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The purpose of this paper is to review the historical development of Lean Six Sigma and to identify the relevant opportunities for the application of Lean Six Sigma within the university setting. The paper also discusses the challenges of Lean Six Sigma implementation in higher education, as well as the cultural changes necessary to provide an appropriate climate for its long-term success.

The paper contains a comprehensive discussion of the development of Lean Six Sigma over the past three decades. Additionally, the paper describes how Lean Six Sigma may be applied in the university setting to improve processes in curriculum delivery; business and auxiliary services; admissions and enrollment management; and research.

Lean Six Sigma can be applied to facilitate process improvements in curriculum delivery; business and auxiliary services; admissions and enrollment management; and research. While obstacles to Lean Six Sigma implementation exist, the process improvements and resulting cultural changes are worthwhile and noteworthy.

The paper serves as a guide for how Lean Six Sigma processes can be utilized in the higher education setting. Other researchers and practitioners may use the paper as a practical orientation to Lean Six Sigma in the university setting.

Due to the unique culture of higher education, the application of Lean Six Sigma to university processes has been sparse. The paper provides a needed orientation as to how Lean Six Sigma may be applied to improve some of the more important functional aspects of the university.

Purpose – This chapter investigates how being Māori influences the sport experiences of Māori participants, and offers a critical Māori perspective on mainstream New Zealand sport. It argues for the value of moving towards a culturally competent approach that embraces, rather than resists, Māori tikanga and practices.

Design/methodology/approach – The research is driven by an Indigenous kaupapa Māori research methodology that privileges research by Māori, about Māori, being Māori. Ten highly experienced Māori participants were interviewed. The cultural competence continuum was employed to assess New Zealand sport’s ability to meet the needs of its indigenous peoples.

Findings – For the Māori participants, mainstream sport reflects the echoes of colonial ways of thinking that frequently ignore or devalue Māori values or interpret assertions of self-determination as separatist and divisive. Using examples from the participants’ experiences, we argue that cultural competence is something that could benefit all in New Zealand sport.

Research limitations/implications – The limitations of a small sample are addressed by triangulating the participants’ perspectives with other sources of information about Maori sporting experience.

Originality/value – The chapter privileges a Māori critique of existing structures and suggests a way forward that could positively influence sport delivery for Māori and people of all ethnicities.

In spite of ongoing and recent initiatives aimed at broadening participation in engineering, the representation of diverse groups of learners in engineering graduate programs in the USA remains a challenge. Foregrounding the voices of 26 Black male engineering faculty, this study aims to investigate how institutions might recruit and retain more Black men in engineering graduate programs.

For this study, inductive thematic analysis was used.

The authors show that three themes, namely, representation as an asset, invested mentors and faculty, and supportive peer networks described as the “Vibe” manifest as crucial elements for successful recruitment and retention of Black men in engineering graduate programs.

These findings are meant to augment the conversation around diversity, equity and inclusion in engineering graduate programs and to address a dearth of published research on the Black male engineering population. This work is also meant to help institutions conceptualize ways to create a “Vibe” that might be transferable to their institution’s sociocultural context.

Effective management and utilisation of plant history data can considerably improve plant and equipment performance. This rationale underpins statistical and mathematical models for exploiting plant management data more efficiently, but industry has been slow to adopt these models. Reasons proffered for this include: a perception of models being too complex and time consuming; and an inability of their being able to account for dynamism inherent within data sets. To help address this situation, this research developed and tested a web‐based data capture and information management system. Specifically, the system represents integration of a web‐enabled relational database management system (RDBMS) with a model base management system (MBMS). The RDBMS captures historical data from geographically dispersed plant sites, while the MBMS hosts a set of (Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average – ARIMA) time series models to predict plant breakdown. Using a sample of plant history file data, the system and ARIMA predictive capacity were tested. As a measure of model error, the Mean Absolute Deviation (MAD) ranged between 5.34 and 11.07 per cent for the plant items used in the test. The Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) values also showed similar trends, with the prediction model yielding the highest value of 29.79 per cent. The paper concludes with direction for future work, which includes refining the Graphical User Interface (GUI) and developing a Knowledge Based Management System (KBMS) to interface with the RDBMS.

It is now forty years since there appeared H. R. Plomer's first volume Dictionary of the booksellers and printers who were at work in England, Scotland and Ireland from 1641 to 1667. This has been followed by additional Bibliographical Society publications covering similarly the years up to 1775. From the short sketches given in this series, indicating changes of imprint and type of work undertaken, scholars working with English books issued before the closing years of the eighteenth century have had great assistance in dating the undated and in determining the colour and calibre of any work before it is consulted.

The ACRL Competency Standards related to learners' values and value systems has not been interrogated in relation to information literacy theory or practice. This paper aims to analyze the inclusion of values in these and other guidelines and seeks evidence of the development of this topic in the literature.

A comparative review of information literacy standards related to values/value systems was conducted. An analysis of the literature engaging issues related to personal or community values related to information was completed. Suggestions for continued work were based on these findings.

Competency standards related to values/value systems are out of place in guidelines designed to assist in the assessment of information literacy instruction. Instead, it is more likely that information literacy development is a form of values education.

Further research is needed to locate specific personal and community values related to information literacy. This research should begin with information‐related values of student communities, professional organizations and other groups.

Readers will develop a greater understanding of professional and personal values in relation to information literacy and the standards designed to help librarians and others.

This paper establishes a basis for a comparative analysis of information literacy standards drafted by different groups. The discussion on the place and purpose of values‐related objectives in the 2000 ACRL Competency Standards and a review of the literature on this topic are unique to this paper.

The literature on individual differences in innovative work behavior (IWB) reveals inconsistencies in the relations of personality traits and tenure on innovation at work. To provide greater clarity about the effects of these antecedents, the purpose of this paper is to report a study of the moderating effects of tenure on the associations of traits and IWB, and apply a theoretical lens based on the trait-activation theory.

In all, 146 employees of a UK-based financial institution completed measures of conscientiousness and openness, and had three aspects of IWB (idea generation, promotion, and realization) rated by their line-supervisor. All participants were on graduate training programs. Hierarchical regression analyses were used to test the moderating effects of tenure on the associations of the self-reported traits with the supervisor-rated IWB outcomes.

Tenure moderated the effects of conscientiousness on IWB, with highly conscientious employees being less innovative with longer tenure. Tenure moderated the effect of openness with idea generation with highly open employees generating more ideas if they were longer tenured.

Management of innovation requires differentiated strategies based on the personality traits and tenure of individual employees. Implications for recruitment, socialization and development are discussed.

This is the first study to examine empirically the interactions of traits and contextual factors (i.e. organizational tenure) on IWB, framed around a strong theoretical foundation (i.e. trait activation theory). The study also makes notable contributions by measuring innovative behavior using a supervisor-rated and multidimensional approach.

Documents how the Dental Service of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) successfully implemented private sector approaches to reimbursement and staffing in a special project designed to improve prosthodontic care for career military personnel. The innovative public‐private synthesis enabled the IDF to relieve bottlenecks and increase productivity while securing high levels of employee and patient satisfaction. The success of the innovation can be attributed, in part, to specific measures taken to adapt private sector practices to the culture and norms of the public sector and to integrate the new program into the broader organizational framework of the IDF Medical Corps. The recruitment of managers appropriate to the various stages of the organizational change cycle also played an important role in the project′s success. The study is based on in‐depth interviews of senior managers within the IDF medical corps, interviews of the managers directly involved in implementing the change, IDF budget reports and productivity analyses, and a survey of front‐line dentists. The analysis will be of interest to managers of public health care systems from around the world, who are looking to the private sector for innovative ideas on how to improve the efficiency of public programmes.

Team effectiveness is often predicated by a group’s ability to communicate. However, the effect of stress response on communication success, particularly nonverbal engagement, and how this might affect team performance, is not clear; a “phenomenon” this study sought to explore.

This was an observational study in a cohort of professional rugby players. Participants gave presentations to their peers on two separate occasions during a “live-in” camp designed to have psychologically stressful elements. Presentations were video recorded and audience engagement was measured. Testosterone and cortisol were used as biomarkers of stress response, with a high testosterone–cortisol ratio considered positive. A team training session followed the presentations and participants were rated for training quality.

A small decline in testosterone was observed each day after waking. Conversely, cortisol rose after waking, with the rise being the highest on the first day. A decline in testosterone–cortisol ratio was also seen each day after waking; the decline was greatest on the first day. Presentation duration and audience engagement was greatest for the second presentation; when the testosterone-cortisol ratio decline and the cortisol increase after waking was smaller. Training quality was also better that day. Pooled data revealed a moderate inverse relationship and weak positive relationships for audience engagement with post-meeting cortisol and post-meeting testosterone–cortisol ratio, respectively. Training quality was related to testosterone and testosterone–cortisol ratio, but inversely related to cortisol.

This study suggests that in stressful conditions, as suggested by an awakening hormone response, communication and team performance could become compromised with reduced ability to engage with others.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the informed learning experiences of early career academics (ECAs) while building their networks for professional and personal development. The notion that information and learning are inextricably linked via the concept of “informed learning” is used as a conceptual framework to gain a clearer picture of what informs ECAs while they learn and how they experience using that which informs their learning within this complex practice: to build, maintain and utilise their developmental networks.

This research employs a qualitative framework using a constructivist grounded theory approach (Charmaz, 2006). Through semi-structured interviews with a sample of 14 ECAs from across two Australian universities, data were generated to investigate the research questions. The study used the methods of constant comparison to create codes and categories towards theme development. Further examination considered the relationship between thematic categories to construct an original theoretical model.

The model presented is a “knowledge ecosystem”, which represents the core informed learning experience. The model consists of informal learning interactions such as relating to information to create knowledge and engaging in mutually supportive relationships with a variety of knowledge resources found in people who assist in early career development.

Findings from this study present an alternative interpretation of informed learning that is focused on processes manifesting as human interactions with informing entities revolving around the contexts of reciprocal human relationships.