Abbreviated Case Studies Research Articles

Three Scientist Practitioners: Self-Reflecting and Narrating Professional Careers and Daily Activities

In this paper, we present three narratives disclosing our experiences as scientist practitioners. Each author reflected on their career trajectories, and the natural interdependence of science and practice, and provided an illustration capturing the main features of their dual role. These three illustrations included collaboration with an integrated (practice and research) team, a deepened self-reflection, and an abbreviated case study with an elite athlete. Consistent with the limited literature on the scientist practitioners model, we share universal career trajectories as academicians who are intensely engaged in sport psychology practice (e.g., practice benefits from science, and vice versa). Some specific elaborations on the interrelated roles and tasks are the benefits of a journal reviewer’s role and the parallel functions of ecological validity (in research) and immersion (in practice) as bridging and balancing the scientist practitioner and scientist practitioner shift in daily activities, professional roles, and career phases. We offer practical considerations regarding the value of asking problem-solving-oriented questions, creating one’s own principles to navigate the dual role, and reminding ourselves about the interdependence of theory and practice.

Setting Down the Skewer: Japan’s Brazilian Food Businesses During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract Drawing from fieldwork conducted from September 2020 to August 2021, this qualitative, interview-based research note explores how Japan’s Brazilian food industry was uniquely affected by the COVID pandemic and the Japanese government’s counter-virus measures. Most Brazilian food establishments in Japan are churrascaria, which include a buffet-style setting and waiters who carve skewered grilled meat directly at patrons’ tables. Given the active discouragement of in-person dining generally and buffet-style specifically by the Japanese government, Brazilian churrascaria had to adjust their operations and menus to meet new dining norms. Moreover, many workers in the Brazilian food industry are immigrants working part time, whose vulnerability was compounded by limited Japanese proficiency and lower socioeconomic statuses. Data derived from interviews with 20 individuals working in Japan’s Brazilian food industry, including owners, chefs, servers, and suppliers, show specifically how this more ‘niche’ industry and its workers were uniquely affected by the pandemic. This research note can therefore serve as an abbreviated case study for future social scientific inquiries that analyze inequality in Japan’s restaurant industry stemming from COVID-19 and the Japanese government’s varied approach to protecting the food industry and its workers.

FEEr: An R package for calculating functional extension and evenness index

Since the 1990s, functional diversity has attracted growing attention from biodiversity scientists. In recent years, various functional diversity indices have been proposed; but many of them presented conceptual and/or practical limitations. We recently developed a functional diversity index, Functional Extension and Evenness (FEE), to overcome some of the limitations. In this paper, we describe the content and major features of a new R package, FEEr, which serves as a tool for calculating the FEE index. The FEEr package includes one major core function to accomplish the FEE calculation and several support functions to provide important intermediate results relevant to the FEE calculation. To demonstrate the usage of this package, we present an abbreviated case study of quantifying the taxonomic and functional diversities of national forest inventory plots in the state of Tennessee, United States. In this application, we compare the correlations between species richness and FEE values in these plots. We also briefly summarize how species richness and FEE values vary among forest types and ecoprovinces in Tennessee. The results indicate that species richness and the FEE index reflect complementary aspects of the biodiversity profile in Tennessee’s forests. The functional diversity package outlined in this work provides a comprehensive foundation for subsequent analyses to address the needs of biodiversity conservation.

Scientific progress or organizational innovation? A comparison of two turns in Library and Information Science

This paper discusses the transformation of library and information science (LIS) from adiscipline narrowly concerned with classification and preservation in libraries and archives toone that includes a wide range of fields and professional training programs. Two alternative butnot mutually exclusive explanations may account for these developments. These changes couldreflect normal scientific progress as the discipline matures. The changes could also be the resultof isomorphic organizational changes in response to shifts in the environment and a need torealign the institutional logics of educational and professional organizations with those of theacademy. These explanations are explored through a comparison of two periods during whichLIS experienced rapid disciplinary and organizational changes: the decades during and afterWorld War II and the final decade of the 20th century. These abbreviated case studies suggestthat both explanations of disciplinary change provide some analytical leverage for explainingdifferent aspects of the development of LIS.

(De)Constructing symbols: Charlottesville, the confederate flag, and a case for disrupting symbolic meaning

ABSTRACTPolitical symbols such as the Confederate flag and Confederate monuments present a certain kind of “stickiness” in meaning, interpretation, and ownership. In some instances, a symbol is deeply tied to its referent, as is the case for the iconic “Hollywood sign” that sits atop the Hollywood Hills in Los Angeles. In other instances, a symbol is only distantly connected to its referent and is more informed by emotion than by details or facts, as I argue is the case for the Confederate flag. These socalled “condensation symbols” take on meanings that are shaped by politics, communities, and myths making them difficult to challenge or reframe. Using the actions of rapper Kanye West as an abbreviated case study, this paper proposes the possibility of disrupting symbolic meanings in ways that could make Confederate symbols less sticky in meaning and ownership, and perhaps less politically divisive.

The relational activation of resilience model: How leadership activates resilience in an organizational crisis

We proposed the Relational Activation of Resilience model to explain how leaders could utilize relationships to activate resilience during crisis and illustrated it using an abbreviated case study of Tan Tock Seng Hospital during the severe acute respiratory syndrome crisis in Singapore in 2003. Early signs of the crisis were recognized by organizational leaders, who then ushered liminality—a period when routines were disrupted, and new relational connections were made to allow members to adjust psychologically, emotionally, and socially, to activate resilience. Within the liminal period, leaders influenced the formation of new connections through mutual and swift trust and utilized these networks to enable collective meaning‐making and sensemaking. In addition, leaders communicated mindfully via these networks to promote positive emotional connections among members. These leadership tasks resulted in the formation of relational networks that could serve as social, emotional, and cognitive resources for organizational resilience.

The Queer Utility of Narrative Case Studies for Clinical Social Work Research and Practice

The author uses a queer critical lens to analyze the marginalization of case study research in the evidence-based practice model of clinical social work. He argues that narrative case studies are necessary for the production of context-dependent knowledge about social work practice and asserts that the method offers particular utility in conducting queer inquiry. The method is explored in relation to its capacity to describe non-normative phenomena and the impact of normative cultural pressures on queer subjects. An abbreviated case study by the author is included to demonstrate these capacities.

Conciliatory States

Existing theory associates ethnolinguistic diversity with a host of negative outcomes. This article analyzes the puzzle of Ghana, the 12th most diverse state globally, yet among the most peaceful, democratic, and developed African states. It argues the position of post-independence political elites within ethno-demographic structures helps explain why some diverse African states pursued broad nation-building public goods, mitigating the political salience of diversity. Diversity encouraged provision of social goods with broad-based support in states with a modest plurality—not large enough to dominate, but without proximately sized ethnic groups—especially for leaders from a minority. Comparative historical analysis of Ghana is expanded with abbreviated case studies on Guinea, Togo, and Kenya.

On Flogging the Dead Horse, Again: Historicity, Genealogy, and Objectivity in Richard Waterman’s Approach to Music

Abstract In a critical appraisal and expansion of the historical methodology championed by ethnomusicologist and anthropologist Richard Waterman, this essay reconsiders the historicity of musical performance and demonstrates ways in which treating ethnography genealogically may serve as a means of doing what Thomas Solomon calls "postcolonial music history." This essay is broadly divided into three parts: a review of Waterman’s work, a theoretical revamping and an abbreviated case study taken from my own research on Catholic patron saint rituals in Bahia, Brazil.

Conflict and compromise in public health policy: analysis of changes made to five competitive food legislative proposals prior to adoption.

Competitive foods in schools have historically been scrutinized for their ubiquity and poor nutritional quality, leading many states to enact legislation limiting the availability and accessibility of these items. Evaluations of these policy approaches show their promise in improving the healthfulness of school food environments, considered an important strategy for reducing childhood obesity. Yet little is known about the decision-making processes by which such legislation is formed and adopted. Using a comparative case study design, this study describes and analyzes the policy formation processes surrounding five state-level competitive food bills introduced in 2009-2010. Data for each case were drawn from multiple key informant interviews and document reviews. Case studies were conducted, analyzed, and written independently using a standard protocol and were subsequently compared for recurring and unique themes. Abbreviated case studies and summary tables are provided. Results indicate that bill cost is a major barrier to achieving strong, health-promoting policy change. Additionally, findings reveal that supporters of stronger competitive food policies often concede to changes that weaken a bill in order to neutralize opposition and achieve stakeholder buy-in. These challenges suggest that continued research on the development, implementation, and evaluation of public health policies can contribute to the advancement of new strategies for effective health promotion.

Turning Financial Markets inside Out: Polanyi, Performativity and Disembeddedness

In light of the spread of markets across the globe and deeper into daily life, this paper argues for a more robust analysis and application of Karl Polanyi's conception of (dis)embedded markets coupled with the performativity thesis authored mainly by Michel Callon. It suggests that while disembeddedness as a concept is necessary for an analysis of contemporary financial markets that are increasingly self-referential, it is not sufficient. Despite the suggestion of a gulf between Polanyian and Callonian economics, there are important similarities in the two frameworks. The similarities are considered along with the considerable difference, all in an attempt to develop a more robust methodological framework for analyzing financial markets. Performativity, it is argued, can help fill the gaps in Polanyi's embeddedness framework, albeit only when that concept's tendency to produce aspatial and apolitical arguments are taken seriously. The paper uses an abbreviated case study of the development of US financial derivative markets in the 1970s and 1980s to argue that markets must be considered in light of both their institutional and geographic entanglements as well as their (dis)embeddedness in systems of calculativeness and mathematical modeling. Specifically the paper analyzes the tension between the derivative origin story authored by Donald MacKenzie, which focuses on neoclassical pricing models like the Black—Scholes—Merton option pricing formula, and my own empirical research, which suggests the urban-economic geography of Chicago played a key role in the development of these instruments.

Implementation Science in the Real World: A Streamlined Model

The process of quality improvement may involve enhancing or revising existing practices or the introduction of a novel element. Principles of Implementation Science provide key theories to guide these processes, however, such theories tend to be highly technical in nature and do not provide pragmatic nor streamlined approaches to real-world implementation. This paper presents a concisely comprehensive six step theory-based Implementation Science model that we have successfully used to launch more than two-dozen self-sustaining implementations. In addition, we provide an abbreviated case study in which we used our streamlined theoretical model to successfully guide the development and implementation of an HIV testing/linkage to care campaign in homeless shelter settings in Los Angeles County.

A Nobel Sport

This article advances a twofold argument regarding the intersection of globalization, sport, and race. Such is world football’s popularity, first, that the sport itself is now a rhetoric in its own right. So freighted is football with internationalist associations that this rhetoric has been enlisted in support of various political invocations of the global from the middle decades of the 20th century forward, as the following abbreviated case studies of Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., and Barack Obama will demonstrate. Second, football’s unique transnational reach has simultaneously yielded a self-negating rhetoric of race. The global paradigm by which the sport is typically referenced has eroded race as a category of cultural analysis—this, despite football’s obvious dependence on racially heterogeneous modes of production and reception. Football has overcome the color line in neither society nor sport as a result. The color line instead has been reified through transnational abstraction, obscured on the strength of football’s insistent internationalism.

Social Issue Emergence on the Web: A Dual Structurational Model

In this paper, we unravel the complex ontological relationship between the empirical hyperlink networks enacted by strategic organizational actors and the epistemic issue networks enacted by decision makers who navigate hyperlinks to construct the boundaries of an issue. To conceptualize this relationship, we present a dual structurational model of issue network emergence that demonstrates the processes by which decision makers come to read and structure their comprehension of an issue out of their experience navigating a hyperlink network. We then discuss how the emergence of an issue network from a hyperlink network has consequences for both the decision makers that wish to act on the social issue and the organizational actors who create links. The model is demonstrated using the Chicago Climate Action Plan, a climate change initiative underway in Chicago, as an abbreviated case study. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Products and processes of agri-scientific service-learning: adding harmony to Dopico and Garcia-Vázquez

This forum response adds a conceptualization of harmony to Dopico and Vazquez’ investigation of pedagogy that combines citizen science, environmental and cross-cultural research, and service-learning. Placing many appropriate and significant aspects of culturally situated science education in an authentically relational context beyond the classroom, this paper calls attention to insightful contributions and new directions for research, such as the process of inducing or eluding nihilism regarding ecological issues. How can such a question be researched effectively in order to learn about the family of pedagogies emerging in response to the need for more ecologically conscious and relationally authentic teaching across many disciplines? In this paper, I use a Vygotskian framework and an abbreviated case study of agricultural service-learning from my research, drawing attention to the importance of students’ culturally-mediated construction of setting as they interact in older and newer ways.

Collaborative systems thinking: Uncovering the rules

As the aerospace workforce braces itself for the “silver tsunami,” more emphasis is needed on how to develop systems skills in engineering workforce. Research has shown this knowledge is tacit and based in experience. However, with nearly one-third of the industry's employees eligible for retirement, this systems-level knowledge is at risk of being lost. This focuses on the team as the unit of analysis and the elements of design process and team culture that foster collaborative systems thinking teams. Eight pilot interviews, ten full case studies, and 14 abbreviated case studies were used to explore “collaborative systems thinking,” or team-level systems thinking. From these data, a definition of collaborative systems thinking is derived and generalizations about collaborative systems thinking teams are presented.

Indian Education for All: a change of heart and mind

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the current status of, and provide guidance for future direction in, the implementation of Indian Education for All, a multicultural education initiative, into Montana's statewide education system.Design/methodology/approachThe paper reports on and analyzes the historical foundation, current status, and practical implications of Montana's Indian Education for All initiative. The abbreviated case study utilizes a combination of focus group and individual qualitative interviews of educational leaders representing the Montana state education agency, Montana K‐12 school administration, and the Montana University and Tribal College systems.FindingsMontana educational leaders have made dramatic progress implementing Indian education into Montana's K‐12 schools and university systems. The process is complex on many levels; including political, cultural, organizational, emotional, and financial issues. Many challenges remain before statewide systemic change occurs.Practical implicationsThe study's findings have implications for world cultures and educational systems regarding the creation, organization, and implementation of a multiculturally literate and responsive education system.Originality/valueThe article provides original data regarding the varying degrees of challenge and success experienced by educational leaders in their implementation of multicultural education, with special emphasis on indigenous populations.

Academic Turnarounds: Restoring Vitality to Challenged American Colleges and Universities (review)

Reviewed by: Academic Turnarounds: Restoring Vitality to Challenged American Colleges and Universities Joseph Beckham Terrence J. MacTaggart (Ed.). Academic Turnarounds: Restoring Vitality to Challenged American Colleges and Universities. Westport, CT: ACE/ Praeger Publishers, 2007. 121 pp. Cloth: $44.95; ISBN: 0-275-98806-6. American colleges and universities, striving to maintain a high level of quality while heightening efficiency, are extremely vulnerable to precarious economic conditions. Private institutions struggle to compete in an increasingly diverse marketplace. Many public institutions find that their share of state revenues is declining in a turbulent political environment characterized by regulatory complexity and demands for accountability. In this challenging environment, small private colleges, regional public universities, and historically Black colleges and universities are particularly vulnerable to enrollment declines and accelerating deficits. In Academic Turnarounds: Restoring Vitality to Challenged American Colleges and Universities, Terrence MacTaggart and his colleagues draw on the contemporary histories of 40 institutions that have achieved an academic turnaround to offer a guide that can help presidents, trustees, and faculty assess institutional financial health, address immediate financial problems, revitalize their institutional image, and shape institutional culture. MacTaggart also offers guidance to donors, accreditors, and others committed to the quality and vitality of American higher education. The book begins with a four-chapter narrative delineating three distinct stages in the process of an academic turnaround. This first section, “The Natural History of Turnarounds,” is followed by two chapters on “Special Topics” dealing with subjects of interest to presidents, financial of-ficers, trustees, and those with a particular interest in the features of academic turnarounds at state-supported colleges and universities. A final section includes two chapters offering guidance to new presidents challenged to transform their institutions and advice to trustees, donors, and ac-creditors on how to positively influence academic turnarounds. MacTaggart uses Chapter 1 to provide an overview of his three stages in an academic turnaround: restoring financial health, marketing and branding the institution, and redefining the institution’s mission and culture. A matrix accompanies the text narrative, identifying characteristics associated with each stage. For example, although a collaborative leadership style is essential, a leader may appear more autocratic in Stage 1 of a transformation, shift to a pragmatic, problem-solving role in Stage 2, and emphasize a collaborative leadership style in Stage 3. The focus of Chapter 2 is the initial stage of a turnaround: restoring financial health. MacTaggart describes three institutional exemplars of an academic turnaround and identifies critical factors that characterize successful financial transformations; including timely and accurate financial information, transparency, clear communication, and new leadership. In Chapter 3, Jerry Berberet emphasizes that branding and marketing have essential and reciprocal roles in creating institutional distinctiveness. Branding involves internal self-study intended to clarify institutional values, strengths, and aspirations. A marketing plan should link the institution’s services to potential students by communicating the quality of student experiences and learning outcomes. Finally, both branding and marketing must be aligned with institutional values and programs to ensure commitment from [End Page 417] the campus community and accelerate the turnaround process. Adrian Tinsley explores Stage 3, academic transformation, in Chapter 4. He extrapolates common threads in three abbreviated case studies and points to faculty engagement as a critical element in the long-term prospects for genuine turnaround. In Tinsley’s view, the institution’s chief academic officer can play a significant role in identifying the aspirational model that best fits the institution, encouraging faculty engagement, and promoting institutional distinctiveness and quality. In Chapter 5, Michael Townsley offers a financial management model and a strategic plan informed by a range of diagnostic and reporting tools. To illustrate the model, Townsley introduces a segmented case study of a fictitious institution at five different stages in a financial transformation. Financial indicators are aligned with each stage, and the roles of the president, chief financial of-ficer, and trustees receive particular attention. MacTaggart uses Chapter 6 to examine the unique problems of academic transformation in public institutions. Because of the highly politicized and bureaucratic environment in which these institutions must operate, he postulates that transformations can take longer but are less likely to be preoccupied with a Stage 1 financial rescue. While state support may insulate the...

Facilitating guided participation through mobile technologies: designing creative learning environments for self and others

We appropriate Rogoff’s (Apprenticeship in thinking: Cognitive development in social context, 1991; in: Wertsch et al. (eds.) Sociocultural studies of mind, 1993) notion of guided participation to demonstrate, through abbreviated case studies, our strategy for integrating mobile technology-based learning experiences in higher education. Guided participation implies facilitating access to shared community-valued practices by supporting new members in legitimate participation. We illustrate how mobile technologies and social software can be used to (a) facilitate guided participation among undergraduate engineering students within classes and (b) teach graduate students in instructional technology to design for guided participation. Thus, students are not only transitioned into respective learning communities but also gain experience in designing for others. Given the recent advances in computing and trends in the adoption, diffusion, and use of mobile technologies, we argue that mobile technologies provide a substantive, fertile, and invigorating area for teaching and research in higher education for the foreseeable future.

Abbreviated Case Studies in Organizational Communication

Objective: Upon completion of this activity, students, based upon their personal and professional experiences, should be able to develop abbreviated case studies for use in organizational communication classes Course: Organizational Communication