Knowledge Solutions
Abstract
This book is open access under a CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO license.
This book comprehensively covers topics in knowledge management and competence in strategy development, management techniques, collaboration mechanisms, knowledge sharing and learning, as well as knowledge capture and storage. Presented in accessible “chunks,” it includes more than 120 topics that are essential to high-performance organizations. The extensive use of quotes by respected experts juxtaposed with relevant research to counterpoint or lend weight to key concepts; “cheat sheets” that simplify access and reference to individual articles; as well as the grouping of many of these topics under recurrent themes make this book unique. In addition, it provides scalable tried-and-tested tools, method and approaches for improved organizational effectiveness. The research included is particularly useful to knowledge workers engaged in executive leadership; research, analysis and advice; and corporate management and administration. It is a valuable resource for those working in the public, private and third sectors, both in industrialized and developing countries.
Chapters (100)
The sustainable livelihoods approach improves understanding of the livelihoods of the poor. It organizes the factors that constrain or enhance livelihood opportunities, and shows how they relate. It can help plan development activities and assess the contribution that existing activities have made to sustaining livelihoods.
Development is about people—it is about how they relate to one another and their environment, and how they learn in doing so. Outcome mapping puts people and learning first and accepts unexpected change as a source of innovation. It shifts the focus from changes in state, viz, reduced poverty, to changes in behaviors, relationships, actions, and activities.
Culture theory strengthens the expectation that markets work, not because they are comprised of autonomous individuals who are free of social sanctions but because they are powered by social beings and their distinctive ideas, beliefs, values, and knowledge. It can contribute to understanding and promoting development where group relationships predominate and individualism is tempered.
The Most Significant Change technique helps monitor and evaluate the performance of projects and programs. It involves the collection and systematic participatory interpretation of stories of significant change emanating from the field level—stories about who did what, when, and why, and the reasons why the event was important. It does not employ quantitative indicators.
Power no longer resides exclusively (if at all) in states, institutions, or large corporations. It is located in the networks that structure society. Social network analysis seeks to understand networks and their participants and has two main focuses: the actors and the relationships between them in a specific social context.
The gulf between the ideal type of a learning organization and the state of affairs in typical bilateral and multilateral development agencies remains huge. Defining roadblocks, however numerous they may be, is half the battle to removing them—it might make them part of the solution instead of part of the problem.
The conditions of economic and social progress include participation, democratic processes, and the location of necessarily diverse organizational setups at community, national, regional, and increasingly global levels. Access to and judicious use of information underpins all these.
Knowledge from evaluations will not be used effectively if the specific organizational context, knowledge, and relationships of evaluation agencies, and the external environment they face, are not dealt with in an integrated and coherent manner. Knowledge management can shed light on this and related initiatives can catalyze and facilitate identification, creation, storage, sharing, and use of lessons.
Strategic reversals are quite commonly failures of execution. In many cases, a strategy is abandoned out of impatience or because of pressure for an instant payoff before it has had a chance to take root and yield results. Or its focal point is allowed to drift over time. To navigate a strategy, one must maintain a balance between strategizing and learning modes of thinking.
The need for twenty-first century mindsets and protocols has sparked interest in design thinking. That is a human-centered, prototype-driven process for the exploration of new ideas that can be applied to operations, products, services, strategies, and even management.
Political economy embraces the complex political nature of decision-making to investigate how power and authority affect economic choices in a society. Political economy analysis offers no quick fixes but leads to smarter engagement.
To enlist commitment, organizations depend on a clear and powerful image of the future. Future Search conferencing has emerged as a system-wide strategic planning tool enabling diverse and potentially conflicting groups to find common ground for constructive action.
Organizations must be resilient if they are to survive and thrive in turbulent times. Learning from experience, investments in leadership and culture, networks, and change readiness can help them move from denial and paralysis to acceptance and practical solutions.
Strategic efforts to effect change are constantly challenged by emerging forces about which there is little advance knowledge. For constructive action, it is useful to look at the past to gain a perspective on the present; but, it is even more profitable to revisit past visions of the future from an interpretation of the present. The concepts of change over time, context, causality, contingency, and complexity help make sense.
The design and monitoring framework is a logic model for objectives-oriented planning that structures the main elements in a project, highlighting linkages between intended inputs, planned activities, and expected results.
A knowledge worker is someone who is employed because of his or her knowledge of a subject matter, rather than ability to perform manual labor. They perform best when empowered to make the most of their deepest skills.
The need to ensure that scarce funding is applied to effective projects is a goal shared by all. Focusing on common parameters of project performance is a means to that end.
Knowledge management is getting the right knowledge to the right people at the right time, and helping them (with incentives) to apply it in ways that strive to improve organizational performance.
When confronted with a problem, have you ever stopped and asked “why” five times? The Five Whys technique is a simple but powerful way to troubleshoot problems by exploring cause-and-effect relationships.
Ideas are not often plucked out of thin air. The SCAMPER brainstorming technique uses a set of directed questions to resolve a problem (or meet an opportunity). It can also turn a tired idea into something new and different.
Meetings bring people together to discuss a predetermined topic. However, too many are poorly planned and managed, and therefore fail to satisfy objectives when they do not simply waste time. The operating expenses of time wasted include related meeting expenditures, salaries, and opportunity costs.
Management by walking around emphasizes the importance of interpersonal contact, open appreciation , and recognition. It is one of the most important ways to build civility and performance in the workplace.
In the twenty-first century, managers are responsible for the application and performance of knowledge at task, team, and individual levels. Their accountability is absolute and cannot be relinquished. In a changing world, successful organizations spend more time, integrity, and brainpower on selecting them than on anything else.
Emotional intelligence describes ability, capacity, skill, or self-perceived ability to identify, assess, and manage the emotions of one’s self, of others, and of groups. The theory is enjoying considerable support in the literature and has had successful applications in many domains.
Organizations must become information-based: (i) knowledge workers are not amenable to command and control; (ii) in the face of unremitting competition, it is vital to systematize innovation and entrepreneurship; (iii) in a knowledge-based economy, it is imperative to decide what information one needs to conduct one’s affairs.
In development agencies, paradigms of linear causality condition need much thinking and practice. They encourage command-and-control hierarchies, centralize decision-making, and dampen creativity and innovation. Globalization demands that organizations see our turbulent world as a collection of evolving ecosystems. To survive and flourish they must then be adaptable and fleet-footed. Notions of complexity offer a wealth of insights and guidance to twenty-first century organizations that strive to do so.
Culture guides the way individuals groups in an organization interact with one another with parties outside it. It is the premier competitive advantage of high-performance organizations. Sadly, for others, organizational culture is the most difficult attribute to change: it outlives founders, leaders, managers, products, services, well-nigh the rest. It is best improved by organizational learning for change.
Organizational learning is the ability of an organization to gain insight and understanding from experience through experimentation, observation, analysis, and a willingness to examine successes and failures. There are two key notions: organizations learn through individuals who act as agents for them; at the same time, individual learning in organizations is facilitated or constrained by its learning system.
When embarking on a change initiative, one should rapidly implement change that results in the higher levels of performance that were envisioned when the decision to make the changes was made. To make this happen, organizations must first overcome the resistance to change and then secure as much discretionary effort as possible.
Branding is a means to identify a company’s products or services, differentiate them from those of others, and create and maintain an image that encourages confidence among clients, audiences, and partners. Until the mid-1990s, brand management—based on the 4Ps of product (or service), place, price, and promotion—aimed to engineer additional value from single brands. The idea of organizational branding has since developed, with implications for behavior and behavioral change, and is making inroads into the public sector too.
Talent is not a rare commodity—people are talented in many ways: it is simply rarely released. To make talent happen organizations must give it strategic and holistic attention.
Gary Hamel defines management innovation as a marked departure from traditional management principles, processes, and practices (or a departure from customary organizational forms that significantly alters the way the work of management is performed). He deems it the prime driver of sustainable competitive advantage in the twenty-first century.
Managing for results requires a coherent framework for strategic planning, management, and communications based on continuous learning and accountability. Results frameworks improve management effectiveness by defining realistic expected results, monitoring progress toward their achievement, integrating lessons into decisions, and reporting on performance.
In the age of competence, one must learn before, during, and after the event. Knowledge solutions lie in the areas of strategy development, management techniques, collaboration mechanisms, knowledge sharing and learning, and knowledge capture and storage.
Interest in performance measurement grows daily but the state of the art leaves much to be desired. To promote performance leadership, one must examine both its shortcomings and its pernicious effects.
Surveys present clear and mounting evidence that staff engagement correlates closely with individual, collective, and corporate performance. It denotes the extent to which organizations gain commitment from personnel.
It is a given that organizational change affects people. It is people, not processes or technology, who embrace or not a situation and carry out or neglect corresponding actions. People will help build what they create.
Good corporate governance helps an organization achieve its objectives; poor corporate governance can speed its decline or demise. Never before has the glare of the spotlight focused so much on boards of directors. Corporate governance has emerged from obscurity and become a mainstream topic.
Newly minted approaches to corporate reputation are already obsolete. Beyond gaining control of issues, crises, and corporate social responsibility, organizations need to reconceptualize and manage reputation in knowledge-based economies.
Who is your customer? What does the customer value? How do you deliver value to customers at an appropriate cost? Business models that focus on the who, what, and how to clarify managerial choices and their consequences underpin the operations of successful organizations.
Projects ought to be vehicles for both practical benefits and organizational learning. However, if an organization is designed for the long term, a project exists only for its duration. Project-based organizations face an awkward dilemma: the project-centric nature of their work makes knowledge management, hence learning, difficult.
Culture must not be seen as something that merely reflects an organization’s social reality: rather, it is an integral part of the process by which that reality is constructed. Knowledge management initiatives, per se, are not culture change projects; but, if culture stands in the way of what an organization needs to do, they must somehow impact.
Innovation is something that is new, capable of being implemented, and has a beneficial impact. It is not an event or activity; it is a concept, process, practice, and capability that defines successful organizations. Innovation in the public sector can help create value for society.
Decision-making is a stream of inquiry, not an event. Decision-driven organizations design and manage it as such: they match decision-making styles to appropriate techniques and, wherever possible, encourage parties to play roles rife with dissent and debate; decision rights are part of the design.
Communities of practice are groups of like-minded, interacting people who filter, amplify, invest and provide, convene, build, and learn and facilitate to ensure more effective creation and sharing of knowledge in their domain.
Action learning is a structured method that enables small groups to work regularly and collectively on complicated problems, take action, and learn as individuals and as a team while doing so.
Appreciative inquiry is the process of facilitating positive change in organizations. Its basic assumption is uncomplicated: every organization has something that works well. Appreciative inquiry is therefore an exciting generative approach to organizational development. At a higher level, it is also a way of being and seeing.
Cooperative work by a team can produce remarkable results. The challenge is to move from the realm of the possible to the realm of practice.
Mind maps are a visual means that represent, link, and arrange concepts, themes, or tasks, with connections usually extending radially from a central topic. They are used by individuals and groups (informally and intuitively) to generate, visualize, structure, and classify these.
The difference between poor and effective teams lies not so much in their collective mental equipment but in how well they use their abilities to think together. The Six Thinking Hats technique helps actualize the thinking potential of teams.
Virtual team management is the ability to organize and coordinate with effect a group whose members are not in the same location or time zone, and may not even work for the organization. The predictor of success is—as always—clarity of purpose. But group participation in achieving that is more than ever important to compensate for lost context. Virtual team management requires deeper understanding of people, process, and technology, and recognition that trust is a more limiting factor compared with face-to-face interactions.
Workplace dynamics make a significant difference to people and the organizations they sustain. High-performance organizations earn, develop, and retain trust for superior results.
Theories of leadership are divided: some underscore the primacy of personal qualities; others stress that systems are all-important. Both interpretations are correct: a larger pool of leaders is desirable all the time (and superleaders are necessary on occasion) but its development must be part of systemic invigoration of leadership in organizations.
Strategic alliances that bring organizations together promise unique opportunities for partners. The reality is often otherwise. Successful strategic alliances manage the partnership, not just the agreement, for collaborative advantage. Above all, they also pay attention to learning priorities in alliance evolution.
Servant leadership is now in the vocabulary of enlightened leadership. It is a practical, altruistic philosophy that supports people who choose to serve first, and then lead, as a way of expanding service to individuals and organizations. The sense of civil community that it advocates and engenders can facilitate and smooth successful and principled change.
The prevailing view of leadership is that it is concentrated or focused. In organizations, this makes it an input to business processes and performance—dependent on the attributes, behaviors, experience, knowledge, skills, and potential of the individuals chosen to impact these. The theory of distributed leadership thinks it best considered as an outcome. Leadership is defined by what one does, not who one is. Leadership at all levels matters and must be drawn from, not just be added to, individuals and groups in organizations.
Communities of practice have become an accepted part of organizational development. Learning organizations build and leverage them with effect. To reach their potential, much as other bodies, they stand to gain from healthy reporting. Quality of information and its proper presentation enable stakeholders to make sound and reasonable assessments of performance, and take appropriate action.
Necessity is the mother of invention. The demand for good ideas, put into practice, that meet pressing unmet needs and improve people’s lives is growing on a par with the agenda of the twenty-first century. In a shrinking world, social innovation at requisite institutional levels can do much to foster smart, sustainable globalization.
Corporate values articulate what guides an organization’s behavior and decision making. They can boost innovation, productivity, and credibility, and help deliver thereby sustainable competitive advantage. However, a look at typical statements of corporate values suggests much work remains to be done before organizations draw real benefits from them.
To develop and deliver products and services, large organizations rely on teams. Yet, the defining characteristics of these often hamper collaboration among different parts of the organization. The root cause is conflict: it must be accepted then actively managed. Promoting effective cross-functional teams demands that an enabling environment be built for that.
The human mind is driven by an emergent array of biological, cognitive, and social properties. Unconscious processes perform feats we thought required intention, deliberation, and conscious awareness. The breakthroughs of social neuroscience are fostering more comprehensive theories of the mechanisms that underlie human behavior.
In most types of organizations, formal authority is located at the top as part of an exchange against fairly explicit expectations. In networked, pluralistic organizations that must rapidly formulate adaptive solutions in an increasingly complex world, its power is eroding as its functions become less clear. In the twenty-first century, the requirements of organizational speed demand investments in informal authority.
With decreasing bureaucracy and decentralization of operations, the span of knowledge coordination should be as close as possible to relevant knowledge domains. Coordinating mediums, or knowledge managers, have key roles to play.
The act of delegating calls for and rests on trust. In organizations, delegation had better be understood as a web of tacit governance arrangements across quasi-boundaries rather than the execution of tasks with definable boundaries.
Surveys are used to find promising opportunities for improvement; identify, create a consensus about, and act on issues to be addressed; record a baseline from which progress can be measured; motivate change efforts; and provide two-way communication between stakeholders. Healthy communities of practice leverage survey instruments to mature into influence structures that demand or are asked to assume influential roles in their host organizations.
Complex adaptive systems are the source of much intra-organizational conflict that will not be managed, let alone resolved. To foster learning, adaptation, and evolution in the workplace, organizations should capitalize on its functions and dysfunctions with mindfulness, improvisation, and reconfiguration.
To manage organizations in ways that will make our society manageable, we need to spark innovations in management. Consider the organization in which you work. What configuration does it have and what does that tell you? What might you do to enhance the strengths and minimize the weaknesses of its structure?
Hierarchy, market, and network forms of organization are not mutually exclusive: in the twenty-first century, the need for resilience, intelligence, speed, and flexibility demands that each organizational form finds requisite expression in individual organizations.
With information and communication technology, civil society plays an increasing role in governance, promoting transparency and accountability to tackle corruption. Development agencies can strengthen civil society-led, ICT-driven anticorruption initiatives by funding projects and programs that foster institutional environments conducive to participation in public affairs, promote cooperation and mobilization, and develop capacities.
Peer assists are events that bring individuals together to share their experiences, insights, and knowledge on an identified challenge or problem. They also promote collective learning
and develop networks among those invited.
Organizational learning calls for nonstop assessment of performance—its successes and failures. This makes sure that learning takes place and supports continuous improvement. After-action reviews and retrospects are a tool that facilitates assessments; they enable this by bringing together a team to discuss an activity or project openly and honestly.
Dissemination is an indispensable means of maximizing the impact of research. It is an intrinsic element of all good research practice that promotes the profile of research institutions and strengthens their capacities. The challenge is to ensure the physical availability of research material and to make it intelligible to those who access it.
Storytelling is the use of stories or narratives as a communication tool to value, share, and capitalize on the knowledge of individuals.
Good practice is a process or methodology that has been shown to be effective in one part of the organization and might be effective in another too.
A retreat is a meeting designed and organized to facilitate the ability of a group to step back from day-to-day activities for a period of concentrated discussion, dialogue, and strategic thinking about their organization’s future or specific issues. Organizations will reap full benefits if they follow basic rules.
Simple planning and a little discipline can turn an ordinary presentation into a lively and engaging event.
Organizational boundaries have been stretched, morphed, and redesigned to a degree unimaginable 10 years ago. Networks of practice have come of age. The learning organization pays attention to their forms and functions, evolves principles of engagement, circumscribes and promotes success factors, and monitors and evaluates performance with knowledge performance metrics.
Organizational learning is still seeking a theory and there can be no (and perhaps cannot be) agreement on the dimensions of the learning organization. However, useful models associated with learning and change can be leveraged individually or in association to reflect on the overall system of an organization.
Evaluation serves two main purposes: accountability and learning. Development agencies have tended to prioritize the first, and given responsibility for that to centralized units. But evaluation for learning is the area where observers find the greatest need today and tomorrow.
The insights, attitudes, and skills that equip managers for their various responsibilities come from many sources outside formal education or training. To identify areas for improvement, it is first necessary to identify what these responsibilities are.
Coaching and mentoring can inspire and empower employees, build commitment, increase productivity, grow talent
, and promote success. They are now essential elements of modern managerial practice. However, many companies still have not established related schemes. By not doing so, they also fail to capitalize on the experience and knowledge seasoned personnel can pass on.
Creativity plays a critical role in the innovation process, and innovation that markets value is a creator and sustainer of performance and change. In organizations, stimulants and obstacles to creativity drive or impede enterprise.
Despite competing demands, modern organizations should not forget that learning is the best way to meet the challenges of the time. Learning charters demonstrate commitment: they are a touchstone against which provision and practice can be tested and a waymark with which to guide, monitor, and evaluate progress. It is difficult to argue that what learning charters advocate is not worth striving for.
Social media is revolutionizing the way we live, learn, work, and play. Elements of the private sector have begun to thrive on opportunities to forge, build, and deepen relationships. Some are transforming their organizational structures and opening their corporate ecosystems in consequence. The public sector is a relative newcomer. It too can drive stakeholder involvement and satisfaction.
The failure of researchers to link evidence to policy and practice produces evidence that no one uses, impedes innovation, and leads to mediocre or even detrimental development policies. To help improve the definition, design, and implementation of policy research, researchers should adopt a strategic outcome-oriented approach.
How can we gauge the successes and failures of collective learning? How can the rest of the organization benefit from the experience? Learning histories surface the thinking, experiments, and arguments of actors who engaged in organizational change.
The true value of a conference lies in its effects on participants. Conferences are to generate and share knowledge that impacts behavior and links to results: this will not happen if the state of the art of conference evaluation remains immature and event planners do not shine a light on the conditions for learning outcomes.
Where large organizations make an effort to boost knowledge sharing, the solutions they fabricate can aggravate problems. Designing jobs for knowledge behaviors and recruiting people who are positive about sharing to start with will boost knowledge stocks and flows at low cost.
Communication is the process through which relationships are instituted, sustained, altered, or ended by increases or reductions in meaning. Belatedly, as the field of development englobes ever-wider realms, it is finally recognized as a driver of change. Sped by the Internet, strategic communications can explain activity and connect to purpose in more instrumental ways than have been considered so far.
Text is no longer the primary means of learning transfer. Character-based simulation, in which animated characters provide a social context that motivates learners, can improve cognition and recall and bodes well for high-impact e-learning.
In the age of the internet, many think libraries are being destroyed. One need not yield to pessimism: identifiable trends point to a promising future. In light of these, one should be able to circumscribe plausible scenarios. Approaches to strategic planning that count on ownership should make a big difference and point to desirable skills for librarians. If they also invest in resilience and give unequivocal attention to branding, libraries can enjoy a renaissance.
Exit interviews provide feedback on why employees leave, what they liked about their job, and where the organization needs improvement. They are most effective when data is compiled and tracked over time. The concept has been revisited as a tool to capture knowledge from leavers. Exit interviews can be a win–win situation: the organization retains a portion of the leaver’s knowledge and shares it; the departing employee articulates unique contributions and leaves a mark.
![Table 116 .1 Schedule of daily activities-[Month, Year]](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318019170/figure/tbl1/AS:671532934242313@1537117336430/Schedule-of-daily-activities-Month-Year_Q320.jpg)
![Table 116 .2 Terms of reference and monthly summary of activities-[Month, Year]](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318019170/figure/tbl2/AS:671532934258691@1537117336450/Terms-of-reference-and-monthly-summary-of-activities-Month-Year_Q320.jpg)
Feedback is the dynamic process of presenting and disseminating information to improve performance. Feedback mechanisms are increasingly being recognized as key elements of learning before, during, and after. Monthly progress notes on project administration , in which document accomplishments as well as bottlenecks, are prominent among these.
Staff profile pages are dynamic, adaptive electronic directories that store information about the knowledge, skills, experience, and interests of people. They are a cornerstone of successful knowledge management and learning initiatives.
A weblog, in its various forms, is a web-based application on which dated entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video are posted. A weblog enables groups of people to discuss electronically areas of interest and to review different opinions and information surrounding a topic.
The knowledge management discipline can be cryptic. These Knowledge Solutions define its most common concepts in simple terms.
If 80% of knowledge is unwritten and largely unspoken, we first need to elicit that before we can articulate, share, and make wider use of it. Knowledge harvesting is one way to draw out and package tacit knowledge to help others adapt, personalize, and apply it; build organizational capacity; and preserve institutional memory.
Organizations are often challenged to identify and resolve workplace problems. The Critical Incident technique gives them a starting point and a process for advancing organizational development through learning experiences. It helps them study “what people do” in various situations.
Organizations spend millions of dollars on management systems without commensurate investments in the categorization needed to organize the information they rest on. Taxonomy work is strategic work: it enables efficient and interoperable retrieval and sharing of data, information, and knowledge by building needs and natural workflows in intuitive structures.
Remembering times past stimulates the mind and helps give perspective and a sense of who we are. Social reminiscence is a gain in performance without practice.
... The livelihoods within isolated communities are continuously challenged, among others, by limited physical infrastructure and economic opportunities, lack of human capital, and increased living expenses (Rokhim et al., 2017). A sustainable livelihood is an alternative approach to considering these priorities and adequate policies in isolated communities while allocating scarce resources most efficiently on a household level (Serrat, 2017). These activities and policies must be sustainable, community-centered, participatory, multilevel, and involve public-private partnerships. ...
... The livelihood diversification is driven and determined by vulnerabilities, including external events (crises, disasters, market trends, climate change) and internal factors, among other demographic (changing population), political, and economic trends (Kumar et al., 2023;Serrat, 2017). These vulnerabilities also affect the adaptation of sustainable tourism as a livelihood strategy (Shen et al., 2008). ...
... However, the fragility of this industry, exemplified by the shocks of the COVID-19 pandemic, underscores the vulnerability inherent in this newfound dependence. Consequently, the region confronts a formidable challenge: the imperative to forge sustainable diversification strategies while efficiently managing resources at the household level (Serrat, 2017). This endeavor necessitates fostering community-centric, participatory initiatives and forging public-private partnerships that not only bolster community well-being but also mitigate vulnerabilities, especially within the context of food security (Kollmair & Gamper, 2002). ...
... The study's findings are analyzed using a sustainable livelihoods approach (SLA)-a framework that seeks to investigate how to improve the livelihood capabilities of individuals and communities. It acknowledges the significance of various capital assets, including natural, human, financial, physical, and social capital, as the basis for rural poverty reduction and sustainable development (Scoones, 2015;Serrat, 2017). The SLA is a comprehensive framework that aims to understand and enhance the lives and livelihoods of individuals and communities, which is the case in our study area. ...
... Sustainable livelihoods framework Source: Modified from Scoones(2015);Serrat (2017) ...
Market Gardening (MG) in Niger is a crucial tool for securing agro-pastoral systems and rural livelihoods amid interwoven challenges such as climate change, conflicts and insecurity, demographic pressure, and poverty, which could not be fully coped with only relying on the very limited availability of capital and modern technology. A study of 60 small garden farmers found that MG significantly enhances farmers’ income and household food security. The average annual income from MG accounts for about 70 per cent of the farmers’ total income. However, challenges like water scarcity, land insecurity, and limited access to credit and markets hinder their full socio-economic role. The farmers try to overcome those obstacles through cooperation, sending remittance from part-time off-farm activities, and mobilization of resources based on their social capital. Those who could not overcome the challenges left the village for a “safer” location. The study emphasizes the need for community collective action, rural-urban networking, and external support to improve MG for rural poverty reduction and food security improvement.
... In this vein, social network theory (e.g. Serrat, 2017;Granovetter, 1973) describes how liked-minded businesses can access valuable information, resources, and further support networks that can be instrumental in navigating the challenges of a crisis. Moreover, and in line with Kuckertz et al. (2022), our study contributes to an improved understanding of migrant entrepreneurship at various developmental stages, using the example of the start-up phase with a particular emphasis on the KIBS sector. ...
... Such reasoning appears conclusive, as social network theory scholars (e.g. Serrat, 2017;Granovetter, 1973) posited earlier how liked-minded businesses can access valuable information, resources, and further support networks that can be instrumental in navigating the challenges of a crisis. ...
As with all start-ups, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a changing environment for migrant start-ups. These changes have posed many challenges to altering strategic behaviour and approaches to driving business. We explored migrant start-ups’ embeddedness in entrepreneurial ecosystems by analysing data from 14 semi-structured interviews with start-ups from Berlin's knowledge-intensive business services sector. We argue that the success of migrant start-ups during crises is dependent mainly on the embeddedness in the local entrepreneurial ecosystem. Thus, we expect entrepreneurs to utilise local networks, infrastructures and interactions to help them cope with the challenges and pave the way for local and international business activities. Our results indicate that embedding in local entrepreneurial ecosystems and a sense of belonging, especially during the business formation phase, play a vital role for migrant start-ups in general and crisis. Revitalising the concept of local embeddedness while considering business development stages, this study challenges the prevailing notion of transnational networks as the sole determinant of entrepreneurial success. Instead, we advocate for greater recognition of the significance of accessing local resources, including market knowledge, social relationships, and institutional support, as fundamental factors driving business development and crisis management within the host country. By recognising and nurturing these local resources, policymakers and support organisations can create an enabling environment that empowers migrant start-ups to thrive, adapt, and contribute to the local EE and economic wealth.
... The term (MBWA) is a management style that concentrates on human relations, open assessments and knowledge, which are extremely important for development and excellent performance of employees within an organization. In (Serrat, 2017); the authors indicate that this concept of management was first practiced in 1973 by Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, the founders of HP corporation, this concept was then generalized and popularized by Tom Peters and Robert waterman in the early 1980s, at that time, managers used to be located away from their employees and needed to personally visit their workplaces to actually observe their performance, but nowadays; the organizations rely on electronic techniques that make the presence of managers at employees' workplaces unnecessary since the contact can be easily made through ...
... For (Serrat, 2017) , MBWA is an effective leadership method that can be used by any manager, but never in virtual organizations. He highly believes in Edwards Damming's saying "if you wait for people to come to you, you will only get small problems. ...
Management by Walking Around MBWA is a management style that involves the leadership techniques that a manager practices when managing an organization. It involves any technique adopted by managers to motivate their employees, in addition to directing and controlling them. MBWA is mainly based on three major issues which are the characteristics of leaders, the characteristics of subordinates, and the organizational environment. Management styles are categorized based on the influence managers have on employees, it can be through their power, their ability to use that power, and through the managers' behaviour as autocratic, democratic, and laissez-faire. In this study, the critical factors that shape the success of the implementation of MBWA in public sector are examined in the municipality and utility organizations in UAE as a case study towards Keywords: Management by wandering around, MBWA, critical success factors.
... Tipe penelitian yang digunakan ialah tipe penelitian hukum normatif yang menggunakan kepustakaan atau studi dokumen maupun pendapat para ahli yang berhubungan dengan kajian penelitian mengenai kedudukan klausula arbitrase sebagai alat bukti penyelesaian sengketa bisnis kepailitan (Bernardini, 2017;Owsiak, 2018;Serrat, 2017). Data yang digunakan merupakan data sekunder terdiri dari bahan hukum primer yaitu Undang-undang Nomor 30 tahun 1999 tentang Arbitrase dan Alternatif Penyelesaian Sengketa; bahan hukum sekunder yang memberikan penjelasan mengenai bahan hukum primer terdiri dari buku, jurnal, penelitian terdahulu, dan dokumen lain yang berkaitan dengan kajian penelitian. ...
Minat masyarakat Indonesia terhadap arbitrase kian mengalami peningkatan sejak hadirnya Undang-undang Nomor 30 tahun 1999. Permasalahan berkaitan kedudukan klausula arbitrase sebagai alat bukti penyelesaian sengketa permohonan pailit dan implikasi klausula arbitrase dalam perjanjian transaksi bisnis. Kajian penulisan dilakukan dengan metode penelitian kualitatif diperoleh dengan penelitian kepustakaan yang bersumber dari buku atau literatur serta jurnal yang telah ada dan sifat penelitian secara deskriptif. Hasil pembahasan bahwa kewenangan absolut yang dimiliki oleh klausula arbitrase akan hak mengadili dan memeriksa muncul sebagai pertimbangan pada saat diajukan ke Pengadilan Negeri. Implikasi hukum dengan adanya perjanjian arbitrase sesuai Pasal 3 Undang-Undang Arbitrase ialah pada saat terbitnya sengketa dari konsekuensi pelanggaran terhadap perjanjian yang telah dibuat. Untuk itu, kesimpulan diperoleh berupa hadirnya klausula arbitrase dalam sengketa kepailitan melahirkan kompetensi absolut yang merupakan citra dari sebuah perjanjian arbitrase. Berbeda halnya dengan permohonan sengketa pailit yang diputus oleh Pengadilan Niaga. Pengadilan Niaga tetap mempunyai wewenang akan penyelesaian kepailitan meskipun telah disepakati melalui klausula arbitrase dan implikasi perjanjian arbitrase dalam transaksi bisnis ialah terjaminnya kerahasiaan dalam proses penyelesaian dan terciptanya perdamaian antar pihak yang bersengketa.
... In labor economics, this is the main and important idea that the workers' skills, in their particular field, are the form of capital generated as a result of investment (Acemoglu & Autor, 2011). According to Serrat (2017), human Capital is a measure of the skills, education, capacity, and attributes of labor that influence their productive capacity and earning (Sulaiman et al., 2015). According to OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), human capital is defined as, ''The knowledge, skills, competencies and attributes embodied in individuals that facilitate the creation of personal, social and economic well-being'' (Brian, 2007;Zhou et al., 2021). ...
Education is considered a key element in the formation of human capital, associated with the sustainable development of a country’s economic growth. The study has investigated the relationship between education and Pakistan’s economic growth in the short as well as long run. For measurement, thirty years of data spanning from 1987 to 2016 was used in the study. The data was retrieved from World Development Indicators (WDI) and the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS). Economic growth was measured from real GDP while education was measured by total years of formal education and government expenditures for education. Pesaran bounds test approach and ARDL model for long and short-run co-integration were applied. The results deduced from the study described that by increasing the labor force education, the real GDP increases with the existence of significant and positive co-integration and confirmed the long-term relationship. It is observed that by increasing the 1% of labor force education, there is a 0.62% increase in real GDP (economic growth) in long run. On the other hand, the results also described the significant and negative co-integration relation between government education expenditures and economic growth (real GDP) in long run. The appearance of this negative relation in results is probably due to the unavailability of total educational expenditures as in this study the education of the labor force increases with decreasing trends in government educational expenditures. This study may be helpful for policymakers in educational policy formulation to enhance the government educational expenditure for improving the education standard of the labor force to boost Pakistan’s economic growth.
... Physical asset (P): Infrastructure and equipment include traffic, roads, vehicles, shelters, sanitation and water supply, energy, and communications. In addition, there are tools and technologies, traditional technologies, pesticides, fertilizers, seeds, and production equipment [15]. ...
The article analyzes the livelihood strategies of farmers to adapt to reduced amounts of water in the upstream Mekong Delta in Vietnam. The study was conducted in An Phu district, the upstream district of An Giang province, bordering Cambodia, the area first affected when the availability of water resource from the Mekong River changes. The study aims to learn about the impact of changes on livelihood patterns and agricultural livelihood strategies using qualitative and quantitative data collection methods including: household surveys, key informant interviews, participatory rural appraisal methods, and in-depth interviews with farmers. The results show that the decrease in water resources has led to transitions in the livelihoods of farmers. From 2011 to 2022, flood levels had changed, peak floods were lower, and duration of the seasonal floods was shorter. Farmers have gradually changed farming patterns and techniques and adopted different strategies, including from (1) rice to “safe rice” (44.73%); (2) rice to fruits (32.99%); (3) rice to vegetables (6.41%); (4) and vegetables to fruits (13.42%). The reason for these transitions are: reduced water resources availability for practical farming; higher profits are possible with alternative strategies; and, availability of new learning from neighbouring farmers. Better use of available water resources, protection of human health and the environment, and lower production costs are the pathways that farmers have been aiming to achieve effectively and safely on account of changes in their environmental conditions.
... It can also help user to give their idle car in rent which will give them an extra bit of income [6]. In the last five years, design thinking has emerged as the quickest organizational path to innovation and high-performance, changing the way creativity and commerce interact [7]. ...
... As indicated by Fernandez-Abascal and Martin-Diaz (2015), the capacity to see, appreciate, control, and assess one's feelings is alluded to as the ability to understand people on a deeper level (EI) (Vesely & other, 2013). More specifically, it is the ability to remember one's and others' emotions, distinguish between them, and use this information to direct one's thinking and actions (Gong et al., 2019;Serrat, 2017). Pekaar et al. (2017) conceptualize it as the capacity or tendency to use emotional process knowledge to regulate social and emotional behavior. ...
This study examined the relationship between emotional intelligence and organizational citizenship behavior among secondary school teachers in Punjab, Pakistan. The study was descriptive-correlational and quantitative, with a positivistic paradigm. The teachers were chosen as sample using a multi-stage random sampling process. The sample comprised of 306 male and female secondary school teachers. Two closed-ended
questionnaires were used to collect data. A pilot study was carried out to ensure the validity and reliability of the
research tools. Pearson r, independent sample t-test, linear regression, and one-way ANOVA were used to evaluate the data. According to the findings of the study, teachers’ emotional intelligence was strongly associated with organizational citizenship behavior. The mean emotional intelligence ratings of male and female teachers differed. According to the study’s findings, teachers' mean scores on organizational citizenship behavior and emotional intelligence were unaffected by teaching experience. The findings also demonstrated that teachers’
emotional intelligence substantially influenced their organizational citizenship behavior at the secondary level. According to the study’s findings, teachers should be emotionally intelligent in order to improve their organizational citizenship behavior.
... Not-for-profit firms also plant trees on behalf of Ant Forest to redeem users' green credit points, which are also business partners, an item of external capital. Ant Forest must maintain the Alipay platform and keep innovating it, supported by staff (expertise, experience, and qualifications) who represent items in human capital (Serrat, 2017). Through these activities, Ant Forest, using the Alipay platform, has played a key role in increasing awareness and engagement in environmental protection (Chen and Cai, 2019). ...
... Hansen et al., 2019). In Serrat (2017), the authors explain that such analysis can either focus on the social actors or their relationships. However, social media platforms generate high amounts of data, which may hinder its apperception. ...
Social media platforms offer cost-effective digital marketing opportunities to monitor the market, create user communities, and spread positive opinions. They allow companies with fewer budgets, like startups, to achieve their goals and grow.In fact, studies found that startups with active engagement on those platforms have a higher chance of succeeding and receiving funding from venture capitalists.Our study is focused on exploring how startups utilize social media platforms to foster social communities. We also aim to characterize the individuals within these communities. The findings from this study underscore the importance of social media for startups.We used network analysis and visualization techniques to investigate the communities of Portuguese IT startups through their Twitter data. For that, a social digraph has been created, and its visualization shows that each startup created a community with a degree of overlap. The overlap of users between communities was characterized using user node-level measures. The results indicate that users in the Portuguese IT startup communities overlap and are of the following types: person, company, blog, venture capital/investor, IT Event, incubator/accelerator, startups, and university. Furthermore, startups follow users who post high volumes of tweets and have high popularity levels, while those who follow them have low activity and are unpopular. The attained results reveal the power of Twitter communities and offer essential insights for startups to consider when building their social media strategies. Lastly, this study proposes a methodological process for social media community analysis on platforms like Twitter.
Peter Ellis discusses what options are available to staff members experiencing toxic leadership and why toxic leadership needs to be addressed
Intellectual property (IP) protection is critical for promoting innovation in academic institutions. However, IP awareness and utilization remains low at Uganda's Makerere and Kyambogo Universities despite their strong research and innovation potential. This study assessed the level of IP utilization as a tool for fostering creativity and innovation at these universities. The research employed a quantitative approach, collecting data through surveys of students, staff and alumni. Findings revealed high levels of innovation participation, but very limited IP registration across patents, trademarks, copyrights and industrial designs. Key barriers included lack of knowledge about registration procedures and high associated costs. While general awareness of IP rights was moderately high, specific understanding of application processes was lacking. To address these challenges, the study recommends regular IP awareness campaigns, implementing online registration systems, increasing IP expertise, and providing financial incentives. Integrating IP education in university curricula, establishing technology transfer support, and developing customized IP policies are also proposed. Continuous monitoring of IP performance metrics can help strengthen management practices. Overall, the research highlights the need for concerted efforts to build IP capacity and promote commercialization of academic innovations in Makerere and Kyambogo Universities. Leveraging IP more effectively can contribute to Uganda's transition into a knowledge-based economy driven by science, technology and innovation.
This study aimed at assessing the experiences of people living with HIV who participated in an agricultural
livelihood support initiative in selected districts of Uganda. The initiative, implemented from 2017 to 2018, involved
the provision of agricultural inputs such as beans, cassava cuttings, goats, chickens, and pigs to participants.
In-depth interviews were conducted with 37 people (28 women and 9 men) from the districts of Kampala, Masaka
and Wakiso (specifically Entebbe) in central Uganda, who had participated in the project. Data were analysed
thematically focusing on facilitators, challenges and outcomes from the project. The following themes emerged
as facilitators: access to land and animal feed, prior farming experience and supportive family and friends. Some
participants experienced challenges including animal/poultry diseases, livestock theft, “low quality” agricultural
inputs, unfavourable weather conditions, limited finance and land to support livelihood activities and difficulties
working in groups. Several participants reported positive livelihood outcomes including improved food security,
better nutrition, increased income and improved mental health. However, some participants reported negative
outcomes which took the form of a loss of money and time invested when their livestock died from disease.
Although participants in the agricultural livelihood initiative faced challenges which reduced the profitability of their
projects, the initiative was regarded as beneficial and worthwhile. These findings have relevance to the broader
field of livelihoods programming. Future interventions can draw from the experiences of our participants while
also taking seriously into consideration the different circumstances of individuals in a targeted population so as to
increase the chances of producing more positive outcomes.
Law enforcement leaders hold significant power within their organizations. Their chosen leadership strategies will ultimately shape the overall performance of an organization, subordinate outcomes, and an agency’s underlying culture. This chapter discusses commonly employed leadership styles and strategies in law enforcement organizations. The existing literature is reviewed to highlight the advantages and shortcomings of each style and strategy while also assessing the effectiveness of other traits and behaviors. This chapter then provides a framework detailing the most effective strategies, styles, traits, and behaviors individuals should possess to lead in law enforcement successfully. Lastly, future research directions are discussed to further understand what makes an effective law enforcement leader.
Conceptual design is an essential stage in the design process, and its ultimate success largely depends on designers’ creativity. Both physical and digital prototypes are commonly adopted by designers to support ideation and creativity, providing intuitive perception and rapid iteration, respectively. In recent advancements, large-scale generation models are able to offer data-enabled creativity support by generating high-quality solutions comparable to human designers. This opens up an imaginary space for designers and brings new possibilities for design tools. In this study, we proposed a hybrid prototype method that synergistically combines physical models and generative artificial intelligence (AI) in the conceptual design stage. Correspondingly, we developed a hybrid prototype system to implement the proposed method. We conducted a comparative user study with 45 designers who completed a design task using the physical prototype method, standalone generative AI, and the hybrid prototype method, respectively. Our results verified the effectiveness of the hybrid prototype method and investigated its mechanism in supporting creativity. Finally, we discussed the application value and optimisation space of the hybrid prototype method.
We analyze the motivational effects of managing by walking around (MBWA), a management style that emphasizes managers’ visits to the rank and file of the company. We do so by conducting a field experiment in the retail division of a Latin American bank. We find that branches significantly increase sales productivity following the management visit, an effect that begins prior to the top manager’s visit and persists for at least a month afterward. We also find a higher impact of the visit on high-performing branches. Our results indicate that motivation is a significant channel through which MBWA improves employee performance.
[Feature Paper-Editor's choiche article]
Abstract: The abandonment of inhabited places is a phenomenon widespread on a global scale that has spanned centuries. It has led to the birth of the so-called 'ghost towns'. These lifeless sites dot the internal Mediterranean and European areas, testifying to the changeability of the human settlements. Through a vision that reverses the paradigm that epitomises the 'ghost towns', these places can be transformed from a problem into an opportunity for the development of the territories that host them. The main topic of this article is to present and update investigations performed on three abandoned settlements sited in Portugal, Italy, and Albania in view of their tourist exploitation, considering three different tailored strategies: underwater tourism, dark tourism, and heritage tourism. For each site, we analysed the site history, the abandonment causes, and the territorial-geological features, thus arguing for the possible valorisation and enjoyment approaches with special attention to digital technologies, which are highly underexploited in the sector. This study, which is part of an international research landscape still in the initial stages, falls within the BEGIN project (aBandonment vErsus reGeneratIoN), which aims to develop a multilevel methodological-operational protocol useful in regional, national, EU, and non-EU contexts for the dissemination of knowledge, conservation, regeneration, valorisation, management, and fruition of areas classified as a 'ghost town'. The research findings can be useful for scholars, practitioners, and local entities entrusted to manage the abandoned towns. Furthermore, the methodological approach followed in this research can supply useful insights into aims to valorise and enjoy worldwide 'ghost towns'.
Intellectual property (IP) protection is critical for promoting innovation in academic institutions. However, IP awareness and utilization remains low at Uganda's
Makerere and Kyambogo Universities despite their strong research and innovation potential. This study assessed the level of IP utilization as a tool for fostering
creativity and innovation at these universities. The research employed a quantitative approach, collecting data through surveys of students, staff and alumni.
Findings revealed high levels of innovation participation, but very limited IP registration across patents, trademarks, copyrights and industrial designs. Key
barriers included lack of knowledge about registration procedures and high associated costs. While general awareness of IP rights was moderately high, specific
understanding of application processes was lacking. To address these challenges, the study recommends regular IP awareness campaigns, implementing
online registration systems, increasing IP expertise, and providing financial incentives. Integrating IP education in university curricula, establishing technology
transfer support, and developing customized IP policies are also proposed. Continuous monitoring of IP performance metrics can help strengthen management
practices. Overall, the research highlights the need for concerted efforts to build IP capacity and promote commercialization of academic innovations in
Makerere and Kyambogo Universities. Leveraging IP more effectively can contribute to Uganda's transition into a knowledge-based economy driven by science,
technology and innovation.
Belief network analysis (BNA) refers to a class of methods designed to detect and outline structural organizations of complex attitude systems. BNA can be used to analyze attitude-structures of abstract concepts such as ideologies, worldviews, and norm systems that inform how people perceive and navigate the world. The present manuscript presents a formal specification of the Response-Item Network (or ResIN), a new methodological approach that advances BNA in at least two important ways. First, ResIN allows for the detection of attitude asymmetries between different groups, improving the applicability and validity of BNA in research contexts that focus on intergroup differences and/or relationships. Second, ResIN’s networks include a spatial component that is directly connected to item response theory (IRT). This allows for access to latent space information in which each attitude (i.e. each response option across items in a survey) is positioned in relation to the core dimension(s) of group structure, revealing non-linearities and allowing for a more contextual and holistic interpretation of the attitudes network. To validate the effectiveness of ResIN, we develop a mathematical model and apply ResIN to both simulated and real data. Furthermore, we compare these results to existing methods of BNA and IRT. When used to analyze partisan belief-networks in the US-American political context, ResIN was able to reliably distinguish Democrat and Republican attitudes, even in highly asymmetrical attitude systems. These results demonstrate the utility of ResIN as a powerful tool for the analysis of complex attitude systems and contribute to the advancement of BNA.
Introduction
Nursing students must be able to detect the standpoints and demands of various sorts of individuals, as well as be competent in taking into account individual emotional reactions, self-confidence, stress management, and social role promotion.
Objective
The purpose of this study was to assess the relationship between emotional intelligence and self-esteem among fourth-year nursing students.
Methods
The study was a cross-sectional study. Data were collected from 225 nursing students through a convenience sampling method in spring 2023 at Arab American University. The instruments of the study included “Schutte Self Report Emotional Intelligence Test” and the “Rosenberg self-esteem scale.”
Results
The analysis indicated that the emotional intelligence mean was 151.3 ± 1.9 (ranging from 33 to 165), which is high. Also, the analysis indicated that the self-esteem of the nursing students was high 24.3 ± 3.5 (ranging from 0 to 30). Furthermore, the analysis showed that there was a moderately positive relationship between nurses’ emotional intelligence and self-esteem.
Conclusion
The emotional intelligence and self-esteem among fourth-year nursing students were high. Also, self-esteem was found to have a moderately positive relationship with emotional intelligence and utilizing emotions.
Employees are an important company asset who have quality work competencies to provide the best performance to support company programs. In practice, the Human Capital (HC) team has a competency improvement program that requires motivation from employees as an internal factor so that the program can run effectively. Work motivation is affected by a variety of factors such as salary, work environment, job security, relationships with coworkers, awards, and so on. This influences whether an employee is satisfied with his or her job. The proportionate stratified random sampling approach was utilized, which is a sampling methodology for populations with mixed or variable features, and the data in this study uses a quantitative approach. The population is millennial employees at PT XYZ with a total of 139 millennial employees. The data was collected by distributing a questionnaire with 28 closed questions and response options indicating how strongly respondents agreed or disagreed with the questions posed. The results show it is possible to conclude that the millennial employees at PT XYZ have a level of job satisfaction that is influenced by work environment factors, innovation, and career development factors that can mediate changes in the level of job satisfaction. This finding could be an overview of benchmarks for management in departments, so that job satisfaction obtained by employees does not become a saturation point but becomes a driving force to improve their performance in this company continuously.
Smallholder farming is an important livelihood strategy for rural households in developing countries. Climate change and variability threaten the sustenance of livelihoods and hinder efforts to eradicate poverty and food insecurity. Although perception studies on climate change and coping mechanisms have been conducted in KwaZulu-Natal Province, little has been done on livelihood analysis. This study uses the Sustainable Livelihood Framework for livelihoods analysis of smallholder farmers in the uMkhanyakude district of KwaZulu-Natal Province in South Africa. Survey data were collected from a sample of 400 smallholder farmers in two local municipalities of the district, using a stratified random sampling procedure. Focus group discussions were used to augment survey data. Descriptive statistics were generated to analyse quantitative data, while qualitative data were analysed through thematic analysis. This study found that climate change significantly eroded livelihood assets, posing a threat to the well-being of smallholder farmers. Persistent drought has led to poor crop and livestock productivity, compelling households to rely heavily on food purchases. These findings underscore the urgent need to safeguard the livelihoods of smallholder farmers in the face of climate change. This study recommends that policymakers should focus on policies that enhance the resilience of livelihood assets for farming communities to minimise climatic risk.
There is an increasing demand for low-cost innovations in the context of developed nations and their societies and economies. Considerable attention is now being given to creating frugally engineered innovations that successfully diffuse from developing nations into developed nations. However, despite its potential, only limited knowledge and understanding of this approach—commonly referred to as reverse innovation—are available. Further academic studies are necessary to advance insight into and understanding of reverse innovation. In this chapter, a study is presented which aims to reveal the potential of reverse innovation to support sustainable development. This endeavor was successfully conducted by taking a fresh view of the reverse innovation phenomenon in regard to problem identification and formation, context of use exposure, and technological convergence disclosure, using a knowledge-oriented approach. This study deals with actual examples of successful reverse innovation from the automotive industry, information and communication technology, and public healthcare. The approach taken gives insight into some of the potential, which often remains overlooked or undetected. However, in order to translate this insight and understanding into concrete actionable knowledge and into contributions to sustainable development, certain knowledge gaps first need to be closed.
This study is concerned with learning organizations' multigenerational workforce and how gamification is essential for digital transformation and digital learning, once learning organizations understand how knowledge growth can affect the organization's long-term success and its culture and innovation. As an essential development and competitiveness, learning organizations are expanding to the digital learning in its culture, for employees develop their own interpersonal and soft skills, through collaborative work and better communication. The main aim of this study is to analyze through a literature review to understand how gamification is a potential problem solver for the multigenerational workforce in its digital learning and development. After a research background and literature review, the analysis shows that organizations with a multigenerational workforce have several benefits—while young employees share their digital skills, older employees share their experience and knowledge. Through gamification, employees increase their motivation, digital skills, and productivity.
The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement was signed in 2020 as a giant free trade agreement signed by 15 countries, including China. In this context, the RCEP agreement is the world's largest free trade agreement in terms of GDP and trade volume. In this study, commercial relations between RCEP countries between 2012 (the year when negotiations of the RCEP agreement began) and 2021 were examined using social network analysis. In the analyses, export values of RCEP countries to each other were used and the data were obtained from Trade Map. In the study, social network analyzes for the years 2012-2015-2018-2021 were analyzed using the Ucinet program, while trade networks were visualized with the Gephi program. For social network analyses, basic ego network indicators, degree centrality values, focus and authority centrality values and eigenvector values were calculated. As a result of the analysis, it is seen that the hub and authority country in trade between RCEP countries is China for all four years (2012-2015-2018-2021). On the other hand, it has been determined that China's most important trade partners are Japan and South Korea. Additionally, it seems that Vietnam stood out with the development of its trade in this period.
Of the numerous forms of leadership propounded by commentators and scholars, none is as elusive as the servant variety. Although, in general terms, there is agreement that it is focused on followers, rather than leaders, much less clarity surrounds how it might be put into practice. This chapter considers possible approaches to the operationalisation of servant leadership as a school improvement strategy. It begins by examining such features of servant leadership as listening skills and empathy, before putting it into the context of other common leadership styles. Transformational leadership is looked at, as is distributed leadership in both its formal and informal modes, the conclusion being that servant leadership is a potentially valid approach for both principals and those at other levels of a hierarchy: informal teacher leadership is seen as a particularly promising ‘home’ for servant leadership. The chapter ends by proposing that professional learning communities, informed by distributed teacher leadership, offer a solid practical basis for leaders of different types to put the servant style into practice.
In today's data-intensive work environments, information systems are crucial for supporting workers. However, workers often do not rely on these systems but resort to workarounds. We argue that trust is essential for workers' reliance on information systems, positively affecting workers' cognitive resources, performance, and well-being. Moreover, we argue that the organisational context (accountability, distractions) and user-related factors qualify trust-outcome associations by affecting workers' trust calibration. In a preregistered study, we asked N = 291 employed users of information systems to re-experience prior everyday usage events (event reconstruction method) and assess event-specific trust in the system, work outcomes, and context conditions. Results confirmed the assumed association between trust in the information system and workers' ratings of both performance and well-being. Moreover, workers' technology competence and need for cognition - but not contextual conditions - qualified trust-outcome associations. Our results offer specific suggestions for achieving successful use of information systems at work.
The implementation of the telework model has become popular globally due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, this new model of work organization generates conflicting opinions regarding the positive and negative effects that its implementation can bring to organizations. In this study, sentiment analysis of Twitter-based teleworking in a post-pandemic COVID-19 context was conducted. A set of Twitter conversations is examined by applying text mining and opinion analysis techniques. The results show the prevalence of positive sentiments regarding telework. In addition, opinions are generally associated with confidence, anticipation, and joy. According to the results, it is recommended to consider telework as an opportunity to improve worker well-being. However, it is important to consider some factors, such as the sector to which the company belongs, the characteristics of the job, and the working conditions.
Central bank communication has changed over the years, following the trend of digitalization. It has been used as a tool for the implementation of monetary policies since the 1990s, when central banks started publishing their inflation reports, outlooks, and meeting minutes on the road towards greater transparency, and to help meet their price stability mandate. This mandate cannot be achieved through traditional financial instruments alone, so digital communication and marketing has become an economic policy tool. The effectiveness of the European Central Bank’s online communication tools will be tested via a GAP model, by applying an adapted version of the servuction scale to the Bank and disseminating it to 500 citizens, with the purpose of measuring citizen satisfaction with its website and communications. The servuction model focuses on high quality services that are perceived as such by private sector customers, having a strong marketing component. The originality of the research consists in adapting it to the public sector, more specifically to central banks, and by treating citizens as customers throughout the study. The model was successfully applied to the European Central Bank, demonstrating that citizens’ expectations are highest regarding both the reliability and assurance dimensions, meaning that they want to feel confident in ECB actions, and to the understandability dimension of its online content. The largest gaps between citizens’ expectations and perceptions were identified within the efficiency, understandability, and empathy dimensions. In future, the study can be replicated and adapted to both national central banks and private banks within the European Union, assessing how citizens perceive their websites, communication, and marketing strategies, with the purpose of improving the latter two, and increasing civic engagement. The model can also be adapted to narrower topics relating to sustainable digital development, such as the expectations and perceptions of citizens with regards to central bank digital currencies.
Whether inherited or acquired, intelligence has always been the subject of debate. Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences has been widely accepted and applied by most educators in education. Physical education and sport is one of the most crucial teaching fields for individuals' healthy development and efficient education. The study aimed to examine the relationship between the multiple intelligence areas of physical education teachers and their demographic characteristics. The research universe consists of physical education and sports teachers working in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC). By the stratified sampling method in the research, 168 teachers were reached out of 182 physical education teachers working in the 2019-2020 academic year. The Multiple Intelligence Scale adapted to Turkish by Babacan (2012) and the personal information form prepared by the researchers were applied in the research. While evaluating the data, the means and the standard deviations of the demographic characteristics of the research group were extracted. T-test, ANOVA, and MANOVA were used to determine the differences between the groups. Tukey and Post-hoc tests were used to determine in which groups the differences were. The results showed that the type of high school teachers graduated from can affect the intelligence domain. The findings also show that different factors can affect teachers in different ways.
Social media platforms offer cost-effective digital marketing opportunities to monitor the market, create user communities, and spread positive opinions. They allow companies with fewer budgets, like startups, to achieve their goals and grow. In fact, studies found that startups with active engagement on those platforms have a higher chance of succeeding and receiving funding from venture capitalists. Our study explores how startups utilize social media platforms to foster social communities. We also aim to characterize the individuals within these communities. The findings from this study underscore the importance of social media for startups. We used network analysis and visualization techniques to investigate the communities of Portuguese IT startups through their Twitter data. For that, a social digraph has been created, and its visualization shows that each startup created a community with a degree of intersecting followers and following users. We characterized those users using user node-level measures. The results indicate that users who are followed by or follow Portuguese IT startups are of these types: “Person”, “Company,” “Blog,” “Venture Capital/Investor,” “IT Event,” “Incubators/Accelerators,” “Startup,” and “University.” Furthermore, startups follow users who post high volumes of tweets and have high popularity levels, while those who follow them have low activity and are unpopular. The attained results reveal the power of Twitter communities and offer essential insights for startups to consider when building their social media strategies. Lastly, this study proposes a methodological process for social media community analysis on platforms like Twitter.
We are on a design journey. Business, education,
society, and community are at the center of this journey.
In the words of the Prime Minister of Singapore,
‘Singapore is a nation by design. Nothing we have
today is natural, or happened by itself... Now, as a first
world country, design thinking will be critical for us to
transform Singapore again, and to stay an outstanding
city in the world. Actually, there are many other policies
which will benefit from your design thinking. If you think
about it, healthcare, education, CPF, national service
and even our political system.’
The ideas expressed by the Prime Minister focus on
the design journey, as a concept, known in the popular
vernacular as Design Thinking, or, more broadly, what
we refer to as Design Innovation. This journey is a vision
for the future, no matter what country or community in
which we reside. We are facing the grandest of global
and national challenges, such as an ageing population,
environmental crises, needs for transformation in
transportation, smart and loveable cities, threats of
terrorism, ethnic and religious tensions, and economic
uncertainty. Design Innovation holds an optimism, an
‘Also Can’, and a promise to confront and overcome
these challenges.
The Design Innovation Methodology handbook
represents a contribution to our design journey. This
handbook was developed by a number of contributors
from the United States and Singapore. Through a
co-creation effort and common interests to innovate
together, the intent is to make a difference for all
persons in our communities and society. Readers
are provided with a meaningful and practical guide,
reference booklet, and living document in which to
engage Design Innovation at the apex of Design
Thinking and Systems Thinking, and beyond.
Appreciation is conveyed to all of the contributors in
developing this handbook. We sincerely hope that
this guide will inspire and embolden all readers and
partners to push the boundaries of human-centered
systems innovation across one’s entire portfolio and
strategic plan. In doing so, the future will be bright,
and we will have an impact beyond anything we can
imagine or foresee. We wish you the very best as you
embrace your personal Design Innovation journey. To
Design Innovation, and Beyond!!
This research tests a sustainability assessment based on the 2030 Agenda’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through a process of their territorialization and implementation. This process enables the development of a spatial decision support system (SDSS) that can be integrated with strategic environmental assessments in urban planning. The assessment takes place on the transversality of the sustainability concept, considering the three dimensions (environmental, social, and economic) in a single assessment through the spatial sustainability assessment model (SSAM) by integrating geographic information systems (GIS) and multicriteria analyses. Economic development, social equity, and ecological integrity represent the three common visions for rethinking peri-urban edges. The choice of key indicators is due to the possibilities for action of urban plans and the vision of SDG 11a, which aims to support ‘positive economic, social, and environmental links among urban, peri-urban and rural areas by strengthening national and regional development planning’. In addition, they were selected to be representative of sustainable planning processes in the peri-urban area. In recognizing the limits of urban expansion processes, in the peri-urban area, it is necessary to promote a different growth based on agri-environmental values, the production of biodiversity reserves and corridors, new models of inhabiting open space, and the consolidation of civic and collective uses. The paper tests the assessment methodology in two urban plans of the Metropolitan City of Naples that address the development of the peri-urban area with different strategies. This provides insight into how to support decision-making processes so that economic development, social equity, and ecological integrity represent three common and integrated visions to enable development that is consistent with SDGs. The results show that it is possible to identify trade-offs among the three dimensions. In fact, where there are environmental subtractions necessary to accommodate peri-urban land-relation functions, these are offset by the social values of collective use and by the values of the current economy that aim to redistribute present resources.
Program pengentasan kemiskinan terus menjadi salah satu program prioritas pemerintah, terutama sejak pandemic Covid-19. Data menunjukkan masih tingginya rumah tangga atau masyarakat mengalami kesulitan untuk memenuhi kebutuhan dasar, sementara lingkup pendukungnya kurang memberikan peluang dalam meningkatkan kesejahteraan secara kesinambungan atau untuk keluar dari kerentanan. Penelitian bertujuan menganalisis kondisi kesejahteraan rumah tangga miskin di perkotaan dengan mendekatkan kepada kebutuhan dasar dan lingkup kesejahteraan. dibutuhkan informasi lingkungan pendukung baik dari internal atau eksternal dalam upaya penanggulangan kemiskinan. Studi ini sangat dibutuhkan pemerintah daerah untuk mendukung program pengentasan kemiskinan. Penelitian ini menggunakan pendekatan survey dari data kelompok rumah tangga penerima bantuan Program Keluarga Harapan di Kecamatan Babakan Ciparay yang diperoleh dari data e-pkh sejak adanya pandemic Covid 19. Data ini sangat mendukung untuk melakukan analisis tingkat kemiskinan secara multidimensi di wilayah perkotaan melalui Nested Spheres of Poverty (NESP). Studi ini menunjukkan bahwa rata-rata keluarga penerima manfaat yang tinggal di perkotaan menunjukan adanya optimisme untuk menjadi sejahtera, meskipun mereka mengalami krisis kebutuhan dasar dan lingkup kesejahteraan. Rekomendasi diberikan perlunya peningkatan evaluasi kesejahteraan rumah tangga penerima bantuan, agar lebih efektif dan berkelanjutan dengan mendekatkan multidimensi untuk melihat berbagai aspek subjektivitas dan objektivitas (kebutuhan dasar, seperti: pendidikan; kesehatan; standar hidup; dan lingkup kesejahteraan dengan pendekatan Sustainable Livelihoods).
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is here to stay. Nonpharmacological interventions such as hand hygiene, social distancing, and respiratory hygiene have remained the mainstay to curb the spread of the virus, and these are sustainable. To understand the information, education, and communication (IEC) efforts undertaken during previous pandemics and successful behavior change strategies that may be applicable to ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, we conducted a narrative review of articles using PubMed search on September 11, 2022. The results highlighted that reinforced IEC is the need of the hour in efforts against COVID-19 pandemic. The communication strategy during a pandemic should be of three stages aligned to the objectives of building a basic understanding and knowledge in the target population: building an awareness of the threat; personal actions to minimize the impact; and reinforcing the need for appropriate actions to minimize disease transmission, in that order. An innovative strategy of displaying IEC on the daily essential products can result in a sustainable solution that might result in a “felt need” in the community to follow COVID-19 appropriate behavior. A broad base of stakeholders’ engagement with civil bodies, nongovernmental organizations, private sectors with well-defined responsibilities and accountability would offer an enabling environment for these efforts in ultimately curbing the COVID-19 pandemic.
Addressing the global challenges of desertification, land degradation, and drought (DLDD), and their impacts on achieving sustainable development goals for coupled human-environmental systems is a key component of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In particular, Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 15.3 aims to, “by 2030, combat desertification, restore degraded land and soil, including land affected by desertification, drought and floods, and strive to achieve a land degradation-neutral world”. Addressing this challenge is essential for improving the livelihoods of those most affected by DLDD and for safeguarding against the most extreme effects of climate change. This paper introduces a conceptual framework for improved monitoring of DLDD in the context of United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) Strategic Objective 2 (SO2) and its expected impacts: food security and adequate access to water for people in affected areas are improved; the livelihoods of people in affected areas are improved and diversified; local people, especially women and youth, are empowered and participate in decision-making processes in combating DLDD; and migration forced by desertification and land degradation is substantially reduced. While it is critical to develop methods and tools for assessing DLDD, work is needed first to provide a conceptual roadmap of the human dimensions of vulnerability in relation to DLDD, especially when attempting to create a globally standardized monitoring approach.
This study was aimed to investigate the impact of abusive supervision (AS) on job performance (JP) through a novel model of moderated mediation, the roles of emotional intelligence (EI) as moderator and workplace ostracism as a mediator. Equity theory was used to build the theoretical foundation and hypotheses of this study. Data were collected from teachers working in high and higher secondary
schools of Pakistan. A final sample size of 320 was recorded. Data analyses were done by utilizing two software programs, that is, (1) AMOS was used for testing the reliability and validity of the study variables, whereas (2) SPSS was used for descriptive statistics along with the PROCESS macro of Hayes to test the proposed moderated mediation model. It was found that AS has a significant negative impact on JP. Furthermore, the moderating mediation roles of EI and workplace ostracism were also supported as proposed. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
School-based bullying is a major global social problem affecting societies around the world. It is argued that Virtual Reality (VR) offers benefits and possibilities in social work education. Within this context, a study was carried out with the aim of analysing students’ experiences with a school-based bullying scenario through Head-Mounted Display Virtual Reality (HMD VR), and exploring the pedagogical potential of this technology to support the enhancement of cultural empathy in international social work education. Using cultural competence and social constructivist perspectives focused on empathy theory, this article addresses the following research questions: How do the research participants describe experiencing the bullying scene with HMD VR? How do the research participants account for their HMD VR experiences in connection with empathy? How can the pedagogical use of HMD VR enhance international social work students’ cultural empathic skills? Data for the study were gathered through four Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) with 38 volunteer research participants based on their postexposure to a scenario on school-based bullying through HMD VR. ATLAS.ti v.23 software (Atlas.ti, Berlin, Germany) was used to undertake a deductive thematic analysis. The findings reveal that HMD VR plays an important role in enhancing different dimensions of empathy, which is an essential element in transformative learning in social work education. The overall implications of using HMD VR in international social work education for enhancing cultural empathy are discussed. The article concludes that HMD VR has a promising role; however, several ethical, practical, and pedagogical aspects need to be considered for this technology tool to provide the sought-after pedagogical value in social work education.
In this chapter, we briefly review how emotions at work have been treated in the research literature. We also describe the power of emotions and address the importance of emotions when making reasoned and wise decisions. We emphasize that managers can improve their understanding and handling of emotions in the workplace.
Several years ago, a characteristic of leadership was the intelligence index, but in recent
years this has changed, and emotional intelligence is considered an important parameter for a leader.
A leader who shows a high index of emotional intelligence can activate his/her human potential
and subsequently others. There is a large body of literature on “what” great leaders should do,
but more emphasis needs to be placed on “how” to develop such leaders by focusing on detailed
individual behavior change and self-development. The current article aims to investigate the concept
of emotional intelligence and describe the levels of the emotional intelligence pyramid model and
how these are reflected in the role of leadership. The theoretical model is complemented by a set of
metacognitive and metaemotional strategies while emphasizing the role of technologies to provide
fertile ground for the implementation of emotional intelligence skills in leadership. The strategies
framework provides a training paradigm for implementation in education and working environments.
The results of this article provide a new theoretical framework of the emotional skills a leader must
possess, and they also provide a useful framework for cultivating them, which will promote long-term
human capital development and help everyone achieve educational and professional success. The
pyramid model of emotional intelligence and its strategies can have practical applications in any
form of leadership, as research has shown a positive correlation between these two concepts
Technological revolution has fundamentally changed the way we live, work and relate to one another, in addition to redefining consumers’ preferences. Through a desk-based review, this chapter explores social media adoption in public sector communication. Specifically, the chapter reviews current development in public sector marketing with a focus on social media adoption in public sector communication. The chapter highlights the relevance of social media adoption in public sector marketing amidst public sector reforms as well as explores the two main strategic implications of social media for the marketing of public services, which include co-production in public service delivery and public service branding. These concepts are key for policies and practice of service delivery in the public sector, especially in an era where citizens expect improved services and better value from public sector organisations (PSOs). The chapter proposes a typology of public sector service and how social media fosters the management of these unique service characteristics.KeywordsSocial mediaPublic sectorCommunicationAfrica