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The paper reports on findings of research into the institutional and individual influences on engaging in professional development (PD), reflecting on how PD might be made available in ways which could support quality in e‐learning.

The paper presents findings of a research project exploring factors influencing engagement in e‐learning PD within New Zealand tertiary education institutions. The research comprised an online survey of 408 individuals in three polytechnics and two universities and 40 qualitative interviews ascertaining beliefs, experiences and practices of staff regarding e‐learning PD.

The survey and interviews suggest there are numerous factors which both help and hinder quality of engagement in e‐learning PD. Most PD engaged in by staff is informal. Engagement in formal PD is influenced by organisational structure, co‐ordination, poorly developed and/or implemented e‐learning policy, differences in managerial support, and individual beliefs and time allocation.

The research is conducted in a small number of tertiary institutions and may not be applicable to private or work‐based training organisations.

Understanding impacts and influences on individual uptake and experiences of PD provides insights into the sorts of institutional practices and policies likely to improve quality in e‐learning and in e‐learning PD.

By focussing on staff experiences, this paper provides important insights into practical considerations informing the development of e‐learning quality enhancement and assurance strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and understand current challenges and future trends in leadership and management development that can help practitioners in post-wars periods, using evidence from Syrian public sector.

Qualitative method design is used for data collection: semi-structured interviews with 24 senior managers in the public sector.

The findings revealed that the current challenges includes egos, technological hurdles, financial constraints, instability and the different expectations of new and old staff; future trends include developing collective leadership, technology literacy applications for effective leadership development, focusing on self-learning and development, focusing on creativity and innovation for transferring learning and development and targeting both vertical and horizontal learning and development.

Research data have been collected with managers working in an unstable environment. Only the public sector has been involved in the study. There were a number of limitations, e.g. selection of participant sample size and exploratory methodology, which affect generalizing the findings.

The implication of the current study is practical in nature. Essentially, post-war governments can use the results of the current study to help leaders and managers develop and implement effective strategies to meet their enormous and urgent needs.

Leadership/management development has become a strategic issue in post-war countries, acting as the key element in the stage of extensive reconstruction of damaged infrastructure, and the restoration and restructuring of social services in former conflict zones, and the restoration and restructuring of economy and many other roles.

This chapter describes the evaluation of a large complex social change programme in England, UK. During implementation, the programme experienced a series of changes to its form, function and governance, which in turn had impacts upon the practice of evaluation itself. These changes also raised questions about the place of evaluation within a policy context that increasingly focuses upon indicators and outcomes of effectiveness and other features and tensions that characterise the New Public Management. This chapter outlines the programme and its evaluation in this context, in order to be able to explore these impacts and raise questions about how we learn from social change programmes.

Planning for transition to a new educational setting, such as changing grades or moving from primary to high school, is important for all students but particularly for those who may require additional support for their individual needs. Research shows that transition planning and implementation for students with disability are best supported through collaboration and information sharing among all stakeholders. In Australia, the Disability Standards for Education (DSE) (2005) mandate consultation between education providers, students with disability, and their carers as part of the process of enrollment so that reasonable adjustments to support a student's progress can be identified and implemented. This chapter reports on two innovative approaches to the organization of transition and support systems for students with disability. The findings reveal that effective transition “doesn't just happen” and that school leaders need to establish effective mechanisms for consultation and collaboration.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and elaborate on how institutional conditions work to the advantage and disadvantage of disaster risk reduction (DRR) policies on different levels in two countries.

A qualitative case study design is used to study empirically two countries with very different traditions when it comes to political-administrative institutions: Argentina and Sweden.

As expected, the institutional foundations of DRR policy in Sweden are shown to be more consistent and stable than in Argentina. However, this difference is of less importance when considering the crucial role of local practices. National institutional foundations can function as support – but is not a necessary condition – for building disaster preparedness on the ground. The authors argue that national governments cannot do without institutionalized praxis-based preparedness, which is vital for both effective emergency management and learning.

This paper contributes to the disaster research debate by elaborating on institutional arrangements that can facilitate or hinder DRR strategies in a multi-level context. The main argument is that institutional practices on the ground are important to compensate for insufficient national institutions, either because they are weak or too distant from practical DRR. The authors also elaborate on how institutional practices can function as a source for learning and for building legitimate practical authority from the bottom up.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a case study of the application of cybernetic thinking by the learning and development unit in a national branch of a large multinational company to help move towards its strategic objective of becoming a learning organization.

A work-based action research approach was adopted. Through a series of action research cycles, the paper presents the interplay between developments in the organization and several strands of cybernetic thinking.

Cybernetic thinking was incrementally integrated to create a new support framework for developing a learning organization.

As a case study the work reported has limited generality. Users of the support framework need to take account of and, to some degree, replicate the specific conditions that led to its success. These included the strategic aim of becoming a learning organization and supportive senior management.

The case study and framework will be of greatest use to other organizations that have the strategic intent of becoming a learning organization, but seek guidance on implementation.

Cybernetic thinking was used to create feedback loops from internal and external conditions, to enhance learning, performance and adaptivity. This involved all employees in their and their organization's future development.

The paper's value offers a concrete instance of applying cybernetic thinking to the creation of a learning organization, a task often found to be difficult in practice. This has been abstracted into a support framework.

The paper aims to focus on fostering a strategic attitude and creativity‐related competences among management students, through alternative teaching‐learning methods, whereby students propose “crazy” ideas that can be applicable to (business) organizations.

The approach taken was an active learning classroom experiment. In total, 22 participants volunteered among the authors' own students, enrolled at different management‐related degrees at the University of Valencia (Spain).

Five student teams proposed very interesting and original ideas (some “crazier” than others, many highly relevant and feasible), aimed at tackling relevant challenges at the workplace or at the university.

Further research may be inspired by this experiment, expanding the scope of the inquiry to other student profiles and/or to actual initiatives involving organizational development and learning dynamics.

All proposals implied that employees/students who have fun will be more committed to their job/studies, involving “win‐win” outcomes. Moreover, the university‐related proposals can be easily adapted to a workplace context. On the other hand, the experiment itself can be also adapted as part of organizational development and learning policies – with employees taking the role here assigned to students.

These “crazy” ideas are invaluable in societies needing radical social‐economic change (e.g. Spain) towards new, knowledge‐based models.

Beyond the most immediate benefits for them, private and public organizations can crucially contribute to knowledge‐driven social‐economic change by embracing these “crazy” ideas in their development and learning policies.

The purpose of this paper is to identify organizational factors that enhance the vocational students’ development of professional skills during workplace learning and, furthermore, to examine the effects of the factors identified on the development.

The results were based on 285 Finnish graduating vocational students’ responses. The confirmatory factor analysis and structural equations were conducted by using Lisrel.

The students’ development of professional skills was enhanced by three organizational factors: an innovative climate, guidance, and interactions with seniors. Furthermore, the results emphasized that other employees have a central role in enhancing the students’ professional skills development.

The study used the students’ self-appraisal of the examined factors because it seems to be a common approach. However, future research should consider managers’ and seniors’ viewpoints.

Managers should map present and future skills requirements set by the organization and create a detailed plan for the students’ workplace learning. A practical tool to engage and support employees to enhance the students’ professional skills is to make a process with explicit descriptions of each organizational factor and the actors’ responsibilities.

The study provides empirical evidence supporting the substantial influence of organizations on the students’ development of professional skills.

The main purposes of the study were to investigate the ethical banking operations based on the award-winning the UK Co-operative Bank which has successfully brought significant implications on sustaining the nation’s (the UK) socioenvironmental development. The Co-operative Bank operations are conceptualised into a solid ethical banking operations framework (EBOF) to contribute theoretically into enriching the body of the knowledge. Besides, by understanding the EBOF of an ethical banking system, the other banking players like the Malaysian bank can learn from this best practice and gradually shape its operation to become more ethical.

The case study on the UK Co-operative Bank was based on primary data collected through a series of qualitative focus group conducted on 20 senior bank managers who were interested and were supportive of this research project. These experienced respondents are actively involved in the Co-operative Bank’s “Corporate Ethical Policy” formulation, as well as the implementation of this policy into the Co-operative Bank’s daily operations. Besides, secondary data are reviewed to obtain a more comprehensive understanding on the Co-operative Bank. The research began in December 2012 and was completed in August 2014. The main reason the researchers opted for qualitative studies is to comply with the criteria of inductive approach, whereby the final outcomes (EBOF) include the crystallisation of the ethical banking operations, which could be generalised theoretically and empirically.

At the end of the study, EBOF based on the Co-operative Bank’s ethical operations (as the case studied) is constructed. As a conclusion, the Co-operative Bank has done tremendously well in sustaining the UK’s socioenvironmental development, which justifies the reason why the Co-operative Bank has won numerous prestigious awards and is being well recognised nationally and regionally.

The novelty concept of ethical banking is driven by the global socioenvironmental initiative that influences some of the major financial institutions which are proactively and gradually shaping their corporate image in safeguarding the community around the environment. This research has successfully attained the ultimate objective to foster knowledge transfer through learning from the best (from the UK Co-operative Bank) in shaping local (Malaysia) ethical banking.

This study constructs the EBOF based on the Co-operative Bank’s ethical operations that could be empirically disseminated and adopted in other banks’ operations (across the globe). This is aimed in shaping the local banking industry to become more ethical (learning from the best practice of the UK Co-operative Bank) in wealth creation that places high emphasis on socioenvironmental benefits rather than economic gain on profit maximisation alone. Besides, the EBOF contributes and enriches the body of the knowledge about ethical banking operations.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce and describe the features of a new e‐learning quality framework developed for a large multi‐campus university. The framework is explicitly designed to improve the quality of e‐learning sites and the quality of online student learning, by developing the skills of the academics who design the sites.

This is a conceptual paper. It examines a range of existing models and literature on evaluative frameworks in e‐learning and positions the new framework within that context. It describes the features that distinguish the new framework from existing models and explains how these differences are tailored to develop the e‐learning design skills of academic staff and to encourage greater engagement with e‐learning quality initiatives across the university.

The paper identifies several features of the new framework that differ from other models and explains the inclusion of these features in terms of the support they provide for quality improvement at a university where academics are the main designers of e‐learning sites.

The paper makes a contribution to the literature on quality initiatives in e‐learning by introducing a new quality framework that differs in significant respects from other models. The rationale underpinning the inherently developmental design of this framework, as set out in this paper, may be useful to other universities where academics are the main designers of e‐learning sites.