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Middle managers in health care today are expected to continuously and efficiently decide and act in administration, finance, care quality, and work environment, and strategic communication has become paramount. Since dialogical communication is considered to promote a healthy work environment, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the ways in which health care managers experienced observing subordinates’ dialogue training.

A qualitative study using semi-structured interviews and documents from eight middle managers in a dialogue programme intervention conducted by dialogue trainers. Focus was on fostering and assisting workplace dialogue. Conventional qualitative content analysis was used.

Managers’ experiences were both enriching and demanding, and consisted of becoming aware of communication, meaning perceiving interaction between subordinates as well as own silent interaction with subordinates and trainer; Discovering communicative actions for leadership, by gaining self-knowledge and recognizing relational leadership models from trainers – such as acting democratically and pedagogically – and converting theory into practice, signifying practising dialogue-promoting conversation behaviour with subordinates, peers, and superiors.

Only eight managers participated in the intervention, but data afforded a basis for further research.

Findings stressed the importance of listening, and of support from superiors, for well-functioning leadership communication at work.

Studies focusing on health care managers’ communication and dialogue are few. This study contributes to knowledge about these activities in managerial leadership.

This paper aims to give an overview of a dialogue manager and recent experiments with multimodal human‐robot dialogues.

The paper identifies requirements and solutions in the design of a human‐robot interface. The paper presents essential techniques for a humanoid robot in a household environment and describes their application to representative interaction scenarios that are based on standard situations for a humanoid robot in a household environment. The presented dialogue manager has been developed within the German collaborative research center SFB‐588 on “Humanoid Robots – Learning and Cooperating Multimodal Robots”. The dialogue system is embedded in a multimodal perceptual system of the humanoid robot developed within this project. The implementation of the dialogue manager is geared to requirements found in the explored scenarios. The algorithms include multimodal fusion, reinforcement learning, knowledge acquisition and tight coupling of dialogue manager and speech recognition.

Within the presented scenarios several algorithms have been implemented and show improvements of the interactions. Results are reported within scenarios that model typical household situations.

Additional scenarios need to be explored especially in real‐world (out of the lab) experiments.

The paper includes implications for the development of humanoid robots and human‐robot interaction.

This paper explores human‐robot interaction scenarios and describes solutions for dialogue systems.

In my training commentary in our November issue I suggested a basic information kit on worker participation. Since then a new survey, of major importance, has been published and should be added to the list.

Purpose – This chapter provides an overview to the challenges of policing both natural and man-made disasters. Questions surrounding police preparedness to respond to large-scale disasters as well as the causes of failure are likely one of the single biggest system threats faced by police today.

Design/methodology/approach – The chapter starts out with a short discussion about the important impact the 9/11 attacks as well as both Hurricanes Katrina and Rita had on policing in the United States. The materials presented also provide a conceptual framework for understanding the meaning of “disasters,” as well as making sense of the effectiveness of the police response. Finally, this chapter provides an overview of the role of police in disasters, and more importantly, their role in “creating order out of chaos” (Punch & Markham, 2000).

Findings – After more than 10 years of substantial attention to problems associated with responses to natural and man-made disasters, significant barriers remain in the level of communication and coordination among first responders. These barriers are best understood as cultural and not technical in nature.

Originality/value of paper – The conceptual role of police in both pre-disaster planning and post-disaster responses has been largely ignored in the literature. This chapter provides a strong framework for conceptualizing these roles. We argue that police, as core members of the first responder system, must continue to break down cultural barriers that diminish their capacities to effectively serve communities in the wake of disasters.

To explore social dialogue over vocational education and training in Europe, comparing the role of the social partners in different national training systems and different industrial relations contexts.

A survey of European member states (EU15 before enlargement) and two EFTA countries addressed to the national agencies or ministries responsible for vocational education and training and representing the contacts of the CEDEFOP Refernet network, supplemented by a literature review and discussions with the social partners at European level.

Throughout Europe the social partners have a formal role in developing vocational training policy and are involved in implementation, particularly at sector and local levels. While the structures of participation vary according to the degree of state regulation and the locus of training, social partner involvement is extensive irrespective of the nature of the regulatory framework.

Only 13 countries responded to the survey and respondents were not always aware of workplace developments. The gaps were addressed through the literature and discussions but inevitably the study is not comprehensive.

Valuable information for those seeking to identify common and good practice in social dialogue to improve the quality and relevance of vocational training.

A useful baseline study of the role of the social partners in vocational education and training in Europe.

This chapter discusses a form of pedagogy of reflection suggested to be defined as the dialogical-reflective professional-development school (DRPDS) – a framework that develops and empowers students by engaging them in a process of continual improvement, responding to diverse situations, providing stimuli for learning, and giving anchors for mediation. The pedagogy of reflection relates to dialogue not only from a theoretical historical context but also by way of example – that is, it offers empowering dialogues within the traditional teacher-training framework. This chapter outlines the importance of the pedagogy of reflection in the multicultural educational space of the preservice education field in Israel, analyzing the first university PDS model. The pedagogy of reflection in the context of the educational dialogue of educators is outlined as a tool for student empowerment, achieved through a community of learners who dedicate space to the development of their whole personality within the profession, taking a moral stance toward the educational discourse, minimizing judgmentalism and prejudice, creating national/gender equality with the goal of examining the fundamental question of educational performance, and reinforcing their sense of organizational belonging within the system. In these contexts, the chapter is based on the elements of dialogical philosophy exemplified in the thought of Burbules, Nelson, Isaacs, Bohm, and Heckmann and the reflective basis of educational and organizational performance exemplified in the writings of van Manen. The chapter also presents two examples from a project in which teaching units based on dialogue and reflection were developed within a dialogic community that represents in its very being collective empowerment, the possibility of coping with problems that are too large for an individual to solve on his/her own, and an alternative to sealed and alienated organizations.

The paper examines the role of trade unions in the provision of continuous training. It first reviews the literature in this area and then considers evidence from a study of trade union involvement in the Spanish national training system managed by the social partners. The study finds that union involvement has led to improved training access for workers in SMEs in large part because of the union role as training provider and has contributed to social dialogue at sectoral and national level but has had a limited impact upon training in larger enterprises. The paper argues that an enterprise‐based social partnership model built around an independent union agenda for training has limited relevance for SMEs and that a more realistic approach is the development of sectoral social dialogue, “partnership at a distance”, capable of delivering outcomes which can be translated to the point of production.

Following a brief introduction to the history of online and online training, this article surveys current training from the point of view of the trainers, the trainees and the media. The final section deals in depth with computer‐assisted instruction for online searching with examples drawn from a number of available packages. Some of the techniques, such as self‐testing and search simulations, as well as the advantages of this method of instruction are discussed.