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Studies on entrepreneurship in public agencies suggest that managing for innovation may increase organizational performance. These studies, however, do not take into consideration the processes of opportunity identification. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to, first, situate the concept of opportunity identification within the broader research on public sector entrepreneurship, and second, to explore the relationship between managerial empowerment practices and employee alertness to new opportunities.

This paper uses aggregated data from the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey – an annual survey of the US Federal employees – to examine the relationship between managerial empowerment practices and employee alertness. The analysis employs a fixed-effects regression to model each panel of the US Federal agencies, from 2011 to 2017.

The results indicate that managerial empowerment practices have a clear correlation to employee alertness and are substantively different from empowerment practice’s relationship to “innovation” – an outcome of entrepreneurship. These findings suggest that scholarship should include opportunity identification as a moderating variable in future studies on public sector entrepreneurship.

The empirical analysis should be viewed as a novel approach to alertness in order to demonstrate the need to include opportunity identification processes in studies on managing for public sector entrepreneurship. Consequently, the results are not generalizable to all public agencies.

This paper highlights processes of entrepreneurial opportunity identification concerning management practices in the public sector, which scholarship has traditionally ignored.

The Standing Committee of the House of Commons on Trade, presided over by LORD E. FITZMAURICE, met again on July 16th and proceeded with the Sale of Adulterated Butter Bill.

Researchers suggest that adaptation should be a planned process, with practitioners actively consulting with program developers or academic partners, but few studies have examined how adaptation unfolds during evidence-based practice (EBP) implementation. The purpose of this paper is to describe real-world adaptation discussions and the conditions under which they occurred during the implementation of a new practice across multiple county child welfare systems.

This study qualitatively examines 127 meeting notes to understand how implementers and researchers talk about adaptation during the implementation of SafeCare, an EBP aimed at reducing child maltreatment and neglect.

Several types of adaptation discussions emerged. First, because it appeared difficult to get staff to talk about adaptation in group settings, meeting participants discussed factors that hindered adaptation conversations. Next, they discussed types of adaptations that they made or would like to make. Finally, they discussed adaptation as a normal part of SafeCare implementation.

Limitations include data collection by a single research team member and focus on a particular EBP. However, this study provides new insight into how stakeholders naturally discuss adaptation needs, ideas and concerns.

Understanding adaptation discussions can help managers engage frontline staff who are using newly implemented EBPs, identify adaptation needs and solutions, and proactively support individuals who are balancing adaptation and fidelity during implementation.

This study’s unique data captured in vivo interactions that occurred at various time points during the implementation of an EBP rather than drawing upon data collected from more scripted and cross-sectional formats. Multiple child welfare and implementation stakeholders and types of interactions were examined.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to identify the types of adaptations made by service providers (i.e. practitioners) during a large-scale US statewide implementation of SafeCare®, an evidence-based intervention to reduce child neglect; and second, to place adaptations within a taxonomy of types of adaptations.

Semi-structured interviews and focus groups were conducted with 138 SafeCare providers and supervisors. Grounded theory methods were used to identify themes, specific types of adaptations and factors associated with adaptation.

Adaptations were made to both peripheral and core elements of the evidence-based practice (EBP). The taxonomy of adaptations included two broad categories of process and content. Process adaptations included presentation of materials, dosage/intensity of sessions, order of presentation, addressing urgent concerns before focusing on the EBP and supplementing information to model materials. Content adaptations included excluding parts of the EBP and overemphasizing certain aspects of the EBP. Adaptations were motivated by client factors such as the age of the target child, provider factors such as a providers’ level of self-efficacy with the EBP and concerns over client/provider rapport. Client factors were paramount in motivating adaptations of all kinds.

The present findings highlight the need to examine ways in which adaptations affect EBP implementation and sustainment, client engagement in treatment, and client outcomes.

Implementers and EBP developers and trainers should build flexibility into their models while safeguarding core intervention elements that drive positive client outcomes.

This study is unique in examining and enumerating both process and content types of adaptations in a large-scale child neglect implementation study. In addition, such adaptations may be generalizable to other types of EBPs.

This paper aims to extend the literature on wicked problems in consumer research by exploring athlete and consumer vulnerability in sport and the potential role that social marketing can play in addressing this problem.

This paper conceptualises the wicked problem of athlete and consumer vulnerability in sport, proposing a multi-theoretical approach to social marketing, incorporating insights from stakeholder theory, systems theory and cocreation to tackle this complex problem.

Sport provides a rich context for exploring a social marketing approach to a wicked problem, as it operates in a complex ecosystem with multiple stakeholders with differing, and sometimes conflicting, objectives. It is proposed that consumers, particularly those that are highly identified fans, are key stakeholders that have both facilitated the problematic nature of the sport system and been rendered vulnerable as a result. Further, a form of consumer vulnerability also extends to athletes as the evolution of the sport system has led them to engage in harmful consumption behaviours. Social marketing, with its strategic and multi-faceted focus on facilitating social good, is an apt approach to tackle behavioural change at multiple levels within the sport system.

Sport managers, public health practitioners and policymakers are given insight into the key drivers of a growing wicked problem as well as the potential for social marketing to mitigate harm.

This paper is the first to identify and explicate a wicked problem in sport. More generally it extends insight into wicked problems in consumer research by examining a case whereby the consumer is both complicit in, and made vulnerable by, the creation of a wicked problem. This paper is the first to explore the use of social marketing in managing wicked problems in sport.

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to examine how staff contributes to the operations of an adult drug court and, more critically, how staff produces client failure. Previous drug court researchers often attribute outcomes to the characteristics or the behaviors of the clients or to the program design, not to the actions of the staff.

Methodology – This study is based on extensive field research in three drug courts over a 4-year period. We observed both public and less public drug court events from the court event to staff meetings.

Findings – The key finding is that staff produces program failures. Within the policies and procedures of their programs, using their professional belief systems, and in interaction with a range of others to manage the demands of their position, staff produces the outcomes.

Limitations – As with other ethnographies, the generalizability of the exact processes may be limited. The core finding that the staff actively creates outcome decisions is a fundamental process that we believe occurs in any drug court or, more widely, problem-solving courts.

Implications – The practical implications of this research are in the illustrations of how staff matter, which we hope will spur others into examinations of staff actions.

Originality – Previous research ignores staff or treats them as mere extension program policies. The in-depth examination of staff behavior provides a unique and valuable examination of how much is lost by ignoring the staff judgments, perceptions, and actions.

At Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, an annual short-term, research abroad non-credit program was created in 2012 as a core component of the undergraduate research initiative that achieves learning outcomes in a meaningful way. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

In order to describe, and analyze the short-term research abroad activity, an instrumental case study design was created. The instrumental case study was chosen as a means of allowing the facilitators/authors to communicate how they attempted to assure that the program was educative. In order to determine if the program was in fact educative and that it met its goal of being an effective research experience the authors utilized two additional research methods. The first was a document analysis of the participant’s research artifacts. Each participant was required to communicate their findings by writing a paper that was submitted for publication to an applicable research journal.

The study found that an experiential education as a pedagogical framework coupled with a short-term research abroad activity can lead to a substantive educative experience, where the authors described and analyzed attempts to ensure that the short-term research abroad program was educative, it also describes the educational assessment findings which describe what was found when the authors tested whether they, in fact, met this goal.

During the design phase of the short-term research abroad program, the authors turned to experiential education as a principle for how they would ensure that the program was grounded in an acceptable educational theory. Experiential education is a widely accepted educational practice used in experiences such as co-ops and internships, study abroad, undergraduate research and service learning.

To frame the short-term cultural research abroad program as something from which student could learn the authors utilized the National Society of Experiential Education’s (2013) list of eight principles of good practice. In order to safeguard that an activity is educative, an assessment or an evaluation of a demonstrative artifact is essential. In assessing the final artifact against a rubric or some other non-biased or less biased criteria, an educator can ensure that the student has gained new knowledge in the form of student learning outcomes (SLOs). In addition, the educator can use the results of this assessment to modify many different aspects of the experience ranging from the timing, the modality, the pre-work, even the learning outcomes themselves.

Given financial and curriculum inflexibility of some students, Universities and faculty could achieve attainment of research-based, program agnostic, SLOs by offering short-term study abroad alternatives to the traditional semester or year-long experiences. With graduates looking to enter the job market where businesses are more globalized and executive’s recognition of a need for more international experience, carefully constructed short-term study abroad programs are meaningful avenues to build those credentials.

Such offerings can be constructed as customized experiences to achieve highly integrated skills across all degree programs.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss changes to MIL-STD-1530C “Aircraft Structural Integrity Program” to account for the increased usage of composites in aircraft structures.

The evolution of the Aircraft Structural Integrity Program is presented and the five tasks that comprise the program are assessed for compatibility with composite aircraft structures.

This paper identifies a number of recommended changes to MIL-STD-1530C to ensure that the unique behaviour of composites is considered within the Aircraft Structural Integrity Program.

This paper recommends changes to MIL-STD-1530C to account for composite aircraft structures, thus providing assurance compatibility of the Aircraft Structural Integrity Program with composite materials.