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This study aims to test the association between transformational leadership and its components and organizational development. As a second aim, this study examines the extent to which employees' maturity may mediate the link between transformational leadership and organizational development.

Hypotheses were tested on a sample of 248 full-time employees (58% men, 42% women) recruited by a simple random sampling method from four Iranian public organizations. Participants were asked to complete scales on transformational leadership, organizational development, and employees' maturity.

Pearson correlation analysis showed a positively significant association between transformational leadership and organizational development. Furthermore, path analysis of structural equation modeling revealed that the direct effect of transformational leadership on organizational development is significant. Additionally, the analysis supported the mediating role of employees' maturity in the link between transformational leadership and organizational development.

Transformational leaders may use the maturity of employees to increase their impact in the process of organizational development.

The dropout rates of open e-learning platforms are often cited as high as 97%, with many users discontinuing their use after initial acceptance. This study aims to explore this anomaly through the lens of affordances theory, revealing design–reality gaps between users' diverse goals and the possibilities for action provided by an open IT artefact.

A six-month case study was undertaken to investigate the design implications of user-perceived affordances in an EU sustainability project which developed an open e-learning platform for citizens to improve their household energy efficiency. Thematic analysis was used to reveal the challenges of user continuance behaviour based on how an open IT artefact supports users in achieving individual goals (e.g. reducing energy consumption in the home) and collective goals (lessening the carbon footprint of society).

Based on the findings, the authors inductively reveal seven affordances related to open e-learning platforms: informing, assessment, synthesis, emphasis, clarity, learning pathway and goal-planning. The findings centre on users' perception of these affordances, and the extent to which the open IT artefact catered to the goals and constraints of diverse user groups. Open IT platform development is further discussed from an iterative and collaborative perspective in order to explore different possibilities for action.

The study contributes towards research on open IT artefact design by presenting key learnings on how the designers of e-learning platforms can bridge design–reality gaps through exploring affordance personalisation for diverse user groups. This can inform the design of open IT artefacts to help ensure that system features match the expectations and contextual constraints of users through clear action-oriented possibilities.

Organizational legitimacy is a central concept in institutional theory and in the more recent stream of communicative institutionalism. Within this scholarship, there exists an elaborated understanding of how macro-level actors, such as news media, influence individual judgments at the micro-level through a top-down communication process. However, little is known about the upward process by which individual propriety judgments influence validity judgments of news media at the macro-level. In this paper, we propose that this upward process of the legitimacy loop is facilitated by the degree to which expressed propriety judgments by individuals create thematic broadness, which bridges stand-alone conversations. Through a study investigating a post-scandal phase in the financial sector, we show how propriety judgments in social media become pre-validated at the meso-level prior to their validation by news media at the macro-level. The presented theoretical framework and empirical insights based on time-series regression analysis provide new knowledge about the multilevel process of organizational legitimacy formation in a digital age and extend our understanding of how a consensus is revealed at the meso-level.

The purpose of this study is to explore beliefs and experiences of Turkish immigrant women in Norway related to body weight, nutrition and exercise practices.

This study has a qualitative research design. Ten semi-structured interviews and a focus group were conducted with a purposive sample of Turkish immigrant women residing in Oslo, Norway. Themes were identified in the transcripts using systematic text condensation.

Participants viewed Turkish women as more commonly overweight or obese compared to Norwegian women. Weight was discussed openly among Turkish women and a preference to lose weight, both as individuals and among community members more broadly, also emerged. For participants, this represented a generational shift. Participants identified their barriers to weight loss, including norms around socialization and food in their community and exercise and eating practices during the long Nordic winter.

Participants expressed a tension between concern about health impacts of overweight and obesity and the desire to uphold cultural practices around food. Weight-related health-care initiatives for Turkish immigrant women can take into account such experiences shaped by their interaction with multiple cultures.

Participants emphasized that perspectives about weight in their Turkish immigrant community were influenced by the transition toward thin weight ideals in Turkey. Self-image regarding weight was also situated within the context of being immigrants in Norway.

The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) of 1977 and its amendment – the Trade and Competitive Act of 1988 – are unique not only in the history of the accounting and auditing profession, but also in international law. The Acts raised awareness of the need for efficient and adequate internal control systems to prevent illegal acts such as the bribery of foreign officials, political parties and governments to secure or maintain contracts overseas. Its uniqueness is also due to the fact that the USA is the first country to pioneer such a legislation that impacted foreign trade, international law and codes of ethics. The research traces the history of the FCPA before and after its enactment, the role played by the various branches of the United States Government – Congress, Department of Justice, Securities Exchange commission (SEC), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS); the contributions made by professional associations such as the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICFA), the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA), the American Bar Association (ABA); and, finally, the role played by various international organizations such as the United Nations (UN), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC). A cultural, ethical and legalistic background will give a better understanding of the FCPA as wll as the rationale for its controversy.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how remote working has been carried out during the first wave of the pandemic in Italian SMEs, representing at the same time an organizational challenge and an excellent opportunity for individual and organizational learning.

This paper involved 60 Italian SMEs of various sectors and 330 employees: 217 clerks (average age 42) and 113 managers (average age 48) belonging to different functional units and with a different education backgrounds. Two different questionnaires, one addressed to clerks and one to managers/executives who coordinate the remote working activity, were prepared and sent. This paper investigates the issues of perceived productivity, technological preparation, coordination, programming and control with specific attention to how the participants faced the remote working experience from the learning point of view.

Before the pandemic, Italian SMEs did not feel the necessity to adopt a structured policy on remote working. The COVID-19 emergency has forced them to consider that working remotely is possible and can produce benefits and positive results for what they learned in terms of autonomy, motivation and trust, to the detriment of physical presence, which is not as fundamental to ensure productivity.

While large, formalized and structured companies encountered modest difficulties being already technologically and culturally prepared for remote working, the big challenge was that of SMEs, who found themselves obliged to adopt it. This paper examines how Italian SMEs lived and evaluated the switch to a new work organization and turned it into an occasion for workplace learning.

Near the end of his life, the eminent literary critic Edmund Wilson was editing his notebooks from the Twenties for publication. At one point he added a long passage on Elinor Wylie, a close friend and successful writer whose work he admired: