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1 – 10 of 541Victoria F. Caplan and Eunice S.P. Wong
The purpose of this paper is to show how one medium-sized research library sustainably delivers large scale integrated library instruction via team efforts that allow for (and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to show how one medium-sized research library sustainably delivers large scale integrated library instruction via team efforts that allow for (and encourage) librarians diverse teaching approaches within a unified team.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper examines an individual case within the context of library and management research literature.
Findings
A self-managed library instruction team, using agreed upon learning outcomes and supported by good infrastructure, communication skills and tools, and within administration supportive of professional development and experimentation can sustainably delivery high volume, high-quality library instruction.
Practical implications
This paper may help other libraries learn how to develop their own self-managed teams to deliver sustainable high volume, high-quality library instruction.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to the literature on self-managed teams in librarianship and especially self-managed teams to deliver sustainable high volume information literacy. It also contributes to the small pool of literature using the jazz metaphor in library instruction.
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The purpose of this paper is to explore narratives in a new nonprofit arts center. It includes the macro‐, meso‐, and personal narratives that keep the center organized in the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore narratives in a new nonprofit arts center. It includes the macro‐, meso‐, and personal narratives that keep the center organized in the midst of the chaotic everyday activities. It advocates the explanatory force of narrative as an alternative to organizational life cycle theory for understanding organizational startups.
Design/methodology/approach
This narrative ethnography involved participant observation, full participation, and narrative interviews over a three‐year period. Using grounded theory, narratives were examined to discover how they engendered and maintained order.
Findings
This paper contributes to the understanding narratives as a constitutional organizing and sensemaking process, including the narratives of “do it yourself,” and economic production, family and home, and personal narratives that constitute community, community boundaries, and identity, adding to our knowledge of organizing.
Research limitations/implications
The research examined only one local nonprofit arts center, therefore the findings are specific to this site and the same types of narratives may not necessarily be found in other nonprofits.
Originality/value
This paper examines a nonprofit during start‐up. It validates support for the examination of organizations through narrative ethnography and narrative interviewing. It purports that narratives constitute social identity, rather than being the evidence of social identity.
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Recent research has shed light on career trajectories outside enclosed organizations and linked individual careers to career fields. This article seeks to explore how individuals'…
Abstract
Purpose
Recent research has shed light on career trajectories outside enclosed organizations and linked individual careers to career fields. This article seeks to explore how individuals' trajectories are affected by structural changes in career fields.
Design/methodology/approach
By exploring several jazz musicians' biographies, a typical trajectory is built. In contrast with this typical trajectory, alternative successful trajectories are investigated.
Findings
The typical trajectory entails a successful introduction of a musician into a field, followed by increasing recognition among peers at jam sessions, stream of engagements and among critics. Consecration of one's public persona occurs in tandem with the institutionalization of one's personal style. These higher levels of “symbolic capital” grant continuous streams of engagements, which in turn are translated into higher levels of economic capital. As a musician achieves a dominant position in a field, inertial forces typecast him, impeding innovation, which leaves room for upcoming younger artists. This model is contrasted with deviant careers that proved to be successful due to structural changes in the field. As the legitimacy sources were no longer tightly coupled, musicians were able to undertake choices not prescribed by successful predecessors. The way individuals behave when facing field uncertainty reveals the enduring values underlying the employment and conversion of resources.
Research limitations/implications
This research is based on qualitative research on jazz musicians' bios. Future research might further explore interpretative schemata applied by musicians facing career choices.
Practical implications
Practitioners might find controversial and conflictive sources of legitimacy opportunities for taking up alternative career paths. Conversely, structural changes might help analysts to assess endurable patterns of individual strategic choices.
Originality/value
The logics of jazz musicians' trajectories are assumed to be analogous to other industry careers. This analogy adds value to the study of careers in two ways: first, it contributes to understanding career patterns outside formal organizations; and second, it permits a multi‐level analysis, where both individual trajectories and the field dynamics are interwoven.
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The deadhead subculture – centered around the band Grateful Dead – has been active for 50+ years. Despite its longevity, academic work is sparse compared to other music…
Abstract
The deadhead subculture – centered around the band Grateful Dead – has been active for 50+ years. Despite its longevity, academic work is sparse compared to other music subcultures. Given its durability and resilience, this subculture offers an opportunity to explore subcultural development and maintenance. I employ a contemporary, symbolic interactionist approach to trace the development of deadhead subculture and subcultural identity. Although identity is a basic concept in subculture research, it is not well defined: I suggest that the co-creation and maintenance of subcultural identity can be seen as a dialectic between collective identity and symbolic interactionist conceptions of individual role-identity.
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In jam festival music scenes, participants build elaborate networks that connect members formally and informally between music events. Largely regional in scope, participants form…
Abstract
In jam festival music scenes, participants build elaborate networks that connect members formally and informally between music events. Largely regional in scope, participants form these networks to develop and perform scene identities and cultivate intimate social relationships. Emerging through cultivated “crews” and “camps,” members build hubs of interaction that sustain and persist well beyond the festival event to create a vital sense of belonging and place. While the affective relationships formed at music festival events tend to be temporary, diffuse, and episodic, scene networks provide a “portable” interactional infrastructure that promotes relational continuity and persistence. These networks also provide more pragmatic benefits to networked members in the form of social and subcultural capital exchanged for symbolic and material rewards within the scene. Drawing from nearly 20 years of formal and informal participant observation in festival scenes, I provide an analysis of these networks and articulate common practices that drive their formation and continuation.
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The process of making an original music album is highlighted to illustrate aspects of the music production process in addition to how leadership and related factors play out…
Abstract
The process of making an original music album is highlighted to illustrate aspects of the music production process in addition to how leadership and related factors play out during this process. Background information is detailed regarding musicians as entrepreneurs, the music production process, group dynamics, learning approaches, aspects of group dynamics, and an emphasis on more shared, distributive forms of leadership. The conceptual framework and results of the ethnographic field study describe a music production process consisting of the following phases: Pre-Production; Production; and Post-Production, with decision-making, direction-setting, and overall leadership approaches playing out at each phase. Reflections, key learnings, and recommendations for future research are presented, all centering on the usefulness in identifying the process of original music production.
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– The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how people making music represent their production activities using images of consumption.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how people making music represent their production activities using images of consumption.
Design/methodology/approach
Supporting evidence is based on in-depth interviews with musicians and support personnel. The data are structured through a thematic analysis.
Findings
The paper argues that consumption serves as a discursive resource that allows cultural producers to make sense of production activities which do not conform to an image of production as an alienated form of labour.
Originality/value
Relating the analysis to the ongoing attempts to conceptualise cultural producers through the concept of prosumption, the paper concludes that there are limits to cultural producers’ abilities to represent their production activities as production rather than a structural change in social or economic organisation, as suggested by some consumer researchers.
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