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The purpose of this paper is to analyze the implementation of an organizational change initiative – Studer Group®’s Evidence-Based Leadership (EBL) – in two large, US health systems by comparing and contrasting the factors associated with successful implementation and sustainability of the EBL initiative.

This comparative case study assesses the responses to two pairs of open-ended questions during in-depth qualitative interviews of leaders and managers at both health systems. Qualitative content analysis was employed to identify major themes.

Three themes associated with success and sustainability of EBL emerged at both health systems: leadership; culture; and organizational processes. The theme most frequently identified for both success and sustainability of EBL was culture. In contrast, there was a significant decline in salience of the leadership theme as attention shifts from success in implementation of EBL to sustaining EBL long term. Within the culture theme, accountability, and buy-in were most often cited by interviewees as success factors, while sense of accountability, buy-in, and communication were the most reported factors for sustainability.

Cultural factors, such as accountability, staff support, and communication are driving forces of success and sustainability of EBL across both health systems. Leadership, a critical factor in several stages of implementation, appears to be less salient as among factors identified as important to longer term sustainability of EBL.

In this chapter, we document the growing importance of FDI from BRIC countries in relation to FDI from both developed and developing countries and investigate the types of firms that are responsible for BRIC FDI.

We follow a two-step empirical approach. First, we provide macro evidence on FDI from BRIC countries. We use UNCTAD data to highlight the patterns of FDI flows and stocks. Second, we provide firm-level evidence on FDI. Using ORBIS data, we elaborate a rich taxonomy of FDI that accounts for the decision to invest abroad and for the location, ownership, and number of foreign subsidiaries. Thus, we characterize BRIC multinationals’ involvement in FDI and examine the relationship between FDI and performance at the firm level.

We unveil new facts about BRIC multinationals. BRIC multinationals are in the minority in their home countries, but they outperform domestic enterprises. Within the group of BRIC investors, those firms that invest in developing countries, that operate in joint ventures, or that have more than five foreign subsidiaries are in the minority, but they outperform those firms that select other FDI strategies.

Our estimates document a positive and robust correlation between FDI and performance; however, the cross-sectional nature of our data does not permit a proper causality analysis.

Our work contributes to the International Economics literature on internationalization and firm performance as well as to the International Business literature on FDI from emerging economies. With respect to the former, we innovate by studying the relation between FDI strategies and firm performance. In relation to the latter, we innovate by introducing firm-level data and a cross-country approach that lets us illustrate the roles and features of FDI from BRIC countries.

This study analyzes the effects of gender and occupational status differences on parents’ work-to-family conflicts, comparing COVID-19 pandemic and pre-pandemic periods. It is examined whether this association is mediated by parents’ telework. Theoretically, we use the work/family border theory and flexible resource versus greedy role perspectives to shed light on the gender- and status-related use of telework and illustrate the influence of flexible working practices on parents’ work-to-family conflicts. Using moderated mediation analysis combined with bootstrapping, we analyze data from two waves of the German Family Panel (pairfam), covering pre-pandemic (2017/18, 2019/2020) and pandemic periods (2020) (N = 3,315). Our results show higher work-to-family conflicts for parents with higher occupational status as well as teleworking parents. Furthermore, we find supporting evidence for the mediation from occupational status to work-to-family conflicts via telework, with a slightly stronger relationship among mothers than fathers. Under the consideration of the pandemic, the mediating effect was only provable for mothers but not for fathers. However, the mediating effect of telework does not strengthen under the pandemic conditions. Our findings support the greedy role perspective, in particular for employees with higher-status occupations, and the assumption of a negative influence of work–family integration through telework for work-to-family conflicts.

This chapter examines the extent to which Working from Home (WfH) affects the temporal alignment of work and private life, i.e., the consideration of personal and family interests in work scheduling, for male and female employees with and without children. A distinction is made between telework that is formally recognized home working time by the employer, and informal overtime at home that is not recorded. It is argued that while the first represents a job resource, by increasing flexibility in work scheduling, the latter constitutes a job demand, which hinders the consideration of personal and family responsibilities in work time planning. Due to differences in status beliefs, identification and the distribution of childcare, gender gaps as well as differences according to family responsibilities are predicted in these associations. Using data from the German BIBB/BAuA Employment Survey 2018, the temporal alignment of work and private life is found to be positively associated with telework, particularly so for men, and negatively associated with informal overtime at home, particularly so for women. While mothers do not benefit from telework during regular working hours in particular, they have the worst temporal alignment of work and private life when they work informal overtime at home.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, working from home (WFH) has become the norm for many employees and their families in Germany. Although WFH has been suggested as a form of flexible work to foster work–life integration (especially for workers with greater care responsibilities), studies have also pointed to its risks when the boundaries between these two life spheres become blurred. To help disentangle these inconsistent findings in relation to work–family conflict, this study focuses on two main concerns: the relevance of additional forms of flexibility for those who work from home (i.e., temporal flexibility, job autonomy, fixed rules about availability) and the implications of WFH for employees’ social relationships with co-workers and supervisors. Based on linked employer–employee data collected in the spring of 2021, the study examined work-to-family conflict (WFC) and family-to-work conflict (FWC) among a sample of 885 employees who worked from home. The results indicate that three factors – temporal flexibility, job autonomy, and fixed rules about availability as a way to set boundaries between work and family life – are important predictors of fewer work–family conflict. This equally applies to employees with caring obligations who overall experience more work–family conflicts while WFH. For those who cared for relatives, autonomy contributed even to fewer work–family conflicts. Supportive relationships with supervisors and co-workers are certainly directly beneficial when it comes to avoiding conflict, but they also reinforce the positive implications of flexible work, whereas poor relationships counteract the benefits of such flexibility. Thus, employers need to provide additional forms of flexibility to employees who work from home and should pay attention to social relationships among their employees as a way to support families and other individuals.

The key questions explored in this volume converge around issues of educational governance in the context of globalization. The individual chapters each contribute to the goals of assessing the development of the educational agenda of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and providing evidence on the trajectories through which the organization’s programs and policies have directly and indirectly influenced and affected diverse educational systems. The chapter explores these issues in more depth, drawing on the perspectives presented in the volume’s individual chapters. The first section provides a discussion of the contexts that have given rise to the OECD as a key global education policy actor. Following this brief historical overview, some of the key findings raised by the volume’s authors are examined in the context of wider literature on global education policy. Collectively, the chapters raise important questions about the role of nation-states in educational planning, the scope and spatiality of international assessments such as PISA and TALIS, and the complexity of evidence and expertise in global, national, and local educational policy-making. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of the implications of the volume’s work for the wider field of comparative and international education.

Due to the “European Union Framework Directive on Safety and Health at work” (Directive 89/391/EEC, 1989), every employer is obliged to avoid psychosocial hazards when designing work. Little is known empirically about the barriers that workplace actors experience while developing and implementing OSH measures that prevent psychosocial hazards. The purpose of this paper is to explore barriers, causes and attempts to overcome them and discusses them with reference to relevant theoretical concepts and models that help to explain how these barriers hinder the development and implementation of OSH measures.

Semi-structured interviews with workplace actors in charge of psychosocial risk assessment (PRA) were conducted in 41 business cases, and transcripts were analysed using a thematic analysis approach. Barriers, causes and attempts to overcome them were extracted inductively and discussed with reference to relevant theories and explanatory models.

The complex nature of psychosocial risks, hindering general beliefs, lack of a perceived scope for risk avoidance, lack of assumptions of responsibility among players on all hierarchical levels, discrepancies between formal responsibility and decision authority, and low reflexivity on processes of development and implementation of interventions were described as barriers. Causes and attempts to overcome these barriers were reflected upon by workplace actors.

Recommendations on the organisation of PRA will be given with respect to the reported results and relevant research in this field.

This qualitative study explores the barriers to developing and implementing OSH measures to eliminate psychosocial hazards, from the perspective of actors in charge of PRA, and why they might fail.