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Changes in the physical environments of health care settings have become increasingly common to meet the evolving needs of the health care marketplace, new technologies, and infrastructure demands. Physical environment change takes many forms including new build construction, renovation of existing space, and relocation of units with little to no construction customization. The interrelated nature of the complex socio-technical health care system suggests that even small environmental modifications can result in system-level changes. Environmental modifications can lead to unintended consequences and introduce the potential for latent safety threats. Engaging users throughout the change lifecycle allows for iterative design and testing of system modifications. This chapter introduces a flexible process model, PROcess for the Design of User-Centered Environments (PRODUCE), designed to guide system change. The model was developed and refined across a series of real-world renovations and relocations in a large multihospital health care system. Utilizing the principles of user-centered design, human factors, and in-situ simulation, the model engages users in the planning, testing, and implementation of physical environment change. Case studies presented here offer exemplars of how to modify the model to support individual project objectives and outcomes to assess at each stage of the project.

Wonders whether companies actually have employees best interests at heart across physical, mental and spiritual spheres. Posits that most organizations ignore their workforce – not even, in many cases, describing workers as assets! Describes many studies to back up this claim in theis work based on the 2002 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference, in Cardiff, Wales.

As government funding continues to decrease, higher education (HE) providers are pressed to become autonomous in terms of managing resources and innovation. Many operate as small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), expanding business activities beyond borders by integrating programmes of International Academic Mobility (IAM). Such programmes involve managing the flow of staff beyond national borders, contributing to a key dimension of internationalisation and IAM-driven innovation. This paper seeks to ascertain the motivations, benefits and barriers for undertaking IAM, and the HR processes through which they operate.

A four-stage qualitative methodological approach including interviews with 26 participants is employed to identify factors that motivate staff to participate in IAM programmes.

Eight factors that motivate staff to be involved with IAM (breaking from routine, leisure/recreation, socio-cultural discovery, networking, altruism, developing new skills/capabilities, research/funding collaboration and self-enhancement) and four issues that act as barriers (funding, HR myopia/lack of information, personal circumstances and schedule constraints) are identified.

This study contributes to an important yet under-researched area of employee-driven IAM, developing a conceptual framework that draws from and enriches: expectancy theory, communities of practice, social and human capital theories and intrapreneurship (i.e. employee-driven innovation).

This paper highlights the social context of common mental disorders in primary care and the paucity of evidence relating to effective social interventions. It introduces the ABC‐E Model of Emotion, which combines social interventions with psychological therapy, and discusses how the implementation of the new role of graduate primary care mental health worker (GPCMHW) provides an opportunity for holistic practice in helping individuals experiencing mild to moderate mental health difficulties in primary care. It provides a case example of the implementation of the ABC‐E model and makes recommendations for further research including the evaluation of the model and GPCMHW training programmes.

Patient engagement has been a focus of patient-centered care in recent years, encouraging health care organizations to increase efforts to facilitate a patient's ability to participate in health care. At the same time, a growing body of research has examined the impact that social determinants of health (SDOH) have on patient health outcomes. Additionally, health care equity is increasingly becoming a focus of many organizations as they work to ensure that all patients receive equitable care. These three domains – patient engagement, SDOH, and health care equity – can intersect in the implementation of social needs screenings among health care organizations. We present a case study on a two-phase social needs screening implementation project and describe how this process focuses on equity. As health care organizations seek to increase patient engagement, address SDOH, and improve health equity, we highlight the need to move away from a siloed approach and view these efforts as interrelated. By approaching efforts to address these challenges and barriers as the duty of all those involved in the patient care process, there may be larger strides made toward equitable health care.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how the characteristics of low-volume manufacturing industries influence the product introduction process and factors which can facilitate that process in low-volume manufacturing industries.

A literature review and a multiple-case study were used to achieve the purpose of the paper. The multiple-case study was based on two product development projects in a low-volume manufacturing company.

The main identified characteristics of the product introduction process in low-volume manufacturing industries were a low number of prototypes, absence of conventional production ramp-up, reduced complexity of the process, failure to consider the manufacturability of the products due to an extensive focus on their functionality and increased complexity of resource allocation. It was determined that prior production of similar products could serve as a facilitator of the manufacturing process.

The main limitation of this study is that the identified characteristics and facilitating factors are confined to the internal variables of the studied company. A study of the role of external variables during the product introduction process such as suppliers and customers could be the subject of future studies.

This research will provide practitioners in low-volume manufacturing industries with general insight about the characteristics of the product introduction process and the aspects that should be considered during the process.

Whereas there is a significant body of work about product introduction process in high-volume manufacturing industries, the research on characteristics of the product introduction process in low-volume manufacturing industries is limited.

A growing body of research suggests that conflict can be beneficial for groups and organizations (e.g., De Dren & Van De Vliert, 1997). This paper articulates the argument that to be in conflict is to be emotionally activated (Jones, 2000) and utilizes Galtung's (1996) triadic theory of conflict transformation to locate entry points for conflict generation. Application of these ideas is presented through exemplars that demonstrate the utility of addressing emotions directly in the management of organizational conflicts.

Smartphones play an integral part in many children's lives. Their constant presence in various contexts and the multitude of affordances they present have a tremendous effect on how childhoods are lived today. One important aspect is the way children's interaction with smartphones can affect relationships and particularly generational relations. In this explorative study, we investigated Azerbaijani children's interaction with smartphones in the family and at school using the sociomaterial and relational approaches. Thinking relationally, we followed children's stories to unravel how smartphones can mediate different types of behavior and assist children in negotiating their place in generational order with the adults in their lives. Analyses suggest that smartphones can both present children with bargaining power to negotiate pleasure and fun as well as means to reinforce the generational order by children themselves. The findings point out that children often transfer social norms and expectations placed on them to the ways they use smartphones.

Today’s public administration is facing a wide range of challenges. This situation requires an ability to change and innovate. However, difficulties in the implementation of innovations have been seen as the cause of many administrations’ inability to achieve the intended benefits of innovations. The purpose of this study is, therefore, to empirically determine which – out of a wide range of enabling factors for innovations – may be the most important for the specific process step of moving from ideas to implementation of innovations in a public administration context, and, furthermore, to identify possible additional enablers for this specific process step.

This study is a qualitative study based on semi-structured interviews with city officials in four cities on four continents.

The study identifies five key enablers for transforming ideas into implemented innovations in public administration: a committed and hands-on leadership, internal as well as external networking, innovation processes over time alternately organized as a separate project and, as part of the standard operating procedures, a system understanding, including an understanding of how the parts contribute to a shared vision and communication of achieved, tangible, short-term results. Three of these enablers are previously identified as overall enablers for innovation and two complement previously identified enablers.

The article identifies enabling factors for the specific step of going from idea generation to implementation of innovations in a public sector context. The article also reviews enabling factors from real experiences. Much of the former literature is conceptual. The article analyses an area in which there is a general lack of empirical research.