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Introduces the cyclic nature of all experience as it is understood in Gestalt terms. Reports on the author′s opinion that in training people in counselling skills to help individuals deal with being made redundant, it is useful to use the idea of a cycle of human experience. This helps practitioners understand the different phases and reactions of individuals to major life events such as redundancy, and also to locate different counselling skills at different points of the cycle.

In this chapter, we explore whether various true, endogenous social cycle theories share common patterns and characteristics.

We examine a number of prominent social theories describing cyclical patterns, and attempt to abstract an ideal type common to all of them, based on the idea of two populations disrupting each other and adjusting to the other’s disruptions.

At the core of such theories we typically find a variation of a two-population model. In these theories, cycles emerge when one of the populations seems to disrupt the other population’s plans, leading to recurring adjustments and disruptions that constitute the cycle.

Finding such commonalities in the world of theories can be useful for several reasons. For one thing, noticing that two theories share certain traits may help us understand each of them better. Furthermore, we show that agent-based modelers using modern object-oriented programming techniques can benefit from finding common patterns in theories.

As a new concept for humane entrepreneurship (HumEnt) evolves, many new research questions arise. At the exploratory stage, the authors found it relevant to examine and discuss the perception of the fundamental assumptions of the HumEnt concept and activities undertaken in this area by business practice.

To thoroughly understand the studied phenomenon, a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods was used. An exploratory survey was obtained from 126 purposefully selected enterprises in Poland; then, a single case study was analysed.

The conducted analysis showed differences between the activities of enterprises and the perception of the HumEnt concept among employees that are especially noticeable at different levels of the management hierarchy.

The multifaceted nature of the results obtained is limited by the inability to infer international differences, to capture trends over time and to generalise to the total population of enterprises.

Although the surveyed companies recognise the importance of the HumEnt concept, it is not tantamount to its execution. The research results may be valuable, especially for smaller enterprises, where the business practice may require support in applying the HumEnt approach.

The research explored both the actual state confirmed by the actions taken and the perception of the importance of individual elements of HumEnt. A knowing–doing gap has been demonstrated between these planes. Moreover, thanks to a two-stage study, practices were selected that can be successfully implemented also in small and medium-sized enterprises.

In this article I deconstruct the polar cultural myths about ageing and how these two influencing memes generate two contrasting scenarios for the future of the city. One meme can be seen as a weight resisting the preferred future whilst the other provides the attractive pull towards the preferred image. Both are interlinked by the reality of an ageing global population – a demographic driver that is shaping the city of tomorrow. This preferred image however is not inevitable; I argue that memetic change of Western society’s episteme of ageing is fundamental to achieving the City of all ages.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a transformative service-based model, which analyzes tripartite service interaction logics among trafficking survivors, anti-trafficking agencies and the community during a process of actively- and passively transformative exchanges. It aims to help researchers and practitioners better understand services that facilitate reintegration of trafficking survivors into society.

Using theory development from sociological and liminality schools of thought, this paper explores a variety of coping strategies that anti-trafficking agencies can offer human-trafficking survivors in post-trafficking service settings.

A novel transformative service-based framework extends current conceptualizations of social and service exchange in a tripartite interaction setting. Anti-trafficking agencies can create a supportive community environment to offer trafficking survivors passively transformative services and to cultivate and nurture their coping skills towards reintegration into society.

Important implications for transformative service-based theory and practice of serving trafficking survivors are discussed. In addition, the study limitations are addressed.

The transformative service-based model analyzes tripartite service interaction logics during a process of exchanges between trafficking survivors, anti-trafficking agency and community ecosystem to achieve meaningful post-trafficking reintegration into society.

Using the transformative service model, community ties need to be re-established for trafficking survivors to achieve successful reintegration into society, and for communities to heal and restore human dignity.

This research proposes a new framework for actively- and passively-transformative service logic for anti-trafficking agencies to offer assistance to trafficking survivors, based on sociological and liminality schools of thought.

Argues that a human resource development (HRD) strategy, in alliance with a global‐arching human resource management (HRM) strategy, is the most effective way to link training policy and practice to organizational goals. Both manufacturing and service organizations require a critical mass of positive factors related to the effective management of human resources to successfully accomplish organizational goals. This involves the analysis of a myriad internal and external environmental factors contingent to the organization, followed by a strategic approach to influencing key stakeholders, and the formulation of strategic HRD policies and plans in parallel with and sometimes influencing business strategy. This links to a broad range of systems covering all areas of the human resource cycle ‐ selection, appraisal, rewards and development ‐ related to individual/team and organizational performance. Concludes that the HRD function must become more strategic in focus.

The purpose of this paper is to propose an integrated approach to process integration, automation, and optimization through enhanced business process models.

The approach is based on a framework of process integration for functional applications, automation for business workflows, and additional functionalities for process optimization. The proposed approach is illustrated using enhanced process models over business integration, automation, and optimization with data elements, structures, and organizational elements. The standard sales order process cycle, quotation approval process, and production order cycle are chosen for illustrating process integration, automation, and optimization, respectively.

The proposed approach combines applications and workflows using integrated process/data models and forms a foundation for business process optimization. It is shown that the integrated approach can improve existing business processes in enterprise resource planning (ERP), beyond business process re‐engineering (BPR) principles, once enhanced business process models are implemented. This approach eliminates need for a hierarchical representation of business processes and highlights the flexibility and visibility of business process implementation in ERP system environment.

Although process integration, automation, and optimization are illustrated using selected business process examples, it requires generalization of these enhancements over entire business blueprint of ERP system. Thus, one key limitation of this research is that it is not generalized for the entire business blueprint of ERP. This also requires changes to data structures beyond current relational data in many ERP systems.

This research provides an integrated approach to business process modeling beyond traditional functional and workflow applications by eliminating hierarchical nature of process and data elements.

In recent years in Italy, as in the rest of Europe, new and profound changes have occurred in both the economic and political world as a whole. Such transformations in social and economic systems, typical of societies in the phase of transition to industrially advanced economies, have determined the need for the strategic and organization reorientation of Italian companies. Explains the strategic role of human resources in this new scenario, analysing some different models of HRM, the context of industrial relations, the differences between small and large companies in terms of HRM and the level of know‐how (technique and management systems) achieved by personnel managers.

Narratives are useful to educate novices to learn from the past in a safe environment. For some high-risk industries, narratives for lessons learnt are costly and limited, as they are constructed from the occurrence of accidents. This paper aims to propose a new approach to facilitate narrative generation from existing narrative sources to support training and learning.

A computational narrative semi-fiction generation (CNSG) approach is proposed, and a case study was conducted in a statutory body in the construction industry in Hong Kong. Apart from measuring the learning outcomes gained by participants through the new narratives, domain experts were invited to evaluate the performance of the CNSG approach.

The performance of the CNSG approach is found to be effective in facilitating new narrative generation from existing narrative sources and to generate synthetic semi-fiction narratives to support and educate individuals to learn from past lessons. The new narratives generated by the CNSG approach help students learn and remember important things and learning points from the narratives. Domain experts agree that the validated narratives are useful for training and learning purposes.

This study presents a new narrative generation process for a high-risk industry, e.g. the construction industry. The CNSG approach incorporates the technologies of natural language processing and artificial intelligence to computationally identify narrative gaps in existing narrative sources and proposes narrative fragments to generate new semi-fiction narratives. Encouraging results were gained through the case study.