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The sustainability of decentralized seed producers established to enhance farmers’ access to seed of newly introduced biofortified crops is a major challenge. Understanding what motivates the multipliers of clonally propagated crops to engage in seed multiplication is critical for enhancing access to improved seed varieties. The purpose of this paper is to examine the structure and content of mental models associated with the decision to engage in biofortified sweetpotato vine multiplication as a business.

The study focused on decentralized vine multipliers from Kenya and Ethiopia. These were stratified by orientation toward nutrition or commercial value addition. A total of 45 multipliers were interviewed. Means-end chain (MEC) analysis combined with laddering technique was used to generate mental constructs multipliers relate with the decision to engage in biofortified sweetpotato vine multiplication.

The structure and content of mental models of biofortified sweetpotato vine multipliers supporting nutrition-focused interventions and those supporting commercial value-addition sweetpotato interventions are different. Nutrition-focused multipliers are driven by the benefits of good health, while commercial value-addition interventions are driven by the benefit of making “more money.” The content and structure of mental models are also country/region specific.

This study has demonstrated that decision to engage in community seed production business is driven not only by the desire to make profits but, equally importantly, by personal and societal (social) factors. It has also discussed the limitations of current analysis and future research areas.

This study is the first to apply MES analysis to assess how decision to invest in seed multiplication business is affected farmers’ personal values and other psychosocial factors.

This paper reports the results of two studies that examined the impact of framing negotiations in affective terms. Pursuant to the recommendations made by Clyman and Tripp (2000) for reducing risks associated with discrepant values, the objective of the first study was to determine the optimal way of representing potential outcomes in affective terms in a negotiation payoff table. Results demonstrated the superiority of happy and unhappy face icons over other representations; it also revealed a slight advantage to varying the quantity of icons, rather than size, to reflect differences in the relative values of these outcomes. In the second study, the focus was on determining to what extent, if any, framing negotiations in affective terms would differentially affect negotiators' thoughts and feelings prior to engaging in a two‐party negotiation. Results indicated that when negotiations are affectively framed, negotiators report higher levels of negotiation involvement and positive emotion and lower levels of trust, as well as a decreased likelihood of employing cooperative negotiation tactics. The implications of the findings for future research are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of knowledge leader readiness within large companies operating in a changing environment.

A conceptual framework emerged from an analysis of four large companies and a review of the knowledge management literature. Secondary research was conducted to compare the four large companies against the proposed framework.

The conceptual model is a support to understand an organizations’ reaction to external changes and the role of the knowledge leader’s readiness in managing these changes and adjusting the knowledge management accordingly. From the analysis, it emerged that a knowledge leader’s readiness plays a relevant role in a changing organizational environment owing to his ability to acquire, handle and diffuse knowledge within the company.

The study emphasizes the significance of internal knowledge in managing changes. Practitioners could use this framework as a conceptual guide for their daily challenges and to recruit future leaders.

This study aims to contribute to the knowledge management literature by providing a practical model for organizations facing a changing environment. The originality of the model is the design of different managerial profiles that combine the leaders’ disposition to knowledge and their ability to drive change.

The purpose of this paper is to argue for the need to develop pre-service teachers’ problem solving ability, in particular, in the context of real-world complex problems.

To argue for the need to develop pre-service teachers’ problem solving skills, the authors describe a web-based problem representation system that is embedded with levels of scaffolding to support the claim.

The authors’ conceptualisation of this cloud-based environment is also very much aligned with the development of pre-service teachers’ systems thinking. Teacher learning itself is a complex system that involves many processes, mechanisms and interactions of elements, and the outcomes may be highly unpredictable (Opfer and Pedder, 2011). As a result of the complex nature of teacher learning, it would be meaningful to frame teacher learning as a complex system. An approach to enable pre-service teachers to be aware of this complexity is to situate them in a systems thinking context.

This paper discusses a system which was developed for problem solving. The levels of adaptive scaffoldings embedded within the system is an innovation which is not found in other similar research projects.

This study aims to examine whether a text stimulus could enhance students' imagination and thus enhance their creativity in the architectural design studio. The assumption is that adopting the text stimulus in the conceptual design stage would support students' imagination through a nonlinear design process, and ultimately produce the creative values of design outcomes.

A curriculum that adopts a text stimulus was developed and used for first-year university students. The aim was to implement an architectural setting to stimulate students' imagination with a framework for creativity evaluation. The study focused not only on the design process that characterizes the generation of concepts and ideas, but also on the processes related to the creative practices that students need for developing their own expression methods to solve problems they encounter.

The results show that design education that emphasizes the imaginary could enhance students' creative thinking, thus leading to creative design. As a training tool in the design studio, the diversity of interpretation following the text stimulus was revealed to provoke a nonlinear design process and to eventually enhance students' originality, differential and inventiveness, which are associated with the creativity criteria for evaluation.

The study explores the translation of imaginary spaces from text into spatial design as a conceptual tool in order to characterize and support creativity throughout design education in the architectural design studio.

This article seeks to address the social aspects of handling knowledge and information. For this purpose, it considers findings from social psychology and discusses their applicability in knowledge management research and practice.

The article presents a selective but systematical review of recent social psychological literature that can be applied for knowledge management purposes.

Two social psychological concepts that strongly influence knowledge processes in organizations are first introduced: social norms and social identity. Two types of social processes that are particularly relevant for knowledge management subsequently take center stage in this article: knowledge sharing and knowledge processing in organizations. The roles social norms and social identity play in knowledge sharing and knowledge processing are then assessed.

Implications for knowledge management practice are considered: among other implications, it is discussed what computer‐mediated support can contribute to knowledge management processes in organizations with respect to both knowledge sharing and knowledge processing.

Potato is a major food staple in Africa, but its production is constrained by poor quality of seed. A recent private–public partnership in Tanzania resulted in introduction of new higher yielding varieties. The purpose of this paper is to examine smallholder farmers’ motivations to invest in the purchase of quality seed of new potato varieties, and if the motivational structure differs by gender.

The paper used means-end chain (MEC) theory combined with goal priming, and laddering interviews on randomly sampled participants (n=45) of an experimental auction conducted among smallholder farmers in Tanzania. The auction was designed to goal-prime respondents on benefits of quality seed. The mental constructs obtained were grouped into attributes, consequences and values, and MECAnalyst software used to generate hierarchical value maps.

Farmers invest in quality seed of a new variety to increase yields, hence income, and also to pursue personal life goals (values) or meet psychosocial needs. The structure of mental constructs associated with the decision to invest in quality seed of a new variety differ by gender.

The study focused on only two new varieties, hence not robust to all new potato varieties. Results need to be tested under different socioeconomic contexts. Furthermore, the MEC approach does not allow for control of other variables that likely influence farmer adoption decision-making process. Future studies should be designed to tackle these limitations.

Investment in quality seed of new variety is driven by monetary goals and psychosocial factors, and some of these factors differ between male and female farmers.

This is the first study to explore drivers of farmers’ decision to use quality seed of a new variety using MEC analysis, and role psychosocial factors play.

This index covers all issues between February 2005 (Volume 9, Issue 1) and November 2008 (Volume 12, Issue 4). Numbers in bold refer to yolume, numbers in brackets refer to issue, with subsequent numbers to pages.

Adolescent mental health issues are on the increase, in particular depression, which is now a major public health concern globally. Mental health education is important and young people’s awareness of mental health is potentially limited. This is one factor that creates barriers to seeking support. School nurses and educational professionals recognise that they do not necessarily have the required skill base to support emotional health concerns with young people. The purpose of this paper is to synthesise qualitative evidence related to the nurse’s role in supporting adolescents.

A literature review using a systematic approach was undertaken, predominantly through collection of primary qualitative research studies. In total, 22 published studies are included in this review, extracted from four databases – CINAHL, Embase, Medline and Scopus.

This review shows that awareness of mental health is needed early in adolescence, while at school, to encourage young people to access support and have knowledge of their own emotional health. The need for further mental health education and provision is asserted.

Young people benefit from someone who is accessible and familiar to them in schools so that they can access emotional support as and when needed. Careful involvement of families (including extended families) is noted. It is proposed that this role should be a mental health nurse role, who should be accessible within the school environment.

This paper is original and adds to existing knowledge that mental health challenges are increasing, and more needs to be done in schools to promote mental health and reduce the stigma associated with seeking support.