using case studies to validate and examine the real opportunities that exist in deploying a business model that harnesses, and commodifies, early life product data for end-of-life processing optimisation. Findings suggest that using intelligent programming networks and algorithms, a DT can enhance decision-making if it has visibility of the product and access to reliable remanufacturing process information, whilst existing IoT components provide rudimentary “smart” capabilities, but their integration is complex, and the durability of the systems over extended product life cycles needs to be further explored

    B/order work: recomposing relations in the seamful carescapes of health and social care integration in Scotland

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    As people, ageing and living with disabilities, struggle with how care is enacted through their lives, integrated care has gained policy purchase in many places, especially in the United Kingdom. Accordingly, there have been various (re)forms of care configurations instigated, in particular, promoting partnership and service redesign. Despite integrations apparent popularity, its contribution to improved service delivery and outcomes for people has been questioned, exposing ongoing uncertainties about what it entails and its associated benefits. Nonetheless, over decades, a remarkably consistent approach to integrated care has advanced collaboration as a solution. Equally, any (re)configurations emerge through wider infrastructures of care, in what might be regarded as dis-integrated care, as complex carescapes attempt to hold and aporias remain. In 2014, the Scottish Public Bodies (Joint Working) (Scotland) Act mandated Health and Social Care Integration (HSCI), as a means to mend fraying carescapes; a flagship policy epitomising public service reform in Scotland, in which normative aspirations of collaboration are central. What then are the accomplishments of this ambitious legislation? From the vantage point of 2021, HSCI has been assessed as slow and insubstantial, but this is not the complete picture. Narratives about failing to meet expectations obscure more complicated histories of cooperation and discord, successes and failures, and unintended consequences. Yet given collaborative ubiquity, if partnerships are contested how then are they practiced? To answer this question, I embarked on an interorganisational ethnography of the enactment of a Health and Social Care Partnership (HSCP), which went ‘live’ on April 1st, 2016; in a place I call ‘Kintra’. I interrogate what happened when several managers (from the NHS and Council) endeavoured to implement HSCI according to the precepts of the Act; working to both (re)configure and hold things together behind care frontiers; away from the bodywork of direct care, immersed in everyday arrangements in the spaces of governance and operations. I chart their efforts to comply with regulations, plan, and build governance apparatuses through documents. I explore through coalescent objects how distributed forms of governance, entwined in policy implementation, were subsequently both sustained, and challenged. I observed for seven months actors struggling to (re)configure care services embedded in a collaborative approach, as well as establish the legitimacy of the HSCP; exemplified through the fabrication of what was understood as a 'must-do' commissioning plan. In tracing documents, I show the ways in which HSCI was simultaneously materialised and constituted through documentation. I reveal how, in the mundane mattering of document manufacturing, possibilities for (re)forming the carescape emerged. By delving into inconspicuous, ‘seamful’ b/order work that both sustained distinctions between the NHS and Council and enabled b/order crossings, I expose how actors were knotted, and how this shaped efforts to recompose the contours of the carescape. While ‘Kintra’s story might be familiar, situated in concerns that may resonate across Scotland; I reveal how collaboration-as-practice is tangled in differing organisational practices, emerging from quotidian intra-actions in meeting rooms, offices, car parks and kitchenettes. I deploy a posthuman practice stance to show not only the way in which public administration ‘does’ care, but it’s world-making through a sociomaterial politics of anticipation. I was told legislation was the only way to make HSCI in ‘Kintra’ happen, nevertheless, there was resistance to limit the breadth and depth of integrating. Consequently, I show how the (re)organising of b/orders was an always-ongoing act of maintenance and repair of a (dis)integrating carescape; as I learnt at the end of my fieldwork, ‘it’s ‘Kintra, ‘it’s aye been!
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