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Describes a study which aimed to identify factors most likely to lead to the implementation of an alcohol policy by employers. The study also examines the types of policy adopted and assesses the process by which the policies were initiated and implemented. Concludes that previous studies have probably overestimated the prevalence of health‐oriented alcohol policies in England, but employers could be encouraged to introduce health goals into disciplinary policies.

This paper aims to outline a knowledge translation (KT) case study undertaken as part of a multi-component research programme aimed at evaluating new parenting supports in the earliest years. The study aimed to: explore the influencing factors relating to research use in an early years context; and to use the findings, at least in part, to execute an integrated KT plan – to promote stakeholder engagement, greater research visibility and to enhance the understanding of findings emerging from the research programme.

A mixed-methods study was embedded within a large-scale, longitudinal research programme. In the present study, a national survey (n = 162) was administered to stakeholders working with children and families throughout Ireland. A series of one-to-one interviews were also undertaken (n = 37) to amplify the survey findings. Also, one focus group was carried out with parents (n = 8) and one with members of the research team (n = 3). Several dissemination strategies were concurrently developed, executed and evaluated, based partly on survey and interview findings and guided by the knowledge translation planning template (Barwick, 2008; 2013; 2019).

The main factors influencing the dissemination of evidence, as identified by the stakeholders – were: a lack of resources; an under-developed understanding of research use and dissemination; insufficient collaboration and communication; and conflicting stakeholder priorities. Despite these challenges, the research programme was found to benefit from a multi-component KT plan to achieve the outlined dissemination goals.

The KT planning process allowed the research team to be more accountable, introspective and to work more efficiently. This helped increase the likelihood of more targeted and successful dissemination of the research findings, delivering a better return on research investment.

This is the first study of its kind (to our knowledge) to provide important insights for stakeholders in Ireland and elsewhere about how to improve the dissemination process. Effective KT planning can ultimately help to bridge the research-policy-practice gap and enable the effective translation of high-quality evidence in the early years’ sector to enhance outcomes for families in the shorter and longer-term.

Drawing on institutional theory, this paper seeks to untangle the relationship between university support for entrepreneurship and students’ entrepreneurial intentions. Specifically, this study aims to examine whether entrepreneurial climates within universities mediate the relationship between university support for entrepreneurship and students’ entrepreneurial intention.

Empirical data is drawn from 195 students across three Malaysian higher education institutions. Partial least squares procedures are used to test the proposed hypotheses.

Findings show that no element of university support for entrepreneurship had a direct effect on students’ entrepreneurial intentions. However, the entrepreneurial climate was found – to mediate the relationship between perceived business and concept development support and students’ entrepreneurial intentions.

This study represents one of the few efforts in the literature considering the role of entrepreneurial climates within universities in influencing students’ entrepreneurial intention. In considering the mediating role of entrepreneurial climate, in the relationship between university support for entrepreneurship and students’ entrepreneurial intentions, this study provides a complementary and contextualised perspective, to existing studies, which have traditionally focussed on the mediating role of individual attributes. Doing so provides further evidence of entrepreneurial universities in fostering entrepreneurship.

Materiality, as a content-selection principle, is an emerging trend in sustainability reporting for making sustainability reports (SRs) more relevant for stakeholders. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether materiality matters in the reporting practice of universities which have adopted the Global Reporting Initiative G4 Guidelines.

Strategic stakeholder theory and sociological institutionalism serve for deriving conflicting expectations about the compliance of universities with the materiality principle. In the empirical section of this paper, content analyses are conducted on the documented material aspects, followed by a correlation analysis for examining to which extent the identified material aspects are reported in the SRs.

Although universities document G4-19 stakeholder-material aspects according to different relevance levels and for internal and external stakeholder groups, the identified material aspects are not appropriately reported in the SRs. The adoption of the materiality principle is a superficial one and therefore more in line with the expectations of sociological institutionalism.

The main limitation for this study is the small number of university SRs available. The chance to make SRs more relevant by focusing on stakeholder-material aspects is not used.

This paper reports the first study looking at the compliance between the documented material aspects and the content of SRs in a particular challenging organisational field, the university sector. This paper also adds to the emerging theoretical discussion about the extent universities implement materiality in SRs.

The collection and dissemination of standardized performance information about students, teachers, schools and school systems offer potentially important tools for school accountability and resource allocation as well as school improvement in developing countries. However, performance monitoring systems in developing countries are in many cases copied from those in high-income countries without a clear understanding of their functioning in contexts of limited resources and capacity for change. The purpose of this paper is to examine the conditions under which and the mechanisms through which system-wide performance monitoring affects school-level organization and processes in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

The review employs realist synthesis because of the complexity and dynamism of conditions in LMICs, the wide variability in available literature and the aim of explaining how particular organizational outcomes arise, given particular conditions. The authors draw on findings from a systematic review of 22 studies and reports, published since 2001, related to the implementation of performance monitoring.

The findings highlight key barriers to the use of data to inform school accountability and improvement. Capacity to collect, interpret and use data is an important condition to both effective external accountability as well as improvement of schools.

The review uses realist approaches to building middle-level theories to help scholars, educational advisers, policy makers and educational leaders understand the causal processes that result in certain outcomes from monitoring activities and to identify the conditions that are necessary for those processes to have the desired outcomes.

A dilemma exists in that many view offshoring as a tradeoff between cost efficiency and innovation. The purpose of this paper is to reconcile this dilemma by showing how and why offshoring to institutionally distant host countries may result in innovation. The authors introduce an institutional lens in order to understand how offshoring to institutionally distant locales affects innovation outcomes of multinational enterprises. This lens is aimed to provide an analytical tool that is less coarse and less overwhelmingly focused on institutional distance (ID) as a harsh and certain harbinger of reduced innovation performance.

The authors use primary data from the Offshoring Research Network as well as secondary data from the Frasier Institute on Economic Freedom, and Hofstede’s cultural value survey to empirically assess the distinct effects of distance on innovation at the firm level.

The authors have developed a model of distance and innovation which goes beyond the traditional assumption of distance as overwhelmingly negative. Whereas in some cases, the positive effect of formal and informal distances outweigh the negative effects stimulating innovation; in other cases, the negative effects of distance hamper innovation. Finally, some elements of distance may not have an impact on innovation outcomes at all.

While previous research stresses the negative effects of distance in general, the authors provide an ID model which, in the context of offshoring, takes into account potential positive, negative, or no effects.

The study presents global supply chain managers with a reference framework for making strategic offshoring relationships decisions.

By unbundling the inherently confounding formative construction of distance measures, eschewing the reflexive assumption that distance is always negative, and mapping theories specific to the application of distinct institutional logics to specific value-enhancing business activities (i.e. innovation), this study offers a more accurate and complete institutional picture that helps reconcile institutional theory with an empirical record that often fails to find what it predicts.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between country of birth or ethnicity (cultural proxies) and career and parental role commitment, and whether or not that relationship is mediated by two psychological dimensions known to differ across Mexican and USA cultures. These mediators are family achievement orientation and gender role orientation.

Data were collected from 372 working female students at community colleges in the USA and Mexico. The survey focussed on career and parental role commitment, family achievement orientation, and gender role attitudes.

Both country of birth and ethnicity predict career and parental role commitment. Females born in Mexico and Hispanics have higher career role commitment and lower parental role commitment than females born in the USA and non-Hispanic whites. Family achievement orientation and gender role attitudes partially mediate these relationships.

Cross-cultural research of work and family issues needs to incorporate psychological dimensions in accounting for country/ethnic differences.

Employees’ cultural backgrounds should be considered in designing programs to support family and work balance.

Assistance programs designed to enable Hispanics to work will be valued and fit with the Hispanic cultural focus on working as a means to care for family.

This study addresses a stated need in the work/life literature for research that addresses cross-cultural differences, and research in the cross-cultural research that calls for the inclusion of psychological dimension mediators between culture and the variables of interest.

Despite the recent growing interest in user‐led organisations (ULOs), they remain an under‐researched area of volunteer sector activity, with the majority of the literature emanating from North America. This article attempts to redress this imbalance by reporting on the innovatory features and challenges facing mental health ULOs in England, particularly in light of recent government policy prioritising generic pandisability ULOs. In‐depth qualitative interviews were undertaken with a purposive sample of 48 service users and staff from four geographically dispersed mental health ULOs in England. Innovatory features identified by staff running and service users attending mental health ULOs were: being user‐led; their non‐hierarchical organisational structures; and community‐inclusive activities. The challenges identified were: maintaining a user‐led ethos; managing the tension between being user‐led or user‐managed; and relationships with funders. Recent policies that recognise and promote the development of ULOs are encouraging, although the emphasis on generic, pan‐disability ULOs may impede the innovatory ethos and development of mental health ULOs.

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between home-to-work spillover, measured as positive and negative home–work interference (HWI) and turnover intentions, as well as the mediating role of perceptions concerning training and development practices.

Data were collected among 418 respondents who were working at two business schools. A confirmative structural equation modeling analysis was conducted for the analysis.

As expected, positive HWI showed negative relationships with turnover intentions, while negative HWI related positively to turnover intentions. Training and development practices mediated the relationship between positive HWI and turnover intentions; the mediation effect was stronger for women than it was for men. Training and development practices did not mediate the relationship between negative HWI and turnover intentions, however.

The outcomes suggest that helping employees to balance their work and home lives can be beneficial for employees, as well as for employers in terms of reducing turnover intentions.

As contributions, additional insight into the relationship between positive and negative non-work factors and turnover intentions by examining the ways in which both positive as well as negative HWI are related to turnover intentions. Furthermore, the research considers the mediating role played by perceptions concerning human resource (HR) practices, and particularly training and development practices as perceived by the employee, in the relationship between positive and negative HWI and turnover intentions.

This paper aims to explore the succession intentions of daughters in family businesses in Sri Lanka by shedding light on the motives behind their willingness to succeed in the family business.

A qualitative approach using semi-structured interviews was used to explore the factors that may influence succession intentions among a group of seven prospective successor-daughters.

Findings showed that while a majority of the daughters sampled have positive succession intentions, there were a few who were either undecided or unwilling. Interestingly, what motivated some daughters to be willing successors was also considered demotivating for others. Daughters perceived succession in family businesses to be impacted by both personal and family background, traditional gender-role expectations and other socio-cultural factors.

Findings from this study provide key insights into gender-related issues with regard to succession in family businesses.