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In response to the challenge to make learning more flexible while at the same time maintaining the positive qualities of classroom and campus‐based settings, the TeleTOP Initiative at the University of Twente has grown from a faculty initiative to an internationally recognised Web‐based learning support product and change method. TeleTOP as a product and the educational ideas motivating it are now being used in a number of company learning settings, particularly the Shell Learning Centre in The Netherlands. Gives an overview of the growth, results, and current status of the initiative as well as key educational and strategic principles that underlie its success.

In this paper, the authors focus on training as a frequently used knowledge management tool. This paper aims to help training function to achieve excellence at the first attempt by evaluating and deciding on the most interesting method for each training action before engaging the investment.

The authors apply instructional theories to evaluate the relevance of training methods and explored the multiple criteria decision analysis methods, which is a mathematical approach, for the evaluation to be rational. An experimental research based on study cases is also presented to test the applicability and effectiveness of the model proposed.

A decisional model that allows to choose rationally the most appropriate training method for each case. It is based on Elicitation and Choice Translating Reality (ELECTRE I) method, which is a multi-criteria decision analysis method and uses criteria from First Principles developed by Merrill in 2002.

The proposed model may have several implications for the improvement of training performance, particularly in the context of quality management systems that require product compliance based on continuous improvement and risk-based approaches. It can, therefore, be used as a tool to control the quality of training process or control the risk relative to the execution of a training action or more generally as a tool to “check” that training methods chosen are the most appropriate to attempt the training objectives before “act” the training action.

The combination of a decision analysis system with the theory of instruction and the applicability to training process management.

A review of current initiatives to increase science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) achievement among American youth and young adults reveals the presence of “IQism”. That is, whether such interventions are directed toward low-income minorities and/or the disproportionate number of higher-income youth who have selected liberal arts majors over an STEM major, the country has reserved STEM as a field for “the best and the brightest”. Utilizing the Theory of Multiple Intelligences, this article argues that STEM content is accessible to all students including those whose first language is informal rather than formal English. Based upon these premises, this conceptual paper aims to introduce the framework of Teaching STEM as a Second Language as a strategy for elevating STEM achievement among students who would otherwise be excluded from the STEM movement.

This paper utilizes a review of both classic and current literature on second language acquisition to identify strategies that can be adopted by STEM instructors to increase STEM achievement among youth and young adults who are viewed as “average” and/or “below-average” academic performers.

Using quotes that confirm the thesis that STEM subject matter has been historically viewed as the domain of those whose cognitive skills place them among the “best and the brightest”, the second language acquisition (SLA) strategy of “scaffolding” is introduced as a pedagogy for producing “comprehensible output” when STEM content is taught to students whose first language is informal English. Constructivism, a concept currently used to guide the teaching of STEM contents is introduced as a framework that merges best practices in STEM and SLA. Using Cummins’ (1991) Common Underlying Proficiency Model, other strategies are also proposed for exporting SLA pedagogies and approaches to elevate equity in the quest to improve STEM achievement levels among youth and adults in the USA.

SLA theories and concepts have not been applied as a potential tool for teaching STEM. This is a unique and powerful lens that can be used to more effectively support the needs of underrepresented populations.

The aim of this paper is to deconstruct the organizational capability of ambidexterity into a typology of hierarchical dimensions that includes each type’s enabling mechanisms and capabilities.

This work reviews and integrates extant literature on ambidexterity and the hierarchy of capabilities to distinguish dimensions of ambidexterity and link each type to capabilities identified in prior research.

A hierarchy involving zero-, first- and second-order ambidexterity is developed. Mechanisms and capabilities for creating and sustaining each type of ambidexterity are described.

As only an initial and conceptual foray toward the purpose stated above, this research does not attempt to argue a comprehensive theoretical framework. Nor does it intend to extend or propose new theory regarding the origins of ambidexterity capabilities or the specific causal relationships between them.

Although prior literature emphasizes approaches for achieving and maintaining ambidexterity, these generally refer to what is described here as zero-order ambidexterity. The hierarchical and holistic system view offered in this research suggests greater importance for second-order ambidexterity and capabilities of top managers for exercising cognitive, behavioral and process leadership complexity.

Recent literature on ambidexterity begins to suggest varied types or levels of ambidexterity. No known work, however, has expressly deconstructed ambidexterity into component dimensions via the hierarchy of capabilities framework.

This paper seeks to review current approaches to learning from health and safety incidents in the workplace. The aim of the paper is to identify the diversity of approaches and analyse them in terms of learning aspects.

A literature review was conducted searching for terms incident/accident/near misses/disaster/crisis modified with learning/training and safety. Shortlisted articles were analysed by questioning who is learning, what kind of learning process is undertaken, what type of knowledge is employed and the type of problem that these incidents addressed. Current approaches to learning from incidents were critically analysed and gaps identified.

Very few papers addressed all the envisaged aspects when developing their learning from incidents approaches. With support from literature, it was concluded that all the four perspectives, namely participants of learning (participation and inclusion), learning process (single loop, double learning), type of incident and its relation to learning (Cynefin complexity framework) and types of knowledge (conceptual, procedural, dispositional and locative) are important when deciding on an appropriate learning from incidents approach.

The literature review focused on journal articles and identified keywords, which might have narrowed the scope. Further research is needed in identifying ways to embed the learning from incidents aspects in the organisation.

The framework developed could be useful by safety planners, safety managers, human resource managers and researchers in the area of organisational learning and safety.

The paper concludes by outlining key questions and proposing a framework that could be useful in systematically analysing and indentifying effective approaches to learning from incidents.

A large body of research has exhibited the positive effect of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) on firm performance. However, research that attempts to explore what happens to high EO firms when they mature is sorely needed. Every firm establishes a heritage over time that impacts future capabilities. In the current research, we build on the international business literature to examine how a firmʼs administrative heritage moderates the long-term effects of the EO-performance relationship, examined through the firmʼs asset specificity, founder tenure, and home culture embeddedness. From this, implications are derived for EO retention and the firmʼs awareness of administrative heritage and how to shape it to their advantage.

Today, long-term success requires firms to sense changes in their environments early and react efficiently to them. Increasing middle managers’ participation in decision-making about market-related and product-related questions has been suggested as one way of enhancing this strategic responsiveness; abandoning formal planning, such as annual budgets, has been another. Yet, empirical evidence on the matter is scarce and conflicting. Drawing on data from Denmark’s 500 largest firms, we show that participation of middle managers in decision-making about new products and markets to serve, in-deed, increases firms’ strategic responsiveness as assessed by a reduction in firms’ downside risk. However, this effect is not a direct one. Nor does it interact positively or negatively with the emphasis put on formal planning as submitted in literature. Our evidence suggests that emphasis on planning mediates the relation between stronger participation of middle managers in decision-making and the increase in firms’ strategic responsiveness. This has implications for ongoing theory building and practice.

The environmental exposures to humankind have increased in number and intensity over past decades introducing the possibility of extreme incidents with irreversible impacts on business and society. The global integration of business and cross-border financial flows supported by digital technology increase the complexity and uncertainty of the business environment. In this context, the behaviors of individual players are interdependent with potentially nonlinear and unpredictable outcomes ascribed to complex wicked problems. As a consequence, organizational decision-makers may pursue false objectives from misinformed causation where stringent score-card controls will exacerbate the problems. The resolution to wicked problems requires cross-functional and collective interactions supported by a collaborative corporate mindset. The conventional control-based management practices fall short in dealing with disruptive developments where value-based stakeholder collaboration can provide resilient responses to unexpected abrupt events.

This article applies ideas drawn from the work of Archer and Wuthnow to strategic and organizational change in the UK brewing industry from 1950 to 1990. Changes to the management of public houses formed part of the ideology of a group of ‘modernizers’ linked to broader discourses. However, these changes brought in their trail logical entailments that were seized upon by other actors to foster the growth of managerial trade unionism. From Archer are drawn ideas about contradictions between ideas at the level of what she terms the ‘cultural system’ and their relationship to conflict at the sociocultural level. From Wuthnow is taken a focus on processes of the production of culture. These ideas can contribute to broader institutionalist approaches by, in particular, helping to deepen the ‘cultural turn’ and by providing an alternative to the focus on institutional entrepreneurship.