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In an effort to save his business, Paul Marciano, the owner of Italian family restaurant Maria’s Ristorante, runs a number of experiments focused on improving the customer experience around his target customer segment. These experiments lead to a better understanding about his business and cause him to make specific changes to his business model that ultimately improve things across the board. The experiments are based on research from the academic literature on the use of behavioral variables to manage customer perceptions.

Scholars and practitioners alike wish to understand what makes workplace conflict beneficial or injurious to, for example, performance and satisfaction. The authors focus on parties’ personal experience of the conflict, which is complementary to studying conflict issues (i.e. task- or relationship-related conflict). Although many authors discuss the personal experience of conflict, which the authors will refer to as conflict personalization, different definitions are used, leading to conceptual vagueness. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to develop an integrative definition of the concept of conflict personalization.

The authors conducted a systematic literature review to collect definitions and conceptualizations from 41 publications. The subsequent thematic analysis revealed four building blocks that were used to develop an integrative definition of conflict personalization.

The authors developed the following definition: Conflict personalization is the negative affective as well as cognitive reaction to the self being threatened and/or in danger as a result of a social interaction about perceived incompatibilities.

The integrative definition of this study enables the development of a measurement instrument to assess personalization during workplace conflict, paving the way for developing effective research-based interventions.

Conceptual vagueness hampers theoretical development, empirical research and the development of effective interventions. Although the importance of conflict personalization is mentioned within the field of workplace conflict, it has not been empirically studied yet. This paper can serve as the basis for future research in which conflict issue and personal experience are separated.

This paper probes into the relationship between Neighbourhood Parks and their efficiency as a potential stress reliever from the outdoor environment. It consists of the introduction to the relationship between stress and outdoor environment, background research on recent issues of Neighbourhood Park and it then continues with the context of perceiving Neighbourhood Park as a stress reliever. This paper looks into the previous studies that employed observations, survey, interviews and instruments as methods in proving Neighbourhood Parks as a potential stress reliever. Relevant findings were highlighted and recommendations for improving the design and planning were suggested to generate more quality living environment in the future.

Contemporary funerary culture in the Netherlands is often characterised as secularised and individualised. This chapter focuses on images of heaven and angels and various versions of the Ave Maria in contemporary funeral music. How is this musical repertoire interpreted in a secularised context? This study builds on earlier research on images of heaven and angels in the context of death (Quartier, 2011; Walter, 2011, 2016a, 2016b) and demonstrates how images of heaven and angels and the Ave Maria in the context of contemporary funeral rituals in the Netherlands are related to ‘lived religion’ – how religion is ‘lived’ both in- and outside institutionalised settings – and ‘continuing bonds’ – how bonds with the deceased are not severed but continued. It also shows that the range of applicability of these concepts should not be overestimated, as musical references to heaven and angels, and the song Ave Maria, can also be regarded as ritual repertoire.

This paper will identify people's experience of visiting selected neighborhood parks and their overall evaluations of selected neighborhood parks. The study is notably done by gathering data from the residents based on their neighborhood parks' experiences, including the landscape features and facilities related to their experiences.

The Likert scale questions on user's experience of using park features at the neighborhood parks, open-ended questions were being applied in order to achieve more data on respondents' feelings and experiences on their thoughts. Then, the feedback from the information gathered from a minimum number of respondents (n = 382) will get into the development of semi-structured interview questions to discuss possible suggestions and recommendations for a better neighborhood park by interviewing a landscape architect and a planner.

The paper provides empirical insights on three particular themes that arise as significant in resident's experience of neighborhood parks in Kuala Lumpur. These three themes are by exploring the facilities of neighborhood parks, connection with natural features and the need for safety that has shown by the residents' experience and evaluation.

Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may lack generalizability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed propositions further.

The respondents consistently see neighborhood parks as a place for exercise, children's play area, social space and enjoying nature.

This paper fulfills an identified people's use and experience of neighborhood parks in Kuala Lumpur.

This study aimed to investigate the sensemaking strategies employed by early-career employees working within organizationally constrained environments.

Grounded in the sensemaking-as-accomplishment framework, a longitudinal multi-case study was conducted, involving three early-career employees. These participants were interviewed multiple times concerning tasks they themselves identified as anomalous and ambiguous.

The study's findings illuminate how early-career employees utilize sensemaking strategies to accomplish anomalous-ambiguous tasks. These strategies are interwoven with deliberate efforts to mitigate organizational constraints that exist in the organization or arise during the execution of complex tasks.

Notable limitation pertains to the time gap between task completion and the interviews. Conducting real-time interviews concurrently with task execution or immediately afterward was not feasible due to constraints in participant availability. This research has implications for organizational learning initiatives, particularly those encompassing employee-driven self-learning components. Insights derived from studies like this can inform the development of effective self-learning schemes within organizations.

Previous sensemaking research focused on what takes place in high-reliability organizations. This study explored sensemaking strategies in workplaces that are organizationally constrained.

Jerry feels good as he leaves his office for the day. He takes pride in being CEO of a Healthcare System that provides much-needed services to the urban poor often in difficult circumstances. He reflects that his career has been an interesting journey. He had started as an accountant with Price Waterhouse, but found the work and time pressures very heavy. Wanting to spend more time with his family, he moved to the a health care system and rose to Controller. There had been a period while Controller when he wondered whether he had made an error in making the change, given the financial turbulence his health care system experienced with the transition to managed care. He experienced no less stress than at Price Waterhouse as he assisted his new employer to manage a turnaround to eliminate waste and reposition the system within a solid financial model. But he emerged from the turnaround with a new sense of direction and drive. Subsequently, seven years ago Healthhelp chose him as its Chief Financial Officer and he’s been CEO for almost three years. Today he’s excited about the new marketing plan he just reviewed which promises to give Healthhelp a bigger share of the home care market.

Purpose – The purpose of this work is to explore ways in which parents of children with disabilities actively seek to create a place for themselves and their children within supportive communities of others – despite structural and attitudinal barriers.

Methodology – Semi-structured, interactive interviews were conducted with six mothers and six fathers of older teens and young adults with severe impairments. Interview transcripts were analyzed for themes related to barriers to social participation and strategies used to create and sustain communities of supportive others.

Findings – Results suggest that, while there are indeed many barriers to social participation, these mothers and fathers have successfully utilized a variety of strategies in order to create a sense of community for themselves and their children including: garnering support from family; creating enclaves of “wise” individuals; and active social networking. Findings also suggest that children with disabilities can provide opportunities for parental community involvement in unexpected ways.

Limitations, implications and value – The sample is small and selective and the study used retrospective interviews to examine parental memories. Despite these limitations, the narratives of these parents provide a provocative look at the potential role of personal agency in the community experiences of parents of children with disabilities. The stories told by these parents clearly suggest that it takes concerted effort to construct a village in the face of significant barriers to social participation. Once created, however, that village of supportive others can provide life enhancing support for children with disabilities and their families.