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A method to engage salient organisational stakeholders in identifying and ranking measures of healthcare improvement programs is described. The method is illustrated using Executive WalkRounds (EWRs) in a multi-site Australian Health District.

Subject matter experts (SMEs) conducted document analysis, identified potential EWRs measures, created driver diagrams and then eliminated weak measures. Next, a panel of executives skilled in EWRs ranked and ratified the potential measures using a modified Delphi technique.

EWRs measurement selection demonstrated the feasibility of the method. Of the total time to complete the method 79% was contributed by SMEs, 14% by administration personnel and 7% by executives. Document analysis revealed three main EWRs aims. Ten of 28 potential measures were eliminated by the SME review. After repeated Delphi rounds the executive panel achieved consensus (75% cut-off) on seven measures. One outcome, one process and one implementation fidelity metric were selected to measure and monitor the impact of EWRs in the health district.

Perceptions of weak relationships between measures and intended improvements can lead to practitioner scepticism. This work offers a structured method to combine the technical expertise of SMEs with the practical knowledge of healthcare staff in selecting improvement measures.

This research describes and demonstrates a novel method to systematically leverage formal and practical types of expertise to select measures that are strongly linked to local quality improvement goals. The method can be applied in diverse healthcare settings.

Wonders whether companies actually have employees best interests at heart across physical, mental and spiritual spheres. Posits that most organizations ignore their workforce – not even, in many cases, describing workers as assets! Describes many studies to back up this claim in theis work based on the 2002 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference, in Cardiff, Wales.

The ability to measure and assess “quality” is essential in building and maintaining a safe and effective transportation system. Attaining acceptable quality outcomes in transportation projects has been a reoccurring problem at both the federal and state levels, at least partially, as a result of poorly developed, inefficient or nonexistent quality assurance/quality control (QA/QC) processes. The purpose of this paper is to develop and implement a new QA/QC process that focuses on a novel double-bounded performance-related specification (PRS) and corresponding pay factor policy that includes both lower and upper quality acceptance and payment reward boundaries for bridge concrete.

The authors use historical data to design different payment scenarios illustrating likely industry responses to the new PRS, and select the single scenario that best balances risk between the agency and industry. The authors then convert that payment scenario to a pay factor schedule using a search heuristic and determine statistical compliance with the PRS using percent-within-limits (PWL).

The methodology offers an innovative approach for developing an initial set of pay factors when lifecycle cost data are lacking and the PRS are new or modified. An important finding is that, with a double-bounded PRS, it is not possible to represent pay factors using the simplified table PWL currently employed in practice because each PWL value occupies two separate positions in the payment structure – one above the design target and one below it. Therefore, a more detailed set of pay factors must be employed which explicitly specify the mean sample value and the design target. The approach is demonstrated in practice for the Agency of Transportation in state of Vermont.

The authors demonstrate a novel approach for developing a double-bounded PRS and introduce a payment incentive/disincentive policy with the goal of improving total product quality. The new pay factor policy includes both a payment penalty below the contracted price for failing to meet a specified performance criterion as well as a payment premium above the contracted price that increases as the sample product specification approaches an “ideal” design value. The PRS includes both an upper and lower acceptance boundary for the finished product as opposed to only a lower tail acceptance boundary, which is the traditional approach.

The authors illustrate a research collaboration between academia and a state agency that highlights the role academic research can play in advancing quality management practices. The study involves the use of actual product performance data and is operational as opposed to conceptual in nature. Finally, the authors offer important practical insights and guidance by demonstrating how a new PRS and pay factor policy can be developed without the use of site-specific historical lifecycle cost (LCC) data that include detailed manufacturing, producing and placement cost data, as data related to product performance over time. This is an important contribution, as the development and implementation of pay factor policies typically involve the use of historical LCC data. However, in many cases, these data are not available or may be incomplete.

With the new PRS and pay factor schedule, the Agency expects shrinkage and cracking on bridge decks to decrease along with overall maintenance and rehabilitation costs. A major focus the new PRS is to actively involve industry partners in quality improvement efforts.

The authors focus on a major modification to an existing QA/QC process that involves the development of a new PRS and an associated pay factor policy undertaken by the Vermont Agency of Transportation. The authors use empirical data to develop a novel double bounded PRS and payment schedule for concrete and offer unique operational/practical insight and guidance by demonstrating how a new PRS and pay factor policy can be developed without the use of site-specific historical LCC. Typically, PRS for in-place concrete have only a lower tail acceptance boundary.

In this paper, I explore what shapes the identities of digital nomads (DNs), a class of remote workers who travel and work concurrently. Through extensive fieldwork and interviews with 50 digital nomads conducted in seven coworking hostels in Mexico in 2022, I construct a theory of DN identity. I base this upon the frequent transformations they undergo in their Circumstances, which regularly change their worker identity.

DNs relinquish traditional social determinants of identity, such as nationality and religion. They define their personal identities by their passions and interests, which are influenced by the people they meet. DNs exist in inherently transitive social spaces and, without rigid social roles to fulfil, they represent themselves authentically. They form close relationships with other long-term travellers to combat loneliness and homesickness. Digital nomads define their worker identities around their location independence. This study shows that DNs value their nomadic lifestyle above promotions and financial gain. They define themselves by productivity and professionalism to ensure the sustainability of their lifestyle. Furthermore, digital nomad coworking hubs serve focused, individual work, leaving workplace politics and strict ‘office image’ norms behind. Without fixed social and professional roles to play, digital nomads define themselves personally according to their ever-evolving passions and the sustainability of their nomadic life. Based on these findings, I present a cyclical framework for DN identity evolution which demonstrates how relational, logistical, and socio-personal flux evolves DN’s worker identities.

Using data from a retail chain of 193 bakery shops that underwent downsizing, we study the effects of two types of downsizing announcements – closure or sale to another operator – on sales in the affected shops, and how these effects are moderated by job security perceptions. On average, sales in the affected shops go down by 26% after a closure announcement and by 7% after a sale announcement. Sales decline more sharply in shops where employees had higher job security perceptions before the announcement. Our findings are consistent with psychological contract theory: a breach of an implicit contract promising job security in exchange for work effort results in a reciprocal effort withdrawal. We rule out several alternative explanations to our findings.

President Bill Clinton has had many opponents and enemies, most of whom come from the political right wing. Clinton supporters contend that these opponents, throughout the Clinton presidency, systematically have sought to undermine this president with the goal of bringing down his presidency and running him out of office; and that they have sought non‐electoral means to remove him from office, including Travelgate, the death of Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster, the Filegate controversy, and the Monica Lewinsky matter. This bibliography identifies these and other means by presenting citations about these individuals and organizations that have opposed Clinton. The bibliography is divided into five sections: General; “The conspiracy stream of conspiracy commerce”, a White House‐produced “report” presenting its view of a right‐wing conspiracy against the Clinton presidency; Funding; Conservative organizations; and Publishing/media. Many of the annotations note the links among these key players.

The purpose of this chapter is to explore the interaction between access-based consumption (ABC) and consumer culture in the specific context of baby products, and connect the two streams of consumer research and design theory, by associating ABC with product service systems (PSS) which are seen as desirable as they offer a promise of sustainability.

Within an action research approach consisting of the establishment of a pilot service provision, we conducted ethnographies including in-depth interviews and focus groups.

The adoption of access-based provisions is constrained by low compatibility with consumer culture. Consumers are concerned with the provision’s ability to satisfy their needs, what this mode of consumption says about them, and the extent to which it associates them with communities of practice.

The limitations are the typical ones of action research, which is linked to a unique, researcher-generated context where the researcher is also a participant, and therefore are difficult to generalize.

The large-scale implementation of PSS underpinning ABC is problematic as it challenges consumers’ needs for self-expression and affiliation; however, we found that consumers in this specific context are responsive to the environmental efficiency of PSS.

Our research explores the intersection between consumer research and design, and consumers’ response to sustainable business models which underpin ABC.

The purpose of this paper is to deepen resource-based view theory by analyzing how intellectual capital (IC) affects performance in temporary teams and by showing the moderating role of integrative mechanisms.

The research context focuses on 153 national teams of football (NTF), also referred to as national soccer teams, as an example of temporary groups. A partial least squares (PLS) methodology was utilized on a data set built from transfermarkt.com and FIFA world rankings. Three main hypotheses were developed and tested using first a PLS and then an OLS approach.

The results show how IC contributes to performance, extending the findings of previous studies to the context of temporary teams. Additionally, the results show how some integrative mechanisms such as assembly decisions and team leader experience influence temporary team performance by creating an interaction effect with existing IC.

This study contributes to IC theories for three reasons. First, it applies IC research to a specific research context: temporary teams, where specific organizational capabilities are required to coordinate resources. Second, the study analyzes the role of integrative mechanisms as moderators of the relationship between IC and performance in temporary teams. Third, the study focuses on NTF as an example of temporary teams.

The purpose of this study is to draw attention to the heuristic value of intersectionality by historicizing it as a framework appropriate for the use of studying discrimination and discriminatory practices in organizations over time.

Utilizing a fusion between amodernist historiography vis-à-vis the nascent ANTi-History approach and intersectional complexity, the authors draw upon historical narratives from archival materials British Airways to empirically examine the utility of, and turn to, intersectional history in historical organization studies.

Analysis of archival materials and commissioned corporate histories revealed subjectivities of socially constructing historicized intersectional identities. This suggests that certain identities have been and continue to “enjoy” privilege while others are marginalized and/or neglected through serial interconnected historical meanings. These processes of privileging and marginalization rely on the way a nexus of meaning is configured.

The research process relied and is dependent on limited archival materials within a single organization (British Airways) and industry (civil aviation). The critique herein should not be misinterpreted as judgment of the airline itself as an exemplar of discriminatory practices but rather for its longevity as an ongoing concern; its rich, colonialist history within the United Kingdom and accessibility of data. Archival traces are housed within a semi-public corporate archive which means those traces available for study have been professional and rhetorically curated.

From the perspective of workplace diversity, our aim has been to reveal to diversity professionals and activists not only the role of history in shaping discrimination but also, in particular, to be alert to the processes whereby the production of knowledge of the past takes place. The authors hope also to have drawn attention to the power of organizations in the generation of discriminatory historical accounts and the need to further explore how such accounts are produced as knowledge of the past. Finally, the authors introduce the notion of “nexus of meaning” to suggest that in the complexity of intersectionality, the authors need to explore not only how people experience different and combined forms of discrimination but also how those experiences are shaped in a complex series of meaning that owe much to past experiences.

The research directs attention to the nexus of meaning that constitute intersecting identities.

The research attempts to historicize intersectionality as a qualitative framework worthy of consideration in management and organization studies. From the perspective of studying discrimination in organizational life, the aim of this paper is to bring forward the role history plays in shaping discrimination as well as the processes whereby the production of knowledge of the past takes place. Attention is also drawn to the power of organizations in the generation of discriminatory historical accounts and the need to further explore how such accounts are produced. This study introduces the nexus of meaning analytic that understands how the experiences of different and combined forms of discrimination are shaped by meanings of the past.

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether relatives of care home residents are best placed to act as “champions” or advocates for their family members, as is often the expectation.

Focus groups and interviews were conducted with 25 relatives of residents in four care homes for older people in the South East of England. Two rounds of focus groups were held in each participating care home: the first was to discuss any issues arising from the care received, or concerns about the home itself; the second was to enable a deeper exploration of the key themes that arose from the first round and explore why relatives, in this case, failed to complain.

Thematic analysis revealed a complex range of emotions experienced by relatives that contributed to a conflict between what they believed to be the correct response and how they behaved in reality, which led to a culture of acceptance. Analysis revealed some relatives were reluctant to “interfere” for fear of possible negative repercussions, thus they downplayed issues in an attempt not to “rock the boat”.

This paper discusses the flaws in the policy emphasis on personalisation and the reliance on family members as advocates, and concludes with suggestions on how care homes may foster an environment where relatives, and indeed residents, feel comfortable to raise issues and concerns.