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The purpose of this paper is to synthesize the effects of gang prevention programs on gang membership.

The authors conducted a systematic literature review across 19 bibliographic databases and a meta-analysis of the effectiveness of these strategies.

The database search resulted in 3,850 hits. Of the 162 studies that were screened in full, six involved a prevention program with outcomes commensurate for meta-analysis. Pooled log odds ratios indicate a significant, positive effect of gang prevention programs at reducing gang membership; however, sensitivity analysis demonstrates that the results are driven by the effects of a single study.

Despite the small sample size, the current study presents the best available evidence regarding the effectiveness of gang membership prevention programs. There is a critical need in the field of gang control for rigorous evaluation of prevention strategies.

The anticipation of organizational change and the transition process often creates uncertainty for employees and can lead to stress and anxiety. It is therefore essential for all organizations, especially those that operate in high-demand working environments, to support the well-being of staff throughout the change process.

Research on how employees respond to the organizational change of relocating to a new work space is limited. To fill this gap in the research, we present a case study examining the well-being of clinical and health care employees before and after a disruptive change: relocation in workplace facilities. In addition, factors that enabled successful change in this high-stress, high-demand working environment were investigated. Interviews were conducted with 20 participants before the relocation and 11 participants after relocation. Following an inductive approach, data were analyzed using thematic analysis to identify key themes.

Our findings suggest that a supportive team, inclusive leadership and a psychologically safe environment, may buffer negative employee well-being outcomes during disruptive organizational change.

This research contributes to the literature on successful organizational change in health care by highlighting the resources which support well-being throughout the change process and enabling the successful transition to a new facility.

Ambidexterity increases an organisation’s capability to successfully navigate dynamic and uncertain environments. While leaders are expected to model flexible learning and practices throughout the organisation, little is known about the leader characteristics and contextual factors that underpin ambidexterity. This study aims to explore whether paradoxical thinking, integrator behaviours and managerial role and level influence the likelihood of leaders exhibiting ambidexterity.

This study relied on a self-report questionnaire completed by 152 managers of a large, public health-care organisation in New Zealand. A k-means cluster analysis of the data was conducted to identify leader ambidexterity clusters, and the hypothesised effects were tested with multinomial logistic regressions.

Health-care managers favoured exploitation and moderate ambidexterity. Higher levels of integrator behaviours (i.e. reflective learning and context responsiveness) were found among leaders who showed high ambidexterity. Context responsiveness was the sole significant predictor distinguishing between high ambidexterity and other ambidexterity profiles. No statistically significant differences in ambidexterity cluster membership were found between clinical and non-clinical roles and across managerial levels.

While our study relied on a cross-sectional self-reported design, the findings underscore the importance of learning behaviours and context responsiveness to ambidexterity. This study discusses avenues for future research and leadership development towards improved organisational learning systems and practices.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first to test the contribution of paradoxical thinking and integrator behaviours to health-care leader ambidexterity and to examine differences in ambidexterity profiles across managerial levels and roles. The factor analysis suggests that integrator behaviours represent two distinct constructs: reflective le`arning and context responsiveness.

The purpose of this paper is to explore Ontario education professors’ perceptions of well-being, document ways in which they support graduate students’ well-being and discuss perceived challenges in doing so.

A basic interpretative design was used, with participants consisting of seven (four females, three males) tenured professors from five faculties of education in Ontario, Canada. Participants completed one to two semi-structured interviews. Interviews were audio recorded, transcribed for member checking and read holistically to identify emergent themes across participants.

Participants provided multifaceted representations of well-being and reported that supporting graduate students’ psycho-socio-emotional well-being was a critical aspect of their role. They discussed the intentional use of specific strategies including creating inclusive learning environments, nurturing caring relationships, providing academic accommodations and promoting relevant on-campus supports and services. Finally, participants identified factors that challenged their abilities to support graduate students’ wellness including institutional norms and expectations, shifting student demographics and uncertainties with respect to professional capacities.

Graduate student mentorship should be included in the faculty reward system. The provision of private, specialized services offered by trained personnel is also recommended. Future research is needed to explore faculty experiences supporting and mentoring diverse groups of graduate students.

While limited in participant numbers and educational jurisdiction, this research extends current mentoring models by adding a mental health and well-being component, thus bridging gaps between well-being and graduate mentorship in higher education.

This paper aims to present a literature review to examine the career development outcomes on practicing engineering novices who are being mentored at work, and factors of mentoring that contribute to those career development outcomes.

Through a meta-synthesis, the research premises and findings of 12 articles identified through a systematic search of nine databases were examined and synthesized, to identify the most common career development outcomes and the most influential factors contributing to these outcomes.

The most common contributing factors were found to be job characteristics, career development mentoring support, psychosocial mentoring support and mentoring methods. The most frequent career outcomes were career satisfaction and promotion.

The sample consisted of only 12 articles; however, according to the guidelines of meta-synthesis and Critical Appraisal Skills Program (CASP), the sample size was ideal. Further, articles were all of high or very high quality, and, in all studies, multiple contributing factors were measured to investigate the relationships among those factors and career outcomes. The factors and outcomes can be considered by researchers as study variables in future studies.

Organizations and practitioners can use factors that influence mentoring outcomes and the mentoring outcomes found in this study to develop more effective mentoring programs.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first systematic review of prior research regarding mentoring for practicing engineers. This paper allows researchers and practitioners to identify key findings and trends in past works, recognize research gaps and propose future research directions.

The rapid proliferation of mobile context aware applications has resulted in an increased research interest towards developing specialized context data management strategies for mobile entities. The purpose of this paper is to aim to develop a new way to model mobile entities and manage their contexts accordingly.

This paper proposes the concept of “Mobile Space” to model mobile entities and presents strategies to manage the various contexts associated therein. To handle availability related issues, two system services are designed: the “Availability Updating Service” which is an identifier based mechanism and is designed to keep track of mobile objects and handle availability related issues, and the “Application Callback Service” which is a publish/subscribe based mechanism to handle application disruptions and interruptions arising due to mobility.

The paper presents a detailed study of the proposed framework and a description of the underlying services and the components therein to validate the framework. Experimental results carried out in WiFi and 3G environments indicate that the proposed techniques can support mobile applications and minimize application disruptions with minimal overhead.

The proposed context management framework is generic in nature and is not designed for a specific class of applications. Any mobile context aware application can leverage on the framework and utilize the provided functionalities to manage application disruptions. Also, the decoupling of mobile application layer and the underlying context data management layer renders context data management layer transparent to the application design.

This paper aims to present findings from 440 responses regarding the experiences of supervision, coping and well-being of 83 service providers and policymakers from eight countries working to support children’s well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A smartphone survey hosted on a custom-built app was used. The data were analysed using qualitative content analysis. The data were gathered in the last quarter of 2020.

While most respondents described the supervision they received as “useful” – both personally and professionally – and reported several characteristics of effective supervision practices, concerns about not receiving optimal support were also voiced. Respondents shared a range of stress management and other self-care practices they used but also revealed their difficulties optimally managing the stresses and anxieties during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, some respondents shared they were feeling helpless, unmotivated and unproductive. Yet, overall, responses were imbued with messages about hope, perseverance and self-compassion.

Using a bespoke smartphone app, rich and intimate insights were generated in real time from a wide range of professionals across high- and low- and middle-income countries – indicating the need to better support their well-being and service delivery.

This article aims to explore the meanings of positionality and demonstrate how reflective memos can illustrate positionality in a constructivist grounded theory (CGT) study.

Acknowledging the positionality of the researcher through a reflective approach is an essential element of CGT studies. The first author (IS) used reflective memoing in her CGT study on Indian immigrant children's asthma to practice reflexivity and make her positionality explicit. Through memos, IS acknowledges her knowledge, beliefs, practices, experience and pre-existing assumptions about the research topic. This article is a compilation of the reflective memos that IS wrote during the initial phase of her research and draws on her motivations as they relate to the topic under study in the context of current literature.

The reflective accounts of a researcher's background and experience can act as a lens for understanding the research question and the choice of methodology.

This article may be useful to novice qualitative researchers who are struggling to define and establish their own positionality. John Dewey's and David Schon's works on reflective thinking serve as valuable tools to practice reflexivity. Philosophically underpinned reflections in the form of memos, employed from the outset and throughout the study, can enhance the study rigour by making research decisions transparent.

This article provides practical guidance on how to outline positionality at the outset of a CGT study.

The global tourism industry is continuing to experience a change from high-touch to high-tech with the increasing implementation of self-service technologies (SSTs) such as hotel reservation websites, kiosk technologies at airports and smartphone applications. SSTs require active customer involvement in the service delivery process and as such, the customer serves as a co-creator of value along with the tourism provider. Although there are benefits to customer involvement in service provision, there is a risk that SST usage may also detract value from the service experience. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to explore customer perspectives on their experiences of SST usage in a tourism context, through the theoretical lens of the service–dominant logic framework.

This interpretivist study employs a two-stage qualitative methodology of short interviews with 133 participants at an international airport, followed by 32 in-depth interviews with SST users in a tourism context.

Six diverse customer SST experiences are identified and then classified in terms of being either value-creating or value-destroying. The first two experiences accruing from SST usage, namely accomplishment and supportiveness, are deemed to be value-creating, while the experiences of lack of control, manipulation, concern about discrimination and social tension are deemed to be value-destroying.

The study responds to a gap in the literature regarding the concept and nature of customer value co-creation pertaining to the use of SSTs in a tourism context. The research findings indicate that value is not only created but may also be destroyed in the SST encounter. The study also illustrates that SST usage may have a strong social element in terms of the presence and role of other customers and employees. This challenges the consensus in the literature that SST usage reduces or removes human interaction.