RSS 1.0Faculty of Arts, Business and Social Sciences
Recent Submissions
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Can social protection tackle emerging risks from climate change, and how? A framework and a critical reviewClimate change is transforming the risks individuals and households face, with potentially profound socioeconomic consequences including increased poverty, inequality, and social instability. Social protection is a policy tool that governments have used to help individuals and households manage risks linked to income and livelihoods, and to achieve societal outcomes such as reducing poverty and inequality. Despite its potential as a policy response to climate change, the integration of social protection within the climate policy agenda is currently limited. While the concept of risk is key to both sectors, different understandings of the nature and scope of climate change impacts, their implications, and of the adequacy of social protection instruments to address them, contribute to the lack of policy and practice integration. Our goal is to bridge this cognitive gap by highlighting the potential of social protection as a policy response to climate change. Using a climate risk lens, we first explore how climate change drives risks that are within the realm of social protection, and their implications, including likely future trends in demand for social protection. Based on this analysis, we critically review existing arguments for what social protection can do and evidence of what it currently does to manage risks arising from climate change. From the analysis, a set of reconceptualised roles emerge for social protection to strategically contribute to climate resilient development.
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Why are co-authored academic articles more cited: Higher quality or larger audience?Collaboration is encouraged because it is believed to improve academic research, supported by indirect evidence in the form of more co-authored articles being more cited. Nevertheless, this might not reflect quality but increased self-citations or the “audience effect”: citations from increased awareness through multiple author networks. We address this with the first science wide investigation into whether author numbers associate with journal article quality, using expert peer quality judgements for 122,331 articles from the 2014-20 UK national assessment. Spearman correlations between authors numbers and quality scores show moderately strong positive associations (0.2-0.4) in the health, life, and physical sciences, but weak or no positive associations in engineering and social sciences, with weak negative/positive or no association in various arts and humanities, and a possible negative association for decision sciences. This gives the first systematic evidence that greater numbers of authors associates with higher quality journal articles in the majority of academia outside the arts and humanities, at least for the UK. Positive associations between team size and citation counts in areas with little association between team size and quality also show that audience effects or other non-quality factors account for the higher citation rates of co-authored articles in some fields.
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First approaches to an underexplored dialect region: Trudgill’s Upper SouthwestAlthough dialectology in England received two major boosts at the end of the 19th century and the middle of the 20th century (Ellis 1889 and Orton & Barry 1956-8), discussion of dialect change since that time has avoided discussion of many areas, concentrated as it was in those Universities with a tradition of dialectology (Essex, Leeds, Sheffield, Newcastle). Though many areas have since been re-examined in England; notably Bristol dialect (Blaxter & Coates 2019), Newcastle dialect (Milroy 1994, Milroy et al. 1999) Sunderland dialect (Burbano-Elizondo 2007), and Manchester dialect (Baranowski & Turton 2015, Bermúdez-Otero et al. 2015) there remain many areas which were never fully explored at the time of the Survey of English Dialects (Birmingham as an urban area for example was completely bypassed by that survey), as well as many areas which remain little known and studied. This paper brings together what is known about the dialects of the Upper Southwest and suggests pointers for directions in future research there based on the data from Worcestershire and Herefordshire that we discuss.
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‘Pack up your blarting’: The language of the senses in Black Country dialectThis chapter examines literary and vernacular sources to consider how sensory experiences become encoded in dialect; looking at how words change meaning over time, how the dialect remains vital, and at the kinds of sensory experiences residents reported having. I explore the Aristotelian model of the senses, relating it to words which were present in my doctoral fieldwork and broaden the discussion of these words and their history. Using speech and writing by Black Country people, drawing on poetry, fiction and spoken data I critique the idea that the dialect is in any greater danger of becoming less vital than any other regional dialect of the UK. Using current linguistic research, I consider the future of the dialect, questioning what experiences speakers may wish to encode through language in a changing Black Country.
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Verbal negation strategies in the Black Country- spatial and temporal variationThis paper examines data from the traditional language variety of the Black Country area of the west Midlands of England; an area lying directly to the west of the city of Birmingham. I introduce the strategies which have been used over time to mark negation of modal and auxiliary verbs in Black Country English, drawing on historical and present-day sources and to inform this introduction. I then outline the phonological rules which have governed the two main competing strategies, one of which continues to govern the present-day localised system of negation. I next examine the rise of one strategy over the other and discuss the timeframe in which this might have occurred, using both dialect surveys and literary sources to strengthen my case. I finally examine the sociolinguistic stratification of the local negative forms, and their sociolinguistic significance within the modern speech community. For this last section I draw on a modern corpus of 39 Black Country residents which was collected between 2003 and 2006.
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Reading Kazuo Ishiguro in times of crisisInternational crises are central to Kazuo Ishiguro's work. This introduction situates Ishiguro alongside contemporary global emergencies, including the COVD-19 pandemic, climate change, and reactions to emancipatory movements. It suggests that Ishiguro's work interrogates ‘crisis' by confronting his characters with both individual and collective crises, a theme explored in Catherine Charlwood's essay here. It shows how Ishiguro's work indirectly relates to the vast health crisis of COVID-19, which Sebastian Groes explores in his essay on empathy, (robot) ethics, digital well-being, and inequality. Connected to the pandemic, the introduction traces how Ishiguro's writing evidences growing concern for the climate crisis. The politics of migration are a key theme in Ishiguro: here Dominic Dean explores their longstanding and dangerous relationship with conspiracy theories, while Ivan Stacy, Melinda Dabis and Richard Robinson all connect Ishiguro to anxieties over resurgent nationalisms, cosmopolitan internationalisms, and complex transnationalisms. This introduction sets out how the essays in this Special Issue collectively explore the ethical difficulties in Ishiguro's crisis narratives, their refusals of easily satisfying resolutions, and their implicit critique of crisis frameworks for understanding political and historical problems. Sharply distinct from passivity or disinterest, Ishiguro’s work elicits an attitude of humility against apparently perpetual, end-dominated crises.
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‘What did you do to them Klaus?’: The Klaus Fuchs atomic espionage case and its impact on the scientific community in early Cold War BritainThe atomic spy, Klaus Fuchs, was one of the most notorious figures of the early Cold War. The story of his espionage and the impact it had has been the subject of extensive historical research. This article provides a new angle on the Fuchs case by examining the repercussions of his actions on his friends, colleagues, and the wider scientific community in Britain that have previously been overlooked. It argues that the subsequent fall-out led several atomic scientists to have their own loyalties questioned and be subjected to extensive and sustained surveillance. As the article will show, the inevitable era of suspicion that the Fuchs case ushered in did damage to the reputations, careers, and prospects of certain scientists. By examining the repercussions, the article helps to provide a first insight into the experience of some British scientists during the early years of the Cold War.
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Transformation or retaining the status quo: Multinational hospitality companies and SME collaboration on sustainability in emerging countriesThis chapter focuses on the dynamics of MHC-SME collaboration on sustainability in an emerging country context. The findings show that MHC sustainability policy is generally driven from headquarters and that economic sustainability has priority over environmental and social sustainability. By contrast, SMEs appear to be able to initiate fully sustainable strategies based on the culture, tradition, family history, industry, and ethical standing of the owners. The interaction of MHCs and SMEs in relation to sustainability involves varying factors at the macro, meso, and micro levels. However, the micro level factor (i.e., human agency) seems to be the determining factor of the relationship. The authors provide rich contextual data by adopting a qualitative research method (case study) based on primary data, which is rare in international business literature.
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Towards an ecocritical adaptation studiesArguments that ‘it is time for adaptation studies to take an x turn’ have proliferated in the inevitably methodologically eclectic field of adaptation studies. However, there are still methodologies with which adaptation studies has not yet engaged in detail, and which could be enriched by certain existing adaptation studies conventions. One such approach is ecocriticism: analyses of how various cultural practices reflect and inform human attitudes and behaviours towards the nonhuman world around us. This article outlines how the study of adaptation has thus far engaged with ecocritical issues, and indicates how existing adaptation studies protocols offer useful tools to extend the ecocritical project in a diachronic and intercultural manner.
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The impact of entrepreneurial orientation on debt financing of family businesses: Evidence from NigeriaThere exists a shortage of studies that establish linkages between entrepreneurial orientation and debt financing in family businesses. In line with this research stream, the purpose of this chapter is to examine the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and debt financing of family businesses. Specifically, the study investigates how the five entrepreneurial orientation dimensions– risk-taking, innovativeness, proactiveness, competitive aggressiveness, and autonomy influence family business debt financing. By adopting a qualitative research methodology and based on empirical evidence gathered through a 10-case study design involving face-to-face interviews with owners of family businesses in Nigeria, the study examines the influence of entrepreneurial orientation on debt financing. The results suggest that the entrepreneurial orientation of family businesses seems to play a pivotal role in influencing debt financing. If a firm is entrepreneurial-oriented, it is reasonable to expect that it will focus attention on new and emerging opportunities for obtaining debt financing. The study advances research on entrepreneurial orientation and debt financing in family businesses. It develops an empirically theoretical framework at the intersection of the family business and entrepreneurial orientation research, filling a gap in the literature. Future research could substantiate the findings of this study on a broader empirical base, using quantitative methods. This study offers a new perspective to the study of entrepreneurial orientation and, at the same time, contributes with findings from research on entrepreneurial orientation to the study of debt financing in family businesses.
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Enabling family business resilience – The role of female leadership: Evidence from a Chinese family businessResearch on what makes family business resilient and why resilience matters in family businesses is in development. Drawing on the upper echelon theory, we examine the impact of female leadership on resilience development. Semi-structured interviews were performed in the selected family business. This was complemented by secondary data available from online publications. Results suggest that resilience consists of abilities to prepare for, control, adapt to, and absorb change. Evidence further indicates female-embodied attributes, female-enabled family cohesion, female-empowered governance, and female-characterised resource orchestration lead to the development of resilience.
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Managing allegations concerning Black and Asian police officers, cultural competence and reflective practice under the Police (Conduct) Regulations 2020The Police (Conduct) Regulations 2020 were introduced in the aftermath of serious findings by the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) that many police supervisors are uncomfortable dealing with low-level misconduct allegations concerning Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) officers. A key component of the new regulations is the use of reflective practice as a way of managing low-level breaches of professional standards. We argue that there is little in the regulations to ensure that police supervisors can reach a threshold of cultural competency to oversee the new processes authentically. Furthermore, we fear that police misconduct data in coming years may indicate significant improvements in rates of misconduct and disproportionalities when the reality is that many issues are being shunted downward to more informal environments where little effort is made to gather and analyse data. Racial and ethnic disproportionalities may become even harder to identify and address as a result.
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What is known about capacity and coordination of social assistance programmes in crisis situations?This paper reviews the literature and documented evidence on capacity and coordination issues in crisis situations, where social protection and humanitarian assistance intersect. The paper finds that while there is a burgeoning literature that mentions capacity and coordination, very little of this focuses on crisis situations. Although both terms are mentioned frequently, they are rarely defined or robustly and systematically assessed. The little literature that does exist points to a substantial knowledge gap on both the ways in which capacity and coordination deficits undermine the delivery of social assistance in crisis situations and what can be done to overcome these deficits. Frameworks that could be useful in exploring these questions in crisis situations are identified including those that differentiate between technical and functional elements of capacity, and between technical, political, social and behavioural aspects of coordination.
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Radical freedom: Periyar and womenThis paper looks at South Indian social reformer and anti-caste radical Periyar E.V. Ramasamy's approach to the women's question. Periyar was not just an advocate of social and economic equality between the sexes but espoused a radical concept of sexual freedom for women, which is central to his concept of liberty as such. While the anti-colonialists of his period defended native traditions and customs, Periyar welcomed modernity and saw it laden with possibilities for the emancipation of women. Likewise, where other social reformers addressed the women's question within the ambit of the nation and/or the family, Periyar saw both nation and family as institutions that limited the liberties of women. This paper compares his thoughts with The Dialectic of Sex, the key work of the radical feminist Shulamith Firestone, and highlights the similarities in their approach to women's liberation and sexual freedom, especially their critique of child-rearing and child-bearing. It explores Periyar's booklet Women Enslaved in detail and engages with lesser known, new primary material of Periyar on the women's question, concluding with a discussion of his perspective of the West.
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Assessing the application of multi-criteria decision making techniques in hospitality and tourism research: a bibliometric studyPurpose: Multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) techniques are decision support systems that provide systematic approaches to solve hospitality and tourism (H&T) problems while minimizing the risk of failure. However, less is known about the application of MCDM techniques in H&T research. This study aims to systematically assess the use of MCDM techniques in H&T research to classify its current application and determine its application potential for H&T research. Design/methodology/approach: This study used bibliometric analysis to examine all published MCDM studies focused on H&T industries, since 1997. In addition, topic modelling was used to discover key concepts. Finally, top cited studies in terms of total citations per year and total citations were qualitatively reviewed for more insights. Findings: The findings revealed an ongoing interest in applying MCDM techniques in H&T research. Specifically, the extension of fuzzy theory in MCDM techniques is burgeoning among H&T researchers. However, a certain number of MCDM techniques seem to be ignored in this field with a repetitive application of MCDM techniques in particular areas. Research limitations/implications: The data for the current research was solely retrieved from Scopus and other databases were not included. Therefore, future research is called for to re-examine the study by considering data from various databases. Originality/value: This study contributes to extant H&T literature by a) identifying the most prolific and influential countries, journals, publications, and trends by applying MCDM techniques in H&T research, and b) elucidating the implications and characteristics of MCDM techniques in H&T research.
