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This paper aims to identify computational thinking (CT) in 4th to 6th grade students in the context of project-based problem-solving while engaged in an after-school program.

This case study approach was selected due to its suitability for answering “how” or “why” questions about real-world phenomena within a set context (Creswell and Poth, 2018; Yin, 2018). This was an appropriate fit given the context of an after-school program and the research question asked how to identify learners’ demonstrated CT through project-based learning hands-on activities and problem-solving in a naturalistic environment.

Results show that heuristics, algorithms and conditional logic were observed more than other components of CT such as data collection, simulations and modeling. Descriptions of common activities in a naturalistic learning environment are presented to illustrate how the students practiced CT over time, which could help readers develop an understanding of CT in conjunction with hands-on problem-solving activities in elementary students. Identifying and classifying CT in this study focused on students’ learning process.

This study contributes to the challenging field of evaluating CT while focusing on observable behaviors and problem-solving activities with various degrees of teacher’s facilitation instead of final artifacts. Implications for researchers and educators interested in integrating CT in K-12 learning and its assessment are discussed.

Several frameworks have been developed to map and document scientific societal interaction and impact, each reflecting the specific forms of impact and interaction that characterize different academic fields. The ReAct taxonomy was developed to register data about “productive interactions” and provide an overview of research activities within the social sciences and humanities (SSH). The purpose of the present research is to examine whether the SSH-oriented taxonomy is relevant to the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines when clarifying societal interactions and impact, and whether the taxonomy adds value to the traditional STEM impact indicators such as citation scores and H-index.

The research question was investigated through qualitative interviews with nine STEM researchers. During the interviews, the ReAct taxonomy and visual research profiles based on the ReAct categories were used to encourage and ensure in-depth discussions. The visual research profiles were based on publicly available material on the research activities of the interviewees.

The study provided an insight into how STEM researchers assessed the importance of mapping societal interactions as a background for describing research impact, including which indicators are useful for expressing societal relevance and impact. With regard to the differences between STEM and SSH, the study identified a high degree of cohesion and uniformity in the importance of indicators. Differences were more closely related to the purpose of mapping and impact assessment than between scientific fields. The importance of amalgamation and synergy between academic and societal activities was also emphasised and clarified.

The findings highlight the importance of mapping societal activities and impact, and that societal indicators should be seen as inspiring guidelines depending on purpose and use. A significant contribution is the identification of both uniformity and diversity between the main fields of SSH and STEM, as well as the connection between the choice of indicators and the purpose of mapping, e.g. for impact measurement, profiling, or career development.

The work sheds light on STEM researchers' views on research mapping, visualisation and impact assessment, including similarities and differences between STEM and SSH research.

This study investigates dispositional factors' (need for affiliation, positive affectivity and proactive personality) moderation effect on the relationship between leader–follower relationship variables (leader–member exchange and perceived supervisor support) and affective commitment to supervisor.

In total, 359 employees in Indonesia participated as the study's respondents. This study employs hierarchical regression analysis to test the hypotheses.

The results show that need for affiliation and positive affectivity moderates the relationship between leader–follower relationship variables and affective commitment to supervisor. In addition, all dispositional factors positively influence affective commitment to supervisor as independent variables. This study's findings depict the social exchange theory in practice.

The present study contributes to theoretical and practical implications. Theoretically, the study extends the knowledge on at least four domains: leader–follower relationship; affective commitment particularly aimed at the supervisor; the roles of dispositional variables on leader–member interactions; and empirically demonstrates social exchange theory. Practically, this study shows which factors are relevant to shaping positive leader–member interactions. Such results are potentially of value for the leader, the organization, and those responsible for recruiting prospective employees.

Innovation originally meant ‘change’ or ‘renewal’. Over time, it became associated with creating new products, methods, materials, markets, and forms of organisation. Today, in everyday language, innovation is used as a much broader term that encompasses non-materialistic, non-economical ideas such as social, educational, philosophical, political, environmental, or spiritual innovations. What makes something innovative is subjective and depends not only on the perceived novelty of the content but also on the co-constructed meaning of what is possible or what it changes in our lives. Therefore, innovation leaders must also become experts in co-constructing meanings with their teams. In this chapter, a structured solution-focused framework will be introduced with the intent to support innovative teams in maintaining effective team dialogue, foster more innovative team collaboration, better innovations, or an improved innovation process. In fostering an interactive and dynamic team process, solution-focused leaders engage in deliberate interactions that often initiate a positive dynamic leading into an even more innovative future.

Strategy implementation is a critical component of firm performance and middle managers play a key role in the implementation process. This study was conducted to enhance the authors’ understanding of how middle managers influence strategy implementation (SI) effectiveness by investigating the impact of leadership and work team coordination.

A field study was conducted using interviews and survey data gathered from executive managers, middle managers and work team members within a large municipal organization undergoing a major strategic change.

Middle manager transformational and instrumental leadership have a direct positive impact on work team SI effectiveness. Additionally, middle manager transformational leadership has an indirect positive effect on work team SI effectiveness through coordination.

The study offers insights into managers and practitioners seeking to improve SI effectiveness by highlighting the importance of middle manager leadership development and the coordination of interdependent tasks within work teams.

The study provides valuable insight into an important but previously unstudied relationship between middle manager leadership and SI effectiveness. The work also helps bridge the chasm between leadership research and strategy research by linking leadership behavior to SI effectiveness – a key ingredient of firm performance.

The purpose of this study is to explore the degree of variance in work value preferences espoused by university students based on whether the students are in possession of work experience and experience abroad. Vocational identity development (VID) was used as a theoretical lens to explore the extent to which being in possession of experience in these two areas shapes vocational identity.

A questionnaire (n = 1,188) was employed to measure the relative salience for 8 latent work values constructs and 25 individual-level work values. Respondents were classified into two groups based on work experience and abroad experience, and the differences in work value preferences between these groups were explored.

The authors' comparison of sample groups revealed that respondents without experience abroad attached significantly greater importance to specific work values (e.g. stability, extrinsic motivation and leisure) than those with sojourner experience. The relative salience of specific work values (e.g. altruistic and extrinsic motivation) was found to be significantly greater for respondents without work experience than those with such experience, however, not to the extent of abroad experience. VID as a theoretical framework was found to be valuable in conceptualising how work value preferences appear to be the outcome of a process of co-construction between an individual and his environment.

The reasons as to how and why changes in work value salience occur cannot be conclusively established due to the exploratory nature and conceptual design of the present study.

The findings suggest work and abroad experience play a pivotal role in shaping respondents' work values and, more generally, the VID. This reinforces the need for cooperation between higher education and industry to provide experiential learning opportunities and career guidance to enhance graduate employability and contribute to long-term engagement of talent in tight labour markets.

The value of these findings is that the findings contribute to greater conceptual understanding of the relationship between work experience, abroad experience and work value preferences. This is particularly relevant to academic staff and curriculum developers at a tertiary level in preparing and guiding university students in their interactions with professional practice.

This paper aims to analyze factors based on organizational knowledge management (KM; transactional memory systems and knowledge-oriented leadership [K-OL]) that help firms to mitigate conflicts based on task management at work, with the aim to improve their innovation capabilities (IC). The knowledge-based view of the firm, conflict management theory and cognitive collective engagement theory have been used to build a model of relationships that connects the development of positive KM contexts and management of dysfunctional conflict with IC improvement.

Data survey collected from inland hotel establishments in Spain is used to test seven hypotheses by means of structural equations modeling, applying the partial least squares technique. Direct, indirect and mediating relationships between variables are examined from the structural path model.

The results confirm that, as expected, IC improve when K-OL and transactive memory systems (TMSs) are properly implemented by hotel establishments, which leads them to reduce negative effects of task management conflict (TMC). Significant direct effects are found between the key variables of the study and also a significant indirect effect between K-OL and IC through TMS reinforcement and the mitigation of TMC.

This paper provides useful ideas for hotel managers about how to improve KM contexts in their establishments while avoiding TMC. Efforts devoted to creating those contexts by hotel establishments are shown to be effective to improve their IC and create competitive advantages.

The analysis of IC improvement by studying TMC mitigation had not been researched to date by the KM literature. The consideration and testing of a model that integrates KM-related tools such as K-OL and TMS to avoid TMC in the hotel industry is the main contribution of this study.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the distinction between human-delivered service and technology-based, automated customer assistance.

This is a conceptual paper. There is no methodology.

The concept of service is primarily delivered when a human helps another. When technology is infused into the process and becomes the major component of delivering the aid that is requested, the process is automated customer assistance. Thus, “self-service” is not service. It is automated customer assistance.

The definition of service is refined to describe the process of a human helping another person. When technology is used to provide the needed aid, it is no longer a service. Instead, it is automated customer assistance. The implication is that researchers should closely examine how users assess and perceive the two separate approaches to providing the needed aid.

The definition of service is refined to describe the process of a human helping another person. When technology is used to provide the needed aid, it is no longer a service. Instead, it is automated customer assistance. Researchers should closely examine how users assess and perceive the two separate approaches. Industry professionals should be mindful of the distinction between the delivery of service, which requires staff, and the provisioning of technology to provide assistance, which requires little to no staff. Intentionality should drive when customers are better helped by a human or by technology.

The value provided helps both providers create and users express when human-based service is needed versus assistance provided by technology.

Whilst a growing body of support exists for the use of prison animal programmes (PAPs), research within UK prisons is sparse. Opportunity to add to this body of literature is also limited due to the practical barriers around safely embedding animals within forensic settings. This study aims to capitalise on an opportunity to explore a visitation model of a prison-based dog programme (PBDP), recently implemented within a UK prison. The intervention requires staff members to volunteer to bring their pets into the prison on a weekly basis and to accompany them as they complete their normal day-to-day prison roles.

Data was collected within a Category B adult prison for males convicted of a sexual offence. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with six prisoners who had spent time with the visitation dogs and six staff members who had been part of those interactions. Reflexive thematic analysis was used to analyse the data, and three themes were developed that focused specifically on the value of this model of PBDP (staff members bringing their pets into the prison).

Three themes (reconnecting men to their outside lives; legitimising pro-social narrative; and “a safe space for them to open up”) were developed from participants’ lived experience of the intervention and its perceived value.

The potential for a low-level PAP to contribute to a rehabilitative prison culture was supported.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study to explore the value of this particular model of PBDP within a UK prison.

The aim of this paper is to theoretically explore the concept of leadership in a Total Quality Management (TQM) context by developing a new theoretical framework of understanding Total Quality Leadership (TQL) as well as by opening the dialogue in researching further key elements of TQL.

The approach that the paper adopts is conceptual. Based on exploration of the wider management and leadership literature of empirical and theoretical studies, this paper develops a framework of TQL.

The suggested TQL framework is composed by three main pillars, namely the proactive, adaptive and the relational. The former consists of elements like anticipation of current business environment complexities and filtering of information that enhances practice decision making. The second pillar refers to adaptation, autonomy and feedback while the last one emphasises on the importance of aspects like social interactions, engagement and empathy. The paper explains why the specific pillars with the additional elements are critical for TQM success.

Given the tremendous challenges that organisations face due to increased complexity and demanding competition of the business environments globally, the role of leadership as the major “soft” aspect of TQM approach, seems to be vital more than ever. But the type of TQL appropriate to enhance total quality success nowadays, is still (and should be) under continuous exploration. This conceptual study attempts to provide new theoretical insights of TQL as well as to open the dialogue around the main elements consisting of TQL and how the future research agenda is formulated.