Can accreditation help a leopard change its spots? Social accountability and stakeholder engagement in business schools

Purpose: Neo-institutional theory suggests that organisations change occurs when institutional contradictions, caused by exogenous and endogenous dynamics, increase over time to the point where change can no longer be resisted. Human praxis will result, but only when sufficiently powerful interests are motivated to act. This paper aims to examine the role that the accreditation of business schools can play in increasing institutional contradictions and hence fostering organisational change towards stakeholder engagement and engagement with social responsibility and sustainability issues. Numerous accreditations are promulgated within the higher education and business school contexts and a number of these relate to, or have aspects that relate to, ethics, social responsibility and sustainability. Design/methodology/approach: The paper first analyses the take up of accreditations across UK business schools and then uses a case study to illustrate and explore stakeholder engagement and changes related to ethics, social responsibility and sustainability linked to accreditation processes. Findings: Accreditations are found to be an increasingly common interest for UK business schools. Further, a number of these accreditations have evolved to incorporate issues related to ethics, social responsibility and sustainability that may cause institutional contradictions and may, therefore, have the potential to foster organisational change. Accreditation alone, however, is not sufficient and the authors find that sufficiently powerful interests need to be motivated to act and enable human praxis to affect change. Research limitations/implications: This paper draws on previous research that considers the role of accreditation in fostering change that has also been carried out in healthcare organisations, public and professional bodies. Its findings stem from an individual case study and as such further research is required to explore whether these findings can be extended and apply more generally in business schools and universities in different contexts. Practical implications: This paper concludes by recommending that the newly established UK & Ireland Chapter of PRME encourages and supports signatory schools to further embed ethics, social responsibility and sustainability into all aspects of university life in the UK. This also provides an opportunity to engage with the accrediting bodies in order to further support the inclusion of stakeholder engagement and issues related to this agenda in their processes. Originality/value: This paper contributes by introducing accreditation as an institutional pressure that may lead indirectly to organisational change and supports this with new evidence from an illustrative case study. Further, it draws on the role of institutional contradictions and human praxis that engender organisational change. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Consumer engagement with self-expressive brands:brand love and WOM outcomes

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore attitudes of consumers who engage with brands through Facebook "likes". It explores the extent to which these brands are self-expressive and examines the relationship between brand "liking" and brand outcomes. Brand outcomes include brand love and advocacy, where advocacy incorporates WOM and brand acceptance. Design/methodology/approach: Findings are presented from a survey of Facebook users who engage with a brand by "liking" it. Findings: Brands "liked" are expressive of the inner or social self. The study identifies a positive relationship between the self-expressive nature of brands "liked" and brand love. Consumers who engage with inner self-expressive brands are more likely to offer WOM for that brand. By contrast, consumers who engage with socially self-expressive brands are more likely to accept wrongdoing from a brand. Research limitations/implications: The research is exploratory and is limited to consumers who are engaged with a brand through "liking" it on the Facebook social network. Practical implications: The study offers suggestions for managers seeking to enhance brand engagement through Facebook "liking", and to encourage positive brand outcomes (such as WOM) among consumers already engaged with a brand on Facebook. Originality/value: This paper provides new insights into consumer brand engagement evidenced through Facebook "liking". It charts the relationship between "liked" self-expressive brands and brand love. Distinctions are drawn between brand outcomes among consumers who "like" for socially self-expressive reasons, and consumers who are brand engaged by "liking" to express their inner selves. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Collaborative design of assessment criteria to improve undergraduate student engagement and performance

Student engagement is vital in enhancing the student experience and encouraging deeper learning. Involving students in the design of assessment criteria is one way in which to increase student engagement. In 2011, a marking matrix was used at Aston University (UK) for logbook assessment (Group One) in a project-based learning module. The next cohort of students in 2012 (Group Two) were asked to collaboratively redesign the matrix and were given a questionnaire about the exercise. Group Two initially scored a lower average logbook mark than Group One. However, Group Two showed the greatest improvement between assessments, and the quality of, and commitment to, logbooks was noticeably improved. Student input resulted in a more defined, tougher mark scheme. However, this provided an improved feedback system that gave more scope for self-improvement. The majority of students found the exercise incorporated their ideas, enhanced their understanding, and was useful in itself.

Medicines optimisation for young people with juvenile arthritis and other long-term conditions:system-level barriers to engagement

To explore the views of pharmacy and rheumatology stakeholders about system-related barriers to medicines optimisation activities with young people with long-term conditions. A three-phase consensus-building study comprising (1) focus groups with community and hospital pharmacists; (2) semi-structured telephone interviews with lay and professional adolescent rheumatology stakeholders and pharmacy policymakers, and (3) multidisciplinary discussion groups with community and hospital pharmacists and rheumatology staff. Qualitative verbatim transcripts from phases 1 and 2 were subjected to framework analysis. Themes from phase 1 underpinned a briefing for phase 2 interviewees. Themes from phases 1 and 2 generated elements of good pharmacy practice and current/future pharmacy roles for ranking in phase 3. Results from phase 3 prioritisation and ranking exercises were captured on self-completion data collection forms, entered into an Excel spreadsheet and subjected to descriptive statistical analysis. Institutional ethical approval was given by Aston University Health and Life Sciences Research Ethics Committee. Four focus groups were conducted with 18 pharmacists across England, Scotland and Wales (7 hospital, 10 community and 1 community/public health). Fifteen stakeholders took part in telephone interviews (3 pharmacist commissioners; 2 pharmacist policymakers; 2 pharmacy staff members (1 community and 1 hospital); 4 rheumatologists; 1 specialist nurse, and 3 lay juvenile arthritis advocates). Twenty-five participants took part in three discussion groups in adolescent rheumatology centres across England and Scotland (9 community pharmacists; 4 hospital pharmacists; 6 rheumatologists; 5 specialist nurses, and 1 physiotherapist). In all phases of the study, system-level issues were acknowledged as barriers to more engagement with young people and families. Community pharmacists in the focus groups reported that opportunities for engaging with young people were low if parents collected prescriptions alone, which was agreed by other stakeholders. Moreover, institutional/company prescription collection policies – an activity largely disallowed for a young person under 16 without an accompanying parent - were identified by hospital and community pharmacists as barriers to open discussion and engagement. Few community pharmacists reported using Medicines Use Review (England/Wales) or Chronic Medication Service (Scotland) as a medicines optimisation activity with young people; many were unsure about consent procedures. Despite these limitations, rheumatology stakeholders ranked highly the potential of pharmacists empowering young people with general health care skills, such as repeat prescription ordering. The pharmacy profession lacks vision for its role in the care of young people with long-term conditions. Pharmacists and rheumatology stakeholders identified system-level barriers to more engagement with young people who take medicines regularly. We acknowledge that the modest number of participants may have had a specific interest and thus bias for the topic, but this underscores their frank admission of the challenges. Professional guidance and policy, practice frameworks and institutional/company policies must promote flexibility for pharmacy staff to recognise and empower young people who are able to give consent and take responsibility for medicines activities. This will increase mutual confidence and trust, and foster pharmacy’s role in teaching general health care skills. In this way, pharmacists will be able to build long-term relationships with young people and families.

Supporting learners’ agentic engagement with feedback:a systematic review and a taxonomy of recipience processes

Much has been written in the educational psychology literature about effective feedback and how to deliver it. However, it is equally important to understand how learners actively receive, engage with, and implement feedback. This article reports a systematic review of the research evidence pertaining to this issue. Through an analysis of 195 outputs published between 1985 and early 2014, we identified various factors that have been proposed to influence the likelihood of feedback being used. Furthermore, we identified diverse interventions with the common aim of supporting and promoting learners' agentic engagement with feedback processes. We outline the various components used in these interventions, and the reports of their successes and limitations. Moreover we propose a novel taxonomy of four recipience processes targeted by these interventions. This review and taxonomy provide a theoretical basis for conceptualizing learners' responsibility within feedback dialogues and for guiding the strategic design and evaluation of interventions. Receiving feedback on one's skills and understanding is an invaluable part of the learning process, benefiting learners far more than does simply receiving praise or punishment (Black & Wiliam, 1998 Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998). Assessment and classroom learning. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 5, 7–74. doi:10.1080/0969595980050102[Taylor & Francis Online]; Hattie & Timperley, 2007 Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77, 81–112. doi:10.3102/003465430298487[CrossRef], [Web of Science ®]). Inevitably, the benefits of receiving feedback are not uniform across all circumstances, and so it is imperative to understand how these gains can be maximized. There is increasing consensus that a critical determinant of feedback effectiveness is the quality of learners' engagement with, and use of, the feedback they receive. However, studies investigating this engagement are underrepresented in academic research (Bounds et al., 2013 Bounds, R., Bush, C., Aghera, A., Rodriguez, N., Stansfield, R. B., & Santeen, S. A. (2013). Emergency medicine residents' self-assessments play a critical role when receiving feedback. Academic Emergency Medicine, 20, 1055–1061. doi:10.1111/acem.12231[CrossRef], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®]), which leaves a “blind spot” in our understanding (Burke, 2009 Burke, D. (2009). Strategies for using feedback students bring to higher education. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 34, 41–50. doi:10.1080/02602930801895711[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®]). With this blind spot in mind, the present work sets out to systematically map the research literature concerning learners' proactive recipience of feedback. We use the term “proactive recipience” here to connote a state or activity of engaging actively with feedback processes, thus emphasizing the fundamental contribution and responsibility of the learner (Winstone, Nash, Rowntree, & Parker, in press Winstone, N. E., Nash, R. A., Rowntree, J., & Parker, M. (in press). ‘It'd be useful, but I wouldn't use it’: Barriers to university students' feedback seeking and recipience. Studies in Higher Education. doi: 10.1080/03075079.2015.1130032[Taylor & Francis Online]). In other words, just as Reeve and Tseng (2011 Reeve, J., & Tseng, M. (2011). Agency as a fourth aspect of student engagement during learning activities. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 36, 257–267. doi:10.1016/j.cedpsych.2011.05.002[CrossRef], [Web of Science ®]) defined “agentic engagement” as a “student's constructive contribution into the flow of the instruction they receive” (p. 258), likewise proactive recipience is a form of agentic engagement that involves the learner sharing responsibility for making feedback processes effective.

Knowledge acquisition and research evidence in autism:researcher and practitioner perspectives and engagement

Background: Government policy and national practice guidelines have created an increasing need for autism services to adopt an evidence-based practice approach. However, a gap continues to exist between research evidence and its application. This study investigated the difference between autism researchers and practitioners in their methods of acquiring knowledge. Methods: In a questionnaire study, 261 practitioners and 422 researchers reported on the methods they use and perceive to be beneficial for increasing research access and knowledge. They also reported on their level of engagement with members of the other professional community. Results: Researchers and practitioners reported different methods used to access information. Each group, however, had similar overall priorities regarding access to research information. While researchers endorsed the use of academic journals significantly more often than practitioners, both groups included academic journals in their top three choices. The groups differed in the levels of engagement they reported; researchers indicated they were more engaged with practitioners than vice versa. Conclusions: Comparison of researcher and practitioner preferences led to several recommendations to improve knowledge sharing and translation, including enhancing access to original research publications, facilitating informal networking opportunities and the development of proposals for the inclusion of practitioners throughout the research process.

Spirituality and business: An interdisciplinary overview

The paper gives an interdisciplinary overview of the emerging field of spirituality and business. It uses insights from business ethics, theology, neuroscience, psychology, gender studies, and philosophy to economics, management, organizational science, and banking and refers to different religious convictions including Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, the Baha'i faith, and the North-American aboriginal worldview. The authors argue that the materialistic management paradigm has failed. They explore new values for post-materialistic management: frugality, deep ecology, trust, reciprocity, responsibility for future generations, and authenticity. Within this framework profit and growth are no longer ultimate aims but elements in a wider set of values. Similarly, cost-benefit calculations are no longer the essence of management but are part of a broader concept of wisdom in leadership. Spirit-driven businesses require intrinsic motivation for serving the common good and using holistic evaluation schemes for measuring success. The Palgrave Handbook of Business and Spirituality, edited by the authors, is a response to developments that simultaneously challenge the “business as usual” mindset.

Unravelling the evolution of autumn colours: an interdisciplinary approach.

Leaf colour change is commonly observed in temperate deciduous forests in autumn. This is not simply a side effect of leaf senescence, and, in the past decade, several hypotheses have emerged to explain the evolution of autumn colours. Yet a lack of crosstalk between plant physiologists and evolutionary ecologists has resulted in slow progress, and so the adaptive value of this colour change remains a mystery. Here we provide an interdisciplinary summary of the current body of knowledge on autumn colours, and discuss unresolved issues and future avenues of research that might help reveal the evolutionary meaning of this spectacle of nature.

Schumann's Opus 39 "Liederkreis": The story of an engagement

The objective of this thesis is twofold: (1) to confirm Robert Schumann's selection of the twelve poems by Josef von Eichendorff for Schumann's own purposes in the song cycle entitled Eichendorff Liederkreis opus 39; and (2) to establish a theme or story line in the final order of the poems. ^ The methodology employed first a research into the biography of Josef von Eichendorff, including an understanding of his use of poetic images that represented Catholicism and nostalgia for his privileged childhood, and a contrast with Robert Schumann's biography and his very different motivations during his song year (Liederjahr) of 1840: love and his traumatic 1835–1840 engagement to Clara Wieck. The songs were then analyzed as a collection and as pairs, both musically and with regard to textual meaning. Finally, the events of the Schumann/Wieck engagement were weighed against the twelve song texts. ^ The results of the findings confirm the likely existence of a theme for the Liederkreis, which is Robert Schumann's 4-1/2 year engagement to Clara Wieck. ^