Search results

The central argument of this paper is that supported living — enabling people with learning disabilities to live in their own homes, with appropriate support — has a potential strategic role in addressing some of the current shortcomings in community‐based residential services. These shortcomings are described, along with the possible contribution of an approach in which housing and support are separated. Finally some of the current concerns about supported living are briefly addressed.

Stepgrandparent-stepgrandchild relationships are increasingly common as a result of relatively high rates of divorce and remarriage and increased longevity. When relationships are close, stepgrandparents may be valuable resources for stepgrandchildren, but the relational processes salient to the development of these ties remain largely unknown. The purposes of our research were: (1) to explore the complexity of stepgrandparent-stepgrandchild relationships, and (2) to examine processes that affected stepgrandparent-stepgrandchild relationship development.

We present results from four grounded theory projects, which were based on semistructured interviews with 58 stepgrandchildren who provided data about 165 relationships with stepgrandparents. Collectively, these studies highlighted key processes of stepgrandparent-stepgrandchild relationship development operating within four distinct pathways to stepgrandparenthood – long-term, later life, skip-generation, and inherited pathways.

Stepgrandchildren’s closeness to stepgrandparents was influenced by factors such as timing (the child’s age and when in their life courses intergenerational relationships began), stepgrandparents’ roles in the life of the middle-generation parent and the quality of those relationships, whether or not the stepfamily defined the stepgrandparent as kin (e.g., through the use of claiming language), intergenerational contact frequency, and stepgrandparents’ affinity-building.

Our study furthers understanding of stepgrandparent-stepgrandchild by attending to the importance of context in examining the processes that affect intergenerational steprelationship development. Exploring processes related to intergenerational steprelationships strengthens our understanding of the benefits and challenges associated with steprelationship development. Our study also sheds light on the “new look at kinship” and the processes that inform the social construction of family in a changing familial landscape.

The purpose of this paper is to study the reform of public purchasing directives initiated by the European Union (EU) and discuss them in light of the criticism against existing public purchasing directives.

A literature review of empirical articles is critical to existing public purchasing directives to summarize the main directions and categories of their criticism, and a thorough reading of the proposed reform of the public purchasing directives is carried out to see if the changes will answer some or all of the criticism directed toward the public purchasing directives.

The reforms seem to be a step in the right direction, particularly with respect to public organizations possibility to support innovation and new product and service development, but little change in the possibilities for development of strategic, long-term relationships.

The reform has just been introduced, and so the analysis of the possible effects of the reform is not based on empirical data (since such data do not exist yet), but mostly on the authors experience in the field and through a comparison with selected literature.

An early assessment of the possible effects of the reform regarding public procurement directives in the EU area is introduced.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how buyers and the vendors pursue alignment in collaborative purchasing (CP) of complex medical technologies.

Through a literature review in CP, the paper identify factors for shareholder alignment (i.e. aligning the needs of the buyers within the purchasing group) and customer alignment (i.e. aligning buyers’ needs with the vendors offering strategies) and investigate how they manifest in the case of CP of complex technology in the Danish National Healthcare System.

Shareholder alignment requires appropriate management of the relationships, expertise and guidance in simplifying procedures and effective management of the purchasing group. Customer alignment is facilitated by buyers’ understating of the vendor’s design options, which are moderated by the vendor’s design strategies.

The findings and generalizations from a single case study are limited to the complexity of the purchased technology and the specific cultural context. However the paper represents the first explorative study that poses the attention on the relevance of shareholder and customer alignment in CP.

The study can offer hospitals, vendors, governmental and regional institutions a better understanding about the alignment mechanisms for successful implementation of CP and how to avoid pitfalls.

Literature on CP is scarce as there are virtually no contributions that debate the key elements and tradeoffs that need to be considered for strategic alignment. The study addresses this gap.

Reports on how Holiday Inn Worldwide has successfully implemented competency‐based HR strategies which directly link compensation and individual performance to business objectives. The core competencies deemed to be of value to the organization were customer service orientation; flexibility; commitment to organizational values; achievement orientation; initiative and proactivity; organizational influence; creative problem solving; enablement and developing others.

The use of students as subjects in academic research is widespread. A systematic review of research‐oriented journals ranging from the behavioural sciences to pure sciences shows that a great deal of research involves student subjects. In business and management oriented research these students tend to be largely male and undergraduate. As three eminent marketing academics remarked somewhat cynically some years ago, “What we know about consumer behaviour may be too closely tied to the sociopsychological and behavioural profile of the college sophomore” (Cunningham, Anderson and Murphy, 1974). Marketing has been an area particularly prone to student‐based research, with an audit of the first 30 issues of the Journal of Marketing Research revealing that over half of the consumer behaviour experiments (48 of 81) used students as subjects (Enis, Cox and Stafford, 1972). Casual perusal of a wide variety of present day journals in other areas, such as accounting and finance, management information systems, work study, and human resources management points to the increase of this practice. This paper reviews briefly the extensive literature on the question of student surrogacy and presents a bibliographic summary of studies accepting the use of, and those rejecting, student surrogation. It also offers a decision model for consideration by researchers contemplating using students in their endeavours.

Scholars and practitioners in the OB literature nowadays appreciate that emotions and emotional regulation constitute an inseparable part of work life, but the HRM literature has lagged in addressing the emotional dimensions of life at work. In this chapter therefore, beginning with a multi-level perspective taken from the OB literature, we introduce the roles played by emotions and emotional regulation in the workplace and discuss their implications for HRM. We do so by considering five levels of analysis: (1) within-person temporal variations, (2) between persons (individual differences), (3) interpersonal processes; (4) groups and teams, and (5) the organization as a whole. We focus especially on processes of emotional regulation in both self and others, including discussion of emotional labor and emotional intelligence. In the opening sections of the chapter, we discuss the nature of emotions and emotional regulation from an OB perspective by introducing the five-level model, and explaining in particular how emotions and emotional regulation play a role at each of the levels. We then apply these ideas to four major domains of concern to HR managers: (1) recruitment, selection, and socialization; (2) performance management; (3) training and development; and (4) compensation and benefits. In concluding, we stress the interconnectedness of emotions and emotional regulation across the five levels of the model, arguing that emotions and emotional regulation at each level can influence effects at other levels, ultimately culminating in the organization’s affective climate.