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Data collected from 319 senior executives and 2477 of their subordinates from a global diversified organization were used to explore the impact of differences in individual personality orientation on the processes by which these individuals enable their workgroups. Personality orientation was defined in terms of self‐ratings on four distinct groupings derived from a k‐means cluster analysis of self‐ratings on the Myers‐Briggs Type Indicator and the Kirton Adaptation Inventory. Perceptions of enablement and ratings of executive behavior were based on questionnaires completed by subordinates. Although no differences were found with respect to the overall degree of enablement experienced by subordinates, personality orientation did affect the specific behaviors employed by executives to enable others and the degree of managerial self‐awareness exhibited (operationalized as congruence in self vs. subordinates' ratings). Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.

While climatic conditions are believed to have some influence on triggering conflicts, the existing empirical results on the nature and statistical significance of their explanatory role are not conclusive. We construct a dataset for a sample of 139 countries which records the occurrence of an armed conflict, the annual average temperature and precipitation levels, as well as the relevant socioeconomic, demographic, and geographic measures over the 1961–2011 period. Using this dataset and controlling for the effect of relevant nonclimate variables, our comprehensive econometric analyses support the influencing role of climatic factors. Our results are robust and consistent with the hypothesis that climate warming is instrumental in raising the probability of onset of internal armed conflicts and suggests that, along with regulating population size and promoting political stability, controlling climate change is an effective factor for inducing peace by way of curtailing the onset of armed conflicts.

The importance of succession in family business is well documented and there is general agreement that successful succession represents a key factor in the success or otherwise of individual businesses owned and run by families. The importance of gender in family business succession is a much more recent topic, where initial work has focussed very much on the increasing tendency for women to take on the family business as a successor. Far less research, however, considers the scenario where a female leader passes on the business, whether that takes the form of family succession, a new leader from out with the family or indeed business sale. This dearth of research is not entirely surprising: whilst female leaders in a family business context are not new, their numbers have been relatively small and often mediated through the lens of co-preneurship with a male partner. As women increasingly succeed to and found family businesses however, the gender dimension within family business succession develops and the research response forms the basis for this chapter.

Even more than 50 years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination toward a number of groups in employment settings in the United States, workplace discrimination remains a persistent problem in organizations. This chapter provides a comprehensive review and analysis of contemporary theory and evidence on the nature, causes, and consequences of discrimination before synthesizing potential methods for its reduction. We note the strengths and weaknesses of this scholarship and highlight meaningful future directions. In so doing, we hope to both inform and inspire organizational and scholarly efforts to understand and eliminate workplace discrimination.

This study aims to highlight the role of individual and instructional design factors on training transfer and explore and review focal training factors that influence the transfer of training.

A conceptual framework has been developed for this study to better present the prevalent factors that have been empirically validated.

The facets of transfer encompassed in this study have gathered enough evidence to demonstrate a positive association with the transfer. This review points out that all predictor variables (learner characteristics, instructional design and environmental factors) positively and significantly influence the transfer of training. A mix of variables is proposed, with further investigation recommended to develop a robust training transfer hypotheses.

This study contributes to the training transfer literature in three ways. First, the authors have shown the positive influence of pre-training factors on training transfer. This study is grounded in a robust theoretical framework, thus fulfilling the previous gaps. This conceptual study elaborates on the importance of factors to establish the training transfer hypothesis. Future studies should test the suggested framework and look for other things that could help learners be more effective and motivated so that training can be more effective and transferable.

This study has significant findings for organizations operating in the current business scenario to enhance learning transfer, where the transfer is very low and a significant cause of concern for every organization. By making management aware of the success factors of training transfer, they can ensure a better training transfer. In this study, the transfer design considerations are discussed in detail, and their practical consequences are provided for training transfer in general and training professionals in particular.

The training transfer literature showcases two significant gaps; first, it lacks appropriate characteristics, and second, there is variability in the results. This study bridges the gaps and attempts to advance our understanding of training transfer grounded in the theoretical framework by focusing on learner characteristics, instructional design and work environment in training transfer, which predictor variables can improve training transfer. This study also contributes to the current training transfer literature by proposing a combination of factors that provide a theoretical foundation for developing a solid training transfer theory.

In a multi-stakeholder recommender system (MSRS), stakeholders are the multiple entities (consumer, producer, system, etc.) benefited by the generated recommendations. Traditionally, the exclusive focus on only a single stakeholders' (for example, only consumer or end-user) preferences obscured the welfare of the others. Two major challenges are encountered while incorporating the multiple stakeholders' perspectives in MSRS: designing a dedicated utility function for each stakeholder and optimizing their utility without hurting others. This paper proposes multiple utility functions for different stakeholders and optimizes these functions for generating balanced, personalized recommendations for each stakeholder.

The proposed methodology considers four valid stakeholders user, producer, cast and recommender system from the multi-stakeholder recommender setting and builds dedicated utility functions. The utility function for users incorporates enhanced side-information-based similarity computation for utility count. Similarly, to improve the utility gain, the authors design new utility functions for producer, star-cast and system to incorporate long-tail and diverse items in the recommendation list. Next, to balance the utility gain and generate the trade-off recommendation solution, the authors perform the evolutionary optimization of the conflicting utility functions using NSGA-II. Experimental evaluation and comparison are conducted over three benchmark data sets.

The authors observed 19.70% of average enhancement in utility gain with improved mean precision, diversity and novelty. Exposure, hit, reach and target reach metrics are substantially improved.

A new approach considers four stakeholders simultaneously with their respective utility functions and establishes the trade-off recommendation solution between conflicting utilities of the stakeholders.

Gender balance has been a declared goal in business and society for decades as gender diversity leads to more equality and better decision-making, enhances financial performance of organizations, and fosters creativity and innovation. Although there is a steady upward trend in the number of women actively participating in the workplace, there is still a dearth of women in top leadership positions. This motivates a closer look at the reasons why this happens. Stigmatization – a social process of disapproval based on stereotypes or particular distinguishing characteristics of individuals (e.g. gender) – has been recognized as one of the primary explanations for the barriers to career advancement of women. This chapter aims to address workplace inequality by analysing different sources of stigma women face in the workplace. Previous research has mostly focused on visible sources of stigma, such as gender or race/ethnicity. We propose to go beyond visible sources of stigma and expand the focus to other physical (e.g. physical appearance, age, childbearing age), emotional (e.g. mental health) and societal (e.g. flexibility) sources of stigma. We are especially interested in the consequences of stigma for women in the workplace. Stigmatization of women is a multi-level process, so this chapter focuses on the antecedents (sources of stigma) and outcomes (consequences of stigma) for women at the individual level, organizational level and the societal level. The proposed chapter will make contributions to the areas of management, diversity and gender studies.

Diversity and inclusion initiatives are normally centred on legally protected traits such as race and gender. As the legal framework expands to ensure that underrepresented workers are protected, there exists a subset of the workforce who have diversity characteristics that are legally unprotected. For example, individuals who have visible tattoos can face employment discrimination when they are looking for work or looking to progress their careers. To add to the challenge, the perception of stigma is fluid and expectations related to the appearance of employees are determined by managers' perceptions of consumers' preferences. Drawing theoretically from self-categorisation theory and information processing theory, we discuss how the creation of a marketing and brand proposition framework can help to build an organisational identity that can benefit consumers and the organisation simultaneously. We also discuss the practical implications and strategies that organisations can consider to reduce such workplace discrimination.

The purpose of this paper is to look at the issues concerning barriers that managers face in relation to participation in training and transfer of training, which have become increasingly important to HRD scholars and practitioners. To date, these areas have largely been examined independently. This paper aims to argue that there is an increasing need to understand and explore these two areas in unison.

Although this paper is primarily conceptual in nature, in order to investigate a model derived from relevant literature, survey data from 137 Canadian employees, mostly from the broader public sector, was examined. These respondents completed a short transfer of training questionnaire three months after a one‐day managerial training programme. In this study, open‐ended questions investigating training barriers are analysed.

The exploratory examination of information from participants of a managerial training programme suggests that the model which links literature on participation in training and transfer of training warrants additional examination. Most significantly, there was substantial overlap between the participation and transfer barriers with the most common barriers being linked to “lack of time” and “unsupportive culture”.

The main limitation of this paper is the relatively small sample size with regard to data concerning barriers to transfer. However, the authors feel that a key implication is that a “bridge of understanding” is created concerning the numerous factors that impact participation in training, transfer of training and the relationships between them. Hence, HRD practitioners and scholars can now use this model to begin to understand how they might improve the overall quality of training programmes and to further explore the relationship between transfer and participation.

The conceptual model developed further integrates the respective literatures pertaining to management training participation and transfer of learning in the workplace. The proposed model shows how barriers to participation can become barriers to transfer and how barriers to transfer from one programme may become barriers to participation to subsequent learning activities.