Transactional Perspective Research Articles

The policy transaction perspective: A pragmatist‐constructivist approach to the policy process

AbstractThe aim of this paper is to advance a pragmatist‐constructivist perspective on the policy process. Building on the pragmatist concept of “transaction,” this perspective suggests that we can further illuminate the policy process by moving towards a more relational analysis that focuses on the emergent co‐construction of actors and issues. It stresses that policy processes are always a form of valuation where values are discovered and invented and through which interests are staked out and identities are forged. The article conceptualizes the policy process as an assemblage of intervening policy situations where policy valuation, problematization, and policy formulation take place and where collective action and problems/solutions are built and tested. The Policy Transaction perspective ultimately opens our eyes to how policy processes form and define the relationship between state and society.

Buying what matters: towards a value model allowing to implement policy preference in public procurement

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to promote value as a core concept enabling innovative and socially responsible procurement. It suggests how organisations should analyse value from their own perspective and from that of their stakeholders and users, to keep pace with the expectations of today's society.Design/methodology/approachThe study examines developments in recent legislation and case law of the EU as well as observed good practice. It builds on these bases and on economic and behavioural approaches to define value and embed it in the awarding framework of public contracts.FindingsWhile traditional “prescriptive” approaches face legality and efficiency challenges as buyers must take into account societal considerations, this change of perspective allows to pursue policies in a more transparent and defendable manner. The study proposes a simple value model as a framework for such analysis.Research limitations/implicationsThe study opens a field for further qualitative and comparative research, measuring or determining how active implementation of value approaches improve efficiency and/or lead to better fulfilment of procurement and policy objectives.Practical implicationsReasoning in terms of value can be further developed into enabling measures promoting sustainable sourcing, support of local and small businesses and bonds with communities.Social implicationsAn explicit introduction of value as a procurement enabler should help organisations to implement their sustainability policies and to better use public procurement as a strategic instrument, and even as a driver of social innovation.Originality/valueIn spite of the pressing practical challenges related to value in public procurement, literature on this topic is scarce and has mostly tackled the problematics from a purely legal or theoretical point of view. This paper tends to address it from different and more practical perspectives, such as contribution of procurement to governance; linking public procurement and public policy; meaning of innovation from transaction (market) perspective and its implications for tendering.

What Content in Early Childhood Education for Sustainable Development is Present in Swedish Preschools?

This article shares what Swedish preschool teachers are working with in the field of early childhood education for sustainable development (ESD) as e, merged in talks with their children, aged two to five years. The tasks carried out as the basis for the present analyses were informal child talks about a topic related to sustainability that the teachers and children had worked with in practice. The teachers themselves chose what content to talk about. The 200 teachers participated in the Swedish research and development programme Sustainable Preschool. The aim of the present study was to make visible the content of teacher-child talks about sustainable development in early childhood education. The research question is: What content areas do teachers communicate about with children 2-5 years of age related to ESD? The teacher-child talks were initiated by the teachers, but through the use of interpretative content analysis the children’s voices were also made visible. The main result is narratives about the content, the most common topics being recycling, growing plants, and animals, areas which have long been common topics in Swedish preschools. For many preschools, however, the talks show an integration of transformative and transactional perspectives in how the content was handled together with the children. ESD in early education in Sweden is no longer dominated by the environmental dimension, as earlier content studies have shown; a new common content relates to the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4.7 regarding sustainable lifestyles and human rights and sustainability is a long process, founded in empowerment, action competence, and changed policy.

Ageing in place in a rural town in Aotearoa New Zealand: A Deweyan transactional perspective

Rural communities are ageing more rapidly than urban centres due to changing demographics and preference for ageing in familiar communities. Concurrently, ageing in place policies have progressively reinforced community living as the best option for most people. For ageing in place to be successful, understanding the relationship between the community environment and the functional ability of older adults is crucial. Yet, little is known about the relationship between older adults and their environment during their everyday experiences in diverse rural communities. This article reports on the findings from walking interviews with 15 older adults as they negotiated their physical environment in a rural community in New Zealand. Dewey's transactional perspective and theory of inquiry were utilised to view the everyday transactions these older adults were undertaking while being out and about doing what they value. A Deweyan perspective enabled a deep understanding of how participants negotiated and renegotiated their environment as they encountered indeterminate situations. The three main categories identified from the data: negotiating changing capabilities in a changing environment; negotiating the environment safely; and negotiating access within the environment, captured the holistic nature of the participants' everyday transactions and their continually changing relationship with their environment. The observations and discussions during the walks uncovered problem-solving and active citizenship as these older adults undertook their own ‘commonsense’ investigations of their environment. The findings highlight the valuable contribution rurally living older adults are making as active citizens during their everyday transactions. Understanding the resourcefulness these experienced older stakeholders bring to their rural communities is the first step in active collaboration at the local level. Mobile research methods are a useful means of capturing real-time experiential data in an inclusive and creative way.

Credit risk contagion of supply chain finance: An empirical analysis of supply chain listed companies.

With the gradual rise of the supply chain financial model and the expansion of scale, credit risk and contagion effects are gradually strengthened as business and financial links between upstream and downstream enterprises in the supply chain. The traditional credit risk contagion assessment model based on the financial status of an enterprise and the pledging of fixed assets has been unable to meet the basic needs of modern supply chain companies and financial institutions for risk control. Therefore, this paper introduces the Cox-Copula model to comprehensively assess a company's financial situation and the business health of upstream and downstream companies in the supply chain from the perspective of actual transactions between companies and fixed asset pledges. The study found that credit risk has a contagion effect in supply chain enterprises, and this contagion effect of credit risk has certain dynamic characteristics. At the same time, it was found that the impacts of macroeconomic factors and microfinance factors on credit risk contagion of supply chain finance have differences in the two dimensions of degree and direction of action.

The new (ab)normal: the participation of children attending preschool and elementary school during confinement

ABSTRACT Humans’ participation positively impacts society and individuals, suggesting that children's participation in activities carried out in supportive environments promotes positive health and the development of key capacities. Covid-19 abruptly changed the daily lives of children and their caregivers due to the general duty of home confinement with consequences for participation. This study focused on the participation of children attending preschool and elementary school during Covid-19 confinement in Portugal. Participants (175 caregivers) completed an online survey based on Picture My Participation! (PmP; Imms et al. 2014). Three case studies with children were conducted using PmP. Results showed good levels of participation in daily activities, with the school-aged children participating more (frequency and involvement) than the preschool-aged children; girls were more involved than boys. The caregivers and children had different perceptions of participation, with caregivers justifying these levels based mainly on the children’s characteristics, while the children reinforced the importance of the environment in their participation. These results are used to enhance a discussion about different perspectives of participation, highlight the importance of listening to different participants, and emphasise the relevance of the biopsychosocial and transactional perspectives to explain behaviour and human development.

Assessing the Impact of Turkey’s Quest for Status Since the 2000s on Foreign Policy Change: Transformational or Transactional?

This paper delves into an assessment of the impact of Turkey’s quest for status since the 2000s on changes in its foreign policy. In other words, how has Turkey’s search for status influenced its foreign policy stances since the 2000s? And can we consider the changes in Turkey’s foreign policy change transformational or transactional in essence? In this vein, this paper will make essential contributions to the existing literature on Turkey’s status-seeking strategies by using specific cases to link them to changes in Turkey’s foreign policy and assessing the extent to which they are transactional or transformational. The examination of this topic is all the more important in light of internal developments in Turkey, such as democratic backsliding and economic crisis, as well external
 factors such as its tense relationships with the EU, its rapprochement with Russia and China, and its increasingly proactive profile in regional crises. This paper critically assesses the pattern of Turkey’s foreign policy change from transformational and transactional perspectives.

Eeyou/Eenou community voices on ‘doing’ Miyupimaatisiiun (wellness) planning: An occupational transactional perspective

ABSTRACT This article is the second of ‘twin’ papers centering community participation in Miyupimaatisiuun (wellness) planning within the Eeyou Istchee (Northern Québec James Bay Cree) context. We present and discuss the results of a community-based study that took place over the course of 4 years (2016-2020). Data were collected through 13 visits to four communities, 22 individual conversation-based interviews with local members of Miyupimaatisiiun (wellness) Committees (MC), 50 hours of community-based activity observations, informal brief interviews, and documents related to MC planning activities. Data analysis was grounded in an occupational transactional perspective encompassing local and regional contexts with which MC members coordinate their intentions and actions to plan for community miyupimaatisiiun. Our first manuscript (Lévesque et al., 2022) presented study results on the meaning of community participation in wellness planning. This second paper predominantly addresses the processes of ‘doing’ Miyupimaatisiiun Committee participation. Three themes are presented and discussed: Connecting local entities, Positioning the local Miyupimatisiiun Committee, and Wearing multiple hats. These results help describe and understand community participation as occupational transaction with the effects of colonization and with coloniality, that is, settler forms of knowledge and ways of doing, as participants bridge community sectors and collectivize local entity resources and efforts toward community miyupimaatisiiun. Ways forward for local Cree governance and regional entities hoping to better support community engagement and mobilization for wellness planning, are proposed. Though research results will be of interest to a broad audience, particular relevance to occupational science is emphasized, in terms of occupational transactionalism and coloniality.

Cross-cultural assessment of the community of inquiry instrument: a comparison between UK and US students

ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to conduct a cross-cultural assessment of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) instrument [Arbaugh, J. B., Cleveland-Innes, M., Diaz, S. R., Garrison, D. R., Ice, P., Richardson, J. C., & Swan, K. P. (2008). Developing a community of inquiry instrument: Testing a measure of the community of inquiry framework using a multi-institutional sample. The Internet and Higher Education, 11(3-4), 133–136], comparing its application between students in the UK and the US. Using data collected from 245 UK accounting students, exploratory factor analysis was performed to assess the factorial structure of the CoI instrument. The analysis identifies three factors, consistent with the three presences outlined in the CoI framework [Garrison, D. R., & Archer, W. (2000). A transactional perspective on teaching and learning: A framework for adult and higher education. Elsevier Science]. However, five items display inadequate factor loadings below 0.5. In a cross-cultural comparison with [Arbaugh, J. B., Cleveland-Innes, M., Diaz, S. R., Garrison, D. R., Ice, P., Richardson, J. C., & Swan, K. P. (2008). Developing a community of inquiry instrument: Testing a measure of the community of inquiry framework using a multi-institutional sample. The Internet and Higher Education, 11(3-4), 133–136] US study, distinct differences emerge. Notably, UK students exhibit higher mean scores for teaching, social, and cognitive presences compared to their US counterparts. In conclusion, it appears that cultures with high long-term orientation and low uncertainty avoidance could be more conducive to active engagement in the learning process and critical thinking, thus leading to high student perceptions of CoI.

RESEARCH ON THE INCENTIVE PROBLEMS AND COUNTERMEASURES OF CORE STAFF IN JS BANK FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL CONTRACT

As a regional joint-stock city commercial bank, JS Bank is faced with huge development problems such as weakening advantages of national and local support policies, weak core competitiveness and declining performance. JS Bank fully recognizes that talent is the source of power for banks to "produce" and "create" better products and services and to win market competition, and core employees who master core technology or have strong management ability are valuable human capital of banks. Through questionnaires and interviews, this research learned several incentive factors in which core employees are not very satisfied with the current incentive mechanism and very dissatisfied with the evaluation. From the perspective of psychological contract transactions, the problems include unreasonable salary structure. From the dimension of psychological contract relationship, the construction of organizational culture is insufficient. From the dimension of psychological contract development, the existing problems are that the promotion channels are not smooth. Based on three dimensions of psychological contract, this study proposes countermeasures to optimize the incentive mechanism. Moreover, from the transaction dimension, the countermeasures are to optimize the salary system. The countermeasures from the relationship dimension are to pay attention to the communication and feedback between superiors and subordinates. In addition, the countermeasures from the development dimension are to perfect the promotion system.

On Habit and Organizing: A Transactional Perspective Relating Firms, Consumers, and Social Institutions

Habits and routines are foundational to several organizational theories. Considering organizational members to be predominately employees, established habit-based models recognize how these members’ habits help build organizations and are shaped by them. Departing from this traditional, internal focus, our paper highlights an important aspect of organizing, which has been relatively overlooked by established habit-based models, namely, how firms engineer consumer habits to their advantage and, by extension, strategically shape the habits of other key resource providers. To better theorize consumer habits and their engineering, and to integrate these phenomena within extant organizational theory, we develop a new habit-based perspective relating firms, consumers, and social institutions. Inspired by Dewey’s transactional approach and drawing on modern habit science, our transactional framework helps illuminate habit engineering, promotes a richer and more integrated view of organizing, and opens new possibilities for habit-based organizational theories. Our paper also offers several implications for firms’ managers, individual consumers, and broader society.

The longitudinal associations among student externalizing behaviors, teacher-student relationships, and classroom engagement

Personal characteristics and classroom environment features both play important roles in predicting students' levels of classroom engagement. The present study took a person-environment transaction perspective to investigate how factors at both the personal (i.e., student externalizing behaviors) and relational (i.e., teacher-student relationships) levels jointly predict the development of classroom engagement behaviors in a sample of 784 elementary school students. Using a longitudinal cross-lagged model spanning across Grade 3 to Grade 5, we found a negative reciprocal association between teacher-student relationships and externalizing behaviors, such that a more positive teacher-student relationship predicted fewer externalizing behaviors in the subsequent academic year, and fewer externalizing behaviors predicted a more positive teacher-student relationship 1 year later. In addition, externalizing behaviors directly negatively predicted subsequent classroom engagement, whereas teacher-student relationships indirectly predicted subsequent classroom engagement by way of externalizing behaviors. Overall, students with more externalizing behaviors experienced more conflicts with and received less support from their teachers, which predicted the development of more externalizing behaviors and lower subsequent classroom engagement.

Covid-19 Pandemic and ICT Performance in Nigerian Banks: Financial Transaction Perspective

The global outbreak and spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) have been referred to as the most dangerous pandemic since World War II. The speed of the spread and the severity of the damage caused by the virus has traumatized the global economy affecting both banks and customers. With the lockdown imposed by the government to restrict the movement of people and activities caused by the increased level of coronavirus cases in Nigeria, the fate of the financial users of about 40 million became unknown. Given the analysis of data on trends of COVID-19 infections from the World Health Organization and Nigerian Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, the study assessed the current situation. It indicated some specific concepts that the banking sector should consider and address while taking the necessary measures to cope with the new change. The study used an ex-post-facto research design, enabling the researcher to measure the effect or relationship between the dependent variable and explanatory variables using time-series secondary data. The data collected was reviewed, and validated by CBN, the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics, and the Nigerian Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) websites. The study concluded that the ICT volume of e-payment has no significant effect on operational efficiency in Nigeria Banks, and the ICT value of e-payment significantly affects operational efficiency in Nigeria Banks during the coronavirus lockdown.

How do mobility device users integrate their devices into occupational performance? A narrative literature review

Introduction: Knowledge about how mobility devices are integrated into occupational performance is important to improve participation in daily life among users and assistive technology provision. This study aimed to identify and synthesise literature on how mobility device users integrate their devices into occupational performance. Methods: A narrative review was conducted with a systematic search in PubMed, CINAHL, PsycINFO and SocINDEX for scientific, original, peer-reviewed journal publications in the English or Scandinavian languages. Following search terms were used: mobility devices, occupational performance and synonyms. Publications were screened and read, and data were extracted by two authors independently. Results: A total of 4088 hits led to the identification of six publications. Two categories were identified: (1) how mobility devices are integrated into occupational performance and (2) for what types of occupations beyond mobility are mobility devices used for; seven types were revealed. Conclusion: Mobility devices are integrated into occupations in unique ways to the individual users, shaping how occupations are performed and are used for different types of occupations beyond mobility. Since mobility device use is situational, it is suggested to investigate assistive technology use, applying a transactional perspective to improve assistive technology provision to increase fulfilment of users’ needs and preferences.

Theoretical and methodological alignment through multi-modal research designs: Advancing the transactional perspective of occupation

ABSTRACT Moving beyond an individualized perspective in occupational science requires not only a theoretical paradigm shift, but also a methodological shift, broadening the focus beyond the individual experience. Methodologically, recentering the focus of inquiry to action requires thoughtful consideration of procedures to minimize some of the traditional dualisms separating individuals’ experiences of cognition and emotion, as well as distinctions drawn between individuals and the natural world. The Transactional Perspective of Occupation (TPO) supports the reduction in dualism through its action-orientation, naturalistic perspective, and conceptual understanding of the aesthetic experience. Consistent with this theoretical stance, non-participatory visual methods provide an opportunity to explore nuances of occupation that are less frequently addressed. Grounded in concepts of the TPO, this paper reviews two of these promising methods, providing an exemplar of how visual methods in occupational science research can be used to deepen understanding of occupation without privileging the individual voice. This exemplar examines multi-species engagement of horses and humans, which provides a natural opportunity to move beyond the language-based and individual-centric strategies that are commonly utilized to explore occupation. Methods and modes of analysis will be discussed, followed by a critique of their potential utility and value for future research aligned with the TPO. Employing non-participatory visual methods provides a new strategy for occupational scientists to reach past the individual perspective and more fully engage the dynamic, situated nature of occupation.

The importance of theory at the Information Systems Journal

The importance of theory at the <i>Information Systems Journal</i>

A transactional model of moral learning – how to challenge unsustainable denials

This article draws on a philosophical critique of the problems of denial in the face of the climate crisis and the call for an education that deals with the root causes of social and environmental injustice in depth. To respond to this radical critique in concrete educational practice, there is a need for an understanding of moral learning that also considers the problems of denial and the role of the teacher in these learning processes. We therefore propose a transactional model grounded in Dewey’s pragmatic philosophy that explains how denial hinders the process of moral learning but also describes how teachers can offer moments of resistance that interrupt denial and challenges and transform moral habits. Finally, we discuss the implications of a transactional perspective and the need for making moral progress by reflectively revising our moral habits in the face of overlapping environmental and social injustice crises.

How technostressors influence job and family satisfaction: Exploring the role of work–family conflict

AbstractRecent developments in information and communication technology have blurred the line between the workplace and the home. This can have a negative influence on employees' well‐being and thus has gained increasing attention from academics and practitioners. In this study, we developed a research model based on the transactional perspective of stress and the challenge–hindrance stressor framework. We defined the two dimensions of work–family conflict as the perceptual stress resulting from a chronic challenge and hindrance technostressors, which ultimately affect employees' satisfaction in both the work and family domains. We tested our model using a three‐wave time‐lagged survey study with data collected from 268 employees. Challenge and hindrance technostressors had different effects on these two main forms of work–family conflict (time‐based and strain‐based) but further induced negative effects on both job and family satisfaction. Overall, we make both scientific and practical contributions to the fields of work‐related technology use and work–family conflict.

Representing informal caregivers of older adults in occupation-focused research: A critical interpretive synthesis

ABSTRACT Within the current demographic and political context, it is likely there will be increasing reliance on informal caregivers in the provision of care to older adults in Western nations. This critical interpretive synthesis explored how informal caregiving has been conceptualized and researched in the occupation-based literature. Five occupation-focused journals were searched for articles on informal caregiving for older adults, resulting in 17 primary research articles. Analysis of these articles revealed that there has been an increasing focus on the experiences of caregivers (as opposed to divided focus between caregivers and care recipients) and that transactional perspectives and exploration of co-occupations have expanded the scope of the literature in this field. This synthesis points to a need to turn greater attention to diversity among informal caregivers, particularly in relation to gender and gender identity and raises concerns regarding lack of critical attention to informal caregiving as embedded in social relations of power. An occupational perspective can contribute to research on informal caregiving by generating knowledge regarding how this occupation is shaped in relation to contextual and political elements and has the potential to illuminate implications for the occupations of caregivers and care recipients.

Closing the experience gap in banking: Humanising customer experience in four dimensions

In the rush to translate analogue interactions into the digital space, many financial institutions (FIs) skipped a step. They failed to define the holistic customer experience (CX) — the subjective thoughts, feelings, sensations and actions — that they want their tools to generate. This is a significant oversight, because a decade of developments in the behavioral and social sciences have demonstrated that business returns accrue from ensuring that brands engage not only the intellectual but also the emotional, sensorial and behavioral dimensions of human experience. In this paper, we present the first model designed to assess multidimensional experience in the banking sector. The humanising customer experience (HCX) model, developed by brand experience agency Monigle in partnership with American Banker, predicts 78 per cent of bank customer satisfaction and net promoter score (NPS). It measures more than 60 variables, crafted for their relevance to the financial sector, which together create the four dimensions of experience that are proven to drive important customer outcomes. By revealing the dimensions and attributes where FIs are currently lagging, the HCX framework offers newfound precision in directing future CX investments. The inaugural year of data, from 2021, shows that FIs are strongest in delivering on behavioral and intellectual experiences, while trailing in sensorial and emotional dimensions. After outlining the social sciences backdrop of this model and explaining its predictive power, we discuss several areas of industry focus where lopsided investments have led to less than fully humanised CX. We conclude that banks need to design experiences that yield emotional benefits, move from providing self-service tools to supporting customers’ financial self-actualisation, and approach services from a fully interactional rather than transactional perspective.