‘In the air’ and below the horizon: migrant workers in UK construction and the practice-based nature of learning and communicating OHS

Local, tacit and normally unspoken OHS (occupational health and safety) knowledge and practices can too easily be excluded from or remain below the industry horizon of notice, meaning that they remain unaccounted for in formal OHS policy and practice. In this article we stress the need to more systematically and routinely tap into these otherwise ‘hidden’ communication channels, which are central to how everyday safe working practices are achieved. To demonstrate this approach this paper will draw on our ethnographic research with a gang of migrant curtain wall installers on a large office development project in the north of England. In doing so we reflect on the practice-based nature of learning and sharing OHS knowledge through examples of how workers’ own patterns of successful communication help avoid health and safety problems. These understandings, we argue, can be advanced as a basis for the development of improved OHS measures, and of organizational knowing and learning.

Ethnographic methodologies for construction research: knowing, practice and interventions

Ethnographic methodologies developed in social anthropology and sociology hold considerable promise for addressing practical, problem-based research concerned with the construction site. The extended researcher-engagement characteristic of ethnography reveals rich insights, yet is infrequently used to understand how workplace realities are lived out on construction sites. Moreover, studies that do employ these methods are rarely reported within construction research journals. This paper argues that recent innovations in ethnographic methodologies offer new routes to: posing questions; understanding workplace socialities (i.e. the qualities of the social relationships that develop on construction sites); learning about forms, uses and communication of knowledge on construction sites; and turning these into meaningful recommendations. This argument is supported by examples from an interdisciplinary ethnography concerning migrant workers and communications on UK construction sites. The presented research seeks to understand how construction workers communicate with managers and each other and how they stay safe on site, with the objective of informing site health-and-safety strategies and the production and evaluation of training and other materials.

Protocol for the PINCER trial: a cluster randomised trial comparing the effectiveness of a pharmacist-led IT-based intervention with simple feedback in reducing rates of clinically important errors in medicines management in general practices

Background: Medication errors are an important cause of morbidity and mortality in primary care. The aims of this study are to determine the effectiveness, cost effectiveness and acceptability of a pharmacist-led information-technology-based complex intervention compared with simple feedback in reducing proportions of patients at risk from potentially hazardous prescribing and medicines management in general (family) practice. Methods: Research subject group: "At-risk" patients registered with computerised general practices in two geographical regions in England. Design: Parallel group pragmatic cluster randomised trial. Interventions: Practices will be randomised to either: (i) Computer-generated feedback; or (ii) Pharmacist-led intervention comprising of computer-generated feedback, educational outreach and dedicated support. Primary outcome measures: The proportion of patients in each practice at six and 12 months post intervention: - with a computer-recorded history of peptic ulcer being prescribed non-selective non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs - with a computer-recorded diagnosis of asthma being prescribed beta-blockers - aged 75 years and older receiving long-term prescriptions for angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors or loop diuretics without a recorded assessment of renal function and electrolytes in the preceding 15 months. Secondary outcome measures; These relate to a number of other examples of potentially hazardous prescribing and medicines management. Economic analysis: An economic evaluation will be done of the cost per error avoided, from the perspective of the UK National Health Service (NHS), comparing the pharmacist-led intervention with simple feedback. Qualitative analysis: A qualitative study will be conducted to explore the views and experiences of health care professionals and NHS managers concerning the interventions, and investigate possible reasons why the interventions prove effective, or conversely prove ineffective. Sample size: 34 practices in each of the two treatment arms would provide at least 80% power (two-tailed alpha of 0.05) to demonstrate a 50% reduction in error rates for each of the three primary outcome measures in the pharmacist-led intervention arm compared with a 11% reduction in the simple feedback arm. Discussion: At the time of submission of this article, 72 general practices have been recruited (36 in each arm of the trial) and the interventions have been delivered. Analysis has not yet been undertaken.

Coordination and control in project-based work: digital objects and infrastructures for delivery

A major infrastructure project is used to investigate the role of digital objects in the coordination of engineering design work. From a practice-based perspective, research emphasizes objects as important in enabling cooperative knowledge work and knowledge sharing. The term ‘boundary object’ has become used in the analysis of mutual and reciprocal knowledge sharing around physical and digital objects. The aim is to extend this work by analysing the introduction of an extranet into the public–private partnership project used to construct a new motorway. Multiple categories of digital objects are mobilized in coordination across heterogeneous, cross-organizational groups. The main findings are that digital objects provide mechanisms for accountability and control, as well as for mutual and reciprocal knowledge sharing; and that different types of objects are nested, forming a digital infrastructure for project delivery. Reconceptualizing boundary objects as a digital infrastructure for delivery has practical implications for management practices on large projects and for the use of digital tools, such as building information models, in construction. It provides a starting point for future research into the changing nature of digitally enabled coordination in project-based work.

Land re-use, complexity and actor-networks: a framework for research

This paper will present a conceptual framework for the examination of land redevelopment based on a complex systems/networks approach. As Alvin Toffler insightfully noted, modern scientific enquiry has become exceptionally good at splitting problems into pieces but has forgotten how to put the pieces back together. Twenty-five years after his remarks, governments and corporations faced with the requirements of sustainability are struggling to promote an ‘integrated’ or ‘holistic’ approach to tackling problems. Despite the talk, both practice and research provide few platforms that allow for ‘joined up’ thinking and action. With socio-economic phenomena, such as land redevelopment, promising prospects open up when we assume that their constituents can make up complex systems whose emergent properties are more than the sum of the parts and whose behaviour is inherently difficult to predict. A review of previous research shows that it has mainly focused on idealised, ‘mechanical’ views of property development processes that fail to recognise in full the relationships between actors, the structures created and their emergent qualities. When reality failed to live up to the expectations of these theoretical constructs then somebody had to be blamed for it: planners, developers, politicians. However, from a ‘synthetic’ point of view the agents and networks involved in property development can be seen as constituents of structures that perform complex processes. These structures interact, forming new more complex structures and networks. Redevelopment then can be conceptualised as a process of transformation: a complex system, a ‘dissipative’ structure involving developers, planners, landowners, state agencies etc., unlocks the potential of previously used sites, transforms space towards a higher order of complexity and ‘consumes’ but also ‘creates’ different forms of capital in the process. Analysis of network relations point toward the ‘dualism’ of structure and agency in these processes of system transformation and change. Insights from actor network theory can be conjoined with notions of complexity and chaos to build an understanding of the ways in which actors actively seek to shape these structures and systems, whilst at the same time are recursively shaped by them in their strategies and actions. This approach transcends the blame game and allows for inter-disciplinary inputs to be placed within a broader explanatory framework that does away with many past dichotomies. Better understanding of the interactions between actors and the emergent qualities of the networks they form can improve our comprehension of the complex socio-spatial phenomena that redevelopment comprises. The insights that this framework provides when applied in UK institutional investment into redevelopment are considered to be significant.

Performance as social practice

Starting point for these outputs is a large scale research project in collaboration with the Zurich University for the Arts and the Kunstmuseum Thun, looking at a redefinition of Social Sculpture (Joseph Beuys/ Bazon Brock, 1970) as a functional device re-deployed to expand the art discourse into a societal discourse. Although Beuys‘ version of a social sculpture involved notions of abstruse mysticism and reformulations of a national identity these were never-the less part of a social transformation that shifted and re-arranged power relations. Following Laclau and Mouffe in their contention that democray is a fundamentally antagonistic process and contesting Grant Kester’s understanding of a ethically based relational practice, this work is alignes itself with Hirschhorn’s claim to an aesthetic practice within communities, following the possibility to view a socially based practice from both ends of the ethics debate, whereby ethical aspects fuels the aethetic to “create situations that are beautiful because they are ethical and shocking because they are ethical, thus in turn aesthetic because they are ethical” (O’Donnell). This project sets out to engage in activities which interact with surrounding communities and evoce new imaginations of site, thereby understanding site as a catalysts for subjective emergences. Performance is tested as a site for social practice. Archival research into local audio/visual resources, such as the Swiss Radio Archive, the Swiss Military Film Archives and zoological film archives of the Basel Zoo, was instrumental to the navigation of this work, under theme of crisis, catastrophy, landscape, fallout, in order to create a visual language for an active performance site. Commissioned by the Kunstmuseum Thun in collaboration with the University for the Arts in Zurich as part of a year long exhibition programme, (other artists are Jeanne Van Heeswijk (NL) and San Keller (CH), ) this project brings together a series of different works in a new performace installation. The performance process includes a performance workshop with 30 school children from local Swiss schools and their teachers, which was conducted publicly in the museum spaces. It enabled the children to engage with an unexpected set of tribal and animalistic behaviours, looking at situations of flight and rescue, resulting in a large performance choreography orchestration without an apparent conductor, it includes a collaboration with renowned Swiss zoologist, Prof Klaus Zuberbühler(University of St Andrews) and the Colonal General Haldimann commander of the military base in Thun. The installation included 2 static video images, shot in an around spectacular local cave site (Beatus Caves) including 3 children. The project will culminate in an edited edition of the Oncurating Journal, (issue no, tbc, in 2012) including interviews and essays from project collaborators. (Army Commander General, Thun, Jörg Hess, performance script, Timothy Long, and others)

Embodying and destabilising disability and childhood

Young people's bodies have been at the centre of much policy and media discourse of late, forming the focal point of moral panics about obesity, substance abuse, and anti-social behaviour, to name just a few. Political responses to these issues are often focused on finding 'pragmatic' solutions based on a normative understanding of child development. This book, instead, demonstrates the contested and differentiated nature of childhood and youth embodiment. It combines the critical analysis of imagined and disciplined youthful bodies with a focus on young people's lived and performed, embodied subjectivities. Contested Bodies of Childhood and Youth points towards ways of addressing the issues that affect young people's wellbeing without criminalising and stigmatising them. It presents cutting edge interdisciplinary research in an accessible style that seeks to bridge the divide between theory and practice in research.

A decade of research and development in disability, virtual reality and associated technologies: review of ICDVRAT 1996−2006

The International Conference (series) on Disability, Virtual Reality and Associated Technologies (ICDVRAT) this year held its sixth biennial conference, celebrating ten years of research and development in this field. A total of 220 papers have been presented at the first six conferences, addressing potential, development, exploration and examination of how these technologies can be applied in disabilities research and practice. The research community is broad and multi-disciplined, comprising a variety of scientific and medical researchers, rehabilitation therapists, educators and practitioners. Likewise, technologies, their applications and target user populations are also broad, ranging from sensors positioned on real world objects to fully immersive interactive simulated environments. A common factor is the desire to identify what the technologies have to offer and how they can provide added value to existing methods of assessment, rehabilitation and support for individuals with disabilities. This paper presents a brief review of the first decade of research and development in the ICDVRAT community, defining technologies, applications and target user populations served.

Emerging hybrid practices in construction design work: role of mixed media

Information technologies are used across all stages of the construction process, and are crucial in the delivery of large projects. Drawing on detailed research on a construction megaproject, we take a practice-based approach to examining the practical and theoretical tensions between existing ways of working and the introduction of new coordination tools in this paper. We analyze the new hybrid practices that emerge, using insights from actor-network theory to articulate the delegation of actions to material and digital objects within ecologies of practice. The three vignettes that we discuss highlight this delegation of actions, the “plugging” and “patching” of ecologies occurring across media and the continual iterations of working practices between different types of media. By shifting the focus from tools to these wider ecologies of practice, the approach has important managerial mplications for the stabilization of new technologies and practices and for managing technological change on large construction projects. We conclude with a discussion of new directions for research, oriented to further elaborating on the importance of the material in understanding change.

Untitled (Abstraction of labour time eternal recurrence monad)

An AHRC funded project titled: Picturing ideas? Visualising and Synthesising Ideas as art (2009-10). Outputs including: 4 exhibitions; 4 publications; 3 papers; 2 largescale backlit digital prints; 1 commissioned print. (See Additional Information) ----ABSTRACT: Utilising the virtuality of digital imagery this practice-led project explored the possibility of the cross-articulation between text and image and the bridging or synthesising potential of the visual affect of ideas. A series of digital images were produced 'picturing' or 'visualising' philosophical ideas derived from the writings of the philosopher Giles Deleuze, as remodellings of pre-existing philosophical ideas; developed through dialogues and consultation with specialists in the fields from which the ideas were drawn (philosophy, psychology, film) as well as artists and theorists concerned with ideas of 'mental imagery' and visualisation. Final images were produced as a synthesis (or combination) of these visualisations and presented in the format of large scale, backlit digital prints at a series of prestigious international exhibitions (see details above). Evaluation took the form of a four page illustrated text in Frieze magazine (August 2009) and three papers delivered at University of Ulster, Goldsmiths College of Art and Loughborough University. The project also included the publication of a catalogue essay (EAST 09) and an illustrated poem (in the Dark Monarch publication). A print version of the image was commissioned by Invisible Exports Gallery, New York and subsequently exhibited in The Devos Art Museum, School of Art & Design at Northern Michigan University and in a publication edited by Cedar Lewisohn for Tate Publishing. The project was funded by an AHRC practice-led grant (17K) and Arts Council of England award (1.5K). The outputs, including high profile, publicly accessible exhibitions, prestigious publications and conference papers ensured the dissemination of the research to a wide range of audiences, including scholars/researchers across the arts and humanities engaged in practice-based and interdisciplinary theoretical work (in particular in the fields of contemporary art and art theory and those working on the integration of art and theory/philosophy/psychology) but also the wider audience for contemporary art.

Ballet-performing normality in the face of crisis

This paper contextualises the framework and methodology for producing the video performance Ballet, by Szuper Gallery (Susanne Clausen & Pavlo Kerestey), which was initiated through an encounter with an archive of rural information and propaganda films from the Museum of English Rural Life [MERL] in Reading, UK. This project looked at ways of extrapolating filmed gestures from the MERL films to choreograph a large-scale performance film and to consider how this practice-led research could instigate a new way of engaging with and interpreting the MERL film collection. The resulting video was produced in 2009 and was first exhibited at MERL, where it became part of the archive. This was followed by a series of international screenings. I will set out the surrounding research in and around the archive propaganda films, focusing on the performances by rural extras (background actors) in these films, while looking at the way one could understand the relation between a future-past, or tradition and accident in these films (Massumi, 1993). I will pair this with a reflection on the cultural reading of the extras (Didi-Huberman, 2009) and the notion of social choreography (Hewitt, 2005) in this context. I will then lay out reflections on artistic methods for the final performance, a Crash Choreography, based on calculated, but spontaneous encounters.

The regional and global competitiveness of multinational firms

International competitiveness ultimately depends upon the linkages between a firm’s unique, idiosyncratic capabilities (firm-specific advantages, FSAs) and its home country assets (country-specific advantages, CSAs). In this paper, we present a modified FSA/CSA matrix building upon the FSA/CSA matrix (Rugman 1981). We relate this to the diamond framework for national competitiveness (Porter 1990), and the double diamond model (Rugman and D’Cruz 1993). We provide empirical evidence to demonstrate the merits and usefulness of the modified FSA/CSA matrix using the Fortune Global 500 firms. We examine the FSAs based on the geographic scope of sales and CSAs that can lead to national, home region, and global competitiveness. Our empirical analysis suggests that the world’s largest 500 firms have increased their firm-level international competitiveness. However, much of this is still being achieved within their home region. In other words, international competitiveness is a regional not a global phenomenon. Our findings have significant implications for research and practice. Future research in international marketing should take into account the multi-faceted nature of FSAs and CSAs across different levels. For MNE managers, our study provides useful insights for strategic marketing planning and implementation.

Surviving Objects

Surviving Objects (2012) is a devised multi-media practice-as-research performance based on extensive interviews conducted with my elderly mother and recorded on a hand-held device. Our conversations concern her experiences as a child refugee following violent deportation by the Soviet Army from Eastern Poland to Siberia (1941), and her subsequent route, via Persia, to a British-run refugee camp in Northern Rhodesia, where she remained for 6 years before arriving in the UK. In order to aid my mother’s reflections, our recorded conversations focus on the objects remaining from that period in her life – my ‘inheritance’. The material presence of this handful of objects is central to the ninety-minute performance. Surviving Objects constitutes my attempt to locate a theatrical form through which to root/re-route this engagement with my mother’s marginalised voice. The end-on performance haptically navigates themes of intimacy and failing memory – navigates, indeed, my constantly shifting relationship with my mother. It searches for new cross-medial pathways along which her experience, and my experience of her, can play-out. Surviving Objects involves: 1. live performance (two silent female actors handling/presenting my mother’s objects); 2. Film (two synchronously-playing, large-scale projections exploring the objects by means of a highly-magnifying macro lens); 3. Pre-recorded sound (my mother’s voice, taken from our recorded interviews, which were conducted in Polish, with my own verbal contribution meticulously editorially excised from those conversations); 4. My translation of her stories (appearing periodically as written text that ‘overlays’ - rather than sub- or surtitles - the projected imagery).

Income differentials and corporate performance

Purpose – This paper seeks to make the case for new research into the perceived fairness and impact of executive pay. Design/methodology/approach – The paper reviews the literature regarding executive compensation and corporate performance and examines the evidence that a more egalitarian approach to pay could be justified in terms of long-term shareholder value. Findings – There would appear to be no evidence to suggest that the growing gap between the pay of executives and that of the average employee generates long-term enterprise value, and it may even be detrimental to firms, if not the liberal capitalist consensus on which the corporate licence to operate is based. Research limitations/implications – The paper outlines a new approach to tracking income differentials with corporate performance through the development of a corporate Gini coefficient “league table”. Social implications – The proposed research is expected to point towards better practice in executive remuneration, and support the growing momentum for a sustainable and enlightened approach to business, in which the key goal is long-term enterprise value based on a fair distribution of the rewards of business. Originality/value – In producing a deeper understanding of the impact of widening income differentials, the paper should be of interest to senior executives in publicly quoted companies as well as press commentators, government officials and academics.