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The purpose of this paper is to study the use of writing boot camp cycles with differentiated facilitation in promoting a research culture within an academic setting by investigating its effectiveness and challenges amongst early career researchers.

This research takes a case study approach within a teaching-focussed private institution moving towards teaching and research. A mixed-method approach captured insights of academics' feelings and perceptions at different stages of the boot camps. Participants set their writing objectives prior to the programme. The initial writing boot camp was followed by a post-programme survey. Two months later, a focus group was conducted and the outcomes were used to refine the subsequent boot camp session.

The findings confirmed that writing boot camps are beneficial in enabling staff members to progress in their writing and in building a research culture. The study further highlighted some of the associated challenges.

This study used only the largest private institution in the country as a case.

This paper highlights some of the key considerations and challenges for practitioners who wish to run effective writing boot camps, e.g. environment, facilitation, debriefing, frequency and duration.

This study introduces the concept of “Writing Boot Camp Cycles” coupled with “Differentiated Facilitation” to enhance the output of writing boot camps while at the same time promoting a research culture.

The purpose of this paper is to describe an experimental staff training program called “Innovation Boot Camp” in which participants engaged in playful activities designed specifically to inspire, energize, and challenge them to become more innovative at work.

This paper is a case study of an innovation‐training program using interviews with participants and personal reflections by the authors on the efficacy and desirability of creativity training.

The paper demonstrates the value of nurturing and developing creative approaches to library work.

Further research must be conducted to determine how a similar staff‐training program might evolve in other library settings.

Innovation is a core component of any learning organization – including libraries. By planting the seeds of innovation and nurturing creativity, it is better able to support its own and the users' learning.

Certainly, the profession supports innovative and creative ideas, but in many libraries innovation is happening only occasionally, haphazardly, and at an individual level. The paper has executed an original and engaging program to make creativity and innovation a more deliberate and pervasive part of everyday work.

The twofold purpose of this study was to determine if selected variables were predictors of: student performance in the MBA programme; and student performance on the MBA MFT exam.

This study focuses on MBA graduates at a US university who have successfully completed the entire programme requirements. Real student performance data, collected from 2007 to 2012, were analysed using multivariate regression techniques.

Results suggest that academic performance in an MBA programme is positively related to undergraduate grade point average (GPA) and GMAT exam score, two of the most common admissions criteria in use today. Additionally, performance in an initial skills-building course exhibits a strong positive correlation with performance in subsequent MBA courses. With respect to performance on the Major Field Test (MFT-MBA), our results indicate that students who do well in the MBA programme tend to score at a higher level than those with lower overall GPAs.

The research study was limited to MBA graduates at a business school in central Virginia. Further studies can determine whether differences in predictors of success in the MBA programme from those found in this study might exist.

Results of this study provide practical implication for MBA programme curriculum development and assist MBA admission committees in designing MBA programme admission criteria.

An extensive literature exists about the variables that influence the performance on the MFT exam at the undergraduate level. This is the first study to explore these relationships at the graduate level.

The purpose of this paper is to provide industry insights on the business models, practices, and capabilities that suppliers need to deliver cost‐effective information technology (IT) outsourcing services from rural locations within the USA. As rural outsourcing has not yet been studied by academics, many questions have not yet been answered. How can suppliers attract enough talent to rural areas to make rural outsourcing viable? How can suppliers scale operations? Will the value proposition attract serious clients? An ongoing research project was launched to answer these and other questions about rural outsourcing. This paper aims to report on the first set of findings based on four case studies.

This paper reports on the results from four case studies of rural outsourcing suppliers. In total, 35 semi‐structured interviews were conducted with founders, executives, delivery center managers, and delivery team members and a visit was made to a rural delivery center owned and operated by each of the four suppliers.

After comparing and contrasting the value propositions, location strategies, human capital development, and scalability of operations across the cases, in general, it was found that rural outsourcing suppliers position their value proposition as lower in price than urban outsourcing but higher in value than offshore outsourcing. Rural outsourcing suppliers achieve this value proposition by locating delivery centers in low‐cost areas and by recruiting, developing, and retaining a high‐performing workforce. Rural suppliers scale operations either by building multiple, small‐sized delivery centers or by building one large delivery center.

There are still many aspects of this phenomenon that warrant additional study. The paper identifies areas of future research pertaining to client experiences, competition from large suppliers, government support, and rural outsourcing in countries outside the USA.

The paper identifies five lessons for practice: rural outsourcing works best when clients engage a team to deliver a service; rural outsourcing is not freelance outsourcing or staff augmentation; rural outsourcing addresses an unfilled gap in a client's sourcing portfolio; rural outsourcing suppliers will continue to move up the value chain; and most rural outsourcing suppliers operate best on a sell‐build sequence, so clients should plan ahead.

This paper reports on industry insights from one of the first known, ongoing academic studies of rural outsourcing.

This chapter examines some key themes raised by the intersection of the urban, the rural and the penal against the backdrop of the Australian ‘rural ideal’. But the chapter also seeks to look critically at that ideal and how it relates (or does not) to the various lifeworlds and patterns of settler development that lie beyond the Australian cityscape. Attention is directed away from the singular focus on the rural/urban divide to stress the importance of North/South in understanding patterns of development and penal practices beyond the cityscape in the Australian context.

This study investigates the different environments in which high school students go through in their formative years and whether these environments affect their intention to study entrepreneurship as a career choice. Bronfenbrenner's social-ecological theory has been used as a backdrop to capture these environments. Four variables chosen are family support, school environment, self-efficacy and global awareness.

A sample of 1770 high school students were chosen through simple random sampling within Gujarat state. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to predict the overall effect of all the environments on Entrepreneurship Education Intention (EEI) of these students.

Findings reveal that self-efficacy has the most substantial influence on intentions. Family support and global awareness have a combined significant effect on self-efficacy, which further translates to a significant impact on high school students' intentions. School environment has an effect on global awareness, which in turn has a negative effect on students' willingness to study entrepreneurship in India.

The study has implications in curriculum design and theory development. The study also provides schools with a framework to understand how to orient their students toward entrepreneurship.

This paper uses a novel theory that has not been applied in studies related to entrepreneurship education and proposes a model for the same. This novelty also reflects in our findings which have subsequent implications for theory and practice.

The purpose of this study is to explore the learning outcomes of the project-based learning in a Master Class programme on sustainability carried out in collaboration by the University of Helsinki and a private company operating in global mining technology. The following two questions were addressed: Q1. What kind of sustainability competences do participants acquire in the Master Class? Q2. What is the role of PBL in the learning outcomes?

The study is based on an ex ante open-ended survey and post-ante interviews addressed to the participants. The data were analysed using the qualitative content analysis.

The findings show that the Master Class contributed to most of the competences under study. However, unlike in previous studies, systemic thinking is highlighted as a fundamental rather than a parallel core competence. Furthermore, the results also emphasise the role of emotions, which is insufficiently acknowledged and accounted for in sustainability education.

The study focussed only on the learning outcomes of the participants (students) and not the other parties (such as company and researchers).

Future research should focus on affective dimension as a stepping stone to the transformational learning. In addition, the role of the systemic understanding in sustainability education should be highlighted as a core competence.

The study revealed the overall positive impacts of the co-creation in university – business collaboration to the participants’ sustainability competences.

The study presents an empirical case study where the various competence frameworks were applied with a result of confirming the validity of the existing key competences, in particular the systemic understanding and showing the role of the affective dimension in the transactional learning.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the value of process mapping to libraries as a first step in promoting a culture of organizational assessment. In addition, this paper offers a case study of the University of Michigan Library’s experience in building up a process mapping skill set and the workflow improvements resulting from these efforts.

This case study is a description and assessment of a program to train library employees on process mapping.

Process mapping in library settings empowers librarians and staff to identify and implement elements for improvements in routine work. When given the tools to assess processes, employees at the University of Michigan made several such improvements.

While library staff tend not to be familiar with process mapping, these skills are critical for retaining institutional knowledge, training staff, and identifying areas for improvement in common and rarely used workflows alike.

Process improvements were identified and implemented at the University of Michigan Library when the staff mapped the processes of their daily work.