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The article aims to offer organizational leadership a framework to integrate opportunities for transformation learning into workplace experiences and maximize the personal growth of employees. Transformational learning is a concept often discussed within higher and adult education but rarely considered in the workplace; the article offers an opportunity to conceptualize transformational learning in workplace contexts.

Two summaries of transformational learning theory shape a foundational understanding of transformational learning. The conceptual framework is connected to examples of transformational learning in the workplace and subsequently offers three areas, cross‐cultural experiences, interactive leadership and development, and action research projects, for leaders to integrate into their practice.

Transformational learning can be observed and encouraged within the workplace. Organizational leadership can be intentional about the incorporation of opportunities for transformational learning.

Leaders must re‐frame their approach to cultural diversity, training and development, and action research. This altered perspective does not require an overhaul of existing policies and procedures, but a change to the way leaders think about workplace experiences and communicate with employees.

The article connects a substantial body of literature on transformational learning in a new way – in the context of work. In the process of questioning their assumptions and the assumptions of others, leaders become adept at critical thinking, empathy, and the ability to provide opportunities for the personal growth in the workplace.

Even more than 50 years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination toward a number of groups in employment settings in the United States, workplace discrimination remains a persistent problem in organizations. This chapter provides a comprehensive review and analysis of contemporary theory and evidence on the nature, causes, and consequences of discrimination before synthesizing potential methods for its reduction. We note the strengths and weaknesses of this scholarship and highlight meaningful future directions. In so doing, we hope to both inform and inspire organizational and scholarly efforts to understand and eliminate workplace discrimination.

In this article, the authors report the results of their pre-service teachers’ reflections with regards to observed social studies instruction in kindergarten through sixth grade. Fifty-seven elementary education majors were in enrolled in a social studies methods course at a university located in the South. Pre-service teachers share the type of instruction observed, comments stated by their classroom teacher about social studies as well as their overall perceptions. Reflections indicate social studies is taught inconsistently across grades levels, best practices were not used for instruction, and a trend in decreased social studies instruction. Thus, classroom teachers exhibited frustration because of these issues.

This chapter addresses the accountability standards expressed in the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and the legislative history of this federal statute on education. The author states that the Act recognized that many students are “left behind” and some “way behind” and analyses how this Act will reduce the academic deficit for those students left behind? This review makes it clear that the fiscal equity movement never got off the ground or close to becoming a major part to the legislation. Legal challenges to NCLB is extensively reviewed which raises the question as the amount of support for this legislation. The chapter closes with the note that NCLB is an under-funded mandate placing the fiscal responsibility on the budget-strapped states.

Multiple research studies show a positive correlation between library usage and student retention. At the same time, no formal research studies focusing on the effect of library usage on LGBT student persistence and retention exist. The purpose of this paper is to provide information about today’s LGBT undergraduates, their personal and academic needs, and how academic libraries may meet those needs.

The author will challenge the grand narrative perpetuated by LGBT librarians that “libraries save [LGBT] lives” through a review of existing research literature on LGBT undergraduates and their personal and academic needs, where libraries play a role in LGBT undergraduate life, and whether or not academic libraries actually meet those needs.

No formal research studies on how libraries play a role in the retention of LGBT undergraduates exist. While LGBT undergraduates share many similarities with their peers, they seek out resources and spaces that the library may be able to provide independently or through collaborations with other units on campus. The existence of campus LGBT resource centers may impact LGBT undergraduate use of libraries.

The author will provide suggestions for academic libraries to create appropriate resources, services, and spaces for LGBT undergraduates so that they persist at their institutions and graduate.

This is the first research paper to address the role that academic libraries play in LGBT student retention.

Displaying a sense of humour provides various interpersonal benefits including reducing tension and promoting conflict resolution, but should a firm use humour in response to publicly viewable online customer complaints after a service failure? The purpose of this study is to demonstrate that a firm’s use of humour in response to negative online consumer reviews has both positive and negative effects on perceptions of corporate image from a customer-as-onlooker perspective.

Three experimental studies are conducted and analysis of variance is used to empirically test the hypotheses.

Although humorous responses have an unfavourable influence on perceived trustworthiness of the firm, they have a favourable influence on perceived excitingness of the firm. The former influence is tied to lower perceived firm sincerity, whereas the latter is tied to higher perceived firm innovativeness and coolness. Furthermore, humour within the customer complaint itself is shown to moderate the influence of humorous responses on perceptions of the firm. Finally, regardless of the type of humour used (i.e. affiliative or aggressive humour) in the humorous response, the positive effect of humorous response remains strong, although aggressive humour further aggravates the negative impact of humorous response on trustworthiness.

The experimental set-up may limit external validity of the study, and the research is limited to the variables examined.

Humorous response is identified as a non-traditional approach to online customer complaints that poses a double-edged sword for managers of service organizations. Firms should avoid using humour in online service recovery if perceptions of trustworthiness are critical or if complaints are written in a neutral tone. However, such responses may be successfully used when a firm wants to position itself as exciting and if complaints are also humorous. Finally, firms are advised to avoid aggressive humour.

The present research represents one of the few studies in marketing to examine the potential of injecting humour into complaint management and service recovery. In addition, this study considers the consumer-as-onlooker perspective inherent in social media.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Term. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

Consists of a series of nine articles under the same title. Each article provides a different slant on the hiring process. Outlines the legal position when hiring employees and concentrates on providing a framework for managers. Covers areas including job analysis and descriptions, where to advertise and recruit, selection criteria, the interview, testing, negotiating the offer of employment and references. Briefly describes trends in employment practices and ways to minimize potential litigation through best practice.

While (customer) engagement has been proposed as a volitional concept, our structuration theory/S-D logic-informed analyses of actors’ (e.g. employees’) engagement in service innovation reveal engagement as a boundedly volitional theoretical entity, which arises from actors’ structural and agency-based characteristics and constraints. In line with this observation, the purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual model of actor (i.e. customer, firm, employee) engagement with service innovation.

Based on the observed gap, the authors propose an integrative S-D logic/structuration theoretical model that outlines three particular service innovation actors’ (i.e. customers’, the firm’s and employees’) engagement, which comprises institution-driven (i.e. fixed) and agency-driven (i.e. variable) engagement facets. In addition, the authors integrate the key expected characteristics of positively (vs negatively) valenced service innovation engagement for each of these actor groups in the analyses.

The authors develop a 12-cell matrix (conceptual model) that outlines particular service innovation actors’ institution-driven and agency-driven engagement facets and outline their expected impact on actors’ ensuing positively and negatively valenced engagement.

The authors discuss key theoretical implications arising from the analyses.

Outlining service innovation actors’ structure- and agency-driven engagement facets, the authors’ model can be used to explain or predict customers’, the firm’s or employees’ service innovation engagement-based activities.