Developing a model of innovation implementation for UK SMEs: A path analysis and explanatory case analysis

Continuous large-scale changes in technology and the globalization of markets have resulted in the need for many SMEs to use innovation as a means of seeking competitive advantage where innovation includes both technological and organizational perspectives (Tapscott, 2009). However, there is a paucity of systematic and empirical research relating to the implementation of innovation management in the context of SMEs. The aim of this article is to redress this imbalance via an empirical study created to develop and test a model of innovation implementation in SMEs. This study uses Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) to test the plausibility of an innovation model, developed from earlier studies, as the basis of a questionnaire survey of 395 SMEs in the UK. The resultant model and construct relationship results are further probed using an explanatory multiple case analysis to explore ‘how’ and ‘why’ type questions within the model and construct relationships. The findings show that the
effects of leadership, people and culture on innovation implementation are mediated by business improvement activities relating to Total Quality Management/Continuous Improvement (TQM/CI) and product and process developments. It is concluded that SMEs have an opportunity to leverage existing quality and process improvement activities to move beyond continuous
improvement outcomes towards effective innovation implementation. The article concludes by suggesting areas suitable for further research.

Experiences of fathering a baby admitted to neonatal intensive care: A critical gender analysis

More fathers than ever before attend at the birth of their child and, internationally, there is a palpable pressure on maternity and neonatal services to include and engage with fathers. It is, thus, more important than ever to understand how fathers experience reproductive and neonatal health services and to understand how fathers can be successfully accommodated in these environments alongside their partners. In this paper we advance a theoretical framework for re-thinking fatherhood and health services approaches to fatherhood based on Critical Studies of Men and Masculinities (CSM). We illustrate the importance of this feminist-informed theoretical approach to understanding the gendered experiences of fathers in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) setting. Using a longitudinal follow-up research design, with two data collection points, a total of 39 in-depth semi-structured interviews was conducted with 21 fathers of infants admitted to NICU between August 2008 and December 2009. The findings demonstrate: (i) ways in which men are forging new gendered identities around the birth of their baby but, over time, acknowledge women as the primary caregivers; (ii) how social class is a key determinant of men’s ability to enact hegemonic forms of ‘involved fatherhood’ in the NICU, and; (iii) how men also encounter resistance from their partners and health professionals in challenging a gender order which associates women with the competent care of infants. An understanding of these gendered experiences operating at both individual and structural levels is critical to leading change for the inclusion of fathers as equal parents in healthcare settings. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA)

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) has probably made the most comprehensive attempt to develop a theory of the inter-connectedness of discourse, power and ideology and is specifically concerned with the role that discourse plays in main-taining and legitimizing inequality in society. While CDA’s general thrust has been towards the analysis of linguistic structures, some critical discourse analysts have begun to focus on multimodal discourses because of the increasingly impor-tant role these play in many social and political contexts. Still, a great deal of CDA analysis has remained largely monomodal. The principal aim of this chapter is therefore to address this situation and demonstrate in what ways CDA can be deployed to analyse the ways that ideological discourses can be communicated, naturalised and legitimated beyond the linguistic level. The chapter also offers a rationale for a multimodal approach based on Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), by which it is directly informed

Shame, intimacy and self-definition: An assessment of the emotional foundation and intimate relationship consequences of an introjective personality orientation.

The current study sought to elaborate and test a theoretical proposition that introjective personality functioning, which has been implicated in various psychological difficulties (e.g., self-critical depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder), has an emotional foundation in the self-conscious emotion of shame and is supported by dissociation. Moreover, introjective functioning was predicted to be associated with reduced interpersonal intimacy. To test the model, a Web-based survey design using path analysis was used. Three hundred and fifteen university students were assessed with measures of self-conscious emotions (i.e., shame, guilt, and embarrassment), introjective (self-definition) and anaclitic (relational) personality style, pathological dissociation, and interpersonal intimacy. Introjective personality was found to be associated with increased shame and reduced interpersonal intimacy. However, the path between pathological dissociation and introjective functioning was not significant. The results are discussed with reference to the moderating influence of introjective functioning between shame and reduced interpersonal intimacy.

Personalising Crime and Crime-fighting in Factual Television:an Analysis of Social Actors and Transitivity in Language and Images

This article addresses the lack of work on media and crime in Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), using an example of a factual television crime report. The existing research in media studies and criminology points to the way that the media misrepresents crime by distorting public understandings and backgrounding structural issues, such as poverty, which are related to crime thereby legitimising a criminal justice system that serves the interests of the powerful in society. Using social actor and transitivity analysis, this article shows how multimodal CDA can make an important contribution as it reveals the more subtle linguistic strategies and visual representations by which this process is accomplished, showing how each plays a part in the recontextualisation of social practice. This programme backgrounds which crimes are committed but foregrounds mental states and the neutrality of policing.

Risk and the Politics of Public Health:A Critical Review

Twentieth century public health initiatives have been crucially informed by perceptions and constructions of risk. Notions of risk identification, assessment and mitigation have guided political and institutional actions even before these concepts became an explicit part of the language of public administration and policy making. Past analyses investigating the link between risk perceptions and public health are relatively rare, and where researchers have investigated this nexus, it has typically been assumed that the collective identification of health risks has led to progressive improvements in public health activities.
Risk and the Politics of Public Health addresses this gap by presenting a detailed critical historical analysis of the evolution of risk thinking within medical and health related discourses. Grouped around the four core themes of 'immigration', 'race', 'armed conflict' and 'detention and prevention' this book highlights the innovative capacity of risk related concepts as well as their vulnerability to the dysfunctional effects of dominant social ideologies. Risk and the Politics of Public Health is an essential reference for those who seek to understand the interplay of concepts of risk and public health throughout history as well as those who wish to gain a critical understanding of the social dynamics which have underpinned, and continue to underpin, this complex interaction.

Exploiting dynamic timing margins in microprocessors for frequency-over-scaling with instruction-based clock adjustment

Static timing analysis provides the basis for setting the clock period of a microprocessor core, based on its worst-case critical path. However, depending on the design, this critical path is not always excited and therefore dynamic timing margins exist that can theoretically be exploited for the benefit of better speed or lower power consumption (through voltage scaling). This paper introduces predictive instruction-based dynamic clock adjustment as a technique to trim dynamic timing margins in pipelined microprocessors. To this end, we exploit the different timing requirements for individual instructions during the dynamically varying program execution flow without the need for complex circuit-level measures to detect and correct timing violations. We provide a design flow to extract the dynamic timing information for the design using post-layout dynamic timing analysis and we integrate the results into a custom cycle-accurate simulator. This simulator allows annotation of individual instructions with their impact on timing (in each pipeline stage) and rapidly derives the overall code execution time for complex benchmarks. The design methodology is illustrated at the microarchitecture level, demonstrating the performance and power gains possible on a 6-stage OpenRISC in-order general purpose processor core in a 28nm CMOS technology. We show that employing instruction-dependent dynamic clock adjustment leads on average to an increase in operating speed by 38% or to a reduction in power consumption by 24%, compared to traditional synchronous clocking, which at all times has to respect the worst-case timing identified through static timing analysis.

Ultrasound in undergraduate medical education: A systematic and critical review

Introduction: Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) use in clinical care is growing rapidly, and advocates have recently proposed the integration of ultrasound into undergraduate medical education (UME). The evidentiary basis for this integration has not been evaluated critically or systematically. In this study, we conducted a critical and systematic review framed by the rationales enumerated by advocates of ultrasound in UME in academic publications.

Methods: This research was conducted in two phases. First, the dominant discursive rationales for the integration of ultrasound in UME were identified using techniques from Foucauldian critical discourse analysis (CDA) from an archive of 403 academic publications. We then sought empirical evidence in support of theses rationales, using a critical synthesis methodology also adapted from CDA.

Results: We identified four dominant discursive rationales, with different levels of evidentiary support. Ultrasound was not demonstrated to improve students’ understanding of anatomy. The benefit of ultrasound in teaching physical examination was inconsistent,and rests on minimal evidence. With POCUS, students’ diagnostic accuracy was improved for certain pathologies, but findings were inconsistent for others. Finally, the rationale that ultrasound training in UME will improve quality of patient care was difficult to evaluate.

Discussion: Our analysis has shown that the frequently repeated rationales for the integration of ultrasound in UME are not supported by a sufficient base of empirical research. The repetition of these dominant discursive rationales in academic publications legitimizes them and may preclude further primary research. Since the value of clinical ultrasound use by medical students remains unproven, educators must consider whether the associated financial and temporal costs are justified or whether more research is required.

Berryman, Sexton and the Possibilities of Poetic Language

This paper examines a select number of poems by Middle Generation poets John Berryman and Anne Sexton in relation to questions of death, silence and the task that literature sets itself as understood in key works by Blanchot, Heidegger, and Levinas. Rather than recourse to the overtrodden critical path of confessional interpretations of their work, this paper connects Berryman’s The Dream Songs (1969) and two Sexton poems (‘Oh’ and ‘The Silence’) to the philosophical determinations of what it is language can say and what demands literature makes of the writer prepared to risk their own being in answer to its call. Central issues such as suicide and the originating silence of the work of art are intricately interwoven with Berryman’s and Sexton’s work. Leaving aside their biographies, and by approaching suicide as a philosophical problem with which their poetry wrestles, a restructured approach to their work becomes available. The impulse to suicide and the mental processes involved in considering and committing the act are instincts and responses located within an individual’s own psychology. For these writers particularly such issues are sited within a philosophical debate about language, what it can and cannot represent. If poetry articulates language’s argument about its own capability, it is the ideal forum for philosophical confrontations with the possibilities of existence as represented by the grave decision to take one’s own life. © The Author 2013.