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The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of negotiation training delivered to senior clinicians, managers and executives, by exploring whether staff members implemented negotiation skills in their workplace following the training, and if so, how and when.

This is a qualitative study involving face-to-face interviews with 18 senior clinicians, managers and executives who completed a two-day intensive negotiation skills training course. Interviews were transcribed verbatim, and inductive interpretive analysis techniques were used to identify common themes. Research setting was a large tertiary care hospital and health service in regional Australia.

Participants generally reported positive affective and utility reactions to the training, and attempted to implement at least some of the skills in the workplace. The main enabler was provision of a Negotiation Toolkit to assist in preparing and conducting negotiations. The main barrier was lack of time to reflect on the principles and prepare for upcoming negotiations. Participants reported that ongoing skill development and retention were not adequately addressed; suggestions for improving sustainability included provision of refresher training and mentoring.

Limitations include self-reported data, and interview questions positively elicited examples of training translation.

The training was well matched to participant needs, with negotiation a common and daily activity for most healthcare professionals. Implementation of the skills showed potential for improving collaboration and problem solving in the workplace. Practical examples of how the skills were used in the workplace are provided.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first international study aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of an integrative bargaining negotiation training program targeting executives, senior clinicians and management staff in a large healthcare organization.

This paper aims to provide evidence that online well-designed educational tasks can provide more relevant and richer active learning environment for business English learners. The benefits of online tasks, as an education tool, became more apparent and gained more importance during the events related to the Covid-19 pandemic. The task design is based on task-based interactions and in a sequence of tasks with the support of an online learning management system (LMS). The findings suggest that online task-based learning (and would-be blended learning in the future) enables meaningful and authentic activities promoting interactions and communicative competences to prepare for learners of business English to enter the workplace.

The overarching aim of the study is to explore how task-design-utilizing online LMS could contribute to enhancing the learning process and to the development of the learner's communicative competences. The study included two aspects, namely: (1) the design of online tasks and (2) pilot evaluation. The task design involved tasks that required interactions between the learners. The pilot evaluation relied on data collection via questionnaires.

Two aspects relating to the findings: (1) a description of the teaching initiatives which was designed to see how blended learning and online tasks can enhance learning and develop the skills of the learners: with questioning techniques targeting communication skills, simulated workplace situations and timely feedback and peer influence; (2) the findings of the pilot study evaluation to see the actual implementation of online tasks. The students' responses corroborate the teachers' comments. The findings of this research showed that LMS tasks, which were designed for this study, helped the learners to enhance their competence in business English. Such competences included communicative skills needed for learners to enter the workplace such as interpersonal skills, presentation skills and negotiation skills in contexts. These findings lead to significant recommendations regarding the way forward for developing active blended learning.

Firstly, teachers need to be trained and involved in designing such online tasks and materials to be used in active blended learning. More training in language teaching methodologies should be investigated to adapt the transition from a traditional to a computer-assisted language learning teacher. This helps teachers to design and implement online simulated workplace tasks. Secondly, time for the use of online tasks should be allocated satisfactorily. This can be achieved by building online learning sessions into class schedule or developing active blended courses. The time for the use of online simulated tasks should be allocated satisfactorily with lab or simulation room, in which students would be shown how to access the online tasks designed on the university LMS and the way to practice with different kinds of tasks.

In this study context, the online tasks design can initiate at activity-level blending to support face-to-face (F2F) activities, for example, online activities to support tasks for the topic Make a request or Offer for help. This can be extended to course-level blending when more online activities are designed to use with F2F activities such as online comparing and contrasting tasks to develop skills in connections with the awareness of cultures. The findings of the research suggest to develop and to implement online tasks alongside with classroom learning and teaching to enable the objectives of business English programme at university for preparing learners to enter the workplace. The recent pandemic highlighted the need for effective methodologies for active blended learning. It is now required that professionals in higher education to collect evidence base to inform future practice of such methodologies. Further significant research efforts should be directed towards collecting such evidence of the effectiveness and improvements of such methods. The support of higher education management professionals in securing funding for such research will be essential.

This study aims to propose and evaluate a novel framework of strategic adaptability in dyadic negotiations. The authors define strategic adaptability as a reaction to a cue that leads to shifts between integrative and distributive strategies. Based on the literature on turning points, phase models and strategic negotiations, the authors developed an initial framework identifying five distinct strategic adaptations.

To verify the framework, the authors analyzed two negotiation simulations with a diverse set of negotiation students. Negotiations were content-coded, and adaptations were labeled.

The authors found a consistent pattern across two studies. Overall, 12% (study 1) and 18% (study 2) of all speaking turns were identified as strategic adaptations. The findings empirically confirmed four of their strategic adaptation types: adapt to deadlock, follow adaptation by opponent, adapt to priority of issue under discussion and adapt to new information on issue. Moreover, findings of this study revealed two new types of strategic adaptability: delayed adaptation to opponent and adapt to understand opponent. Study 2 additionally revealed that strategies vary with the negotiation phase, and negotiation outcome seems to benefit more from the constellation rather than the frequency of adaptations. Furthermore, lower-scoring negotiators tended to adapt to the opponent’s strategy instead of initiating a change in strategy.

The findings of this study provide preliminary insights into how strategic adaptations unfold. These findings present future research opportunities to further test the framework's robustness, increase the knowledge of individual and cultural factors, explore the relationship with negotiation outcomes and develop educational interventions to enhance strategic adaptability.

Educational institutions in the Middle East are often criticized for using outdated teaching strategies such as lecturing that promote rote learning and memorization skills rather than life skills such as critical thinking, creativity and innovation which are important for students’ education and their future careers. This applied research paper presents an example of using Project-Based Learning (PBL) in Higher Education as a supplement to traditional lecturing and the benefits of using this approach for teaching and learning. A group of 62 female Arab students studying Emirati Studies at a federal higher institution in the UAE were involved in this classroom-based inquiry which took place over a 14-week semester. Data were collected using quantitative and qualitative methods to examine how effective the PBL approach was in engaging learners, in improving their skills and in helping them achieve the course learning outcomes. The results of the study showed that PBL was useful in helping students develop essential 21st century skills such as critical thinking, team work, problem solving, research skills, presentation skills, interpersonal communication skills, negotiation skills, creativity, and innovation. This research project helps to illustrate and provide evidence of how using PBL as a supplement to traditional lecturing can be a catalyst for an effective and efficient process-oriented quality education where students are active individuals managing their own learning and having fun in the process.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the intention to prevent sexual risk behaviors and associated factors among the youth in Yangon, Myanmar.

A cross-sectional descriptive research was undertaken among 192 youths. Participants included the youth residing in the study area and participated in the youth development program. Bivariate and multivariate logistic regressions were applied to identify an association.

The findings indicated that the proportion of a high level of intention to prevent sexual risk behaviors was 53.6%. The factors associated with the intention to prevent sexual risk behaviors were: belief strength on sexual risk behaviors (aOR = 2.84; 95% CI: 1.06–7.26), normative belief on the prevention of sexual risk behaviors (aOR = 2.03; 95% CI: 3.03–6.23), motivation to comply with preventing sexual risk behaviors (aOR = 4.72; 95% CI: 3.11–6.23), decision-making (aOR = 2.46; 95% CI: 2.22–5.41) and negotiation (aOR = 6.3; 95% CI: 2.37–10.23)

The study was a cross-sectional study and cannot establish causal relationships. These results can be a guideline for implementation for the youth but may limit the generalization of results to other age groups in Myanmar.

Findings can be used as a local and national public health guideline for developing interventions to prevent sexual risk behaviors.

Sexual risk behavior is considered taboo and puts Myanmar youths at risk of health and social problems. It is important for prevention efforts to determine factors related to sexual intentions to prevent the consequence of these problems.

From the organisational perspective, the authors know that management, including innovation management, becomes less “organised” by bureaucracy and administrative tools, and much more impacted by organisational capabilities, competences and hidden, “soft” routines, bringing innovation and creativity to the core of organisation. The purpose of this paper is to focus on competency sets for open innovation (OI) and is to provide recommendations for OI competency development in companies, linked to the core OI processes.

The research is exploratory and aims at theory-based practical indication combining deductive identification of competency clusters and inductive model development. Thus, the authors apply quantitative methods to data collection and analysis. The authors conducted an extensive literature review on competence challenges with regard to execution of OI, and empirical data analysis based on a large-scale structured industrial survey in Europe (N=264), leading to the development of competency sets for companies. SPSS tools are applied for empirical tests.

The authors develop a generic OI competency model applicable across industries, combined with organisational implications for sustaining OI management capabilities. The research clusters competencies based on the empirical analysis, which addresses the various challenges of OI, leading to recommendations for competency management in an OI context.

The data were collected from one key informant per company. Although the authors made efforts to ensure that this was a senior manager responsible for innovation, the authors cannot exclude some bias in the way that OI activities and related competencies are perceived. Exploratory nature of the research, which calls for a more systematic investigation of the OI activity modes and the OI competencies resulting competency model. In particular, the competencies could be tested on an inter-professional sample of employees with involvement in and/or responsibility for innovation, development, and HR management, as well as on leaders of innovating companies. Third, although significant in size for the analyses undertaken, the sample is not large enough to enable a more fine-tuned analysis of regional differences across Europe in the way that OI is managed through the development and implementation of competencies.

The research contributes to the OI management field with an outlined OI competency profile that can be implemented flexibly and tailored to individual firm’s needs. It brings indications for both further theory building and practice of innovation organisation, especially with regard to human resource development and organisational capability building for OI.

The social implications of the paper result from the contribution to innovation management competency development in OI regimes, which is an important tool for designing contemporary educational programmes, contributes to OI management sophistication in business which is especially important during the economy slowdown and search for new sources of growth and productivity, and supports firms productive engagement in OI ecosystems and collective technology upgrading towards higher societal benefits and stakeholder involvement.

An empirically grounded OI competency model is proposed with an implication to support human resource development for OI. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there has been no prior attempt to build such a model. The distinguished feature of the research is its extensive European coverage of 35 countries and multinational scope. The empirical validation strategy makes the research extremely relevant for management decisions related to human factors related OI capability development in organisations.

This paper investigates the integration of leadership training into IT curricula to develop current and future skills needed by the IT job market. The technical and non-technical skills required for IT professionals are presented and a conceptual model for including leadership training in technical courses is outlined. To implement this model, we adopted the Problem-Based Learning approach to teach an IT course. Qualitative and quantitative data were gathered, through a survey, from 52 undergraduate students in the College of Information Technology at Zayed University. Our results show that our adopted approach was successful in teaching IT skills as well as developing leadership skills. Given these findings, we highlight the importance and feasibility of integrating leadership development on a daily basis within technical courses to develop both the technical and non technical skills required by the job market.

Industry 4.0 or the Fourth Industrial Revolution is characterized by robotic process automation and machine-to-machine communications. Since computers, machines, and robots share information and knowledge more swiftly and effectively than humans, the question is what human beings' role could be in the era of the Internet-of-Thing. The answer would be beneficial to institutions for higher education to anticipate. The literature reveals a gap between the intended learning outcomes in higher education institutions and the needs of employers in Industry 4.0. Evidence is shown that higher education mainly focused on knowledge (know-what) and theory-based (know-why) intended learning outcomes. However, competent professionals require knowledge (know-what), understanding of the theory (know-why), professional (know-how) and interpersonal skills (know-how and know-who), and need intrapersonal traits such as creativeness, persistence, a result-driven attitude et cetera. Therefore, intended learning outcomes in higher education should also develop interpersonal skills and intrapersonal characteristics. Yet, personality development is a personal effort vital for contemporary challenges. The history of the preceding industrial revolutions showed the drawbacks of personality and character education; politicians have abused it to control societies in the 19th and 20th centuries. In the discussion section, the institutions for higher education are alerted that the societal challenges of the twenty-first century could lead to a form of personality education that is not in the student's interest and would violate Isaiah Berlin's philosophical concept of ‘positive freedom’.