Beyond El Arrebato: the seven stages of Conocimiento as instruments for radical reflection and the unlearning of white supremacy culture

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheila García Mazari

PurposeTo be actively antiracist requires an internal reckoning, what Chicana activist and scholar Gloria E. Anzaldúa referred to as “el arrebato.” Used to describe the first of seven cycles through which conocimiento, or knowledge, is formed, el arrebato presents a shift in the understanding of the world as it has been prescribed by both patriarchy and white supremacy. This paper will use Anzaldúa's Seven Stages of Conocimiento to trace a Latinx librarian's journey in unlearning white supremacy toward a shift to antiracist practices.Design/methodology/approachThis ethnography follows the author from her time as a Diversity Alliance resident librarian in an R1 library to her current position as a tenure-track librarian in a primarily white institution, outlining how the seven stages have led toward active interrogation of not only library structures but with the legacy of anti-Black and anti-Indigenous discourse within her own Latinx identity.FindingsAs an ongoing reflective practice, this paper presents a journey of learning and unlearning toward critically deconstructing the culture of “niceness” within librarianship, where the principles of neutrality and vocational awe lend to library structures that place responsibility on the individual for institutional trauma rather than rightly examining and reconstructing the environments and structures themselves.Originality/valueThis autoethnography presents the viewpoint of a first-generation Latinx librarian growing up in a tricultural context in the Midwest.

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 447-460
Author(s):  
Nan Hua

Purpose This paper aims to examine the impacts of IT capabilities on hotel competitiveness. Design/methodology/approach This study adapts and extends Hua et al. (2015) and O’Neill et al. (2008) by incorporating the specific measures of IT expenditures as proxies for the relevant IT capabilities to explore the impacts of IT capabilities on hotel competitiveness. Findings This study finds that expenditures on IT Labor, IT Systems and IT Websites exert different impacts on hotel competitiveness. In addition, IT capabilities exert both contemporary and lagged effects on hotel competitiveness. Originality/value This study is the first that uses financial data to capture direct measures of individual IT capabilities and tests the individual impacts of IT capabilities on hotel competitiveness from both contemporaneous and lagged perspectives. It uses a large same store sample of hotels in the USA from 2011 to 2017; as a result, the study results can be reasonably representative of the hotel population in the USA.


2022 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  

Purpose Reflective practice makes an important contribution to the ultimate success of any management development program. Greater emphasis on reflection demands that both program participants and action learning facilitators take appropriate responsibility needed to increase the overall effectiveness of the process. Design/methodology/approach This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context. Findings Reflective practice makes an important contribution to the ultimate success of any management development program. Greater emphasis on reflection demands that both program participants and action learning facilitators take appropriate responsibility needed to increase the overall effectiveness of the process. Originality/value The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Emmanuel Tetteh ◽  
Christopher Boachie

PurposeThis paper attempts to investigate the influence of psychological biases on saving decision-making of bank customers in Ghana.Design/methodology/approachIt employs weighted least squares regression to test the effect of psychological biases on savings decisions of bank customers.FindingsThe findings show that all the nine psychological biases, namely mental accounting, availability, loss aversion, representativeness, anchoring, overconfidence, status quo, framing effect and disposition effect employed for the study have a significant influence on saving decision of bank customers. The results depict that psychological biases are entrenched in the saving pattern of bank customers in Ghana.Practical implicationsFor policy purposes, the study recommends that bank customers need to enhance their knowledge of psychological biases in order to improve their gains from savings, and not to fall prey to these prejudices. The satisfied customer is a dependable source of bank viability and survival.Originality/valueTo the best of the knowledge of the author, this study provides the first empirical evidence of the influence of psychological biases on saving decisions of bank customers in Ghana. The findings of this study will enhance knowledge on the influence of psychological biases on individual decision-making and will accentuate the fact that the individual is not an entirely rational being.


2017 ◽  
Vol 35 (7) ◽  
pp. 892-906
Author(s):  
David A. Gilliam ◽  
Teresa Preston ◽  
John R. Hall

Purpose Narratives are central to consumers’ understanding of brands especially during change. The financial crisis that began in 2008 offered a changing marketplace from which to develop two managerially useful frameworks of consumer narratives. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach Consumer focus groups, interviews with bankers and qualitative consumer surveys were used to gather consumers’ narratives about retail banking. The narratives were examined through frameworks from both the humanities and psychology (narrative identity). Findings The individual consumer narratives were used to create first a possible cultural narrative or bird’s eye view and later archetypal narratives of groups of consumers for a ground-level view of the changing marketplace. Research limitations/implications Like all early research, the findings must be examined in other contexts to improve generalizability. Practical implications The narrative results revealed the impact of change on consumers’ identities, views of other entities and retail banking activity to yield managerially actionable information for segmentation, target marketing, branding and communication. Originality/value Frameworks are developed for consumer narratives which are shown to be useful tools in examining consumers’ reactions to changing markets and in formulating marketing responses.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Amitesh Singh Parihar ◽  
Vinita Sinha

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify the strengths and areas of improvement for taking organizations one step ahead in terms of adopting digitalization, analytics and governance. Also, the paper aims to identify the organizational cultural traits that influence the adoption of digitization and technology, analytics and governance. Design/methodology/approach A quantitative analysis of survey questionnaire collected from working professionals of various manufacturing industries to find out the driving traits and the restraining traits and to propose which is dominating. Sector: manufacturing, sample: working professionals across functions and sample size: 80–100 people. Findings This research suggests the cultural traits that influence the adoption of digitization and technology, analytics and governance in any organization. Practical implications As organizations explore new ways of working, their organizational culture and employee perspective would play an important role in prioritizing the interventions. This research aims to suggest a strategy to strengthen the driving forces and/or weaken the restraining forces. Originality/value There are various papers available on the individual topics but the uniqueness of this paper is that it represents all three factors in a single research and their influencers.


2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-30
Author(s):  
Nataša Rupčić

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to discuss the possibilities of transcending individual, organizational and social problems through the prism of presence as suggested by Senge et al. (2012). Design/methodology/approach The paper is based on the critical review of previous contributions. Findings The idea of a learning organization seems romantic and elusive, as well as difficult to implement, especially when the definition by Senge (1990) is considered. At the same time, organizational and social complexity is increasing and resulting in numerous difficult or wicked problems. To reach integrative and transcending solutions, a change in perception and surrender to presence is key. Research limitations/implications Conclusions provided in the paper could benefit from further practice to corroborate the findings. Practical implications Suggestions for practitioners have been provided on how to solve personal, organizational and social problems on the basis of the paradigm shift and the shift in perception. Originality/value In this paper, the individual, organizational and social dimensions in terms of their intricacies are considered and solutions are offered that could simultaneously solve wicked problems on all three levels.


2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (6) ◽  
pp. 650-668
Author(s):  
Pyounggu Baek ◽  
Jihyun Chang ◽  
Taesung Kim

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the fundamental premises (i.e. perspectives on organizations and intrinsic research contributions) embodied in the literature on organizational culture and offer insights into where organizational culture research should be headed now and going forward. Design/methodology/approach This research provides an integrative review of organizational culture research and investigates commonalities and differences in terms of the fundamental premises between North America and Europe. Findings The findings include that the modern perspective was most pervasive (87 percent) in both regions, with Europe slightly more open to varied perspectives such as symbolic and postmodern ones; approximately 70 percent of the studies were geared toward organization-level contributions, less than 10 percent toward individual-level contributions, and less than 20 percent toward mega-level contributions as the underlying research intent; and (c) in terms of the perspective-contribution combination, the pair of modern perspective and organization-level contribution was most dominant in both regions, while the individual-level contribution was paired with no other perspectives than the modern one. Research limitations/implications This research suggests that the research community shape a whole new discourse on organizational culture and recommends several promising research avenues. Originality/value By engaging in fundamental discussions on how an organization has been perceived and what purpose it has meant to deliver, this research offers an overarching view of where we stand currently and possibly where we should be heading in terms of organizational change management.


2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (3/4) ◽  
pp. 142-145
Author(s):  
Mario Coffa

Purpose Based on a comparison with different realities, analysis of the situation of libraries in line with International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) policies and directives. Design/methodology/approach The method used for the following paper is that of a remote interview. Findings The expected results will emerge from the debate that can be raised from this paper. Research limitations/implications The IFLA guidelines have international value but are implemented according to the context of the individual country, not always in a uniform manner. Originality/value The interview reveals the formality of the contents through the informality of the method.


2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (10) ◽  
pp. 2025-2053
Author(s):  
Markus Wohlfeil ◽  
Anthony Patterson ◽  
Stephen J. Gould

Purpose This paper aims to explain a celebrity’s deep resonance with consumers by unpacking the individual constituents of a celebrity’s polysemic appeal. While celebrities are traditionally theorised as unidimensional semiotic receptacles of cultural meaning, the authors conceptualise them here instead as human beings/performers with a multi-constitutional, polysemic consumer appeal. Design/methodology/approach Supporting evidence is drawn from autoethnographic data collected over a total period of 25 months and structured through a hermeneutic analysis. Findings In rehumanising the celebrity, the study finds that each celebrity offers the individual consumer a unique and very personal parasocial appeal as the performer, the private person behind the public performer, the tangible manifestation of either through products and the social link to other consumers. The stronger these constituents, individually or symbiotically, appeal to the consumer’s personal desires, the more s/he feels emotionally attached to this particular celebrity. Research limitations/implications Although using autoethnography means that the breadth of collected data is limited, the depth of insight this approach garners sufficiently unpacks the polysemic appeal of celebrities to consumers. Practical implications The findings encourage talent agents, publicists and marketing managers to reconsider underlying assumptions in their talent management and/or celebrity endorsement practices. Originality/value While prior research on celebrity appeal has tended to enshrine celebrities in a “dehumanised” structuralist semiosis, which erases the very idea of individualised consumer meanings, this paper reveals the multi-constitutional polysemy of any particular celebrity’s personal appeal as a performer and human being to any particular consumer.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 122-137
Author(s):  
Samantha Balemba ◽  
Eric Beauregard

PurposeVictim resistance has been shown to have an important impact on the outcome of sexual assaults. Thus, the factors that affect a victim’s likelihood of various levels of resistance are relevant to consider, given the possibly detrimental effect these actions can have on crime outcome. While not intended to blame the victim in any way, it is important to examine the role the victim plays within a sexually coercive interchange in order to completely understand the sex crime event and, thus, be able to inform potential victims as to the patterns that increase resistance and, potentially, overall violence. The paper aims to discuss this issue.Design/methodology/approachSequential logistic regression analyses were conducted on a sample of 613 sex offenses (incorporating both adult and child victims) to examine the individual and combined effects of offender lifestyle, disinhibitors, victim vulnerability, situational impediments and offender modus operandi on victim resistance levels.FindingsResults suggest that indicators of offender mindset are significant, particularly the use of pornography prior to the crime, and affect victim interpretation and response to the offender’s actions during the course of the assault. Other relevant factors include the victim’s age and the degree of violence present in the offender’s approach and subsequent offending strategies.Originality/valueThis information would be helpful to incorporate into victim education programs so that past and future potential victims can better understand the criminal event and the causes and effects of their own actions within that event.


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