John Amis

Implementing childhood obesity policy in a new educational environment: the cases of Mississippi and Tennessee.

OBJECTIVES Our purpose was to investigate the processes involved in, and outcomes of, implementing 3 new state-level, school-oriented childhood obesity policies enacted between 2004 and 2007. METHODS We followed policy implementation in 8 high schools in Mississippi and Tennessee. We collected data between 2006 and 2009 from interviews with policymakers, administrators, teachers, and students; observations of school-based activities; and documents. RESULTS Significant barriers to the effective implementation of obesity-related policies emerged. These most notably include a value system that prioritizes performances in standardized tests over physical education (PE) and a varsity sport system that negatively influences opportunities for PE. These and other factors, such as resource constraints and the overloading of school administrators with new policies, mitigate against the implementation of policies designed to promote improvements in student health through PE. CONCLUSIONS Policies designed to address health and social problems in high-school settings face significant barriers to effective implementation. To have a broad impact, obesity-related policies must be tied to mainstream educational initiatives that both incentivize, and hold accountable, the school-level actors responsible for their implementation.

Beyond communication: The role of standardized protocols in a changing health care environment

Background: Communication errors have grave consequences in health care settings. The situation–background–assessment–recommendation (SBAR) protocol has been theorized to improve communication by creating a common language between nurses and physicians in acute care situations. This practice is gaining acceptance across the health care field. However, as yet, there has been little investigation of the ways in which SBAR may have an impact on how health care professionals operate beyond the creation of a common language. Purpose: The purposes of the study were to explore the implementation of the SBAR protocol and investigate the potential impact of SBAR on the day-to-day experiences of nurses. Methods: We performed a qualitative case study of 2 hospitals that were implementing the SBAR protocol. We collected data from 80 semistructured interviews with nurses, nurse manager, and physicians; observation of nursing and other hospital activities; and documents that pertained to the implementation of the SBAR protocol. Data were analyzed using a thematic approach. Findings: Our analysis revealed 4 dimensions of impact that SBAR has beyond its use as a communication tool: schema formation, development of legitimacy, development of social capital, and reinforcement of dominant logics. Practice Implications: The results indicate that SBAR may function as more than a tool to standardize communication among nurses and physicians. Rather, the findings indicate that SBAR may aid in schema development that allows rapid decision making by nurses, provide social capital and legitimacy for less-tenured nurses, and reinforce a move toward standardization in the nursing profession. Our findings further suggest that standardized protocols such as SBAR may be a cost-effective method for hospital managers and administrators to accelerate the socialization of nurses, particularly new hires.

Translating Intentions to Behavior: The Interaction of Network Structure and Behavioral Intentions in Understanding Employee Turnover

This paper integrates psychological and sociological perspectives to provide a more complete explanation of the link between intended and actual turnover. Findings from two studies suggest that the translation of intentions to leave ones job into turnover behavior is attenuated by centrality in organizational advice and friendship networks. Our results demonstrate that psychological and network factors jointly impact employee turnover, and distinguish the effects of different types of networks friendship, advice, ties in-degree, out-degree, and levels dyadic, triadic in the turnover process. We discuss the implications of these findings for research and practice, and propose a two-stage model of turnover grounded in temporal construal theory that describes how psychological and structural factors variously influence the turnover decision process.

Adolescent obesity, educational attainment and adult earnings

We estimate the effects of being obese during adolescence on the likelihood of high school graduation, post-secondary educational attainment and labour market earnings as an adult (over 13 years later). We use longitudinal data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (Add Health), conducted by the Carolina Population Center of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This is a nationally representative sample of students in grades 7 through 12 for the 1994–1995 first wave survey. Three subsequent waves of follow-up interviews occurred in 1996, 2001–2002 and finally in 2007–2008, when the sample was aged 25–31. Probit and linear regression models with a large set of controls (to minimize any bias that may result from omitting factors related to both adolescent obesity and adult outcomes) are fitted to carry out analyses separately by gender or racial groups. Pathological body weights are most notably present among males, blacks and Hispanics, suggesting possibility that diverging obesity effects may be found across race and gender groups. Unlike some prior research, we find no significant effects of adolescent obesity on high school graduation, but for some demographic groups, negative effects are found on college graduation and future income. Policy implications are discussed.

Cognitive appraisal as a mechanism linking negative organizational shocks and intentions to leave

ABSTRACT The past two decades have seen a significant rise in both frequency and size of mergers and acquisitions in the US, many of which have been associated with considerable interruption of organizational activities and a host of negative outcomes for employees. In this study of 763 US-based airline employees, we identify threat appraisal as a key mechanism explaining the relationship between four change-related variables (quality of change communication, procedural fairness in restructuring, change management history, and anxiety about change) and employee turnover intentions. Results indicate that turnover intentions are influenced by quality of change communication, procedural fairness in restructuring, and anxiety about change as mediated by threat appraisal. We also found that job embeddedness moderated the relationships of quality of change communication and procedural fairness in restructuring with threat appraisal. Our focus on malleable levers of withdrawal offers theoretical and practical insights into how turnover intentions can be influenced.

Inequality, Institutions & Organizations

The organizations and institutions with which we interact in our everyday lives are heavily implicated in the rising levels of global inequality. We develop understanding of the ways in which a preference in social structures for the free market over other forms of economic organization has made inequality almost inevitable. This has been accompanied by organizational practices such as hiring, promotion and reward allocation, that maintain and enhance societal inequalities. The mutually constitutive relationship between organizations and institutions in the reproduction of inequality are exposed throughout.

Intra-professional status, maintenance failure, and the reformation of the Scottish civil justice system

Abstract The Scottish civil justice system is undergoing its most substantive transformation in over 150 years. This reformation will create new judicial bodies, alter the jurisdictional reach of courts, and drastically unsettle what has been, up to now, a highly stable institutional field. These changes have caused pronounced threats to the status of different groups of actors in the field. Our work examines the impact of these threats, and the varying responses among groups of professional actors. In so doing, we detail how intra-professional status differences and uncertainty hindered attempts to maintain threatened institutions.

Understanding organization change and innovation: A conversation with Mike Tushman

ABSTRACT Professor Michael Tushman was selected as the 2016 Organization Development and Change Division’s Distinguished Scholar. Following his address, he sat down with John Amis to discuss his ideas on organizational change and innovation. Inspired by an early practical experience at a work placement while an undergraduate student, Mike has engaged in a career-long pursuit of seeking to understand how and why some organizations are able to successfully engage in programmes of change and innovation while others are not. Here he recounts his formative industry involvement that led to this fascination, the academic experiences that have helped him to develop into one of the field’s most productive scholars, and what he perceives to be the most interesting, and potentially important, questions that researchers of change could profitably investigate in the future.

The role of professions in institutional change processes

This paper presents the findings of a study examining the ways in which institutions and professions are recursively interrelated, and act to mutually shape each other during times of institutional...

Brands: Interdisciplinary Perspectives

This paper explores some of the subtle and complex roles which consumption culture may play in the moral development of children. We concentrate on the role of commodified celebrities in children’s understanding of moral questions, taking English soccer hero David Beckham as an example. We address three questions: first, how do children draw on celebrities to shape their understanding of moral issues?; second, what kind of morality is likely to emerge when iconic celebrities become a site in which children’s relationship to moral issues is developed?; and third, what does this mean for children’s understanding of a global media culture which revolves around a culture of spectacle and commodified celebrity? Our findings emphasise both the role of consumption culture as a framework within which moral unfolding happens, and children’s ability to construct morally engaged positions which hold complexity and ambivalence around specific aspects of consumption culture. We propose that the kind of morality that e...