Identities as Organizational Practices: The Case of Informal Lunchroom Meetings

Identity has been widely acknowledged as playing a central role in various organizational processes, yet there is still a need to better understand the dynamics and functions of identity work in modern organizations. The present paper is centered within this concern, and examines identity as intersubjective by nature and as a member’s phenomenon. We do so by conducting a video-based investigation of an informal lunchroom meeting at a place of work, and analyze how divergent identities of a manager gets evoked and negotiated in constructing diverse alliances among colleagues. Our aims are to: 1) reveal the intersubjective, multimodal and embodied nature of identity work; 2) demonstrate identity work as organizational practices, used in order to accomplish specific actions; and 3) pose a question on the view on identity as a layered/leveled phenomenon

‘Attention Please’ The Whitepaper

The topic of attention has garnered a lot of attention in recent times; some say attention is in crisis. Combine this with the proliferation of technology able to measure our behavioural and cognitive processes, we aren’t short of studies that measure attention. However, like many hot topics, attention and understanding it is not a new obsession and much can be learned from existing theory and research. We were interested in attention because: a) instinctively it feels like an important criterium for effective advertising b) we were curious how the changing nature of the media landscape was influencing attention As a start point we were keen to get a comprehensive view of the available theory and evidence so that we had a solid foundation for any new research. We believe, whilst it’s important to acknowledge the seismic changes in the media landscape ushered in by the digital era, it’s also important to consider the enduring nature of human behaviour. Behavioural economics, now popularised in the advertising world, continually reminds us of this. This whitepaper, prepared by Bournemouth University, is our attempt to pull together all the existing thinking on attention. It is the first phase of a long-term project ‘Attention Please’. Our ambition with this programme of research is to shed new light on the topic of attention, unearthing useful insights and frameworks for advertisers and their agencies. Ultimately, we want to make the link between attention and effectiveness more apparent so that attention as a topic can be fully appreciated as an important consideration for anyone involved in the business of advertisin

Balancing multiple roles through consensus: Making revisions in haircutting sessions

This study demonstrates how participants in haircutting sessions merge different roles during one of the most sensitive moments of an encounter: requesting and/or making revisions to a new cut. During the process of arriving at a consensus of whether or not changes need to be made to the new cut, the stylist and the client negotiate not only the quality of the cut, but also their expected roles. Caring about both the bodies and the minds of customers is an important element in measuring the quality of cosmetological services, a consideration which may oblige stylists to immediately agree with and act upon every client request or concern. However, simply yielding to the customer’s opinions can threaten the stylist’s role as a beauty expert, one who possesses their own professional standards. The analysis reveals that the participants frequently transform revision requests/offers into mutual decisions through a combination of verbal and bodily actions. In doing so, they harmonize the sometimes conflicting responsibilities of “service provider/patron” and “expert/novice.

Mediated business: Living the organisational surroundings – Introduction

This special section builds upon Deirdre Boden’s work on the constitutive nature of talk for organizations and the Culture & Organization 2004 special issue that developed her concern. Specifically, we aim to further engage with how business is managed, formed and locally accomplished by means of the organizational surroundings that the participants make themselves part of and the multimodal resources that they have at their disposal, in other words: how people live the organizational surroundings. Our hope is to shed light on future directions in the multimodal analysis of workplace interaction and studies of organization in general, and encourage a further interconnection among scholars from various disciplines

DOCK2 is involved in the host genetics and biology of severe COVID-19

「コロナ制圧タスクフォース」COVID-19疾患感受性遺伝子DOCK2の重症化機序を解明 --アジア最大のバイオレポジトリーでCOVID-19の治療標的を発見--. 京都大学プレスリリース. 2022-08-10.Identifying the host genetic factors underlying severe COVID-19 is an emerging challenge. Here we conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) involving 2, 393 cases of COVID-19 in a cohort of Japanese individuals collected during the initial waves of the pandemic, with 3, 289 unaffected controls. We identified a variant on chromosome 5 at 5q35 (rs60200309-A), close to the dedicator of cytokinesis 2 gene (DOCK2), which was associated with severe COVID-19 in patients less than 65 years of age. This risk allele was prevalent in East Asian individuals but rare in Europeans, highlighting the value of genome-wide association studies in non-European populations. RNA-sequencing analysis of 473 bulk peripheral blood samples identified decreased expression of DOCK2 associated with the risk allele in these younger patients. DOCK2 expression was suppressed in patients with severe cases of COVID-19. Single-cell RNA-sequencing analysis (n = 61 individuals) identified cell-type-specific downregulation of DOCK2 and a COVID-19-specific decreasing effect of the risk allele on DOCK2 expression in non-classical monocytes. Immunohistochemistry of lung specimens from patients with severe COVID-19 pneumonia showed suppressed DOCK2 expression. Moreover, inhibition of DOCK2 function with CPYPP increased the severity of pneumonia in a Syrian hamster model of SARS-CoV-2 infection, characterized by weight loss, lung oedema, enhanced viral loads, impaired macrophage recruitment and dysregulated type I interferon responses. We conclude that DOCK2 has an important role in the host immune response to SARS-CoV-2 infection and the development of severe COVID-19, and could be further explored as a potential biomarker and/or therapeutic target

Beauty and consensus : practices for agreeing on the quality of the service in client-professional interactions

textThis dissertation is a microanalytic investigation of professional communication in beauty salons in the United States and Japan. In particular, it centers on the analysis of a common, yet very important occurrence found in cosmetology sessions: what I call the "service-assessment sequence", in which service-provider and client determine whether or not the completed work in a given session is adequate. This is a crucial moment in the haircutting activity (and in other fields of the service industry) in order to bring a satisfactory closure to the session, as well as maintain a healthy relationship for future sessions, retain clients in general, and ensure client satisfaction overall. Using the methodological frameworks of microethnography and conversation analysis, I examine the moment-by-moment unfolding of interaction, focusing on how participants smoothly conduct the service-assessment sequence and how they achieve the successful completion of a service encounter through a number of tactics. The findings include: the participants' systematic coordination of talk and physical inspection through multiple second pair parts; the participants' coordination of talk and action to negotiate sequence closure; the participants' professional use of head nods in the middle of physical inspection and at sequence completion during service encounters in Japan; and the participants' employment of a unique combination of verbal and embodied actions to transform the event of revision into a mutual decision. These findings suggest several important aspects of professionalization in beauty salons. Notably, the professionals' ability to harmonize talk and action is a special trait. Also, despite the fundamental regularities, the service-assessment sequence is frequently adapted to specific circumstances of each beauty salon that may vary across different services and cultures. Finally, the production of professional assessments and agreements are achieved by the participants' constant work on dramatization through the use of various communicative resources. The study is applicable not only to the field of cosmetology, but to a range of professional-client interactions where people evaluate the quality of service with their subjective perspectives, enhancing our understanding of negotiation-in-interaction in the workplace and what it means to professionalize communication in such situations.Communication Studie