Tell me a good story

Perceptions of Cross-Cultural Challenges and Successful Approaches in Facilitating the Improvement of Equine Welfare

Projects that aim to improve the welfare of equids worldwide usually involve people from different countries and cultures working together. Given that professionals involved with multi-stakeholder projects often work cross-culturally, this study examined their experiences regarding the challenges involved in, and their reflections on, how to work in a culturally sensitive way. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 participants working in a total of 29 countries and analysed using thematic analysis. Key response themes emerged from the responses to questions covering the areas of perceptions of animal welfare, challenges working cross-culturally and embracing cultural sensitivity. The overriding theme regarding perceptions of animal welfare was that of barriers to animal welfare, under which emerged the subthemes of limited financial and material resources, limited understanding of the tenets of animal welfare, and attachment to traditional medicines and practices. Exploring the key challenges resulted in two themes: challenges regarding the local context and etiquette, and those regarding working with different stakeholders. Considering cultural sensitivity, again, two themes emerged: the importance of trust and respect, and of working with local partners. Previous works have highlighted the importance of shared linguistic knowledge, interpersonal skills and cultural knowledge, and these elements also emerged in this research. As well as providing insights into the challenges of working cross-culturally, the findings of this study have enabled the development of suggestions for how this work could be taken forward in a practical way to be of use to professionals in this sector.

Perceptions of Fear and Anxiety in Horses as Reported in Interviews with Equine Behaviourists

Simple Summary

Previous studies have identified that people are poor at recognising fear and pain in horses, consequently leading to one of the key welfare concerns for horses in the United Kingdom. Given that equine behaviourists are uniquely placed to understand how horse caregivers perceive fear and anxiety in their horses, this study examined the experiences of registered equine behaviourists working with horse caregivers. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine participants and analysed using thematic analysis. Three key response themes emerged: caregivers are extremely poor at recognizing fear and anxiety in horses; some clients do recognise behavioural signs indicating fear and/or anxiety but only the overt signs (e.g., rearing, running away) rather than the more subtle signs (e.g., tension in face, subtle avoidance behaviours such as a hesitant gait); and fear and/or anxiety behaviour is often misinterpreted or mislabelled. This study has provided initial insights into the lack of recognition of fear and anxiety of horses by their caregivers in the United Kingdom, together with tried and tested approaches to conversations to change this.

Abstract

One of the key welfare concerns for horses in the United Kingdom is lack of recognition of fear in horses. This study aimed to gain an understanding of how well horse care givers recognise fear and/or anxiety in horses by interviewing equine behaviourists (who interact with large numbers of horse care givers and talk to them about this topic routinely). The experiences of Animal Behaviour and Training Council (ABTC)-registered equine behaviourists working with horse caregivers were examined, including the ability of clients to recognise fear and/or anxiety in horses, how clients respond when discussing fear as the reason for their horse’s behaviour, and what explanations the participants use to explain fear and anxiety. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine participants and analysed using thematic analysis before being written up to reflect the discussion points. When asked how well horse caregivers recognise fear and/or anxiety in horses, three key response themes emerged: caregivers are extremely poor at recognizing fear and anxiety in horses; some clients do recognise behavioural signs indicating fear and/or anxiety but only the overt signs (e.g., rearing, running away) rather than the more subtle signs (e.g., tension in face, subtle avoidance behaviours such as a hesitant gait); and fear and/or anxiety behaviour is often misinterpreted or mislabelled. These key themes recurred throughout several other interview questions. This study has provided initial insights into the lack of recognition of fear and anxiety of horses by their caregivers in the United Kingdom as well as tried and tested approaches to conversations to change this. Such synthesis of experience and techniques across the equine behaviour sector, together with the information gained regarding perception of equine caregivers, could be a valuable approach to improve the effectiveness of behaviour consultations and welfare initiatives.

Understanding employees' information security identities: an interpretive narrative approach

Purpose

The authors seek to understand the formation of control- and security-related identities among organizational employees through and interpretive narrative analysis. The authors also seek to identify how the identities form over time and across contexts. Several identities are identified as well as the changes that may occur in the identities.

Design/methodology/approach

Few interpretive or critical studies exist in behavioral information security research to represent employee perspectives of power and control. Using qualitative interviews and narrative analysis of the interview transcripts, this paper analyzes the security- and control-related identities and values that employees adopt in organizational settings.

Findings

Two major categories of behavioral security compliance identities were identified: compliant and noncompliant. Specific identities within the compliant category included: faithful follower vs the reasoned follower, and other-preserving versus the self-preserving identities. The noncompliant category included: anti-authority identity, utilitarian identity, trusting identity and unaware identity. Furthermore, three patterns of identity changes were observed.

Research limitations/implications

The authors’ narrative stories suggest that employee identities are complex and multi-faceted, and that they may be fluid and adaptive to situational factors. Future research should avoid assumptions that all employees are the same or that employee beliefs remain constant over time or in different contexts. Identities are also strongly rooted in individuals' rearing and other life experiences. Thus, security control is far broader than is studied in behavioral studies. The authors find that history matters and should be examined carefully.

Practical implications

The authors’ study provides insights that managers can use to enhance security initiatives. It is clear that different employees build different control-related identities. Managers must understand that their employees are unique and will not all respond to policies, punishments, and other forms of control in the same way. The narratives also suggest that many organizations lack appropriate programs to enhance employees' awareness of security issues.

Originality/value

The authors’ narrative analysis suggests that employee security identities are complex and multi-faceted, and that they are fluid and adaptive to situational factors. Research should avoid assumptions that all employees are the same or that their beliefs remain constant over time or in different contexts. Identities are also strongly rooted in individuals' rearing and other life experiences. Their history matters and should be examined carefully.

Author Highlights for the Past 35 Years

This essay reviews leading contributions to The DATA BASE for Advances in Information Systems over the past 35 years, both in terms of identifying leading scholars who published most frequently in the journal as well as papers that have been cited most frequently. Using standard scientometric methods, I identify the leading authors who published five or more papers since 1982. In terms of analyzing highly cited papers, I organize the analysis into four time periods of nine years each, a structure that reveals that The DATA BASE has been a longstanding venue for IS scholars to introduce their early work - whether conceptual or empirical. Notably, several esteemed IS scholars published early conceptual versions of their ideas in The DATA BASE - often many years before they followed up with related work in other journals. In terms of highly cited papers, the analysis in this essay also reveals that The DATA BASE shifted toward publishing empirical papers after 1990 and, despite the prevalence of positivist, quantitative research during the past 25 years, qualitative research has also become prominent in the journal. More recently, the journal has also featured several literature review papers on important topic areas, such as virtual teams, technostress, IT outsourcing, and IT security. This essay reviews leading contributions to The DATA BASE for Advances in Information Systems over the past 35 years, both in terms of identifying leading scholars who published most frequently in the journal as well as papers that have been cited most frequently. Using standard scientometric methods, I identify the leading authors who published five or more papers since 1982. In terms of analyzing highly cited papers, I organize the analysis into four time periods of nine years each, a structure that reveals that The DATA BASE has been a longstanding venue for IS scholars to introduce their early work - whether conceptual or empirical. Notably, several esteemed IS scholars published early conceptual versions of their ideas in The DATA BASE - often many years before they followed up with related work in other journals. In terms of highly cited papers, the analysis in this essay also reveals that The DATA BASE shifted toward publishing empirical papers after 1990 and, despite the prevalence of positivist, quantitative research during the past 25 years, qualitative research has also become prominent in the journal. More recently, the journal has also featured several literature review papers on important topic areas, such as virtual teams, technostress, IT outsourcing, and IT security.

Language Quality in Requirements Development: Tracing Communication in the Process of Information Systems Development

Knowledge transfer, communication, and shared understanding between project stakeholders are important factors in requirements development and in the information systems development process. Nevertheless, the impact and analysis of language and linguistic communication during requirements development is still an open issue. In our research, we claim that requirements development depends on the ability to deal with language and communication issues in practice and reach shared understanding of requirements. We propose the concept of language quality as a suitable means for analyzing the emergence of coherent and meaningful requirements. By applying the thereby developed dimensions of language quality to a real information systems development project, we are able to obtain practice-grounded propositions to further evaluate the consequences of different actions on the interaction and communication process of stakeholders in requirements development.

Understanding User Dissatisfaction

This paper examines the role of fairness and how it shapes a user’s view in IT-enabled change. Drawing from several fairness theories, components of fairness are identified and examined in two studies. The first study examines the role of fairness through user interviews and finds that all five components of fairness are considered by users in enterprise system implementations. The second study operationalizes and analyzes the components of fairness through a questionnaire distributed to users. This second study finds that fairness is comprised of all five components that were proposed and a significant relationship exists with user dissatisfaction. The two studies lead to a new theoretical perspective and provide practical implications regarding the role of fairness in IT-enabled change and their strategic implications.

Sustainable e-Recruiting Portals

Since most e-recruiting portals suffer from outdated applicant profiles and receive little user return as soon as applicants have found a new job, in this study, the authors explore how to motivate applicants to keep their profiles up-to-date and stay connected with one specific recruiting portal throughout their careers. The authors interviewed applicants, system analysts and programmers of an Austrian e-recruiting portal. Narratives showing striking differences between these three stakeholders’ interpretation of system requirements for long-term usage are discussed. The identified requirements point to niche recruiting: integrating social network and community features for specified user segments sharing a similar social identity and fostering pre-existing offline ties among users for career purposes. Implications are sketched for more sustainable e-recruiting research, design and development.

Resistant Groups in Enterprise System Implementations: A Q-Methodology Examination

This paper is an initial investigation into types of user resistance and the management strategy expectations of users in a mandatory adoption setting. Despite its relationship to adoption, relatively little is known about user resistance. User resistance is investigated in the Enterprise System (ES) environment because the complexity and richness of ES leads users to manifest a large range of resistant behaviors and beliefs. Using Concourse Theory and Q-methodology, ES users are interviewed followed by the development of a Q-sort questionnaire, which was distributed to ES users. The results reveal eight user groups and address the management strategies preferred by each group. The results have implications for both research in the field of user resistance and adoption, and practitioners involved in system implementation.

An investigation into extracting and analysing stories

Purpose

The use of storytelling as a knowledge elicitation tool has attracted much attention in recent years, yet there is limited literature on how to illicit or stimulate the story. This paper aims to find appropriate research instruments that stimulate storytelling and morph vocalised individual narratives into multifaceted stories that provide an insight into the emotions, politics and “life” of organizations.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper uses an in depth case‐study approach undertaken within the UK Fire and Rescue emergency service and uses the concept of storytelling as a research instrument to elicit highly contextualized knowledge from knowledge holders. The intention is not to attempt to find an objective truth but rather to stimulate discursive openness.

Findings

The paper demonstrates that the developed story elicitation technique can stimulate storytelling and story creation. The research provides a simple formalism for structuring story elicitation and analysis.

Research limitations/implications

It would be useful if future research explored the use of the story elicitation technique presented here in other domains, particularly those where multiple stakeholders are involved and therefore there is the possibility of multiple “truths.”

Practical implications

The story elicitation will make a practical contribution to the management “toolbox” providing managers with a mechanism for stimulating storytelling, especially in complex situations where multiple perspectives need to be considered.

Originality/value

This paper presents a non‐prescriptive investigative tool for studying the multidimensional nature of storytelling and legitimisation.