Search results

The increasing use of non-tenure employment contracting as a cost savings and/or management flexibility increasing mechanism in colleges and universities raises concerns about the impact of this strategy on other aspects of the higher education system. The purpose of this paper is to document reduced research productivity at a university that uses rolling contracts in comparison to research productivity at another university in the same state university system in the USA that uses tenure track contracting.

Negative binomial regression analysis allows investigation of the primary variable of interest (appointment type) while controlling for other factors that may also affect research productivity.

The findings suggest that non-tenure track employment contracting may have other long-term implications for institutions of higher education that warrant consideration.

No prior study has investigated the topic of comparative research productivity in business schools using this methodology or data source.

This study aims to examine the impacts various types of resources had on customer effort in mandatory and voluntary value cocreation activities and the contribution of efforts in these different activity types to quality of life.

Data from customers across five chronic health conditions were collected through an online survey. Rasch analysis helped identify hierarchies of activities representing varying levels of effort across four activity types (mandatory (customer), mandatory (customer or organization), voluntary in-role and voluntary extra-role activities). The conceptual model that was developed to examine the relationships of interest was analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling.

While clinical resources helped mandatory activities and personal network resources facilitated voluntary activities, psychological resources had greater impacts on customer effort across the whole range of activities. Effort in each activity type contributed to the quality of life differently, with voluntary activities having the greatest impacts on quality of life.

This study lends support to a holistic approach to health service that requires the mobilization of networks of resources to encourage customers’ engagement in a broad range of activities. Understanding the resources facilitating effort in distinct activity types provides insights to develop strategies to drive value cocreation efforts that subsequently contribute to improvements in quality of life.

Drawing on an extensive and nuanced categorization of activities, this study broadened the understanding of the networks of resources that are integrated in customer value cocreation processes and the link between value cocreation efforts and quality of life.

Drawing on an extensive range of activities across different types, including mandatory (customer), mandatory (customer or organisation), voluntary in-role and voluntary extra-role activities, this study aims to identify different health-care customer value cocreation practice styles based on the combinations of value cocreation activities they undertake and empirically examine how customers adopting different styles differ in terms of well-being and satisfaction.

The study was conducted across health customers with a variety of chronic conditions. Data were collected from three focus groups and an online survey.

Five customer practice styles, namely, the highly active, other-oriented, provider-oriented, self-oriented and passive compliant customers, were revealed. While a moderate to a high level of activities is often recommended as it is associated with higher levels of physical, psychological, existential and social well-being and customer satisfaction, the results also suggest there is no single ideal style as different styles may be associated with the same level of outcomes.

As customers cocreate value differently, it is crucial to understand the underlying heterogeneity and its implications to outcomes.

Highly active and provider-oriented are the two styles that should be particularly encouraged because of their association with positive outcomes. Personalised strategies need to be developed and resources need to be put in place to build productive relationships amongst service providers, customers and peers and to increase the perceived value of such interactions so as to shift customers towards more active styles.

The study advances the understanding of customer value cocreation and its link to well-being by empirically deriving five distinct practice styles and demonstrating how they differ across meaningful well-being and satisfaction dimensions.

This article discusses the labelling and location of self‐organising community groups ‐ ‘self‐help’, ‘peer support’ and ‘service user’. It notes the increasingly close relationship between these groups and statutory authorities, and how this relationship may put the benefits of the groups at risk. Historical, cultural and social factors are discussed to help explain differences and separate developments within African, Caribbean and other Black communities.

This chapter contends that to meet the needs of refugees, we must go beyond addressing only safety and security by including education as well, specifically, literacy development. The authors suggest that in order to support refugee education, generally, we need to identify best practices for supporting reading programs in refugee settings. The authors discuss basic design and assessment of literacy education programming in refugee settings that parallels the designs for traditional school-wide literacy programs, which we have in place in more stable regions of the world. The authors attempt to converge the fields of literacy education with refugee studies to make recommendations for supporting refugees’ literacy education with the goal of preserving their native language and literacy while preparing them for the future.

Confidentiality in adoption has been the norm in this country since the 1930s. Traditionally, it has been perceived as beneficial to all sides of the adoption triangle: the adoptive parents, the adoptee, and the birth parents. Adoption agencies have supported the policy of confidentiality, and as a result the practice of concealment is almost universal in the United States. Alaska, Hawaii, and Kansas are the only states that allow adult adoptees access to their birth and adoption information.

Women remain under-represented in leadership positions in both clinical medicine and medical education, despite a rapid increase in the proportion of women in the medical profession. This chapter explores potential reasons for this under-representation and how it can be ameliorated, drawing on a range of international literatures, theories and practices. We consider both the ‘demand’ for and ‘supply’ of women as leaders, by examining: how evolving theories of leadership help to explain women’s’ leadership roles and opportunities, how employment patterns theory and gender schemas help to explain women’s career choices, how women aspiring to leadership can be affected by the ‘glass ceiling’ and the ‘glass cliff’ and the importance of professional development and mentoring initiatives. We conclude that high-level national strategies will need to be reinforced by real shifts in culture and structures before women and men are equally valued for their leadership and followership contributions in medicine and medical education.

This article relates one aspect of an action research project on work related stress and mental health problems to its wider context. It is argued that self‐help/mutual aid, including self‐management, could make an important contribution to tackling the current epidemic of work‐related stress in the UK and elsewhere. Initiatives such as the government's Work‐Life Balance campaign indicate that the policy context is appropriate. An overview of the causes, costs of, and policy responses to work‐related stress is followed by a discussion on the nature of self‐help/mutual aid and the benefits that the sharing of experiential knowledge can bring to participants. This includes a specific, structured form of self‐help: self‐management programmes as led and used by mental health user groups. We conclude that self‐help initiatives can make a valuable contribution to addressing work‐related stress if employers support them. Beyond simply ameliorating staff retention problems, the experiential learning communities that could be created could be an asset, particularly in seeking to change workplace cultures to minimise work‐related mental stresses.