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Because of the expansion of the internet and Web 2.0 phenomenon, new challenges are emerging in the disclosure practises adopted by organisations in the public-sector. This study aims to examine local governments’ (LGOs) use of social media (SM) in disclosing environmental actions/plans/information as a new way to improve accountability to citizens to obtain organisational legitimacy and the related sentiment of citizens’ judgements.

This paper analyses the content of 39 Italian LGOs’ public pages on Facebook. After the distinction between five classes of environmental issues (air, water, energy, waste and territory), an initial study is performed to detect possible sub-topics applying latent Dirichlet allocation. Having a list of posts related to specific environmental themes, the researchers computed the sentiment of citizens’ comments. To measure sentiment, two different approaches were implemented: one based on a lexicon dictionary and the other based on convolutional neural networks.

Facebook is used by LGOs to disclose environmental issues, focussing on their main interest in obtaining organisational legitimacy, and the analysis shows an increasing impact of Web 2.0 in the direct interaction of LGOs with citizens. On the other hand, there is a clear divergence of interest on environmental topics between LGOs and citizens in a dialogic accountability framework.

Sentiment analysis (SA) could be used by politicians, but also by managers/entrepreneurs in the business sector, to analyse stakeholders’ judgements of their communications/actions and plans on corporate social responsibility. This tool gives a result on time (i.e. not months or years after, as for the reporting system). It is cheaper than a survey and allows a first “photograph” of stakeholders’ sentiment. It can also be a useful tool for supporting, developing and improving environmental reporting.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is one of the first to apply SA to environmental disclosure via SM in the public sphere. The study links modern techniques in natural language processing and machine learning with the important aspects of environmental communication between LGOs and citizens.

This paper aims to assess knowledge relatedness as a possible determinant of business innovation performance. Knowledge relatedness is understood as the degree of similarity between a firm’s knowledge and that of its parent, i.e. the company that the entrepreneur leaves to establish his or her own firm. Innovation performance results from the competitive position that the company achieves through its management of new products and services on the market.

For the empirical work, the authors used a database composed of 356 entrepreneurs who established recently their own business in Costa Rica: people who stopped working in multinational companies in Costa Rica and created their own businesses, and people who created their own businesses simultaneously as the former employees of multinationals.

This paper reports a positive and significant correlation between knowledge relatedness and innovation performance for a number of young firms.

This paper presents the fact of including knowledge relatedness as a research topic linked to business innovation.

The purpose of this action research study was to design, implement and evaluate interventions that enhanced the induction program for new teachers in a P-12 school district. At the outset, we hoped the study would provide new teacher support resulting in improved teaching practices, increased job satisfaction and/or increased teacher retention among the target population. With this in mind, our research question was: What structures and supports from a school-university partnership facilitate capacity-building among university teacher education faculty, school and district leaders, mentor teachers, and new teachers in the context of an induction program?

This study used an intervention-centered mode of action research methodology that aims to make systems-level change. This type of action research intends to solve real organizational problems with a focus on conducting “research in action” rather than “research about action” (Coghlan and Brannick, 2014, pp. 5–6). This approach necessitates that data collection and analysis are iterative processes, occurring throughout the research process, instead of solely at the end stages of the research process. Our action research process used Coghlan and Brannick’s (2014) action research cycle model. The cyclical four-step process includes constructing (verifying the problem in the local context), planning action, taking action and evaluating action. Facilitated by the interim director of a Professional development schools (PDS) partnership in the Southeastern United States, a team of co-researchers which included three university teacher education faculty and four school district administrators used action research methodology to create systemic change that enhanced the district’s induction program. We collected data through multiple qualitative methods, including surveys, focus groups, observations and interviews during the course of three action research cycles. These data and our theoretical framework (complex adaptive systems theory and social network theory) informed two major interventions that supported new teachers during the challenging first year of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.

The interventions and the research process were mutually beneficial for both institutions and contributed to professional learning and growth at the individual, group and system levels. The three major findings described include: (1) engaging in collaborative action research is mutually beneficial for both schools and universities; (2) induction programs benefit from university resources; (3) learning communities build all educators’ professional capacity.

Our research recommendations are: (1) more research is needed on the benefits of school-university partnerships to induction programs; (2) school-university partnerships should leverage action research to improve systems; (3) within school-university partnerships, the connection between collaborative leadership and sustainability requires further research. One limitation was that this study was conducted in a single school-university partnership context involving a large public university and a mid-sized public school district that had a well-established partnership. More induction-centered research is needed in different types of school-university partnership contexts that have varying levels of longevity and partnership structures.

Our recommendations for practice include (1) school-university partnerships should leverage collaborative learning communities to catalyze individual, group and systems-level learning and change, and (2) school-university partnerships must prioritize induction support to strengthen the teaching profession.

Since Hunt’s (2014) literature review on induction support in PDS partnerships, very few empirical studies have been conducted in this research area. This study, which examined induction support in a PDS partnership over a two-year period, makes a significant contribution to the scholarly literature on induction teacher support in school-university partnership contexts. Facilitated by the interim director of a PDS partnership, a team of co-researchers, which included three university teacher education faculty and four school district administrators, used action research methodology to create systems-level supports that enhanced the district’s induction program.

This study examines the strategy–performance relationship within publicly traded German firms. Strategic management literature provides several strategic frameworks that offer guidance on promising strategies. However, given major changes, such as globalization, managers wonder whether strategic frameworks are still applicable.

The authors employ principal component analysis (PCA) to measure competitive strategy and analyze a sample of 6,037 firm-years among 651 firms between 2000 and 2019.

While the authors find evidence for the existence of efficiency-based strategies, differentiation-based strategies and mixed strategies, only differentiation-based strategies are positively related to performance.

The study’s results contribute to the discourse on the strategy–performance relationship, as they provide insights into promising strategies that are of interest to researchers and practitioners. Further, the authors introduce a new measure of competitive strategy based on PCA.

The purpose of this study is to investigate factors surrounding low Emirati student recruitment and retention within a nursing programme in the Abu Dhabi Emirate. A sequential explanatory mixed methods research design was used to collect data from 140 Emirati students at different levels of the nursing program. Questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and related document analyses were used to collect information for this study. Quantitative analysis revealed that overall participants perceived the Emirati society as holding a positive image of nursing, though a majority of them indicated that nursing as a profession, would be a third or last choice of career for them. Inferential analysis on the reasons to choose or not choose nursing, revealed an opportunity to work as part of the team; and as a stepping stone to other professions as significant reasons, versus perceived program difficulty level, and perceived unpleasant tasks. Thematic analysis of interviews highlighted: 1) personal interest; 2) parental support; 3) awareness of the profession; 4) perceived barriers; 5) potential benefits, and 6) policies at the local and national levels. The study has several implications for nursing education and policy in the United Arab Emirates and the region.

.يبظوبأ ةرامإ يف ضيرمتلا جمانرب نمض مهب ظافتحﻻاو نييتارامﻹا ةبلطلا ددع ةلقب ةطيحملا لماوعلا ةسارد وه ةساردلا هذه نم ضرغلا نم تانايبلا عيمجتل ةطلتخم قرط يف لسلستم يثحب ميمصت مادختسا مت دقو 140 .ضيرمتلا جمانرب تايوتسم فلتخم ىلع ايتارامإ ابلاط تسﻻا تلمعتسا ةيبلغأ نأ يمكلا ليلحتلا فشك و .ةساردلا هذهل تامولعملا عمجل ةلصلا تاذ قئاثولا تﻼيلحتو ةمظنملا هبش تﻼباقملاو تانايب ضيرمتلا نأ ىلإ تراشأ مهتيبلغأ نأ نم مغرلا ىلع ،ضيرمتلل ةيباجيإ ةروص لمحي هنأ ىلع يتارامﻹا عمتجملا ىلإ نورظني نيكراشملا مهرايخ نوكيس ،ةنهمك ضيرمتلا رايتخا مدع وأ رايتخا بابسﻷ يلﻻدتسﻻا ليلحتلا يف و .مهل ةبسنلاب ةيفيظولا ةايحلا نم ريخﻷا وأ ثلاثلا ةماه ةيباجيإ بابسأك ،ىرخأ نهمل قﻼطنا ةطقنك وأ ؛قيرفلا نم ءزجك لمعلل ةصرف نع جئاتنلا تفشك ،ةيبلسلاو ةيباجيﻹا بابسﻷا لباقم ا يف و،ضيرمتلا رايتخﻻ رايتخا مدعل ةريبك ةيبلس بابسأ اهنأ ىلع ، اهيف بوغرملا ريغ ماهملاو ،جمانربلا ةبوعص ىوتسم ىلإ رظنلا ،لباقمل :تﻼباقملل يعيضاوملا ليلحتلا زربأو .ةنهمك ضيرمتلا 1 ( ؛ةيصخشلا ةحلصملا 2 ( ؛نيدلاولا معد 3 ( ةنهملاب يعولا ؛ 4 ( ؛ةعقوتملا زجاوحلا 5 ( و ،ةلمتحملا دئاوفلا 6 ( ةلود يف هتاسايسو ضيرمتلا ميلعت ىلع تاروصت ةدع ةساردلا هذهلو .ينطولاو يلحملا نييوتسملا ىلع تاسايسلا ةقطنملاو ةدحتملا ةيبرعلا تارامﻹا .

Outsourcing is recognized as one of the critical factors for efficient execution of pharmaceutical supply chain management (PSCM), and many pharmaceutical companies engage in international outsourcing of services (IOS) to survive in global highly competitive business. Since the key success factors for both domestic & international alliances are partnership characteristics and strategic fit management, but there is no empirical research on this issue in Thai pharmaceutical partnership offshore outsourcing. Therefore, this survey of Thai and foreign companies, both contract providers (CPs) and contract manufacturers (CMs), seeks to indicate significant relationships among both outsourcing strategic fit and partnership types, including outsourcing performance outcome. This research is two-fold. First, the partnership types (Type I, II, & III), the strategic fit types (low fit, moderate fit, and good fit), and their correlations are analyzed. And second, their outsourcing performance (company revenues and growth rates) are presented. The results showed that the most of the Thai pharmaceutical outsourcing manufacturing are classified as the partnership Type II, as well as the moderate strategic fit, and strongly support the relationship between the two models. Both of the companies’ revenue and growth rate could predict the companies’ performances outcome for each of partnership and strategic fit types. However, it is not necessary that the most integrative type of partnership, Type III, will be always the best, because it depends also on the strategic fit between each pair of partners as well.

Although management scholars have embraced grand challenges research, in many cases, grand challenges have been treated as merely a context for exploring extant theoretical perspectives. By comparison, our approach – robust action – provides a novel theoretical framework for tackling grand challenges. In this invited article, we revisit our 2015 model, clarifying and elaborating its key elements and taking stock of subsequent developments. We then identify three promising directions for future research: scaffolding, future imaginaries, and distributed actorhood. Ultimately, our core message is remarkably simple: robust action strategies – participatory architecture, multivocal inscription and distributed experimentation – jointly provide a means for tackling grand challenges that is well matched to their complexities, uncertainties, and evaluativities.

The purpose of this study is to analyze how institutional governance and business environment affect countries’ competitiveness and their relative importance.

In this paper, the authors analyze how institutional governance and business environment affect countries’ competitiveness, their relative importance and what are the implications for Brazil. The authors have collected data from 131 countries related to the institutional governance, business environment and competitiveness of these countries. For the analysis of the mentioned influences, the technique of partial least squares structural equations modeling is used.

Results indicate that the main role in countries’ competitiveness is played by the quality of institutional governance. The quality of the business environment reinforces the positive effect of the quality of institutional governance on countries’ competitiveness (mediation effect). Brazil has poor governance quality indicators when compared to high-middle income countries, especially regarding government effectiveness, political stability and control of corruption.

The study provides a better understanding of the relative importance of governance quality and business environment quality for countries’ competitiveness. One limitation of this study is that the research was restricted to data related to the year 2019.

For strategists and decision-makers, understanding these effects on countries’ competitiveness and their relative importance is fundamental to understanding what makes their companies internationally competitive.

The presence and appreciation of institutional governance quality need to be cultivated in society.

Instead of using the original diamond model, which presents circular relationships, the authors have used the business environment construct, composed of elements of the diamond model to test the relationships between the quality of institutional governance, competitiveness and the business environment.