Insider Knowledge Research Articles

Dilemmas of Proximity: Motives Influencing Portuguese Firms’ Internationalization to Morocco

This study aims to identify Portuguese firms’ motives for internationalizing to Morocco. To achieve this objective, we used a mixed-method (quantitative and qualitative) approach, obtaining data from a questionnaire survey and interviewees from Portuguese enterprises involved in this internationalization process. From exploratory factor analysis (EFA), firms’ reasons for entering the Moroccan market were categorized into five dimensions: (a) Price and Business Infrastructure, (b) Regional Hub and Business Environment, (c) Financial Incentives and Raw Material, (d) Skilled Labour Force and (e) Weak Competition and International Business Partners. The study shows that the factors/dimensions identified are associated both with firms’ resources and capacities and with the characteristics that sometimes define the entrepreneur–manager’s perceptions. In addition, our study provides inside knowledge of this topic through small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) managers’ views on key aspects of their presence in Morocco, which leads to a more robust portrayal of this type of process.

How employment-focused social procurement tackles health inequities: an investigation of Australia’s construction industry using determinants of health theory

With public and private clients in the construction industry increasingly using social procurement to achieve their social responsibility goals, it is important to develop theory-informed approaches for understanding how and to what extent social procurement creates social value. The research presented in this article uses social determinants of health (SDOH) theory to develop a case study of an employment-focused social procurement initiative in Australia’s construction industry. The case study shows how the employment-focused social procurement initiative used cross-sector intermediation to alleviate structural barriers to employment, including siloing in the employment services sector, unsupported pathways from training into employment in construction, and negative stereotypes of people who face structural barriers to employment. Using SDOH theory, the paper frames these barriers to employment as ‘upstream’ and ‘midstream’ structural determinants of health inequities. The research finds that the initiative’s impacts on determinants of health inequities are enabled and limited by commercial factors including project location and duration, status of the principal contractor, and insider knowledge of timing and requirements of new jobs.

Exploring the Impact of Financial Literacy, Risk Tolerance, Job Satisfaction and Trust in Financial Institutions on Personal Investment Behaviors Among investment Company Employees in Shanghai, China

The purpose of the study is to examine financial literacy, risk tolerance, job satisfaction and trust in financial institutions on personal investment behaviours among investment company employees in Shanghai, China. Data from a total of 324 respondents were collected from personal investment company using survey. The results of multiple regressions demonstrate that financial literacy, risk tolerance, job satisfaction, and trust in financial institutions have significant predictive power in explaining variations in personal investment behaviours among investment company employees in Shanghai, China. Trust in financial institutions stands out as the most potent predictor in the model followed by risk tolerance, financial literacy and job satisfaction. These results confirm existing literature but add a layer of complexity by focusing on employees in the financial sector. The strong correlation indicates that even those with inside industry knowledge place high value on trust. The emotional assurance stemming from trust appears to act as a foundational pillar for making investment decisions, especially in a bustling financial hub like Shanghai. It seems that trust mitigates the inherent risks of investments, leading to more confident decision-making.

Exploring the Implementation of Unpredictability in the Field of Aviation Security

Regulations for aviation security have tended to be reactionary, responding to terrorist attacks by implementing more stringent measures. This has resulted in a more predictable system that can make it easier for unlawful interference. To address risks from both external (terrorist attacks) and internal (insider threats) sources, introducing unpredictability – such as varying security controls – proactively could be beneficial. A study conducted semi-structured interviews with security experts in order to explore how and why unpredictability is implemented at airports. The results revealed that European airport stakeholders apply unpredictable measures for various reasons: complementing the security system, outmaneuvering opponents, and improving human factor aspects of the security system. Unpredictable measures are applied at different locations by various controlling authorities across different forms; however, their deployment lacks systematic evaluation. Additionally, findings indicated that varying security controls may help mitigate insider threats by reducing insider knowledge. Further research should focus on evaluating the deterrent effect of unpredictability and providing recommendations on how unpredictable measures can be effectively realized proactively to address emerging risks.

Departing from stigma and secrecy and elevating stories of agency: Narrative practice in the voices of sex workers

This paper explores the use of narrative therapy and community work to respond to the complexities surrounding women’s experiences in the sex industry. It offers practices for therapists and community workers seeking to engage with sex workers in ways that are respectful of their hard-won knowledge and seek to elicit double-storied accounts in relation to hardship, thicken stories of preferred identities, and explore absent-but-implicit values, hopes and commitments. These practices include an innovative use of re-membering questions and a collective Tree of Life process adapted to the specific experiences of women in the sex industry. The paper elevates the insider knowledge of sex workers, particularly the lived experience of women engaged in sex work in which they have a high degree of choice and autonomy. It includes a collective document of sex workers’ insider knowledge about confronting stigma and isolation, addressed to people whose work intertwines with sex workers in some way: therapists, support workers, lawyers, police, activists.

Entanglements of feminist activism and gender equality policy in the Spanish and Swedish film industries: between convergence and critique

ABSTRACT This article compares entanglements between activist demands and policy in the Spanish and Swedish film industries using a critical frames approach. Considering contextual factors such as domestic discourse on film policy and resistance against gender equality, the comparison is based on deep insider knowledge aiming to deepen the understanding of feminist activism and its relation to policy in the two countries. In both Spain and Sweden, activists have demanded equality in the film sector since the seventies. Today, both countries feature gender equality measures and vivid feminist organizations. Based on current equality policies, reports from the Swedish and Spanish Film Institutes, documents from feminist filmmakers’ associations and interviews with activists, the article shows that feminist activists oscillate between strategically converging their demands to policy and criticizing reforms. Furthermore, policy echoes activists’ arguments but are less informed by ideas about structural inequalities. Activists in both Spain and Sweden stand up for the gender equality measures which have been implemented, but the Spanish activists are more prone to simultaneously voice criticism against the reforms..

“Normal wasn’t always productive or helpful”: teachers of Color authentically caring for the humanities of Black, Indigenous, and students of Color during the COVID-19 pandemic

As research continues to dissect the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the teaching profession, the experiences of teachers of Color remain overlooked. Thus, this article explicitly centers the lived experiences and insider knowledge of six secondary teachers of Color who taught virtually during the pandemic to answer the question, “How do teachers of Color describe the change in their practices and pedagogies as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic?” Their narratives described how they cultivated humanizing relationships with students in a virtual context, how their teaching practices and pedagogies shifted to prioritize students’ needs, and how they rejected deficit, neoliberal discourses of “learning loss” espoused during the pandemic. Collectively, their actions embodied elements of authentic caring that prioritized and sustained the humanities of students of Color during a time of immense upheaval. Their narratives underscore the importance of cultivating and enacting authentic caring to challenge harmful schooling practices during times of crisis and beyond.

Inside knowledge: Incarcerated people on the failures of the American prison By D.Larson, New York: New York University Press. 2024. pp. 301. $30.00 (hbk). ISBN: 9781479818006

Inside knowledge: Incarcerated people on the failures of the American prison By D.Larson, New York: New York University Press. 2024. pp. 301. $30.00 (hbk). ISBN: 9781479818006

Acupuncture Education in the UK

The journey of acupuncture and moxibustion (zhenjiu)1 in the UK as part of Chinese Medicine is entangled with UK politics, the structure of the National Health Service, the concerns of what is science and research, the changing state of higher education and the role of China as friend or foe within geopolitics. It is also entangled with individuals and relationships and situations. In this research note, I will trace the history of acupuncture education in the UK through the second half of the twentieth century to the present-day drawing on my 45 years of experience as an acupuncture student, practitioner and educator. I include a vignette based on my insider knowledge of one course, the first Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) school of acupuncture in the UK, its move into a university and its closure in 2023. While acupuncture includes systems that have developed in countries such as Japan and Korea the focus of this paper will be on Chinese acupuncture due to its major influence on course content in the UK.

Editorial viewpoints of scientific publishing for early-career research scientists.

While the structure and composition of the scientific manuscript is well known within scientific communities, insider knowledge such as the tricks of the trade and editorial viewpoints of scientific publishing are often less known to early-career research scientists. This article focuses on the key aspects of scientific publishing, including tips for success geared towards senior postdocs and junior faculty. It also highlights important considerations for getting manuscripts published in an efficient and successful manner.

Perpetrator knowledge: a Bayesian account

Abstract Perpetrator knowledge (also known as “guilty knowledge,” “insider knowledge,” “crime knowledge,” or “first-hand knowledge”) is an important, but undertheorized type of criminal evidence. This article clarifies this concept in several ways. First, it offers a precise, probabilistic definition of what perpetrator knowledge is. Second, the article provides a taxonomy of arguments relating to perpetrator knowledge. This classification is based on an analysis of 438 Dutch criminal cases in which this concept was mentioned. Third, it models these arguments using Bayesian networks. Fourth, the article explains a potential reasoning error relating to perpetrator knowledge, namely the fallacy of appeal to probability.

YPAR and powerful partnerships for change: reconceptualisations of youth-led participatory action research and catalytic validity

ABSTRACT Youth-led participatory action research (YPAR) empowers children and young people to platform their capability to create knowledge based on their lived experiences. It is this insider knowledge of childhood, which adult researchers lack, that enables the young to make significant contributions to educational research and to secure positive change. This article reports and reflects on YPAR in a secondary school in Thailand. Pupil researchers alongside the author, an adult ally, sought to establish if and to what extent the wider school population shared their dissatisfaction with the need for learners to take paid-for classes in addition to their regular school lessons. Through pupils taking photographs that captured their lived reality in regard to supplementary paid-for classes, the sharing of these images with the school leadership team, and the generation of data from a wider survey, the young people argued for, crafted, and secured positive change to their school lives and, potentially, beyond. YPAR enabled educational leadership to make evidence-informed decisions. However, the traditional YPAR concepts of confrontation and dialogue between young people and adults as equals were found to be contextually inappropriate, suggesting that, within power-rigid contexts, ‘powerful partnerships’ with adult allies are more comprehensible to those who live within those contexts, and, thus, more effective in securing positive change. The paper therefore suggests that strategies cognisant and sympathetic to established power hierarchies are needed if positive change to the lived realities of children is to be achieved. Considering this finding, reconceptualisations of YPAR and its catalytic research validity are offered alongside the results and discussion of the YPAR itself.

Exploring the role of instructional leaders in promoting agency in teachers’ professional learning

This qualitative study used structural analysis of conversational episodes and content analysis to examine how two instructional leaders fostered teacher agency and collaboration in planning ongoing structures and content during a yearlong professional learning experience in one elementary school. Framed within a theory of agency, we found a merging of insider and outsider knowledge in the interactions between university partners and the two leaders of the English language arts leadership team that occurred across time, that agentive discourse was topically coherent among the leadership team as a collective group, and that the collective group maintained reflective and forward-looking common professional learning goals. We argue that meaningful professional development contexts position all participants in ways that value and trust their individual contributions and prompt them to act agentively to meet individual learning goals while maintaining a focus on the school’s collective goals.

Social Landscape Characterisation: a people-centred, place-based approach to inclusive and transparent heritage and landscape management

ABSTRACT Landscapes are composed of physical places, affording meaning-making and value creation from everyday heritage based on personal experiences, life histories, memories, traditions and heritage practices. Individually held values form the basis for attachment and connection between people and places. Place attachment develops into a sense of place, belonging and identity. Despite the Burra Charter and Faro Convention’s aspiration to include people in the assessment process, individual, subjective or emotional connections to place are often overlooked within heritage decision-making. When places are altered, neglected or damaged, such connections can be lost, and the quality of place diminished. Most changes to landscapes happen as part of the planning process, which is not currently able to account for individual connections but based on views expressed in the language of the Authorised Heritage Discourse (AHD). This paper presents a method to meaningfully integrate insider or individual knowledge into the framework of local planning and decision-making while at the same time addressing subtleties and fluidity of such personal views. The people and place-centred method of Social Landscape Characterisation collects, analyses and visualises invisible or hidden value communities based on the same meaning (category value) or location (place value) as shared values across wider landscapes.

The Evolution of Employee Assistance Programs to Best Support Healthcare Organizations.

Employee assistance programs (EAPs) have been evolving since they first became prevalent in the 1970s. The important counseling component of EAPs is sometimes lost in discussions about what they do, with many EAPs marketing a broad portfolio of services such as childcare, elder care, legal referral, and other concierge services rather than counseling. The objective of this study was to examine outcomes for the EAP of one organization (Mayo Clinic), compare them to outcomes reported in the literature, and gain insights to help all healthcare organizations best support their employees. Consistent with customary EAP practice, data for this study was collected through an anonymous survey link distributed by e-mail to users of individual counseling as well as users of organizational consulting services such as advising leaders and supervisors and leading educational sessions. All (n = 82) individual counseling respondents indicated they would recommend the EAP, none reported worse symptoms, 90% decreased their stress levels, 92% reduced their feelings of anxiety, 88% enjoyed an overall improvement in mood, and 95% developed new skills. If their concern was work-related, 96% agreed the counselor understood the work culture and was able to provide helpful guidance; of the clients who were feeling burned out, 86% agreed they gained strategies to reduce its symptoms. Thematic analysis of individual counseling services indicated that participants highly valued their counselors. Regarding organizational consulting services, respondents (n = 50) indicated EAP services increased their confidence as leaders, supported their work, and provided tangible guidance. They appreciated having an internal EAP counselor. Thematic analysis of organizational consulting services indicated that EAP supported leaders by listening, coaching, and empowering them to normalize issues. EAPs have evolved into distinct internal, external, and hybrid internal-external models. Internal model counselors are company employees with inside knowledge of company culture, external EAP model counselors are contracted outside of the company, and hybrid models combine a small cadre of internal counselors with the support of outside contractors. Regardless of the model, EAP counselors must collaborate with internal stakeholders, notably the human resources department, to efficiently identify and troubleshoot employee relational issues and allow for customized initiatives to improve mental health. Based upon these findings and the authors' direct experiences with EAP providers, components of an ideal EAP are outlined to show how EAPs can best support employees. Healthcare leaders seeking to add EAP services are advised to focus on offerings that are custom fit to the organization.

The effects of peer inclusion in the design and implementation of university prison programming: A participatory action research, randomized vignette study.

Objective: Including people most impacted by a challenge in designing and implementing solutions to that challenge has reemerged in social science research. In prison settings, academics' outside knowledge of "what works" combined with incarcerated people's inside knowledge of lived experience could lead to more comprehensive rehabilitative programs. This combined approach may make less sense as an intervention in prison, however, due to sensitive and complicated interpersonal dynamics. We determine if incarcerated women perceive prison programs as more efficacious when other incarcerated women are collaboratively involved in the design and implementation of those programs, as compared to other program delivery methods. Methods: We employ a participatory action research framework in administering a randomized vignette to 200 incarcerated women. We randomize who designs and teaches a prison program in a hypothetical scenario, with incarcerated women alongside university researchers the key combined condition of interest. We then ask a series of questions regarding incarcerated women's perception of the program's efficacy. Results: Women who received the combined condition were four times more likely to view the program as legitimate when compared to programs taught by correctional staff. The combined condition was not significantly different on legitimacy when compared to either researchers alone or incarcerated women alone. We did not observe other expected relationships between the combined condition and perceived program efficacy. Conclusions and Implications for Practice: Researcher and incarcerated person-led programming should be implemented carefully in institutional settings to leverage the value of lived experience while avoiding creating further harm for confined people. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Exemplifying the situated nature of teacher noticing: Elementary teachers' use of insider knowledge

AbstractTeacher noticing is a crucial aspect of responsive and ambitious mathematics teaching, allowing educators to understand students' mathematical thinking and make informed decisions. However, this noticing is influenced by teachers' insider knowledge (i.e., past and present knowledge and experience with students), which is shaped by societal norms, biases, and expectations, including potentially harmful deficit discourses. This study investigates teachers' noticing of written work from a situated perspective using qualitative secondary analysis. The goal of this work is to exemplify upper elementary teachers' use of historical knowledge gained from classroom interactions or informal school settings, along with local and broader contextual factors. Data analysis included elementary teachers' noticing mathematical thinking in written work from their class, their use of insider knowledge of their students, and distinctions in orientations toward students and their thinking. Results indicate how insider knowledge enhances, impedes, or does not impact individual teachers' focus on the details and reasoning evidenced in their students' strategies. The findings contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the complexities of teacher noticing and emphasize the importance of acknowledging the socio–cultural and historical context which is needed for equitable mathematics teaching. Implications are discussed.

Insider and Outsider Knowledge: Etic and Emic Perspectives on Empirical Missiological Research and Its Consequences for Theological Education

This article discusses the need for a distinction between an outsider’s and an insider’s perspective in missiological research. It uses the concept of etic and emic that has been developed by the linguist Kenneth Pike, demonstrating the need from the historical example of the representation of Indian life and religion in Europe as well as some epistemological questions that evolve from the topic. Here, an outsider’s perspective led to a misunderstanding of Hinduism that has persisted to the present day. This contribution introduces recent research examples that illustrate the integrating etic and emic perspectives in research. After some practical considerations, the article concludes with consequences for theological education for missions.

The role of insider knowledge in the trajectories of highly accomplished scientists.

Insider knowledge is critical information about how to achieve success that is not available to the general public but is relatively well-known to individuals within the domain and to those who have access to those individuals. The goal of this study was to examine the perceived role of insider knowledge in a sample of highly accomplished American professionals in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). We asked participants explicitly if insider knowledge had played a role in their talent development trajectory from K-12 education to their current creative work, with questions related to experiences at the undergraduate and graduate level and during their careers. The study was exploratory, so no formal hypotheses were put forward. Given the lack of research on the topic of insider knowledge as defined in this paper, we conducted semi-structured interviews with a select group of individuals who had successful careers in STEM fields, both to see if insider knowledge was something that they considered important and to see if they felt that insider knowledge had played a role in their educational and career trajectories. Our hope is that the results of this paper will inform future in-depth studies on the topic of insider knowledge.

‘An anarchy of treason’: public history, insider knowledge and the early spy novels of John le Carré

ABSTRACT John le Carré is credited with re-defining spy fiction into something widely considered as more ‘authentic’. His work emerged during a period replete with spy scandals and public investigations. This article considers the intersection of the public history of intelligence with le Carré’s early novels, particularly The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. It reveals how the author drew creatively on that public history to shape his narratives and underpin the mood of his stories. Finally, it probes the ‘insider knowledge’ in the stories, illustrating that, contrary to le Carré’s protestations, there exists a demonstrable correspondence between fact and fiction.