Scholars Face Research Articles

Towards a digital research environment for Buddhist studies

This article will explain the structure and function of a digital research environ- ment for Buddhist studies entitled Research Base for Indian and Buddhist Studies (RBIB). In the field of Buddhist studies (and especially in the area of Indian Buddhism), scholars face various obstacles in their efforts to share materials—in both paper and digital media. In establishing the RBIB, we have considered it to be of paramount importance to preserve the continuity of the prior tradition of studies within the paper medium, while at the same time developing a method- ology that takes best advantage of the digital medium. After identifying six basic conditions that will satisfy the demands of both approaches, we have imple- mented a Web collaboration system that fulfills these conditions. Our system also makes functional parts of the RBIB that enable the presentation of the re- lationships between arbitrary fragments of related texts in various canonical lan- guages through a user-friendly interface, which in turn allows users to learn how to edit and browse relationship data. Our system has thus far been highly eval- uated by testers, and it has been further facilitated by recent developments in Information Communications Technology. Humanities digitization has a deep mutual relationship with this new technology.

Challenges in international survey research: a review with illustrations and suggested solutions for best practice

When conducting international research projects, scholars face a myriad of challenges that reach beyond those encountered in domestic research. In this paper, we explore the specific issues related to international survey research, focusing on the different stages of the research process that include defining the study population and gaining data access, survey development, data collection, data analysis, and finally publication of the results. For each stage, we review the pertinent literature, provide illustrations based on examples from our own research projects, and offer possible solutions to address the inherent challenges by formulating suggestions for improving the quality of international survey research.

Social justice and the international flow of knowledge with specific reference to African scholars

PurposeIn the globalized world the movement of scholars facilitates the global flow of knowledge and supports the pillars of the knowledge economy as defined by the World Bank. But not all academics are born equal: African scholars face significant barriers with regard to freedom of movement. The purpose of this paper is to describe the processes that African scholars typically have to undertake to participate in the global academic community, to identify some of the potential difficulties in these processes and to articulate the moral concerns that arise from these processes.Design/methodology/approachBoth secondary data analysis to illustrate and support the arguments as well as anecdotal evidence to provide specific examples of African scholars' experiences are used.FindingsJustice is viewed as one of the most important virtues regulating the movement of people in the global knowledge society. It is used as a normative instrument to argue that the international community has a moral and legal responsibility to create a more flexible and fair structure to enable knowledge to flow more freely between African scholars and their counterparts in Europe and North America.Practical implicationsA Global Knowledge Treaty is proposed that will allow African scholars to travel more freely in pursuit of new knowledge and opportunities and platforms to share their knowledge is proposed as a potential solution that seeks to strike a fair balance between rights of nation‐states and the rights of individuals to freedom of movement.Originality/valueThe value of the paper lies in that it highlights a topic of contemporary importance in the knowledge economy that has far‐reaching implications for African scholarship in particular and education and development in African countries in general.

Publishing without betrayal: Critical scholarship meets mainstream journals

Summary In this paper, I discuss challenges critical scholars face with respect to publishing qualitative research in ‘top tier’ mainstream journal outlets. Relying on ideas and insights from postcolonial and feminist thinking, I discuss how these theoretical positions inform reading, writing, and reflexivity in the production of critical management scholarship. To this end, I use examples from reviewers’ comments on work I’ve submitted to the Academy of Management Journal as well as conferences to demonstrate specifically the problematic assumptions that guide qualitative research expectations particularly in ‘top tier’ management outlets. Adopting a reflexive stance that recognizes the limits of individual agency, I suggest that engaging in interdisciplinarity across social science disciplines may promote critical and socially engaged scholarship as legitimate business knowledge.

Three decades of research on consumer adoption and utilization of electronic banking channels: A literature analysis

The increased availability of electronically mediated self-service technologies in the banking industry has changed the way banks service their customers. Banking customers today can access, through a variety of different channels, sets of powerful tools which allow them to conduct analyses, make decisions and enact financial transactions via working from their home, office or elsewhere. Following practice, research into the adoption and use of electronic banking channels has grown substantially over the last three decades. However, banks seek further growth in consumer electronic banking. Prior research may not have identified all the issues involved in adoption and use and may be limited in other ways. Scholars face challenges researching this area due to fragmented findings and methods over three decades of study. The aim of this paper, therefore, is to empirically determine the ‘state-of-play’ of research in this field. Using a systematic and comprehensive review of 247 peer-reviewed articles from key research outlets, this paper reveals theories and methods used to study adoption of electronic banking channel at the individual level. Among other things, the findings indicate domains and issues which have been well- or under-researched, conceptual frameworks and principles which have been lightly- or substantially-drawn upon, as well as research methods which have been heavily- or under-utilized. In order to advance research in electronic banking, future researchers should consider diversifying their theoretical and methodological approaches using the opportunities uncovered in our findings.

Boules: The carnival of Naousa. Folklore or symbolism?

The Boules of Naousa is taking place during the Carnival period. It is a dance event that incorporates a variety of elements from Greek history, tradition and religion. This paper describes the event, with reference to the special costumes, and the specific songs and dances that this includes. It also endeavors to retrieve its connection with Ancient Times, Byzantine Times, and later years, shaping an amalgam of influences and conceptions. Finally, it goes beyond the surface, trying to determine the meaning of this dance event, not as a simple custom, as most scholars face it, but as a reflection of Greek identity.

Evaluating Voter–Candidate Proximity in a Non-Euclidean Space

When applying the proximity model in electoral studies, scholars face the challenge of estimating voter–candidate proximity when voters' responses to issues/policies in a multidimensional policy space are correlated. In this article, we contend that voters' correlated evaluations can be captured by the structure of a non-orthogonal policy space. After orthogonalizing such a space using the Gram-Schmidt process, we can improve our estimation of the spatial distance between voters and candidates. Moreover, our study suggests that in multidimensional space neither the city-block nor the Euclidean distance is ideal for estimating proximity. We propose to use a generalized parametric Minkowski model and our analysis demonstrates that the most appropriate distance metric for a particular study is an empirical issue that hinges on the particular structure of a dataset.

Search Engines for Tomorrow's Scholars

Today's scholars face an outstanding array of choices when choosing search tools: Google Scholar, discipline-specific abstracts and index databases, library discovery tools, and more recently, Micr...

Challenges for young management scholars in Iberia and Latin America

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to offer the author's view about some of the challenges young Iberoamerican scholars face in order to build a successful research record.Design/methodology/approachThis is an individual account of some of the most common barriers Iberoamerican scholars face when starting their academic career.FindingsThe paper presents some of the difficulties encountered by young scholars, such as motivation, lack of feedback, teaching load, and lack of resources and addresses these challenges in an almost intimate fashion.Originality/valueThe paper uses an idiosyncratic approach to the practical career obstacles faced by a young scholar outside the mainstream academic environment.

Reflections on modern China and the progressive power of educational studies

The turn towards using domestic experience in contemporary Chinese educational studies has led to the development of theoretical frames rooted in the reality of Chinese society. This article identifies four ways of understanding and reforming Chinese society that have been developed by 20th century Chinese educators. By reflecting on these four approaches, and on the modern value oriented reactions to social transformation expressed by contemporary Western educational scholars, this article argues that Chinese educational scholars face two essential tasks when developing theories based on domestic experience so as to make positive contributions to China’s unfinished project of modernity. The first is to study the phenomena of imbalance, alienation, and backwardness caused by all kinds of economic and cultural movements and forces in the huge space of Chinese society, and the second is to develop progressive educational ideas that are robust enough to counter these phenomena.

Being a scholar in Iberoamerica: a long and winding road

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to offer the author's view about some of the challenges Iberoamerican scholars face in order to build a successful publication record.Design/methodology/approachThis is an individual review of some of the most common barriers Iberoamerican scholars encounter when trying to publish their work and examine the extent to which they are valid.FindingsThe paper presents some of the difficulties encountered by scholars located outside the main US/Anglo Saxon University environment, but introduces some principles to overcome these barriers.Originality/valueThis paper focuses on different strategies and tactics to overcome these barriers, including aspects like seeking research opportunities, academic crafting, co‐authorships, and targeting papers to specific journals.

The geolinguistics of English as an academic lingua franca: citation practices across English‐medium national and English‐medium international journals

To explore how the global status of English influences knowledge production and circulation, this paper focuses on citations in English‐medium national and English‐medium international journal articles. Drawing on text, ethnographic, and corpus data from a longitudinal study in four national contexts, we argue that citation practices vary significantly along geolinguistic lines – that is, in terms of who gets cited, where and by whom – and that such differences are highly consequential. We argue that multilingual scholars face particularly difficult decisions which can in part be understood as a tension between the politics of knowledge building and knowledge measuring. We conclude by calling for greater recognition of this tension in discussions about English as an academic lingua franca and in Anglophone centre gatekeeping practices.A dolgozat országos és nemzetközi tudományos szakfolyóiratok hivatkozási gyakorlatát elemzi, és azt vizsgálja, hogyan befolyásolja az angol nyelv globális státusza a tudományos ismeretalkotás és ismeretközlés folyamatát. Négy különböző országban végeztünk longitudinális kutatást, és szövegelemzéssel, valamint etnográfiai és korpuszalapú módszerekkel nyert adatainkból megállapítottuk: a hivatkozás gyakorlata nagymértékben függ geolingvisztikai tényezőktől, vagyis az, hogy mely szerzők, mely országokban, kikre hivatkoznak, igen eltérő lehet, és ezek az eltérések jelentős következményekkel járnak. Ebből számunkra kitűnik, hogy a több nyelven publikáló kutatóknak különösen nehéz döntésekkel kell szembesülniük, melyek egyik forrása az a feszültség, amely a tudománypolitika ismeretépítéstés ismeretértékelést szolgáló irányelvei között húzódik. Dolgozatunk következtetésében rámutatunk, hogy ennek a feszültségnek több figyelmet kellene kapnia az angol, mint tudományos közvetítő nyelv szerepéről szóló elemzésekben, valamint az angol nyelvű publikációs központok szerzőkkel szemben támasztott követelményrendszerében és szelekciós gyakorlatában.

The Technical Communication Research Landscape

This article reports data from questionnaires assessing the day-to-day experiences that members of the technical communication field have in carrying out their research. The data revealed that most members experience at least some frustration and numerous constraints that prevent them from doing the kinds and amounts of research that they want to do and that may affect the quality of their research. In short, technical communication scholars face an array of challenges. This article presents examples of these challenges and ideas that respondents had both for lessening the challenges scholars face and for better preparing graduate students. It suggests several practical initiatives for addressing these challenges along with realistic strategies for implementing those initiatives.

Copyright in the networked world: plagiarism and its ambiguities

PurposeLibraries and scholars face more frequent problems with and decisions about plagiarism than in the past. This article aims to look at complex cases where plagiarism may have occurred.Design/methodology/approachThe method is anthropological and looks at specific cases, in which the situations are real but the actors have been fictionalised to protect identities.FindingsPlagiarism tools, while invaluable for discovering potential problems, can also expose cases where judgments depend on complex circumstances.Originality/valueThe goal is to show areas where ambiguity in plagiarism cases exists.

On making a career in the field of organization science: concluding the debate

Since the publication of the invited essay by Glick, Miller, and Cardinal (2007), there has been ongoing debate concerning the vagaries or otherwise of a career in the organization sciences. As readers will recall, in my editorial introducing that piece (Ashkanasy, 2007), I foreshadowed that JOB would be publishing a series of follow-up articles. The first of these comprised the three commentaries published along with the Glick essay (Pfeffer, 2007; Rousseau, 2007; Sitkin, 2007). Subsequently, Hollenbeck and Mannor (2007) penned a reply critical of the method Glick and his colleagues used to draw their conclusions. In the present issue, the series continues with a reply to Hollenbeck andMannor (2007) by Glick, Miller, and Cardinal (2008) and a closing retort by Hollenbeck and Mannor (2008). Also, and as I foreshadowed in my earlier editorial, the series would conclude with a point–counterpoint debate, edited by Paul Spector, and presented in this issue. Responses to the original essay by Glick et al. (2007) and the subsequent criticism by Hollenbeck and Mannor (2007) have been overwhelming. I hear from colleagues that these articles have become de rigueur in graduate programs, and that they are generating debates in doctoral consortia and other similar forums. That is exactly the kind of impact former JOB Editor Denise Rousseau was looking for when she invited the original essay. I hope that the final series of articles in the present issue will add additional depth to readers’ understanding of the pressures aspiring scholars face in our disciplines. Glick and his associates argue that this is precipitated by inherent weaknesses in the underlying paradigms in the organization sciences, and that difficult and sometimes hard-line approaches are needed to deal with this. Hollenbeck and Mannor maintain that, while it is certainly not easy to make a career in our disciplines, Glick et al. have overstated the capriciousness of the career decision-making process. As readers could see in the original commentaries, however, and now even more clearly in the point–counterpoint articles in this issue, the issue is in fact more complicated than that, and extends across other scholarly disciplines as well. This is the last word on the topic in JOB, but I am sure the debate will continue outside of these pages for some time to come. I would like to close by expressing my sincere thanks to all the authors who have contributed to this series.

The Skeleton Score of Verdi's Una vendetta in domino : Two Surviving Fragments

For many years I have been fascinated by the kind of information to be found in auction and dealer catalogs. Unfortunately, we do not always have direct access to the manuscripts described in these catalogs. Nonetheless, even the descriptions (often with partial reproductions) can prove of great interest. four-page sketch of a duet from Verdi's Giovanna d'Arco, for example, is known only from two auction catalogs, each of which reproduces a different page from the manuscript. (1) This material was enormously valuable as Alberto Rizzuti prepared the critical edition of the opera, which will appear early in 2008 in The Works of Giuseppe Verdi. When I received a grant in support of my research on Italian opera from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in 2004, I decided to gather as much of this information as possible and to make it more generally available through an online database. young Italian scholar, Daniela Macchione, has assumed primary responsibility for conducting the necessary research. She has described her work in the following terms: The status of sale catalogs still hovers uncomfortably between that of ephemera and that of significant bibliographical tool. (2) The importance, variety, and sometimes uniqueness of the information they contain, however, even if this information is directed primarily to those who aspire to acquire the items, make these catalogs precious resources for scholars, perhaps more precious for the difficulty scholars face in gaining access to them. With the support of the Mellon Foundation and in collaboration with the University of Chicago, I am currently responsible for realizing OperaCat, a database in which are gathered catalog descriptions of thousands of autograph manuscripts sold at auction or in the antiquarian book market over the past 150 years pertaining to the most important Italian opera composers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: Gioachino Rossini, Vincenzo Bellini, Gaetano Donizetti, Giuseppe Verdi, and Giacomo Puccini. It is our intention that OperaCat will be freely available to scholars by the end of 2009. The material included in OperaCat is heterogeneous. Most is reproduced from descriptions (often with quotations and images) of letters, musical manuscripts, and documents. In some cases the material has been published or has ended up in accessible library collections. In many cases, however, these items-the only hint of whose existence is found precisely in these catalogs--have never been described in any other form. (3) This study was made possible thanks to information first gathered in OperaCat. In its catalog of spring 2007, the English antiquarian dealer Otto Haas included as item 118: A new source for Verdi scholarship: hitherto unknown Sketch for 'Un Ballo in Maschera,' referring to it as an Autograph music manuscript, 2 pp. on a large 2/3 folio leaf (34 x 15.4 cm; 1/3 of the leaf is cut off) written on recto and verso with intense corrections. The catalog description of the single leaf is inaccurate in many respects, but fortunately the dealer provided reproductions of both the recto and the verso of the leaf (although, as we shall see, their descriptions were reversed), so it is possible to analyze the source. (4) To clarify the nature of this leaf, however, it is necessary to recount some recent history. For the Verdi Festival in Parma marking the 100th anniversary of the composer's death, Ilaria Narici prepared under my direction a preliminary version of the critical edition of Un ballo in maschera for The Works of Giuseppe Verdi, in which the definitive version of Narici's edition will ultimately appear. Her preliminary version was first performed on 31 January 2001 at the Teatro Regio of Parma, under the baton of Valery Gergiyev. In the program accompanying that performance, I published an article in which I attempted to clarify the compositional history of the opera. …

Assessing an organizational culture instrument based on the Competing Values Framework: Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses

BackgroundThe Competing Values Framework (CVF) has been widely used in health services research to assess organizational culture as a predictor of quality improvement implementation, employee and patient satisfaction, and team functioning, among other outcomes. CVF instruments generally are presented as well-validated with reliable aggregated subscales. However, only one study in the health sector has been conducted for the express purpose of validation, and that study population was limited to hospital managers from a single geographic locale.MethodsWe used exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses to examine the underlying structure of data from a CVF instrument. We analyzed cross-sectional data from a work environment survey conducted in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). The study population comprised all staff in non-supervisory positions. The survey included 14 items adapted from a popular CVF instrument, which measures organizational culture according to four subscales: hierarchical, entrepreneurial, team, and rational.ResultsData from 71,776 non-supervisory employees (approximate response rate 51%) from 168 VHA facilities were used in this analysis. Internal consistency of the subscales was moderate to strong (α = 0.68 to 0.85). However, the entrepreneurial, team, and rational subscales had higher correlations across subscales than within, indicating poor divergent properties. Exploratory factor analysis revealed two factors, comprising the ten items from the entrepreneurial, team, and rational subscales loading on the first factor, and two items from the hierarchical subscale loading on the second factor, along with one item from the rational subscale that cross-loaded on both factors. Results from confirmatory factor analysis suggested that the two-subscale solution provides a more parsimonious fit to the data as compared to the original four-subscale model.ConclusionThis study suggests that there may be problems applying conventional CVF subscales to non-supervisors, and underscores the importance of assessing psychometric properties of instruments in each new context and population to which they are applied. It also further highlights the challenges management scholars face in assessing organizational culture in a reliable and comparable way. More research is needed to determine if the emergent two-subscale solution is a valid or meaningful alternative and whether these findings generalize beyond VHA.

The TWAIL Discourse: The Emergence of a New Phase

One of the most important discourses to have emerged in opposition to mainstream international law has been the third world approaches to international law (TWAIL). This discourse may be divided into two historical phases: TWAIL I and TWAIL II. While TWAIL I was characterised by a focus on colonisation and the hegemonic use of international law by powerful nations, TWAIL II has concentrated on international institutions and the impact of globalisation. It is posited that the TWAIL discourse is in the process of entering into a new phase post 9/11. This phase can be understood as one in which TWAIL scholarship must respond to a series of new challenges in a world where terrorism is a serious concern. Such a response shares many common characteristics with TWAIL I and will involve a focus on the inconsistent and untenable use of international law by certain nations. Yet the scholarship in this phase must also draw greatly from TWAIL II. The challenges and responsibilities that TWAIL scholars face during this phase are far greater than those experienced during the first two phases of this discourse. For this crucial approach that enables us to rethink our understanding of international law, this phase will mark one of its most important periods.

Racial Recovery, Racial Death: An Introduction in Four Parts

In February 2005, an article appeared in the Boston Globe asserting that census records list as white the author of two novels published in the Schomburg Collection of African American Women Writers of the Nineteenth Century (Jackson). The genealogical work reported in the Globe turned out be sound. Yet the researcher's not quite subtle interpretation of nineteenth-century Black writing, the repeated implication that she had solved the mystery of why Emma Dunham Kelley-Hawkins's literature never fit with contemporaneous texts and themes (par. 4), and the popular press's eager unveiling of Kelley-Hawkins's racial mis/classification raised larger questions about nineteenth-century women and racial identity, identification, and indeterminacy. In response the new revelations, some reporters and critics have suggested that Kelley-Hawkins's work will be--and deserves be--reforgotten (McLemee, par. 2). (1) Such reviviscent insinuations recall the politics of disavowal and dismissal that are part of the reception history of nineteenth-century women's literary production. Indeed, this opposition women's putative concerns and the popular literary styles women often adopted undergirded the justifications for preserving almost exclusively male literary canons until civil and women's rights movements took root in the publishing and academic worlds of the early 1970s. Since then, more and more early Black women's writing has been recovered and reprinted. As it continues help desegregate literary canons and be placed in continually augmented historical contexts and evolving interpretative frameworks, scholars face the challenges of partial recovery and responsible speculation that are the necessary genesis of our work. It is worth recalling that our understandings of now-canonical authors such as Harriet A. Jacobs, Harriet E. Wilson, and Frances E. W. Harper, for example, have significantly evolved in the last decade as scholars have built on partial discoveries introduce new information--and whole new bodies (of work)--that inform our understanding of the period and the received paradigms that act as its scholarly prism. (2) Until 2005, Kelley-Hawkins belonged a group of authors identified as African American despite the partial or inconclusive information about their racial identity and identification. For example, despite the best-selling (twenty-first century) status of The Bondwoman's Narrative, this date, the work of some of the most noted scholars and highly skilled genealogists has yielded no definitive information confirm its author's racial identity (Andrews and Kachun, Editors' Introduction xxxviii). And although, as Daphne A. Brooks reminds us, the ethnographic facts about the wildly popular stage performer Adah Isaacs Menken and her personal life have largely remained a source of occlusion and contention (134), Menken's work, like Kelley-Hawkins's, is included in the Schomburg collection. The public attention and assumptions eddying around Emma Dunham Kelley-Hawkins's reclassification provide an invitation for specialists in the field revisit and reframe some of the organizing themes and tropes that have come be associated with the nineteenth century: racial protest and racial uplift, passing, and the figure of the (tragic) mulatta. As Brooks puts it, such lingering controversies about race and cultural iconography force us to scrutinize critical methods for defining race and the tools that we use measure and evaluate its social and political worth and cultural authenticity (135). In this issue of Legacy, examinations of Kelley-Hawkins's work appear alongside essays that also place their analyses of forgotten, misplaced, and marginalized texts within the larger scope of nineteenth-century writing, recovery, and reception. From this vantage point, readers can reconsider the evolving politics of nineteenth-century African American canon formation, reassess how we evaluate racial evidence and authenticity, and rethink how and why racial identity, identification, and indeterminacy matter. …

The Link Between Domestic Political Institutions and Commitments to Tariff Reduction Agreements

Lately countries have concluded many free trade agreements. However, the puzzle scholars face is why so many countries have rushed to enter a free trade agreement. In this study, I ask how and whether domestic institutions of a country make a difference in committing to tariff reduction agreements. I argue that the rush to PTAs since the 1980s is linked to the domestic constraints. I claim that the propensity of signing a trade agreement increases as the survival of political leaders becomes more dependent on having a large size of winning coalition. Decision-makers have greater political motivations to enter international trade agreements as the level of democracy increases as well. This study tests key propositions drawing on a comprehensive database of international trade agreements from 1950 to 1992 with 150 countries. I find that leaders have greater political incentives to conclude international trade agreements as the size of their winning coalition grows. The results also suggest that the level of democracy is associated with a leader's political motivation to conclude international trade agreements. I also find that electoral rule and the number of veto players have an impact on interstate commercial cooperation. By highlighting this dynamic, I demonstrate that domestic institutional constraints deserve more attention in international political economy.