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This article focuses on the assessment of entrepreneurship competence by selected vocational teachers in Italy. The exploratory research question addresses the extent to which entrepreneurship assessments are competence based, and the research seeks to identify fully fledged assessment programmes with both a formative and summative component, and the use of assessment rubrics. It also explores the extent to which entrepreneurship competence is referred to in school documentation and later assessed, and the tools and strategies used for such assessment.

This case study is part of a larger European research project promoted by Cedefop; in Italy it focused on six selected vocational IVET and CVET programmes and apprenticeship schemes. It used a wide range of instruments to ensure triangulation and multiple perspectives: analysed policy documents and undertook online interviews with experts and policy makers. At VET providers' premises it deployed: analysis of school documents; observations of learning environments; interviews and focus groups with (in schools) teachers, directors and vice directors, learners and alumni (in companies) instructors, company tutors and employers, apprentices and alumni.

Assessment tasks were rarely embedded within fully fledged assessment programmes involving both formative and summative tasks, and assessment rubric for grading. Most of the time, entrepreneurship programmes lacked self-assessment, peer assessment and structured feedback and did not involve learners in the assessment process. Some instructors coached the students, but undertook no clear formative assessment. These findings suggest institutions have a testing culture with regard to assessment, at the level of both policy and practice. In most cases, entrepreneurship competence was not directly assessed, and learning outcomes were only loosely related to entrepreneurship.

One limitation concerned the selection of the VET providers: these were chosen not on a casual basis, but because they ran programmes that were relevant to the development of entrepreneurship competence.

At the policy level, there is a need for new guidelines on competence development and assessment in VET, guidelines that are more aligned with educational research on competence development. To ensure the development of entrepreneurship competence, educators need in-service training and a community of practice.

So far, the literature has concentrated on entrepreneurship education at the tertiary level. Little is known about how VET instructors assess entrepreneurship competence. This study updates the picture of policy and practice in Italy, illustrating how entrepreneurship competence is developed in selected IVET and CVET programmes and apprenticeships.

Three scenario-based experiments were conducted to explore the influence of the base option’s price format (just-at vs just-below) on tourists’ upgrade intention. The findings of this research indicated that tourists are more inclined to upgrade the option when the base option’s price is presented in a just-at condition due to the mediating role of tourists’ price perceptions of the upgrade option. This study discovered that the just-at (vs just-below) pricing strategy can lower tourists’ price perceptions of the upgrade choice. This research further explored the moderating of tourists’ mindsets. It was found the threshold-crossing effect will disappear for tourists with fixed mindsets. This study also provides practical implications for travel service providers to set up appropriate pricing strategies to attract tourists to make upgrade decisions.

This study aims to introduce management students to climate change by providing them with an opportunity to address it in their own lives, through a class exercise.

An in-class exercise was designed, carried out and described in this study. Student teams were assigned different questions on how to address major causes of climate change. Each team did research to generate answers, and ranked their answers based on the speed of implementation. Teams reported their answers to the class. The instructor facilitated a debriefing session, during which all responses were ranked with respect to other variables, including cost savings, time savings and lifestyle fit. This exercise uses few resources and can be adapted to different time lengths and teaching/learning formats (e.g. on-ground, virtual, asynchronous online).

This exercise can help students to gain an understanding of climate change and its causes and complexities. Students learn how to implement a diverse set of personal actions to mitigate climate change; these can start in the present and continue throughout their lives. In addition, this exercise may help students to make the leap from individual climate change mitigation practices to organizational and societal practices, when they are in the position to do so as future leaders.

Although classes, exercises, and assignments ask management students to consider issues such as climate change at the organizational level, this individual-level exercise can allow students with limited organizational experience to engage more quickly with climate change and better understand organizational and societal implications in the future. That is, if students first understand how to address climate change in their own lives, they may more effectively transfer and apply that understanding at organizational and societal levels and ultimately synthesize solutions to address climate change in the world.

The first-aid courses organized by the Youth Red Cross Carinthia (Austria) had a quality problem, necessitating a professionalization in teaching and time structure. This research aimed to enhance the quality and effectiveness of these courses by implementing modified lesson studies with non-professional trainers. The paper presents the realization process, empirical research and results obtained by applying the first-aid curriculum.

Around 22 lesson study first-aid courses (14 classes with 2 cycles, 8 with 3 cycles) were conducted and evaluated in different Austrian school types. An observation sheet was created to evaluate attention and competencies. Interviews were conducted with both teachers and students to validate the results.

The research findings demonstrate that lesson studies can significantly enhance the quality and effectiveness of first-aid courses. Inexperienced and experienced first-aid teachers significantly improved their teaching skills. Newly educated first-aid teachers showed substantial improvement, leading to the introduction of an induction period and coaching opportunity within the Youth Red Cross Carinthia.

This is the first lesson study conducted in a non-academic context. It highlights the adaptation process of Carinthian first-aid courses. It illustrates how lesson studies impact lesson clarity, instructional variety, student engagement in the learning process, student outcome, student feedback and teaching effectiveness in a non-academic context. It contributes to the literature on the application of lesson study in first-aid education and provides insight into the benefits of this approach in enhancing the quality of first-aid training.

Municipalities, as the front lines of service delivery, use websites as one of the tools to communicate information to the public. While it is considered a record, many organisations, including municipalities, do not manage websites as such. This study aims to explore the archiving of websites as records in the municipalities of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) Province in South Africa by using the web archiving life cycle model.

This study used a mixed-methods research with an explanatory design, with quantitative data collected first through content analysis of websites and qualitative data collected through interviews. Researchers used multilevel sampling, first quantitatively analysing all available websites of the municipalities (52) in KZN, and then qualitatively selecting only records managers, information managers, web administrators, communication managers and website managers or designers from municipalities because of their understanding and involvement with websites in some way.

This study established that some records on municipal websites are often in paper format in record-keeping systems, whereas others are born digital and are not captured in the systems. Municipalities lack a dedicated web online harvesting tool as well as an archiving policy or strategy to guide website archiving. Furthermore, municipalities placed a high reliance on service providers to keep their websites operational.

It became clear during the interviews that most of the participants were unfamiliar with web archiving. As a result, only 12 of the 56 selected participants from the municipalities provided the required information in relation to the current study as others could not provide answers. Data for other participants were not analysed.

Due to a lack of infrastructure for ingesting digital records into archival custody, a framework for harvesting web content of value is proposed both internally in municipalities and externally to an archive repository.

Given the importance of the growing segmentation of ageing consumers and their increasing interaction with the Internet, digital marketing scholars are becoming more interested in this market. Prior research needs to pay more attention to this market in many contexts of digital marketing. This study aims to provide insights into ageing consumers’ content usage, content typology choices, and online brand advocacy (OBA).

Semi-structured interviews were applied, and 16 consumers from Southern Europe aged 55+ were included. The interviews were transcribed and examined following the principles of content analysis.

According to the research, older consumers display their usage and concerns regarding online content. They have different decision-making processes depending on whether they are purchasing products or services. Likewise, their choices of content typology vary based on the utilitarian or hedonic product category.

This study contributes to the literature by providing insights into this growing segmentation and proposing an OBA framework for older consumers related to content marketing. Finally, the study suggests that older consumers are passive online and active offline brand advocates.

This study investigates the individual and binary (i.e. combined) effects of institutional dimensions of open government data (which include instructional, structural and accessible rules) on scientific research innovation, as well as the mediating roles that researchers' perceived data usefulness and data capability play in between.

Based on a sample of 1,092 respondents, this study uses partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and polynomial regression with response surface analysis to evaluate the direct and indirect effects of individual and binary institutional dimensions on scientific research innovation.

The findings demonstrate that instructional, structural and restricted access data have a positive effect on scientific research innovation in the individual effect. While the binary effect of institutional dimensions produces varying degrees of scientific research innovation. Furthermore, this study discovers that the perceived usefulness and data capability of researchers differ in the mediating effect of institutional dimensions on scientific research innovation.

Theoretically, this study contributes new knowledge on the causal links between data publication institutions and innovation. Practically, the research findings offer government data managers timely suggestions on how to build up institutions to foster greater data usage.

The objective of this study is to examine how emotions play a role in the firm’s reaction to disruptions in the supply chain. Drawing on the upper echelons theory, we evaluate whether managers’ perception of collective emotions (CEs) in the supply environment affects the execution of specific organisational responses (bridging and buffering) to disruptive events. Furthermore, we investigate to what extent companies' own capabilities, such as supply chain resilience, influence this relationship.

A web-based survey was distributed among managers involved in supply chain relationship management (e.g. supply chain or purchasing managers). LinkedIn was used to identify and contact adequate respondents, and 221 valid responses were collected. The proposed theoretical model was empirically tested using structural equation modelling based on partial least squares (PLS-SEM).

Results suggest that emotions can shape a firm's response to supply chain disruptions. In fact, managers are more likely to pursue both bridging and buffering strategies as their perception of CEs increases. However, the intensity and underlying motivations for pursuing each strategy differ.

When CEs are perceived by buyer managers, stronger supply chain resilience incentivises the choice of cooperative practices within existing suppliers, thereby reinforcing pre-existing links. We conclude that combining companies' inherent variables or capabilities with managerial cognition and perceptions can improve our understanding of decision-making processes and buyer–supplier relationships.

Since research has already shown that social distance affects the relationship between employees and the organization, this study (1) examines job-related resources that contribute to teleworkers’ organizational commitment and (2) works out how internal communication professionals can strategically address them.

A total of 50 problem-centered, semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with teleworkers from Austrian and German organizations between March and June 2021.

The interview data resulted in eight job-related resources that contribute to teleworkers’ organizational commitment. By pointing out the communicative aspects of these resources, we discuss how internal communication professionals can strategically engage to maintain the connection between teleworkers and the organization despite the distance. It highlights the communicators’ role as a strategic communicators and networkers, as enabler and as key speaker for employees’ needs.

The data were collected during a health crisis (COVID-19 pandemic) in the context of Austrian and German organizations and refers to the perspective of employees for whom teleworking israther new.

The study provides in-depth insights into teleworkers’ expectations and entails clear implications for the practice of internal communication professionals to strengthen teleworkers’ commitment.

Key to transnational higher education (HE) cooperation is building trust to allow for seamless recognition of studies. Building on the Tuning Educational Structures initiative (2001) and lessons learnt from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)-Assessment of Learning Outcomes in Higher Education (AHELO) feasibility study, this paper offers a sophisticated approach developed by the European Union (EU)-co-financed project Measuring and Comparing Achievements of Learning Outcomes in Europe (CALOHEE). These evidence the quality and relevance of learning by applying transparent and reliable indicators at the overarching and disciplinary levels. The model results allow for transnational diagnostic assessments to identify the strength and weaknesses of degree programmes.

The materials presented have been developed from 2016 to 2023, applying a bottom-up approach involving approximately 150 academics from 20+ European countries, reflecting the full spectrum of academic fields. Based on intensive face-to-face debate and consultation of stakeholders and anchored in academic literature and wide experience.

As a result, general (overarching) state-of-the-art reference frameworks have been prepared for the associated degree, bachelor, master and doctorate, as well as aligned qualifications reference frameworks and more detailed learning outcomes/assessment frameworks for 11 subject areas, offering a sound basis for quality assurance. As a follow-up, actual assessment formats for five academic fields have been developed to allow for measuring the actual level of learning at the institutional level from a comparative perspective.

Frameworks as well as assessment models and items are highly innovative, content-wise as in the strategy of development, involving renown academics finding common ground. Its value is not limited to Europe but has global significance. The model developed, is also relevant for micro-credentials in defining levels of mastery.