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With the growing need for employees to be innovative, public-sector organizations are investing in employee training. This study aims to examine the effects of a combined Lean Six Sigma and innovation training, using action learning, on public-sector employees’ creative role identity and innovative work behavior.

The authors studied a public service agency in Singapore in which a five-day Lean Innovation Training was implemented, using a combination of Lean Six Sigma and Creative Problem-Solving tools, with a simulation on day one and subsequent team-based project coaching, spread over six months. The authors administered pre- and postintervention surveys among all the employees, and initiated group interviews and observations before, during and after the intervention.

Creative role identity and innovative work behavior had significantly improved six months after the intervention, enabled through senior management’s transformational leadership. The training induced managers to role-model innovative work behaviors while cocreating, with their employees, a renewal of their agency’s core processes. The three completed improvement projects contributed to an innovative work culture and reduced service turnaround time.

Starting with a role-playing simulation on the first day, during which leaders and followers swapped roles, the action-learning type training taught all the organizational members to use various Lean Six Sigma and Creative Problem-Solving tools. This nimble Lean Innovation Training, and subsequent team-based project coaching, exemplifies how advancing the staff’s creative role identity can have a positive impact.

The purpose of this study is to explore the potential contribution of the metaverse to improve training and development as a function of human resource development (HRD) perspective. The authors explore the benefits and challenges of the metaverse and introduce cases of companies using the metaverse in training.

A narrative literature review was conducted to collect information on the metaverse in training. The authors reviewed peer- and non-peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, white papers, corporate websites and blogs and business magazines.

A total of 75 articles were reviewed, including 14 cases, which were summarized to demonstrate how companies are applying metaverse technology in training contexts. For a more in-depth review, three cases were selected and summarized in terms of context, process and outcomes.

The metaverse is an emergent topic in HRD. It has the potential to revolutionize the functions of training and development through the combination of advanced technologies, including virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality. This article is the foundational attempt to provide a comprehensive summary of existing literature and case studies that highlight the potential of the metaverse in training within the context of HRD.

The authors illustrate that there are significant differences in the wage performance across companies in relation to the digital content of their production and training activities.

Using company-level data from three waves of the Continuing Vocational Training Survey (2005, 2010 and 2015), this paper provides an overview on European firms implementing training and the magnitude of their training effort.

The authors conduct a regression analysis documenting that a wage premium of 9% is associated with companies undertaking training and that an additional 8% is paid by firms arranging training for IT skills-intensive workers. The latter effect is pervasive across sectors and is not strictly related to industry exposure to the digital transformation.

The authors assess the wage effect of training, in relation to the digital content of firm production or job tasks, using a large set of European companies (112,000), from countries with different degree of specialisation and institutional setting. The analysis covers a significant period of time of the last wave of digitalisation (2005, 2010, 2015).

Training has been an important tool for enhancing the skills and productivity of employees. Having productive employees helps organizations sustain themselves. Today, the authors organisations have an increasing number of employees on third-party payroll performing core as well as noncore business functions. However, due to the lack of ownership and moral obligation of employers, these employees are often not provided training, resulting in skills obsolesce and less productivity. The present study is a systematic literature review (SLR) on client organizations’ roles in training third-party employees (TPEs) and its related outcomes.

The present study is a SLR on client organizations' roles in training TPEs and their related outcomes. Using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) approach, this study presents a review of 217 research papers on training of TPEs and its related outcomes.

The study identifies the outcomes of providing training to TPEs and presents the findings and suggestions made by researchers. The study concludes that TPEs are an important investment for the client organization. Training them would benefit the client organization, TPEs and the economy as a whole. The paper also suggests some avenues for future research.

This paper tries to answer an important question: What could drive productive behavior among TPEs? Based on the literature reviewed, the answer is that TPEs could be offered training opportunities with a view to enhancing their employability. This could induce, among them, a sense of being valued and supported while contributing to organizational performance and creating a feeling of reciprocal obligation. This is an important contribution to literature. Low investment in these employees affects their employability, i.e. be it in the same organization for another term or another organization and thus the need for training and development, for sustained productivity among TPEs, in organizations.

Training and development, for them, would result in enhanced employability within as well as outside the organization. These employees could also be a good source for regular positions within the organization, if required, benefiting both the organization and the employee. Additionally, the economy would also benefit from a pool of skilled workforce. Therefore, it is suggested that governments initiate some policy framework regarding mandatory training of TPEs to increase their competencies, resulting in increased organizational productivity, especially for TPEs at lower and middle levels of management.

The paper is an original contribution by the researcher. An attempt has been made to highlight the training needs of TPEs and their related outcomes.

The purpose of this study is to identify the factors leading to adoption of social networking sites (SNS) by librarians of entrepreneurial libraries to provide support to business community in their market research. Identification of these adoption factors will help to design SNS in the way that led to their seamless diffusion in university libraries, making them capable of providing reliable and useful market knowledge to the business community.

To meet the research objectives, this study is based on the technology adoption model (TAM). The survey was conducted with 50 librarians of various universities across Europe, Asia, America, Africa and Australia, sampled through non probabilistic sampling techniques-purposive and snowball sampling. The collected data are analyzed through partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to estimate the formulated structural equation model using SmartPLS 3.2.9 software version.

The results indicate that university librarians have high perception about usefulness and ease of using SNS for meeting their business objectives. The perceived usefulness (PU) is solely based on the prolonged adoption of SNS technology in personal lives of the librarians. The perceived ease of use (PEU) is triggered by the increasing quality of evolving SNS technology, especially user friendliness. The prolonged use of technology, increasing market entry of brands and improving quality of SNS will overcome librarian resistance to use SNS for market research related support to business community. Evolving technologies are more likely to be adopted seamlessly in entrepreneurial libraries.

This study has implications for librarians, entrepreneurs and technology providers. Librarians should have flexible technology adoption policies in place to keep technology adoption synchronized with changing market conditions. Entrepreneurs should share clear and accurate business needs as well as practicing ethical and lawful business practices. They should also help libraries to gain new skills to make future adoption easier. Technology providers should focus on improving the quality of their technology by increasing their functional utilities, performance and reliability as well as making them more user-friendly.

This study investigates technology adoption of SNS in libraries from the perspective of providing market research related services to entrepreneurs rather than just digitalizing library services for student users.

This study examines the perceptions of human resource (HR) professionals regarding the use of micro-credentials in the job market. The research explores the role of micro-credentials as emerging credentials in job requirements, continuing education, soft skills acquisition, job application evaluation (JAE) processes, qualification preferences in recruitment, salary/pay scale determination and promotional opportunities.

A quantitative research methodology was used to collect data through questionnaires distributed to 124 HR professionals.

The study finds that HR professionals recognize the value of micro-credentials in enhancing a candidate’s resume and aligning with their career objectives, as they offer personalized skill-building opportunities. However, some recruiters question the legitimacy of micro-credentials, perceiving them as informal and questioning their practical transferability.

This study highlights the importance for HR professionals to remain updated on emerging trends, adapt to the changing dynamics of the professional workforce and incorporate this into their recruitment and promotion policies. It also emphasizes the need for further investigation into the legitimacy of micro-credentials and their impact on the job market and presents the potential benefits of their integration into HR practices.

This study aims to investigate the quality level of the leading three Public Administration Institutes’ (PAIs) websites in the Arab world.

A convenient sample of 203 Jordanian Government employees answered the questionnaire that assessed five quality dimensions (content, navigation, interface design, accessibility and educational purpose) for each website.

The website of PAI of Kingdom of Saudi Arabia recorded a high level in all quality dimensions, whereas the website of PAI of Jordan recorded moderate quality in all dimensions except for accessibility; the website of PAI of Egypt recorded a high level in all quality dimensions except for the educational purpose. Based on the qualitative analysis, participants agreed that the PAI website has the best quality, accessibility, navigation and design compared with the Egyptian and the Jordanian PAIs websites.

Designers of PAI websites should consider end users’ needs and regularly assess the website’s usability. PAIs developers should also establish more interactive portals to provide transparent and effective electronic services to users. The findings are significant in helping policymakers better understand the importance of distance training and learning using websites and platforms.

Developing a high-quality website enhances the relationship between the government and its employees, consequently establishing the credibility and trust of citizens in public services.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that measures the quality of PAI websites in the Arab world. The findings provide more cross-culture evidence for the e-government and digital literature in helping policymakers develop more technology interactive platforms.

Based on the principles of the human capital theory, this study investigates the role of the quality management system (QMS) in higher education institutions (HEIs) in developing successful employability attributes among graduates. Considering industry as a prominent stakeholder in academia, the authors took industry–academia collaboration as the mediating variable.

Using the European Foundation for Quality Management model, the author analyzed how QMS in public HEIs located in London, the United Kingdom (UK), impacts business management, computer science and engineering students' employability. Following the nonprobability convenience sampling technique, this study included data from 324 local and international students.

The structural analysis identified QMS as a significant factor in enhancing students' employability, and industry–academia collaboration is found to act as a partial mediator in this relationship.

The management of HEIs in developing countries can take valuable guidelines from this study and integrate QMS in their institutions in developing their students' employability, as it is being done by HEIs in the UK.

With the advent of transformational and digital technologies, companies are striving to integrate digital transformation strategy (DTS) into their business models to stay competitive. However, in many cases, the implementation of DTS fails because managers lack knowledge about the opportunities and challenges associated with this strategy.

First, a bibliometric analysis was conducted with data related to DTS from the Scopus database for the period 2011–2023 to identify scientific trends in the field of DTS. Subsequently, 2,363 documents were collected and analyzed using Vosviewer software. Finally, the opportunities and challenges within the field of DTS were identified as one of the latest trends through a meta-synthesis method.

The findings of this research highlight the current scientific trends in the field of DTS. Also, the challenges of implementing the DTS are lack of instructions and rules, financial weakness, lack of alignment, inappropriate organizational structure, lack of digital organizational culture, challenges related to employees, lack of a digital leader and cyber threats. In addition, DTS implementation opportunities can be divided into three groups: improving customer experience, improving business processes and strategic renewal and creation of new business models.

The present research introduces two key innovations. The first is to offer a summary of prior research in the field of DTS. The second is identifying the opportunities and challenges associated with adopting this strategy, which is one of the latest trends.

Through a case study of a recently established but rapidly growing research-intensive university in China, this study explores how transnational joint doctoral programs are strategically instrumentalized to overcome policy restrictions on postgraduate degree accreditation. It utilizes the cumulative (dis)advantage theory as the analytical lens. This study investigates the innovative, bottom-up initiation of transnational higher education tailored to the development goals of the university and this region, thus providing an alternative perspective for the dominant top-down discourse on transnational higher education research in China.

This study employs a qualitative case study design that incorporates semi-structured interviews and document analysis to investigate the examined university’s joint doctoral programs.

The study examines how, through its transnational joint doctoral programs, the case university actively accumulated the advantages of recruiting excellent research students, cultivating the public’s confidence and deepening international collaboration. These advantages created a virtuous circle, which further reinforced each other and accelerated the university’s development. The disadvantages include power disparities between the case university and its partners, students’ study discontinuity because of temporal and spatial division and the challenges of co-supervision. Accordingly, the university implemented counterstrategies such as adopting a differentiated stance with varying partners, offering flexible administrative and management supports and aligning differently with various supervisors’ collaboration styles.

This study presents innovative institutional strategies in the Greater Bay Area of China to pursue rapid development and internationalization through transnational higher education programs. It also strives to illuminate the significant role of transnational higher education in facilitating experimental governance with Chinese characteristics.