A participatory action research study of key account management changes

Pure Participatory Action Research projects in the IMP research tradition are rather rare. This paper describes both the process and the outcomes of such a project carried out for a major business to retail firm in the UK. The issue at hand was, and is, Key Account Management, defined in a very broad way. The process is one of changing the ways in which the actors in the firm at different levels work together to try to coordinate the long term strategy and short term operations in relation to powerful retail customers. The outcomes for the firm have, so far, been very positive. The outcomes for the researchers are too early to fully evaluate but look very promising

A softer side to men

“I am on time. It’s the afternoon of my medical for life-insurance suitability. The AMP building in Sydney is my destination. I arrive with about twenty minutes to spare. I don’t remember the receptionist. I don’t remember the faces of the doctors who attended me that day. All I can remember is that I could see the clouds passing over the glass ceiling as my blood pressure was taken several times. The first doctor took my blood pressure three times before seeking another opinion. The second doctor confirmed his fears. I was in the “too high” risk category. At the time I was 22 years of age, and weighing, on average, one-hundred and fifty kilograms. Over the next nine months I reach an extreme level of weight loss. At my lightest I weighed eighty-two kilograms.” I am a male researcher, researching masculine bodyweight and masculine embodiment. In the qualitative tradition, seven men (primary participants) who underwent significant weight gain. and loss were interviewed with the purpose of understanding how they experienced their sense of self as socially reflected. In addition to this, seven significant others (secondary participants) were interviewed in relation to their observations of primary participants during these periods. This is an interdisciplinary study which utilises symbolic interactionist concepts of self, and social identity, in conjunction with sociological and philosophical concerns about body-image, bodyweight, and the expression of subjective and social masculine identities in a gendered socio-cultural context, where tension exists between individual freedom and social control (See Bordo, !999a: Cooley, 1964; Drummond, 2002; Foucault, 1980; Goffman 1963b, 1967; Mead, 1934; Sparkes, 1999). It was found that different levels of male body fat influences subjective conceptions of self, subjective expressions of masculine identities, and social projections of what it means to be a fat and thin man. This study reveals that men went to extremes to lose weight, in most cases by restricting their food intake. In addition to this, it was also found that thinner men consume more fashion than fatter men, and that happy fat men in sexual relationships were least likely to regulate their bodyweight until these relationships ended. Self-regulation was found to be more prominent in those men competing for intimacy in the sexual market. In brief, this study establishes here is a softer reflective side of men than had been previously documented

Dancing With Difference

This is a symbolic interactionist study into behaviours surrounding social interaction. The study has two components, asking how people with able-bodies interact with a young person with a disability, and how does the young person, who is non-verbal, respond to and interpret such interactions? Participants were observed and recorded using a digital camera whilst interacting at a social venue. The able-bodied participants were not aware of the camera at the time of filming, and were approached after the filming to participate in the study. Seven participants were later interviewed and asked to explain what they were aware of as they interacted. Lyndon, the young person with a disability, was involved in the planning and implementation of the research from the beginning. Most research undertaken on interactions between able-bodied people and people with disabilities has not been able to move past the way in which people with disabilities are dehumanised during the interaction process (Jahoda, Markova & Catterrnale, 1989). Little attention has been given to the possibility that able-bodied people are unsure of how to go about interacting with people with disabilities (Soder, 1990). The study found that able-bodied people were concerned about being seen to stare at Lyndon (because staring is rude) and thought that asking personal questions about his disability would be impolite. There was a fear of drawing undue attention to him and his disability during the interaction. Participants interacted with Lyndon using a set of projections and abstract assumptions of how they saw him. They constructed these through what they observed in his physical appearance and body language. The themes used to interact with him were; the chosen one, public awareness, pity or tragedy and sexually safe. Lyndon was unable to alter these constructions through dialogue and instead had to accept them or reject them. Lyndon also projected a set of assumptions onto participants he interacted with, yet during the interactions he was unable to convey to the other what they were. In this context, each encounter is masked by people\u27s inability to understand and interpret not only theirs, but the others intention and motivation behind each interaction

Distorted body image and anorexia complicating cystic fibrosis in an adolescent

AbstractA 15 year old girl with cystic fibrosis has been dieting and losing weight for 2 years. Despite being underweight she aims to lose a further 6 kg to become a “size zero”. Her falling weight has been associated with deteriorations in her general health and lung function, which is exacerbated by poor compliance. The situation has been complicated further by her becoming pregnant

Enacting emotional labour in consultancy work:playing with liminality and navigating power dynamics

While theoretical understanding of professional emotional labour has developed in recent years, methodological issues with capturing its practice mean that understanding of how professional emotional labour is enacted remains relatively limited. The current study utilises memory work to surface potentially unacknowledged meanings associated with the remembered performance of professional emotional labour as a proxy for the psychological access required to demonstrate dissonance between felt and displayed emotions. The article uses an emotionally charged feedback meeting between a management consultant and their client as an opportune context for surfacing the enactment of professional emotional labour. The combined memory work data - consisting of original meeting recordings and a parallel commentary developed in discussion with the consultant - are analysed through a Goffmanian lens in order to theorise role positioning as a tool of enacting professional emotional labour. A model is proposed that maps the roles adopted against the dimensions of playing with liminality and navigating power dynamics. We suggest the potential transferability of these findings to other situations of liminality and their relevance for management learning interventions

How to match the optimal currently available inhaler device to an individual child with asthma or recurrent wheeze

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The in vitro identification and quantification of volatile biomarkers released by cystic fibrosis pathogens

There is interest in the development of exhaled breath tests for the detection of lower airway infection in children with cystic fibrosis. The first stage of this process is the identification of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) released into the gas phase by CF pathogens that can be used as breath test biomarkers. Selected ion flow tube mass spectrometry (SIFT-MS) is ideally suited to these in vitro studies as it allows simultaneous quantification of multiple VOCs in real time. We review a decade of in vitro experiments using SIFT-MS to analyse the VOCs released by respiratory pathogens. This includes identification and quantification of VOCs and the investigation of the in vitro factors that affect their production. We also report on how our culture methodology has been refined over the years to better account for variations in bacterial mass. Finally, we discuss how these in vitro findings have been translated into clinical trials and assess possible future applications

The Wicked World of Marketing Management

This paper reports some of the central findings of an extensive ethnographic study of a team of senior marketing managers in the UK subsidiary of a major multi-national supplier of branded consumer goods. It responds to repeated calls for more in-depth research that examines what marketing managers actually do and how their understandings inform their actions. It is argued that the particular character of the decisional milieu that confronts marketing managers has a central impact on their conduct and that this can be better understood by employing Rittel"s conception of wicked problems and Mischel"s conception of weak situations. It is demonstrated that the marketing managers studied confront a weakly situated wicked complex of commercial contradictions. It is contended that, due to their embedded formal techno-rationality, the marketing management discourse and pedagogy currently fail to speak to this reality of marketing management

In Search of Marketing Management : A Study of Managing in Marketing.

This empirical study attempts to craft a richer description, and deeper understanding, of the work of managers in marketing than that elaborated in the managerial work literature and within the marketing management discourse. Perspectives on both the character of the 'content' and 'conduct' of marketing manager work are sought. Several marketing managers, operating in diverse commercial contexts, were interviewed and observed. The field research deployed an array of longitudinal methodologies including programmes of diary-stimulated interviews, work shadowing, participant self-observation, and action research. A description of managerial work is developed that rests at an 'ontic level' between that of classical / 'Fayolian' management theory and the conceptualisations generated through the empirical study of managerial work. The developed model characterises the 'substance' of managerial conduct as the 'shaping and sustaining of commitments'. The model, based on a metaphorical temporal rope, elaborates the various interweaving strands and threads of what is argued to be the quintessence of managerial behaviour, the forms and characteristics of organizational commitments, the character of their crafting and conducing, and the properties of the so-emerged commitment webs. The 'content' of the subject managers' work is elaborated through the concept of endeavour portfolios, and the inherently political, weak-situation / wicked-problem character of their endeavours is illuminated. The 'rhetorical technology' of the marketing discourse is found to permeate the content of the subject managers' endeavours, and provide adequate labels for the strands and threads of their endeavours. However, outside of their use in the staging of truth effects, the processual prescriptions of the marketing discourse are not evident in their daily work. The marketing management discourse is found not to speak to the milieu, or substance of the subject managers marketing management. This 'substance' rests in their pursuit of innovative reconciliations for the complex of contradictions that confronts them