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The purpose of this paper is to highlight the role an intentional and cohesive research group for doctoral researchers and supervisors can play in surfacing and de-mystifying many of the implicit doctoral literacy practices involved in doctoral study.

This participatory, collaborative project, involving 11 doctoral researchers and three supervisors, was conducted in two stages. In the first stage, doctoral researchers and supervisors engaged in a discussion which resulted in a shared concept map. The concept map was then used as a prompt for stimulated recall interviews in which the participants reflected on the connections and peer learning afforded by the research group.

Drawing on ideas from Communities of Practice theory, the data revealed that the research group, including both supervisors and doctoral students, developed knowledge, relational connections and an awareness of a range of doctoral literacies.

This paper makes suggestions for how those in doctoral education can develop and embed research groups into institutional practices.

This study demonstrates the significant role a research group which is structured, intentional and guided plays in supervisors’ and doctoral students’ development of doctoral literacies and the fundamental intellectual and relational connections afforded by participating in such communities.

This chapter presents an exploratory case study focused on how public libraries serve or fail to serve the information needs of the immigrant population in the Queen’s Borough of New York City, a region that COVID-19 is acutely impacted. This study examined immigrants’ desired types of public library services, public librarians’ role in meeting their needs, and the challenges they faced in providing services. Findings confirm immigrants’ multiple service needs and add new insights about how the public library staff plays a critical role in helping the immigrant population cope with different forms of assistance. The results further indicated that librarians face institutional and cultural barriers in serving immigrant customers that may lead to the underutilization of library services. Widespread public crises related to the COVID-19 pandemic deepened information needs and disparities.

This study aims to investigate the reliability issues of microvoid cracks in solder joint packages exposed to thermal cycling fatigue.

The specimens are subjected to JEDEC preconditioning level 1 (85 °C/85%RH/168 h) with five times reflow at 270°C. This is followed by thermal cycling from 0°C to 100°C, per IPC-7351B standards. The specimens' cross-sections are inspected for crack growth and propagation under backscattered scanning electronic microscopy. The decoupled thermomechanical simulation technique is applied to investigate the thermal fatigue behavior. The impacts of crack length on the stress and fatigue behavior of the package are investigated.

Cracks are initiated from the ball grid array corner of the solder joint, propagating through the transverse section of the solder ball. The crack growth increases continuously up to 0.25-mm crack length, then slows down afterward. The J-integral and stress intensity factor (SIF) values at the crack tip decrease with increased crack length. Before 0.15-mm crack length, J-integral and SIF reduce slightly with crack length and are comparatively higher, resulting in a rapid increase in crack mouth opening displacement (CMOD). Beyond 0.25-mm crack length, the values significantly decline, that there is not much possibility of crack growth, resulting in a negligible change in CMOD value. This explains the crack growth arrest obtained after 0.25-mm crack length.

This work's contribution is expected to reduce the additional manufacturing cost and lead time incurred in investigating reliability issues in solder joints.

The work investigates crack propagation mechanisms of microvoid cracks in solder joints exposed to moisture and thermal fatigue, which is still limited in the literature. The parametric variation of the crack length on stress and fatigue characteristics of solder joints, which has never been conducted, is also studied.

Research on Traveller education in Ireland is limited. Internationally, studies on the education of the Traveller, Roma or Gypsy community tend to focus on educational participation and exclusion, discrimination, identity and belonging with little focus on the representation of Traveller student across different types of schools and educational settings. This chapter examines the distribution of Traveller students across mainstream and alternative education settings in Ireland, and how this distribution varies across different types of schools and centres. Using data from the Growing Up in Ireland principal survey and survey data from Irish alternative education providers (The National Youthreach Programme), it explores the concentration of Travellers in mainstream provision, in designated disadvantaged schools (Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools [DEIS]) compared to non-DEIS schools, and alternative education in Ireland. Findings show a higher representation of Traveller students in schools designated disadvantaged compared to non-disadvantaged settings and greater numbers of Traveller students in large primary and, to a lesser extent, secondary schools. The findings for alternative education show that Traveller young people make up 15% of learners which is higher than their representation in the general population or the school system. There is marked regional variation with higher representation of Travellers in alternative education settings in the West of Ireland compared to other regions.

With increasing policy emphasis on inclusive education and the need to increase retention of students from Traveller backgrounds, it is perhaps an opportune time to explore the distribution of Traveller students across different school and alternative educational contexts so that educational supports can be targeted more effectively.

HRM decentralization and devolution have been highlighted as key HRM processes in organizations’ quest for increased flexibility. Although they have been extensively studied in the MNC and International HRM literature, they have mainly been examined on a separate basis, and their definition and operationalization have often been confused. Thus, we first clarify the difference between the two concepts by refining the definitions by Hoogendoorn and Brewster (1992), and then empirically examine how they are related.

The relationship between HRM decentralization and devolution is examined by means of a survey in a large multi-country sample of multi-unit organizations.

Regarding our clarification objective, we contend that devolution has to do with who takes responsibilities for HRM (i.e. line managers or HRM professionals) while decentralization refers to where HRM responsibilities are allocated (i.e. headquarters or increasingly local units). Regarding the relationship between the two concepts, the results show that higher levels of HRM decentralization are related to higher levels of devolution, but this association is attenuated in organizations with more powerful HRM departments.

The study contributes to theory and practice by disentangling, at the conceptual, operational, empirical and practical levels, two different but related HRM decisions (how much to devolve and how much to decentralize HRM) that organizations must make to efficiently cope with the characteristics of their own structure and competitive environment. It highlights the role of the relative power of HRM departments in how HRM responsibilities are ultimately distributed across the organization.

This paper analyses how firm births and deaths are influenced by previous firm births and deaths in related and unrelated sectors. Competition and multiplier effects are used as the theoretical lens for this analysis.

This paper uses 2008–2016 Irish business demography data pertaining to 568 NACE 4-digit sectors within 20 NACE 1-digit industries across 34 Irish county and sub-county regions within 8 NUTS3 regions. A three-stage least squares (3SLS) estimation is used to analyse the impact of past firm deaths (births) on future firm births (deaths). The effect of relatedness on firm interrelationships is explicitly modelled and captured.

Findings indicate that the multiplier effect operates mostly through related sectors, while the competition effect operates mostly through unrelated sectors.

This paper's findings show that firm interrelationships are significantly influenced by the degree of relatedness between firms. The raw data used to calculate firm birth and death rates in this analysis are count data. Each new firm is measured the same as another regardless of differing features like size. Some research has shown that smaller firms have a greater propensity to create entrepreneurs (Parker, 2009). Thus, it is possible that the death of differently sized firms may contribute differently to multiplier effects where births induce further births. Future research could seek to examine this.

These findings have implications for policy initiatives concerned with increasing entrepreneurship. Some express concerns that public investment into entrepreneurship can lead to “crowding out” effects (Cumming and Johan, 2019), meaning that public investment into entrepreneurship could displace or reduce private investment into entrepreneurship (Audretsch and Fiedler, 2023; Zikou et al., 2017). This study’s findings indicate that using public investment to increase firm births could increase future firm births in related and unrelated sectors. However, more negative “crowding out” effects may also occur in unrelated sectors, meaning that public investment which stimulates firm births in a certain sector could induce firm deaths and crowd out entrepreneurship in unrelated sectors.

This paper is the first in the literature to explicitly account for the role of relatedness in firm interrelationships.

This paper aims to examine how doctoral students in education and applied linguistics fields successfully navigated graduate writing demands by participating in a support community that catalyzed writing productivity, peer mentoring and feedback. Guiding graduate students’ writing processes based on scholarly interests and providing peer support are vital to scholarly productivity and transition into academia.

Following a collaborative analytic autoethnographic case study design (Adams et al., 2022; Chang et al., 2013), the authors narrated major events that impacted their writing and publication experiences. The authors visualized their entire doctoral writing experience based on the frequency of writing events that contributed to writing productivity. In data triangulation discussions, the authors reflected on writing experiences.

Findings show that the support community alleviated individual struggles associated with writing a dissertation and high-quality papers. Key factors contributing to scholarly growth included nonevaluative peer support, feedback and shared academic resources. Writing within the periphery of faculty research and predominantly focusing on doctoral milestones led to individual scholarly interests being overshadowed. Without structured guidance, doctoral writers may develop initiatives to alleviate individual struggles and meet academic writing demands in the disciplines.

The authors recommend including structured guidance on developing writing productivity and a personal research agenda in the early stages of the doctorate.

This study offers unique examples of how a student group supported writing productivity and socialization into the academic community. It illustrates the multifaceted nature of academic writing influenced by faculty–student relationships, peers and individual initiatives. This paper provides doctoral writers and graduate programs with examples of accomplishing academic publishing goals.

This paper aims to evaluate the measurement properties of the Employee Perception to Assess the Lean Implementation Tool (EPLIT) in the Brazilian hospital context.

A cross-sectional study was conducted in two Brazilian hospitals, adhering to COnsensus-based Standards for the selection of health Measurement Instruments (COSMIN) guidelines. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and Cronbach's alpha were used for construct validity and reliability.

The adapted tool comprises 27 items across five domains, explaining 63.3% of the variance. Cronbach's alpha ranged from 0.78 to 0.86, indicating satisfactory reliability.

Limitations include convenience sampling and exclusive use of EFA for validation. Future studies may employ Confirmatory Factor Analysis for further validation.

The tool aids healthcare managers in Brazil to systematically evaluate Lean implementation, contributing to process optimization and quality improvement.

Effective Lean implementation using the validated tool could lead to improved healthcare delivery and patient outcomes.

This is the first study to adapt and validate EPLIT for the Brazilian healthcare sector, offering a robust tool for managers and researchers.