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The purpose of this paper is to look at the National University of Singapore's Libraries' (NUSL) efforts in moving forward to assert its place as an institutional service organisation, not solely in the traditional area of providing access to information, but also in developing itself as a place for knowledge, for inspiration and for life to its user community.

The article takes the form of a case study, giving details about the seven libraries that together make up the NUSL. It looks at how the libraries face competition from a number of information sources.

The NUSL needs to understand its users, use the correct branding and reach out to the community.

NUSL has embarked on a new proactive journey to reach out, bond with its users and seize every opportunity to promote its brand.

Searching for a job is an important process that influences short- and long-term career outcomes as well as well-being and psychological health. As such, job search research has grown tremendously over the last two decades. In this chapter, the authors provide an overview of prior research, discuss important trends in current research, and suggest areas for future research. The authors conceptualize the job search as an unfolding process (i.e., a process through which job seekers navigate through stages to achieve their goal of finding and accepting a job) in which job seekers engage in self-regulation behaviors. The authors contrast research that has taken a between-person, static approach with research that has taken a within-person, dynamic approach and highlight the importance of combining between- and within-person designs in order to have a more holistic understanding of the job search process. Finally, authors provide some recommendations for future research. Much remains to be learned about what influences job search self-regulation, and how job self-regulation influences job search and employment outcomes depending on individual, contextual, and environmental factors.

Persistent change has placed considerable pressure on organizations to keep up or fade into obscurity. Firms that remain viable, or even thrive, are staffed with decision-makers who capably steer organizations toward opportunities and away from threats. Accordingly, leadership development has never been more critical. In this chapter, the authors propose that leader development is an inherently dyadic process initiated to communicate formal and informal expectations. The authors focus on the informal component, in the form of organizational politics, as an element of leadership that is critical to employee and company success. The authors advocate that superiors represent the most salient information source for leader development, especially as it relates to political dynamics embedded in work systems. The authors discuss research associated with our conceptualization of dyadic political leader development (DPLD). Specifically, the authors develop DPLD by exploring its conceptual underpinnings as they relate to sensemaking, identity, and social learning theories. Once established, the authors provide a refined discussion of the construct, illustrating its scholarly mechanisms that better explain leader development processes and outcomes. The authors then expand research in the areas of political skill, political will, political knowledge, and political phronesis by embedding our conceptualization of DPLD into a political leadership model. The authors conclude by discussing methodological issues and avenues of future research stemming from the development of DPLD.

The purpose of this paper is to compare and evaluate how the governments in six Asian countries have dealt with selected grand corruption scandals.

This paper is based on the comparative analysis of 11 corruption scandals examined in the six articles on India, Japan, Macau, Malaysia, Philippines and Singapore included in this special issue of Public Administration and Policy.

The responses of the governments in the six countries depend on the strength of their political will in combating corruption. The responses of the governments in Malaysia, Philippines, India and Japan reflect their weak political will in combating corruption and lack of accountability of the corrupt offenders. By contrast, the strong political will of the governments in Singapore and Macau is reflected in the investigation and punishment of the corrupt offenders without any cover-up of the scandals.

The findings would be of interest to scholars, policymakers and anti-corruption practitioners and activists.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and assess the perception of customers (students) about the services provided by Brazilian universities, through the identification of the attributes that impact on customer satisfaction and the dimensions or factors related to quality in services. This may generate a better management and seek more competitive edge in graduate courses.

The research method was developed in two phases: the first one is characterized by a qualitative and exploratory approach and the second one as a quantitative research of conclusive character. In the qualitative phase, in-depth interviews were implemented with a semi-structured approach. A survey was performed in the final phase and a multivariate statistical technique was used for the data analysis.

The results echoed in a set of 40 analyzed attributes (variables), distributed in six dimensions of quality in services, in the graduate courses (second cycle) of administration, which could serve as a basis for orienting other Brazilian universities.

The data analysis did not include crossed techniques that could have enriched the analysis process. Another limitation that can be pointed out is the fact of having only adopted a factor analysis method to identify the dimensions of service quality that influence customer satisfaction (students). In addition, data collection was cross-sectional, which does not allow any change verification of the respondents’ perception.

Taking into account the current scenario of increased competition between the Brazilian universities to attract and retain students, the knowledge of student’s preferences and the dimensions of quality service can effectively contribute in the development of strategies and actions for an effective graduate programs management (second cycle), and for their consolidation in the Brazilian market.

The development of more adequate courses, in terms of level of quality and relevancy.

The identification of the attributes that represent the quality dimensions, related to the services provided, can assist any Brazilian university to prioritize its strategies and actions and to contribute to excellence in education. In addition, it may encourage customer retention (students) and consolidate its market position. Moreover, the study can contribute as a source of empirical data for transferability and benchmark strategies in other contexts for Brazilian universities.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically test a new theory called the balanced theory of port competitiveness.

Data were collected from multiple respondents in 72 of the largest container ports. The instrument was translated into English, Simplified Chinese, Korean, and French. The data were collected through online and paper-based surveys. The data were analyzed using analytical hierarchy process.

The theory was shown to explain the behavior of port stakeholders in improving competitiveness by balancing the need to attract new customers with that of attracting new investors when making decisions, which can often be contradictory. The analysis showed significant effects for the five variables of volume competitiveness (VC) and the five variables of investment competitiveness.

This study is limited in that it only tested the balanced theory on the largest container ports. The decisions by port managers may differ at smaller ports or those that do not handle containers.

Port stakeholders now have a ten-variable model of the factors needed to attract new customers and investors. These variables, and their tradeoffs, can evaluate the impact of managerial decisions on port competitiveness.

This study informs the literature by being the first to test a new theory that explains a greater level of port stakeholder behavior when improving competitiveness. Prior to this study, VC and investor competitiveness had only been studied separately, although they were related in practice.

THE ABOVE advertisement appeared in The Cambrian of 20th August 1875, and in the two following editions of this weekly newspaper. Swansea had adopted the Public Libraries Acts at a lively and rather stormy meeting in October 1870. Until December 1874, the matter of establishing a library service lay in abeyance. Then after mounting criticism, particularly in the local press, over the long delay in implementation of the Acts, the Town Council appointed a Library Committee which held its initial meeting on 8 January 1875. Their first important duty was to appoint a librarian.

As a fascinating concept, the term of organizational memory attracted many researchers from a variety of disciplines. In particular, the content of organizational memory, which involves declarative and procedural memory, found broad research interest in the management literature. Nevertheless, there is sparse research in the management literature on the emotional content aspect of organizational memory. Emotional memory is a less obvious aspect of the organizational memory and should be conceptualized, defined and investigated to enhance the literature on the organizational memory. The purpose of this study is to: define and establish the characteristics of organizational emotional memory; discuss the process of emotional memory in organizations such as how emotional memory can be developed and retrieved, and where it can be stored in organizations; and develop arguments regarding the roles of emotional memory in organizations to enhance the current theory on organizational memory.

This study reviews a variety of literature on the organizational memory and emotions.

This study demonstrated that emotional memory of organizations influences their routines, beliefs and procedures, and management should consider the past emotional experience of organizations to be more innovative.

By introducing the emotional memory process in organizations, this study helps managers to control, regulate or manipulate the recollections of past emotional events to perform effectively.

This study offers a contribution to the management literature by identifying the emotional memory concept and its processes, and presenting a model of interrelationships among emotional memory, declarative and procedural memory. In particular, this study adds new insight to the literature on the emotional life of organizations and offers literature a tool for both understanding and theorizing about emotion in organizations by making emotional memory concept explicit in a multidisciplinary understanding of organizational phenomena, and by providing a framework to clarify how we might conceptualize emotional memory.

The purpose of this paper is to present personal experiences of using storytelling as a “sensemaking” tool, to argue for the benefits of this method as a process of better understanding the gendered academy and the role storytelling can play in effecting change.

Drawing on personal experiences of storytelling within workplaces, the paper explores how stories between colleagues can lead to positive change through the co‐construction of new worlds of meaning which are spontaneously revised through interaction.

The paper demonstrates how storytelling between individuals experiencing inequality makes visible the gendered practices in academic workplaces and can lead to a change in those experiences of the workplace. Also, such stories can be a means for prompting change through negotiation. Theoretically, a triple‐loop learning environment within an organization could provide the agora required for stories about inequality to be heard continually and change to come about through negotiation.

The paper uses a method that serves as a heuristic device and as such cannot be generalized for all organizational settings. The findings offer a new but partial solution for negotiating gender inequity in academia by suggesting that there must be more storytelling in openly public spaces between colleagues to challenge and negotiate the gendered organizational cultures of academia.

The application of the method of triple‐loop learning in academic organizational settings can assist in challenging and changing gender inequity through the consistent use of narratives.

The paper is unique in that it argues for the value of a self‐reflexive narrative form of method which favours stories being shared in public spaces – the agora – as a way of addressing gender inequity within complex, male dominated professions such as academia.

The main purpose of the current research is to examine affective and cognitive mechanisms by which the trickle-down effect of work engagement from leader to follower takes place.

The current research consisted of two independent studies. In study 1, an experience sampling method was used (N = 1,321 data points from 171 participants) to test within-person effects. In study 2, the authors recruited 266 employees working in 61 teams with two data collections one month apart, to test between-team effects among variables.

In two independent studies, leaders' work engagement resulted in followers engaging in surface acting (an affective process) and developing self-efficacy (a cognitive process), which in turn resulted in followers' work engagement.

The current research provides some clarifications to the literature on work contagion of engagement by examining dual mechanisms. In particular, although previous research emphasized the negative aspects of surface acting, the current research suggests that surface acting can be potentially helpful by facilitating the contagion effect of work engagement leaders to followers. Further, this research also examines the facilitative role of self-efficacy in mediating the relationship between a leader's work engagement and followers' work engagement. Finally, the authors conducted two independent studies that used different research designs, and results were consistent across the two studies, which can provide evidence for the robustness of the results.