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This paper aims to review the challenges of performance appraisal in organizations and argue that these challenges can and must be overcome.

The authors review research on performance appraisal in organizations and on claims that organizations are abandoning performance appraisal.

Structured performance appraisals are still the norm in organizations around the world. There are clear and practical strategies for improving appraisals. These include improving feedback and removing unnecessary complexity, clarifying the goals of appraisal systems, focusing appraisal on behaviors and outcomes under the employee's control and increasing the fairness of appraisal systems.

Research is needed on the effects of changing the ways performance appraisals are conducted in organizations.

Practical strategies for improving performance appraisal are outlined.

Better performance appraisals will benefit organizations and their members.

This paper refutes the growing claim that organizations are abandoning performance appraisal and illustrates practical strategies for improving performance appraisal.

The purpose of this study was to examine the learning experiences of high school Black males participating in an academy of engineering that was configured as a magnet school. We followed a qualitative case study design to explore the experiences of 16 Black male academies of engineering students. We identified three recurring themes from the interviews with the Black male academy of engineering students: Promoting Interests in STEM, Drawing Connections to Core Academic Concepts, and An Affinity for Hands-on Learning through the Engineering Curriculum. The results of our study helped us to better understand how academies provide a platform for Black male students' interest in engineering as a viable college and career pathway.

The purpose of the study was to explore and articulate how Socratic seminar might be considered more completely as part of justice-focused social studies classroom disciplinary practices.

The authors reviewed the literature on Socratic seminar and developed a model for its practical use. The authors used the model to demonstrate its use in teaching civil rights history, as an example for implementation.

Socratic seminar is an instructional method that layers several disciplinary literacy skills within social studies that have the combined potential to create a transformative dialogue within the classroom and communities, especially when leveraged in more complex multi-text ways. Through the seminars, students can better understand what the authors name horizontal historical analysis, the perspective on concurrent social justice movements and vertical curricular analysis or how social justice movements experience continuity and change over time.

The authors provided an accessible model for teachers and students to use Socratic seminars as part of transformational social studies practices.

The authors demonstrate how the Socratic seminar model can provide students with the intellectual foundation for considering social action as more critically informed civic agents.

The authors examine and offer a model of how Socratic seminar can engage students in vertical and/or horizontal historical analysis for transformational purposes. Further, the authors identify how Socratic seminar can build the skills and dispositions of social studies, provide space for knowledge creation through critical historical inquiry and help reframe how teachers and students understand learning and human relationships by shifting the classroom power and promoting student agency through dialogue.

In the ever-evolving digital landscape, this study aims to explore which specific personality traits contribute to the innovativeness of startups, with a particular emphasis on understanding how technology adoption mediates this relationship. By doing so, the authors strive to unveil the nuanced dynamics of personality, technology adoption and startup innovativeness in the digital era.

The authors conduct a quantitative empirical analysis using a sample of 1,314 German startups. This study utilizes a mediation analysis to examine the effects of personality traits on the innovativeness of startups, taking technology adoption as a mediator into account.

The empirical results show certain personality traits have direct effects on innovativeness. Also, the results show that technology adoption is a driver of startup innovativeness. In addition, these traits are (partially) mediated by technology adoption.

The results shed new light on the interplay of entrepreneurs' personality and technology adoption in relation to startup innovativeness and therefore underline the importance of technology in this triangular relationship. The authors employ secondary data from startups in Germany, which complicates generalization of the results to other geographical and cultural contexts.

This study contributes to the scientific debate on the role of personality traits in entrepreneurship by providing empirical evidence on the mediating effect of technology adoption in the relationship between personality traits and startup innovativeness. The findings offer valuable insights for researchers, entrepreneurs and policymakers interested in understanding and promoting innovativeness in the context of startups.

This paper aims to establish a theoretical framework that can comprehensively explain the executive compensation in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) within the context of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

The author develops a theoretical framework for executive compensation in SOEs from the perspective of Marxist economics and points out that the executives in SOEs are engaged in management labor, and their compensation should adhere to the principle of distribution according to labor contribution.

Based on this theory, the author posits that the continuous upward trend of executive compensation in SOEs, is consistent with the trend of SOEs' ongoing expansion, which reflects a continuous improvement of SOE executives' management labor in both quality and quantity.

It is necessary to start with Marxist economic theory and scientifically study the issue of SOE executive compensation, adhere to the principle of distribution according to work in the context of a socialist market economy and implement the specific guideline of the Party Central Committee; only in this way can the long-term healthy development of SOEs be promoted continuously.

Although humanoid robots are increasingly adopted in many business settings, the dynamic effects of anthropomorphism and the functional perceptions of service robots on consumers’ responses remain unclear. This paper aims to examine the impacts of robot anthropomorphism on consumers’ trust, receptivity and the downstream effect on satisfaction. Furthermore, it examines the mediating effects of perceived ease of use (PEOU) and perceived usefulness (PU) in the relationship between anthropomorphism and consumer responses.

After conducting two separate pilot studies to help design the research materials, this research involves three sequential studies. In studies 1A and 1B, the authors used two distinct humanoid robots (i.e. Connie and Pepper) to test the direct effects of anthropomorphism on trust and receptivity and the mediated effects via PEOU and PU. Study 2 conducted a 2 (robot appearance: machine-like vs. human-like) × 2 (task complexity: low vs. high) between-subjects experimental design to further explore the boundary effects of task complexity on trust and customer satisfaction.

This research theorizes and empirically examines the mediating effects of PEOU and PU in the relationship between anthropomorphism and consumers’ responses (i.e. trust and receptivity) to service robots. Results also demonstrate a moderating role of task complexity, whereby only when the task was complex did anthropomorphism affect consumer responses and customer satisfaction. The parallel mediations of PEOU and PU were also confirmed. However, when task complexity was low, the authors observed no differences between human- and machine-like robots.

First, this research used a scenario-based method by exposing participants to different pictures or videos of service robots and measuring individuals’ responses. Consumers may respond differently upon interacting with robots in actual service contexts. Second, future research could investigate the effects of other aspects of anthropomorphism, such as robots’ voice characteristics (gender, high/low pitch), verbal communication styles and emotional expression. Finally, future research could explore other service contexts to test the generalizability of the findings.

Findings of this study also provide useful insight for companies interested in adopting service robots. First, the authors unearthed several positive outcomes of using human-like versus machine-like robots in service settings. Despite concerns about the perceived creepiness and discomfort associated with human-like robots, managers should not worry about these service agents’ potential negative effects. Second, it shows that human-like robots’ competitive advantage over machine-like robots stands out when task complexity is high. Managers should therefore carefully consider relevant service characteristics and task requirements when deciding whether to adopt robots.

This study provides original and valuable contributions to the growing literature on service robots by addressing scholarly incongruencies regarding the impact of anthropomorphism and disentangling its positive influence on consumers’ perceptions and acceptance of service robots. This study also contributes to research on technology acceptance and service robot receptivity by empirically demonstrating the mediating role of PEOU and PU. Furthermore, this research enriches the body of knowledge on task-technology fit by providing evidence that task complexity is a crucial factor to consider in service robot design.

What started as an apparently benign virus in a remote district of China suddenly had the entire world under its grip, with thousands dying every day in all parts of the world. World Health Organization declared it a pandemic and requested every country and every institution to minimize human contact and maintain spatial distance. The pandemic was there to stay and while the world tried to find its antidote months and years passed before a solution was found, or nearly so. Educational institution was affected with the entire economy of every country. Future of our next generation and the continuity of education were at stake. The only possible solution was to teach and learn from the safe corner of one’s home. It meant a transition of the entire education system to an online mode, which was unprecedented. Institutions grappled with technology, trying to find the right approach of imparting education, with added expenses and training the academicians to find a level of comfort teaching online. This book explores the theory that evolved around online teaching and cites evidence that has been gathered toward self-regulation and resiliency, highlighting the power and privilege and the best practices for implementing techniques to support students. COVID-–19 meant a paradigm shift toward teaching–learning methods and soon became the “new norm” in designing curricula so that students can continue with their journey toward acquiring high-standard quality education without any disruption in the future.