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The literature suggests that improvements in nurses' work environments may improve the quality of patient care. Furthermore, monitoring the work environment through staff surveys may be a feasible method of identifying opportunities for quality improvement. This study aimed to confirm five proposed sub‐scales from the Nursing Work Index – Revised (NWI‐R) to assess the nursing work environment and the performance of these sub‐scales across different units in a hospital. Data were derived from a cross‐sectional survey of 243 nurses from 13 units of a 300‐bed university‐affiliated hospital in Quebec, Canada, during 2001. Using confirmatory factor analysis, the five sub‐scales were confirmed; three of the sub‐scales had greater ability to discriminate between units. Using hierarchical regression models, “resource adequacy” was the sub‐scale most strongly associated with the perceived quality of care at the last shift. The NWI‐R sub‐scales are potentially useful for comparison of work environments of different nursing units at the same hospital.

The purpose of this article is to investigate the performance of scales to assess the work environment of hospital professional staff, other than nurses or physicians.

A survey was conducted among professional (non‐nursing or medical) staff at a 300‐bed urban, university‐affiliated Canadian hospital. A total of 24 work environment items were adapted from a scale previously validated among nursing staff. Scales were developed based on a principal components analysis, and were compared among four groups of staff. The relationships between the scales and the following measures were then explored using univariate and multivariate analyses: satisfaction with the work environment, perceived quality of patient care, perceived frequency of patient/family complaints, work‐related injuries, and verbal abuse of staff.

The survey response rate was 154/200 (76.6 percent). Four scales were identified (with corresponding Cronbach's alpha), assessing the following aspects of the work environment: supervisory support (0.88), team‐work (0.84), professionalism (0.77), and interdisciplinary relations (0.64). In multivariate analyses, there were significant differences between the job groups in all four scales. One or more of the scales was significantly associated with overall satisfaction, perceived quality, and adverse incidents, even after adjustment for other staff characteristics.

Limitations include: the cross‐sectional design, subjective measurement of quality of care, small sample sizes in some groups of staff, and the single study site.

The scales developed in this study may be used by managers to assess hospital staff perceptions of the work environment.

The four proposed scales appear to measure meaningful aspects of the working environment that are important in determining overall satisfaction with the work environment and are related to quality of care.

Despite the great importance attributed to values in the family business, few studies have focused on their importance and on how such values influence the way family businesses behave over time. Using Aristotelian virtues as our main framework, the purpose of this paper is to understand what motivates both family members and business families to perform virtuous acts, therefore, observing the underlying beliefs at both levels of analysis that make individuals and families repeatedly behave in a way that reflects the pursuit of excellence of character.

The authors rely on a qualitative methodology, following an interpretive approach. Based on the narratives of family members from two Spanish family businesses, the authors abductively analyze how values and virtues in family businesses allow them to cope with changes that occur across generations.

Findings suggest that family businesses that have survived heavy crises have been able to overcome these critical moments in part due to their strong virtues – both at the individual and at the family level – where the so-called four cardinal virtues have been evident, for example, through the achievement of collective goals and adherence to a stated mission, as well as through behaviors that have been aimed at improving and benefiting the community.

Values are the basis for all businesses and their behaviors. Understanding the type of values, as well as the underlying virtues, that allow for prosperity across generations is important for business families to perpetuate those that allow the family business to thrive.

This paper contributes to the family business field by exploring a key understudied dimension that determines family business prosperity over time and across generations. It brings to the forefront values and virtues that are rarely studied in this setting despite their great importance, using narratives as a key element for value transmission as well as a research method that allows for deeper insights about specific processes.

The purpose of this article is to examine the role of social capital and higher order meta-skills in developing the employability of marketing students at a UK university.

This conceptual article, bolstered by illustrative primary data, provides a broader conceptualisation of employability. This is to address the specific research question on how social capital (contacts and connections) is deployed (via capability-based higher order meta-skills) in a UK university developing the employability of a specific group of students. The article is situated in the highly fraught context of teaching excellence measurement schemes [such as the teaching excellence framework (TEF) in the UK].

The research findings highlighted the role of social capital and higher order meta-skills in developing the employability of marketing students at a UK university.

While the illustrative primary data are not generalisable, as they are limited to one group of marketing students in one UK university; the conceptual development, including a new social capital based definition of employability that incorporated the capabilities, provided by higher-order meta-skills, is widely applicable.

The article has highlighted how the impact of social capital, etiquette and meta-skills, while being “between the lines” of the employability discourse and the metrics of the TEF, explains the differing perceptions of the value of employability initiatives. The article highlights the grey area of between the reasons given as to why some candidates are valued over others. Perhaps no rhyme or reason sometimes, just the “hidden” perception/interpretations of the interview panel of the “qualities” of one candidate over another.

The difficulty in ascertaining the influence of social capital (and how it can be deployed through higher-order meta-skills as capabilities) results in challenges for universities as they endeavour to respond to the data requirements of “learning gain” within teaching excellent measurement schemes such as the UK teaching excellence framework.

The purpose of this study is to help these leaders position themselves for the new economy, to help them see what the author has seen. As the author’s clients emerged from the global economic turmoil that began in 2008, they indicated they had learned numerous lessons – the most important one: when leaders make good decisions, little else matters. When they refuse to make decisions, or show a pattern of making bad ones, nothing else matters. Helping these leaders position themselves for the new economy, the author could see what others did not.

Something was standing in their way – usually the unwillingness or inability to demand cohesion and teamwork. In many cases, they thought they needed more – more education, more experience, more time or more data. They did not realize they had enough of these, but they did lack the confidence, courage and optimism to make the changes that many would resist.

Through this work together, the most successful leaders realized they could no longer push growth. Instead, they had to remove barriers to success and usually these barriers were of their own making. They needed to understand how to leverage their strengths, remove their silo-building behaviors and replace them with silo-busting decisions.

These compelling stories and surprising research findings in this paper focus on real people, who actively sought professional improvement and personal development. Working together, the author and others mapped out their journeys, identified the key roadblocks they faced, recognized the wrong turns they had taken and unlocked their decision-making potential – all the while navigating an increasingly uncertain world and, in some cases, more than doubling the size of their companies.

Creating value through service innovation requires new processes and ways of communicating to multiple stakeholders. Institutions and stakeholders within the service ecosystem, however, often resist change. Adopting a new service strategy entails two distinct costs – monetary and psychological. The tensions between an organization’s need to generate incremental revenue and the challenges of balancing business as usual and the costs associated with service innovation are explored. Specifically, this paper aims to explore the adoption of a customer relationship management (CRM) technology solution in a bureaucratic setting, and the sequence of events needed for successful implementation, with emphasis on overcoming various barriers and hurdles.

A case study methodology is used to gather and analyze data on how the Arizona State University (ASU) athletic department responded to the changing competitive environment via adopting a CRM technology solution. Data collection consisted of ten semi-structured interviews.

The experience of ASU illustrates that the primary benefits of a CRM technology solution include the generation of incremental revenue, capturing data and personalized marketing. The main challenges are coordinating adoption, obtaining commitment, developing competency, estimating costs and creating content.

A conceptual framework emerged from the data that describes the likelihood of a service technology’s successful implementation based upon the interaction of the strength of key actors, organizational situation perception and organizational commitment. The model extends the proposed duality of service innovation outcomes as either success or failure to acknowledge the likelihood of a partial implementation where marginal success is achieved.

The sequence of events needed for successful implementation of a service technology is highlighted, with emphasis on overcoming various barriers and hurdles. Implementation steps are provided, as well as a model to help pinpoint issues.

The case study provides insight for overcoming pitfalls and barriers to adopting a new service technology in a traditionally bureaucratic organization where resistance to change is the norm, and innovation is not.

In his March 1986 article in Newsweek, Russell Watson exposed “Queen Imelda” Marcos's life of indulgence as the Philippines' First Lady in the opening paragraph:Three thousand pairs of shoes, size eight and a half. Five shelves of unused Gucci handbags, still stuffed with paper, price tags still attached. Five hundred bras, mostly black, and a trunk full of girdles, 40 and 42 inches around the hips. Huge bottles of perfume, vats of Christian Dior wrinkle cream, a walk-in-safe littered with dozens of empty jewelry cases. When the palace of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos was opened to the public as a museum last week, foreigners and Filipinos alike gawked at what the former First Lady had left behind. “It was the worst case of conspicuous consumption I have ever seen,” said an American visitor, Rep. Stephen Solarz. “Compared to her, Marie Antoinette was a bag lady.” (Watson, 1986, p. 14)