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The purpose of this study is to investigate the experiences of staff during the development and implementation of an Australian-first, family-focussed service addressing the mental health needs of young people (aged 12–25 years) with an intellectual disability. This study aims to understand the challenges and successes of the staff team when navigating their way in a new program working with a complex client group.

This study used a thematic analysis on data collected from focus groups at two time points in the implementation phase of the new program. Thematic analysis of the data was conducted to identify important themes relating to the staff’s challenges, successes and learning.

The findings showed that there was a lot of adaptation needed for staff members trained in either mental health, or disability, but not both. Another key finding was the importance of working with the young person’s family system as well as their existing system of support services. This major focus of the work for staff could be challenging due issues arising in the family unit and a lack of collaboration between services. Working with this complex client group was viewed as challenging and stress inducing; however, the motivation and attitudes of staff were found to be positive factors in the running of the program.

This paper makes an original contribution to the field, as it provides a unique look at staff experiences when needing to adapt to a new and challenging workplace that was the first-of-its-kind in Australia.

The purpose of this paper is to explore trends in entrepreneurship spaces developed by universities to support entrepreneurship education. It identifies characteristics that make a space conducive to innovation and explains whether current spaces adequately conform to those characteristics. More generally, this paper seeks to clarify what is being built, for which purposes and with what results.

Given the novelty of this research, the paper uses a multiple-method approach to allow for an iterative examination between theory and data. Multiple data and methods were used, including an action research method, a systematic survey of 57 entrepreneurship spaces at US universities and a thematic and content analyses of interviews carried out with individuals directly involved in the functioning of such spaces.

The paper presents a prescriptive model aimed at guiding the practitioner in the design of an entrepreneurship space. It identifies five types of entrepreneurship spaces that differentially support entrepreneurial activities and rely on different characteristics. These characteristics are centrally important for innovation and entrepreneurship spaces.

There are a number of practical implications from the work. It identifies key challenges in the design of entrepreneurship spaces and shows which questions to consider in the decision-making process.

The paper advances research on entrepreneurship spaces, an important yet poorly understood phenomenon. It reviews and introduces the literature on how space can support innovation, entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial “spirit’” and proposes a typology of entrepreneurship spaces, providing a path toward more robust and comprehensive theory building.

Voluntary collective turnover can be costly for workplaces. The authors investigate the effectiveness of high-performance work system (HPWS) intensity as a tool to manage voluntary collective turnover. Further, the authors investigate a cynical workplace climate (CWC) as a boundary condition on the HPWS intensity–voluntary collective turnover relationship.

The unit of analysis is the workplace, with human resource (HR) managers providing data on HPWS practices in Time 1 (T1) and voluntary collective turnover two years later. Aggregated employee data were used to assess the cynical workplace climate. Hierarchical regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses.

This study’s results demonstrate a negative relationship between HPWS intensity and voluntary collective turnover when there is a low cynical workplace climate. The authors find that in a high cynical workplace climate, HPWS intensity is ineffective at managing voluntary collective turnover.

This study’s results show that HPWS intensity needs to be well received by the workforce to be effective in reducing voluntary collective turnover.

To increase the chances of HPWS intensity reducing voluntary collective turnover, workplaces need to assess the level of employee cynicism in their workplace climates. When the climate is assessed as low in cynicism, the workplace can then consider implementing an HPWS.

The authors explain why the HPWS intensity–voluntary collective turnover relationship varies across workplaces. As HR practices are subject to interpretation, workplaces need to look beyond the practices in their HPWS and focus on employee receptivity to HR practices.

Current statistics highlight the increasing prevalence of homelessness in Australia, however, there is scant research regarding empathy and homelessness in the paramedic literature. Research in other areas of healthcare demonstrates that interaction with the homeless can positively impact empathetic attitudes and also highlights the opportunity to examine if these results are consistent or generalisable to the Australian paramedic profession. Therefore, the aim of our study was to explore paramedic students' empathetic attitudes towards homelessness.

A sequential mixed method design study was undertaken using a repeated measures and focus group approach. Paramedic students participated in clinical experience, involving interactions with the homeless. This entailed participating in at least four shifts (11 pm – 5 am) where students gained experience at the Salvation Army Health Café or with the Youth Street Teams in Melbourne, Australia. Empathy levels of the paramedic students toward homelessness, both pre- and post- were measured using the Medical Condition Regard Scale (MCRS) and the Health Professionals' Attitudes Toward the Homeless Inventory (HPATHI). A focus group with student participants was also conducted to obtain further detailed information about their perceptions of the experience.

A total of 20 students participated (100% response rate). Statistically significant (p < 0.05) increases were observed on the MCRS pre- to post- data with total mean scores of 48.35 (SD ± 8.33) and 51.65 (SD ± 5.56), respectively. On the HPATHI a statistically significant (p < 0.0001) increase in Personal Advocacy was observed. Eight of these students took part in a subsequent focus group. Following thematic analysis of the focus group, a number of common themes were identified that included: communication, empathy and rapport, and a change in perception and attitude.

The results of this pilot study demonstrate that through participation in a project involving experience interacting with the homeless population, paramedic students showed a greater level of empathy towards the homeless. Increases in empathetic regard, social advocacy and personal advocacy were also found.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a framework for enhancing organizational productivity and capacity building at the national, industry-wide level that is based on an active collaboration between elements of the industry that the authors will refer to as the organization and the educational system that trains/educates the human resources that play a vital role in enabling the organization to acquire and then maintain the competitive advantage needed to be successful.

This framework is based on the concept of competencies of the human resource and a competence-based model for recruiting and developing these human resources. This framework has been successfully applied by the Kemt Enterprise Training Partnership (ETP)/Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET-Egypt) project in the Egyptian papermaking industry to solidify an understanding of the required competencies in this sector. For the purposes, the term competency will be defined as a set of skills, knowledge and behavior that allows employees to do their jobs effectively and efficiently without interfering with either other tasks or tasks they will encounter in the future.

Organizational productivity will be assumed to be related to having a workforce that is both competent and of the appropriate size, and can be determined using an organizational function map coupled to the development of a set of related occupational standards.

The paper proposed a national framework competence-based model which collaborates all the national efforts to enhance the national competitiveness.