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The purpose of this paper is to provide a retrospective analysis of computer simulation’s role in accelerating individual innovation adoption decisions. The process innovation examined is Lean Systems Thinking, and the organizational context is the imaging department of an Australian public hospital.

Intrinsic case study methods including observation, interviews with radiology and emergency personnel about scheduling procedures, mapping patient appointment processes and document analysis were used over three years and then complemented with retrospective interviews with key hospital staff. The multiple data sources and methods were combined in a pragmatic and reflexive manner to explore an extreme case that provides potential to act as an instructive template for effective change.

Computer simulation of process change ideas offered by staff to improve patient-flow accelerated the adoption of the process changes, largely because animated computer simulation permitted experimentation (trialability), provided observable predictions of change results (observability) and minimized perceived risk.

The difficulty of making accurate comparisons between time periods in a health care setting is acknowledged.

This work has implications for policy, practice and theory, particularly for inducing the rapid diffusion of process innovations to address challenges facing health service organizations and national health systems.

The research demonstrates the value of animated computer simulation in presenting the need for change, identifying options, and predicting change outcomes and is the first work to indicate the importance of trialability, observability and risk reduction in individual adoption decisions in health services.

This chapter presents an exposition of the Generalized Fechner–Thurstone (GFT) direct utility function, the system of demand functions derived from it, other systems of demand functions from which it can be derived, and its purpose and the econometric circumstances that motivated its original development. Its use in econometrics is demonstrated by an application to household consumer survey data which explores the relationship between prices, on the one hand, and expected exogenous preference changers such as household size, schooling of heads of household, and other social factors, on the other.

Studies and analyses changes to the promotion policies and practices at the University of Western Australia (UWA) and identifies outcomes by gender. Suggests that there are quite a few factors to be addressed before gender equity in academia at UWA is obtained. Discusses, in depth, how to try to deal with lack of networks, socialization, the dual‐role burden, masculine organizational culture and gendered power imbalance in the workplace. States that, although great inroads have been made at UWA, statistics show that there are still very fundamental barriers to be addressed to aid further improvement for women academics.

This study aims to examine the interplay between ownership structure (organisational form) and management control system (MCS) design as governance structures within Australian primary health-care organisations (PHOs), seeking support for the suggestion that professional services will be most efficiently and effectively provided in organisations that have internal governance that is matched to their ownership form.

The analysis is based on a series of in-depth investigations into the MCS choices made by seven Australian PHOs. Arguing that the degree of information impactedness is inversely related to the level of general practitioner (GP) ownership, organisations where more than 50 per cent of the GPs working within the practice are owners are classified as “high ownership” (“low information impactedness”). The adoption by high-performing organisations of their predicted MCS archetype according to Speklé’s development is then interpreted as representing empirical support.

The findings provide uniform support for the importance of the match between ownership structure and internal governance mechanisms. As predicted, the two high-performing, high member-owned organisations reported MCS resembling exploratory archetypes, the three high-performing, low member-owned organisations reported MCS consistent with a boundary archetype and the two low-performing organisations reported little emphasis on any control.

This study provides evidence of the importance of the appropriate match between ownership structure and internal governance mechanisms for PHOs.

This study has potential to assist managers, owners and advisors to optimise MCS design in professional services organisations where there is heterogeneous ownership by professionals.

This study is one of the few attempts to provide empirical support for the assertion of the importance of a match between ownership structure and MCS design. It also represents one of the few attempts to provide empirical support for Speklé’s (2001) control archetypes, here the boundary and exploratory archetypes, archetypes that are applicable within important sectors of the economy, notably the professional services sector.

Employee loyalty is generally a very positive trait. However, when loyal employees are confronted with dysfunctionality in the workplace the impact on their well-being can be significant. The purpose of this paper is to assess the interaction of employee loyalty and employee experience of inter-professional dysfunction in a hospital setting to predict employee job tension.

The paper is based on the analysis of a cross-sectional attitudinal survey of employees within a hospital setting in Australia. The authors use OLS regression and an SPSS macro (by Hayes, 2013) to assess the regions of significance of the interaction effects.

The authors find, as anticipated, significant direct effects for employee loyalty and inter-professional dysfunction on employee job stress. The authors further find significant interaction effects that suggest that highly loyal employees who experience inter-professional dysfunction also experience disproportionately high levels of job tension.

The main research implication of this research relates to the confirmation of the presence of an interaction effect between loyalty and inter-professional dysfunction in predicting employee job stress. Further, the zone of significance analysis (following Johnson and Neyman) suggests that this effect is evident at even low levels of inter-professional dysfunction.

Organisations should appreciate employee loyalty but should also be aware that loyal employees are more vulnerable to the negative consequences of organisational dysfunction than are employees with limited organisational loyalty.

The paper confirms the importance of managing organisational cooperation between groups in organisations as a precursor to positive employee outcomes.

This is the first paper to investigate this interaction and to apply Johnson-Neyman analysis to confirm the regions of significance for the interaction effects noted.

Positive organizational scholarship in healthcare (POSH) suggests that, to promote widespread improvement within health services, focusing on the good, the excellent, and the brilliant is as important as conventional approaches that focus on the negative, the problems, and the failures. POSH offers different opportunities to learn from and build resilient cultures of safety, innovation, and change. It is not separate from tried and tested approaches to health service improvement – but rather, it approaches this improvement differently. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

POSH, appreciative inquiry (AI) and reflective practice were used to inform an exploratory investigation of what is good, excellent, or brilliant health service management.

The researchers identified new characteristics of good healthcare and what it might take to have brilliant health service management, elucidated and refined POSH, and identified research opportunities that hold potential value for consumers, practitioners, and policymakers.

The secondary data used in this study offered limited contextual information.

This approach is a platform from which to: identify, investigate, and learn about brilliant health service management; and inform theory and practice.

POSH can help to reveal what consumers and practitioners value about health services and how they prefer to engage with these services.

Using POSH, this paper examines what consumers and practitioners value about health services; it also illustrates how brilliance can be theorized into health service management research and practice.

The purpose of this project was to examine the extent to which early-career women faculty in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) experience working in a chilly interpersonal climate (as indicated by experiences of ostracism and incivility) and how those experiences relate to work and non-work well-being outcomes.

Data came from a sample of 96 early-career STEM faculty (Study 1) and a sample of 68 early-career women STEM faculty (Study 2). Both samples completed online surveys assessing their experiences of working in a chilly interpersonal climate and well-being.

In Study 1, early-career women STEM faculty reported greater experiences of ostracism and incivility and more negative occupational well-being outcomes associated with these experiences compared to early-career men STEM faculty. In Study 2, early-career women STEM faculty reported more ostracism and incivility from their male colleagues than from their female colleagues. Experiences of ostracism (and, to a lesser extent, incivility) from male colleagues also related to negative occupational and psychological well-being outcomes.

This paper documents that exposure to a chilly interpersonal climate in the form of ostracism and incivility is a potential explanation for the lack and withdrawal of junior women faculty in STEM academic fields.

Social studies educators have displayed an interest in student-created multimedia, including digital documentaries. The research community has responded with a small but growing body of studies, but the literature to date has not explored students‘ perspectives on these assignments. This study combined classroom observations, document analysis, and student interviews to examine students‘ views of technology, the curriculum, and their final products. The findings reveal that students come to technology-based, content-driven assignments with prior conceptions of both the technology and the content. These expectations shape student actions and transform the assignment, in some cases surpassing curricular expectations. Evidence from students‘ products, classroom observations, and interview data, however, also suggest that student agency was limited by the classroom reality of mimetic learning. The results of this study have various implications for teacher educators and educational researchers interested in leveraging technology to improve learning. They must acknowledge the dynamic nature of classroom interaction and the impact student choices have on Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK). Technology integration occurs in the operational curriculum, often in unpredictable ways. Based on our study we know that student preconceptions and desires impact the learning goals. By better under-standing the role of student agency, teachers can plan for instruction that uses digital history to effectively teach content.