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The development of Research Management and Administration (RMA) in Europe is strongly connected with the development of the Science and Technology (S&T) policy of the European Union (EU). These policies were the result of a continuous debate between the member states and the European Commission and European Parliament.

Although there is no data on the early development of RMA, there are some publications on the history of the development of the S&T policy in Europe: the excellent publication ‘A History of European Union Research Policy’ by Luca Guzzetti (Guzzetti, 1995). Guzzetti’s book investigates the history of EU research policies from 1948 up to the preparation of the Fourth Framework Programme (FP) (1994–1998).

The RMA aspects are constructed mainly by oral history complemented with some written sources. The history shows a gradual development of the profession unevenly spread in time and European geography. This has mainly with the EU enlargement in the same period, when new member states were connected to the FP. The profession started with a few colleagues’ way back in the eighties of the last century as financial people were dealing with the first European financial reporting up to the present day where RMA is becoming a field of work attracting many new colleagues.

The purpose of this paper is to share the lessons learned in teaching programming skills to refugees during a time when circumstances were changing quickly and constantly and the needs of the target group were not well known.

The integration of refugees poses serious challenges for the hosting society’s education system. A large number of refugees can put a strain on all kinds of public resources, and difficulties with differences in languages, previous curricula, falling behind due to having to spend time outside of education, and psychological traumas have to be expected. In response to the refugee crisis and in order to manage mass migration, the adaptive nature and rapid development of civic approaches can contribute to overcoming some of these challenges. To evaluate the impact of civic approaches, the authors have paid attention to refugees{code} an Austrian coding school for refugees which was developed by the civic community and which shows great potential in terms of providing rapid, innovative and adaptive kinds of educational support for refugees, as well as helping to combat the lack of programmers in the Austrian job market.

As the great potential that initiatives like refugees{code} have for education, there are also substantial challenges. As we learned from the first course, course completion rates were very low. Therefore, it is important to build an infrastructure and a learning environment around the course. This learning environment includes providing mentoring and support, creating spaces where participants can learn. It was also found that having a pedagogically trained staff who is sufficient in the English language, too, is necessary to cater to a heterogeneous group. Also varying teaching strategies according to the needs and skills of the learner is necessary. One of the issues that confronts projects like refugees{code} is also receiving legal status. The collaboration with universities and colleges can be greatly helpful because they are already familiar with the structure of public authorities as well as with heterogeneous groups. Initiatives like refugees{code} are agile and flexible and know how to take advantage of that. The authors conclude that bringing successful education to heterogeneous and culturally different groups is multi-faceted. It is not something any individual organization or project can do; it can only be the result of a system of different actors working together with traditional educational institutions.

This research study reports on two courses of programming for refugees and seeks to offer practical advice for further research and for the implementation of such courses into the educational system. Therefore a framework is proposed which should be taken into account in case of doing similar work.

Current literature argues that citizen engagement platforms must be used to gather citizens’ feedback to provide improved quality of services to citizens. However, limited studies consider the challenges faced by practitioners at the local level during the incorporation of those feedback for continuous service improvement. As a result, these services fail to fulfil the need of citizens. The purpose of this study is to structure the relationship between citizens’ feedback and continuous service improvement to meet the need of citizens.

Design science research methodology has been adapted under which a case study approach has been followed to investigate one of the citizens’ engagement platforms in Ireland.

The results from this study highlighted that practitioners faced challenges (e.g. capacity, risk and constraints) in terms of fulfilling the needs of citizens and there is a lack of structured approach to continuously provide improved services to them.

This study provides a structured approach in the form of a process model to showcase how citizens’ feedback can be incorporated for continuously providing improved services to the citizens.

This research provides a prescriptive view to assist municipalities during the incorporation of citizens’ feedback for continuous service improvement while addressing the challenges they face during this process.

This paper proposes a process model based on the guidelines of the open group architecture framework enterprise architecture and the collaboration with practitioners that would assist local authorities in continuously providing improved services to the citizens.

Many HRM practices are never thoroughly implemented, or are implemented ineffectively. To better understand what line managers need to implement HRM practices effectively, the authors have developed and validated a psychometrically sound measurement instrument dealing with line managers' attributions for effective HRM implementation. Based on the theory of causal attributions, the authors distinguish between internal and external attributions that determine how line managers implement HRM practices on the work floor.

A multidimensional approach has been used, and, after collecting data from 471 line managers, thorough scale development guidelines and validation procedures have been applied for instrument development.

The instrument's psychometric qualities have been assessed by calculating the reliability and validity of line managers' internal attributions – including its composing dimensions of desire and competences – and their external attributions – including the dimensions of support, capacity and policy and procedures. In particular, both convergent and discriminant validity as well as intra-class correlations have been established. The newly developed measures are found to be of good quality. The scales appear to discriminate well between the distinguished groups and show a good variation within groups.

The developed measurement instrument helps HRM professionals to better understand line managers' attributions to effectively implement HRM practices and to provide them with support and training for effective HRM implementation.

Previous research has already identified weaknesses in HRM implementation, but lacked addressing the causes of this. The study presents antecedents for HRM implementation effectiveness, based on the causal attribution theory, and a psychometrically validated instrument to measure these antecedents.

The purpose of the paper is to contribute to an understanding of the relational work carried out in mentoring programmes and the implications for learning capabilities in future practices.

This study is based on field research of a mentoring programme bringing together senior and newly graduated workers in a large Swedish health care organisation. In total, 54 qualitative interviews with mentors, mentees, HR, managers and union representatives are included.

The findings point to the role of trust and a psychological sense of community in the socialisation work that goes on in relationships between the mentor and the mentee. This in turn leads to increased social capital in the form of learning and retaining workers. The conditions for being vulnerable and asking questions, as well as daring to be independent, are an essential and decisive part of constructing bonding within the professional group and bridging out to other professions and parts of the organisation.

The practical contribution from this study is the workplace conditions that are central to organising mentoring programmes, with implications for learning capabilities in future practices.

With its theoretical focus on social capital, the study shows the importance of relationships for learning and retaining both newly graduated and experienced employees in a context of high employee turnover. It is central to achieving strong and mutually beneficial relationships through continual and trustful interaction between actors. By using the concepts of social capital, socialisation agents and psychological sense of community, this study contributes to an understanding of mentoring and workplace learning.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of volunteers and its impact on related accountability practices towards beneficiaries by a large humanitarian non-governmental organisation (NGO) in Indonesia.

The authors adopted a qualitative case study design. The empirical evidence comes from rich fieldwork carried out in an Indonesian NGO. The authors collected the evidence mainly via 46 interviews and five focus groups.

The authors found that the case NGO drew heavily on the social and cultural capitals of volunteers in the process of serving its beneficiaries, which, in turn, facilitated the enhancement of its accountability to the beneficiaries. The authors also found that volunteers play a bridging role to reduce the distance between NGOs and beneficiaries.

For NGO managers, this study provides necessary empirical evidence on the positive role played by the volunteers in the development and operationalisation of accountability to the beneficiaries. In the authors’ case, beneficiary accountability is enhanced by the social conduct and practices performed by the NGO’s numerous volunteers. Beneficiary accountability is of significant concern to the policy makers too. This study shows that volunteers and NGO can work in a reciprocal relationship where social and cultural capital can be mobilised to each other’s advantage. To facilitate beneficiary accountability, NGOs can draw on the socio-cultural capitals held by the volunteers who appear to share the same norms and expectations with the beneficiaries. This process can also lead to the building of social and cultural capital by the volunteers themselves as they achieve great satisfaction and gain valuable experience in this process that could lead to greater satisfaction in their spiritual and material lives.

The authors extend the previous literature on beneficiary accountability by highlighting the under-researched role of volunteers in such accountability practices. In this paper, the authors first discuss the facilitating role of volunteers in enhancing NGOs’ accountability towards beneficiaries. Then, this is illustrated empirically. In addition, the authors argue that although Bourdieusian concepts like field and capital have been widely used in the analysis of various organisational practices the concept of habitus received limited attention particularly from the context of developing countries. The authors undertake an examination of the habitus of volunteers in the Indonesian case organisation and explore their linkages with the field and associated capitals.

The current study evaluated (1) characteristics of the community leadership development program associated with successful participant recruitment, (2) active ingredients that promoted fellow engagement and program completion and (3) how the program addressed blackness and racism.

Individual interviews were conducted with a representative subset of former program fellows.

Results indicated that offering training in small cohorts and matching fellows with individual mentors promoted program interest. Program strengths and unique ingredients included that the program was primarily led by people from the Black community, program malleability, and that the program was a partnership between fellows and leadership. Additionally, the program was responsive to fellows’ needs such as by adding a self-care component. Fellows also noted dedicated space and time to discuss race and racism. Results offer a unique theoretical perspective to guide leadership development away from the uniform or standardized approach and toward one that fosters diversity and equity in leadership.

Altogether, this work demonstrates how leadership development programs can be participant-informed and adapted to participants’ social and cultural needs.