Elms at Night and Outside the Museum (for George F. Ledingham)

Poetry by Ken Wilso

Wood Mountain Walk: Afterthoughts on a Pilgrimage for Andrew Suknaski

Ken Wilson’s ‘Wood Mountain Walk: Afterthoughts on a Pilgrimage for Andrew Suknaski’ reflects on a 250-kilometre walking pilgrimage made in honour of the late Canadian poet Andrew Suknaski. Wilson’s autoethnographic essay considers the possibilities and challenges of walking as a way to engage with land and community; Suknaski’s book Wood Mountain Poems and the issue of cultural appropriation; what it is like to walk in a sparsely populated and arid agricultural province where trespassing laws confine walkers to roads; and walking as both pilgrimage and artistic practice

Surrender No. 40

In June 2016, I made an improvised pilgrimage on foot through the Haldimand Tract in southwestern Ontario, the territory deeded to the Haudensaunee in 1784 and mostly stolen back by settlers since then. I grew up in Brantford, a city in the Haldimand Tract, ignorant of the history of the area. When I learned about that history, I decided to walk through the Tract as a way of understanding, physically, the scale of the land theft that had occurred, a theft that, as a settler, I had benefitted from. “Surrender No. 40” is an account of that pilgrimage

Place and Space in Walking Pilgrimage

What kind of experience of territory is produced by walking pilgrimages? Do they generate experiences of place or space as with the definitions provided by Yi-Fu Tuan in Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience? This paper addresses these questions by considering Tuan’s distinction between space and place and various attempts at deconstructing that binary opposition. It looks at three texts about walking that seem to turn space into place--Nan Shepherd’s The Living Mountain, Thelma Poirier’s Rock Creek, and Iain Sinclair’s London Orbital: A Walk Around the M25--before considering the author\u27s own failure to turn space into place during an improvised walking pilgrimage in southwestern Saskatchewan, Canada. Finally, the paper considers a more recent pilgrimage by the author on the Whithorn Way in Scotland. He concludes that walking pilgrimage actually generates a phenomenal experience of more abstract qualities, ‘placeness’ and ‘spaceness,’ which are interrelated and interpenetrated, folded together (in a Deleuzian sense), a conclusion that leaves the author ready to re-evaluate his improvised pilgrimage in Saskatchewan as well as the literary accounts he discusses

The Promise and Peril of Walking Indigenous Territorial Recognitions carried out by Settlers

This article proposes that if the permission and guidance of local Indigenous groups is obtained, and their protocols observed, a collaborative physical act of settler, or Indigenous-settler walking across territory on which events are to be held may constitute a more constructive form of ‘territorial acknowledgement’ than a verbal statement read out at such an event. By drawing sustained attention not only to Indigenous land but also to Indigenous title, resources, and jurisdiction, and by pointedly underlining the actual land in question, walking territorial acknowledgements can help settlers to develop an embodied sense of place-in-relation. In so doing they can move forward both the relationality implicit in Indigenous territorial recognition and the claims territorial recognitions make on settler bodies. These walk-acts diminish the superficial ‘virtue-signalling’ and public performance of contrition which too often attach to such acknowledgements, threatening to render them obsolete

The Longer-Term Effects of Management-Led Buy-Outs

There is now extensive evidence on short-term performance improvements in buy-outs, but little relating to the longer-term. This paper examines the relatively neglected area of the longevity and longer-term effects of smaller buy-outs. In terms of longevity, the evidence presented shows that the majority remain as independent buy-outs for at least eight years after the transaction, and that entrepreneurial actions concerning both restructuring and product innovation are important parts of entrepreneurs\u27 strategies over a ten year period or more. For the first time, the paper also provides an analysis of the financial performance and productivity of a large sample of buy-outs and non-buyouts. It shows that on a variety of financial ratios buy-outs significantly outperform a matched sample of non-buy-outs, especially from year 3 onwards. Analysis of post buyout efficiency of survivor buy-outs, using regression analysis to estimate augmented Cobb-Douglas production functions, shows that buy-outs are superior to matched nonbuy-outs with a productivity differential of the order of 9% on average from year t+2 onwards. The evidence of superior longer term performance suggests that venture capitalists may need to consider their investment perspectives carefully, particularly in respect of exit versus second round investment. For financiers it is clear that the buy-out concept can be successfully applied to growth as well as restructuring cases

Finnish Developmental Work Research (Dwr) – A Powerful Research Paradigm With Policy Possibilities?

Finnish Developmental Work Research (DWR) has been used in New Zealand by WEB Research, who have been world leading exponents of the approach. Over a twenty year period they used the approach in such varied research locales as the public sector (IRD, Immigration, NZQA), public/private organizations (Dutch Rail; the New Zealand Pip Fruit and Dairy Industries), and the private sector (a furniture manufacturer, two meat companies; and in the Wool and Meat Industries).However, the requirements of the approach, and of Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) on which it is based, often did not sit comfortably with the New Zealand research environment at the end of the twentieth century. Consequently, sometimes research was foreclosed early before full results were apparent.This presentation will review the original DWR research approach and WEB’s use of it. It will then contrast two recent New Zealand primary industry applications in the Pip Fruit and Dairy Industries. The former led to spectacular policy success with the development and adoption of the Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme. The latter’s research component has been terminated. Application of the research results now rests with DairyNZ, the sponsors of the project, who have taken the extension of the research into their own hands. Conclusions are drawn on the key components of a successful application of the approach

A Developmental Work Research (DWR) Study of Team and Organisational Learning at DHL Worldwide Express

The environment in which New Zealand businesses and public agencies operate is volatile, complex and uncertain. Organisations face a wide and competing range of demands. Managers and employees need to collaborate across functions, business units and teams. Practical research approaches are needed to help support them.This paper illustrates how a developmental work research (DWR) approach can support business process improvements and organisational/earning in continuously-changing, complex environments. We present findings from a PGSF study of cross-functional team problem-solving and learning at DHL Worldwide Express in Christchurch between April1997 and June 1998. The study used DWR methods, including analysis of videotaped meetings, developed at the University of Helsinki and the University of California San Diego by Engestrom and his colleagues (1996b).We describe how DWR was used to: analyse a process improvement initiative, or 'problem-trajectory', and how disturbances and tensions within this work activity reveal the underlying contradictions in DHL's operational and training systems; and identify opportunities for comprehensive system innovations that have a marked impact on productivity, efficiency and customer service

A Comparative Analysis of Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome among Individuals Exposed to Different Stressor Events

The purpose of the present study was to compare post-traumatic stress syndrome among persons involved in nine different stressor events: combat in the Vietnam War; rape; serious life-threatening events; divorce; the death of a significant other; critical, near fatal illness of a significant other; family trauma; multiple traumatic events; and no stressful event. To assess the severity of the symptoms which define post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the Impact of Event Scale, the Beck Depression Inventory, the Stress Assessment Scale for PTSD from the Vietnam Era Stress Inventory (Wilson & Krauss, 1980) and the Sensation Seeking Scale were administered to the participants (N=409). A person by situation conceptual model of PTSD was presented from which two major hypotheses were tested. As predicted from the model, the degree of loss of a significant other and life-threat were predictive of syndromespecific symptoms of PTSD. The results of the study strongly support the heuristic value of an interactionist model of PTSD

Boston Hospitality Review: Spring 2016

Understanding the Momentum and Motivations of Foreign Investors in U.S. Hospitality by Ken Wilson and Liya Ma -- Creating Memorable Experiences: How hotels can fight back against Airbnb and other sharing economy providers by Makarand Mody -- Rebranding Before the Digital Age: 4 Strategies Used by the Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers During the 1992 Democratic National Convention by Leora Halpern Lanz, Juan Lesmes, and Erinn Tucker -- Federal Minimum Wage Debate: Are Gubernatorial Politics Behind a Hotel Line Employee Wage? by Nicholas Thomas and Eric Brown -- Rethinking Substance Use and Abuse Among Hospitality Employees by Amir Shani -- Consumers’ Desires in Hostels: Addressing Latent and Explicit Needs in United States Hostels by Emily Horto