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The purpose of this paper is to describe how first-line managers (FLMs) in home care (HC) reason about the opportunities and obstacles to lead the work according to the individual’s needs and goals.

In this participatory appreciative action reflection project, eight managers within one Swedish municipality were interviewed. The data were analysed using a thematic analysis.

The results showed a polarization between two different systems that FLMs struggle to balance when attempting to lead HC that adapts to the needs and goals of individuals. One system was represented by the possibilities of a humane system, with human capital in the form of the individual, older persons and the co-workers in HC. The second system was represented by obstacles in the form of the economic needs of the organization in which the individual receiving HC often felt forgotten. In this system, the organization’s needs and goals governed, with FLMs needing to adapt to the cost-effectiveness principle and keep a balanced budget. The managers had to balance an ethical conflict of values between the human value and needs-solidarity principles, with that of the cost-effectiveness principle.

The FLMs lack the opportunity to lead HC according to the needs and goals of the individuals receiving HC. There is a need for consensus and a value-based leadership model based on ethical principles such as the principles of human value and needs-solidarity to lead the HC according to the individual’s needs and goals.

This study aims at understanding how higher education institutions (HEIs) can contribute to sustainable development, by designing their programmes for bringing about a transformative impact on communities and students, and also to examine what alternative pedagogical approaches could be used for that. In the past decades, HEIs have increasingly created social innovation (SI) programmes, as a way to achieve United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. These community-oriented and field-based programmes are difficult to ally with conventional classroom education. This study explores how these programmes could integrate the participatory approach and what would be the benefits. It also investigates the effectiveness of the experiential learning approach for teaching sustainability.

A case study method is used to document SI projects initiated by an HEI programme in rural India.

It was found that the participatory approach contributes to empowering communities and also benefits the students in terms of academic, professional and personal growth. Empirical findings show that experiential learning is an efficient method to teach sustainability. Ultimately, both pedagogical approaches are found to be mutually beneficial.

This study fills a gap in the literature, by providing empirical evidence on how HEI can implement innovative educational strategies such as participatory approach and experiential learning in their programmes towards teaching sustainability. A conceptual model for HEI interested in developing similar programmes is also proposed. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first studies focusing on the context of Indian HEI.

This paper argues for the need to use multiple sources and methods that respond to research challenges presented by new forms of war. There are methodological constraints and contention on the superiority given to positivist and interpretivist research designs when doing fieldwork in war situations, hence there is a need to use integrated data generation techniques. The combined effect of severe limitations of movement for both the researcher and researched fragmented data because of polarized views about the causes of the war and unpredictable events that make information hard to come by militate against systematic, organised and robust data generation. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to make fieldwork researchers understand significant research problems unique to war zones.

This research was guided by the postmodernist mode of thought which challenges standardised research traditions. Fieldwork experiences in Cabo suggest the need to use the composite strategies that rely on the theoretical foundation of integrative and creative collection of data when doing research in violent settings.

The fieldwork experiences showed that the standardised, conventional and valorised positivist and ethnographic research strategies may not sufficiently facilitate understanding of the dynamics of war. There should not be firm rules, guidelines or regulations governing the actions of the researcher in conflict. As such, doing research in violent settings require reflexivity, flexibility and creativity in research strategies that respond to rapid changes. Research experiences in Mozambique show the need to use blended methods that include even less structured methodologies.

Fieldwork experiences in Cabo challenges researchers who cling to standardised research traditions which often hamper awareness of new postmodernist mode of thought applicable to war settings. It is essential to study the nature of African armed conflicts by combining creativity and flexibility in the selection of research strategies.

The concept of “participation” has become a buzzword in contemporary public governance models. However, despite the broad and significant interest, defining participation remains a debated topic. The aim of the current study was to explore how participants perceived and interpreted the meaning and scope of participation.

This study is part of a four-year (2019–2022) longitudinal research project investigating stakeholder participation in the context of developing and establishing a strategic regional plan in Region Skåne in southern Sweden. The research project has a qualitative approach and uses interviews with different stakeholder groups such as municipal politicians and public officials and a survey as empirical material.

The authors developed a participation spectrum including eight types of participation: to be open, to be informed, to be listened to, to discuss, to be consulted, to give and take, to collaborate and to co-create. The authors also identified four different purposes of participation: creating a joint network, creating a joint understanding, creating a joint effort and creating a joint vision. The spectrum and the purposes were related through four characteristics of participation, i.e. involvement, interaction, influence and empowerment.

The study rests on a single case, and so the results have limited transferatibility.

Researching participation in terms of the participants' perceptions contributes a new perspective to the existing literature, which has commonly focussed on the organizers' perceptions of participation. Moreover, in order to clarify what participation meant to the participants, the study puts emphasis on untangling this from the why question of participation.

The purpose of this study is to determine the characteristics of the studies in terms of country, participant profile and methodology, as well as to determine what the Internet of Things (IoT) is currently contributing to higher education.

The study was developed following the methodology supported by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses statement and the PICOS strategy, retrieving scientific literature from Web of Science, Scopus, ERIC and Google Scholar. Of the 237 studies that the search yielded, 11 were included.

The results showed that among the opportunities offered by IoT is that it not only brings the introduction of information and communication technology into the classroom, but also enhances student interest, thus, improving the quality of teaching in higher education. On the other hand, one of the challenges it faces is the attitude of teachers towards its adoption, as well as the level of digital competence of teachers.

This study presents how higher education institutions are including the IoT in their educational activities. The IoT refers to a network of digital interconnectivity between devices, people and the internet itself that enables the exchange of data between them, allowing key information about the use and performance of devices and objects to be captured to detect patterns, make recommendations, improve efficiency and create better user experiences.

The study utilises unique survey data gathered from 12,427 party members. The dependent variable measures party members’ in-party commitment and is based on willingness to donate money, to contribute effort, the feeling of belonging in the party network and social trust in the party network.

In this article, we study how different extra-parliamentary online and offline activities are associated with in-party commitment amongst political party members from the six largest Finnish parties. We especially delve into the differences between members of the Finnish parties.

We found that extra-parliamentary political activity, including connective action through social media networks and collective action through civic organisations, is highly associated with members’ in-party commitment. Additionally, members of the newer identity parties more effectively utilised social media networks, whilst the traditional interest parties were still more linked to traditional forms of extra-parliamentary political action.

By employing the sociological network theory perspective, the study contributes to ongoing discussions surrounding the impact of social media on political participation amongst party members, both within and beyond the confines of political parties.

In order to better optimize the internal management system of book publishing and to cope with the changes in the external market environment, the purpose of this paper is to carry out cross-border publishing with the help of a transmedia storytelling model to realize the transformation and upgrading of the industry. Focusing on the relationship between the book publishing transmedia storytelling model and business performance, the moderating effect of the innovation environment on different variables is assessed.

This paper proposes several feasible hypotheses based on existing research. The research data came from 365 managers of Chinese book publishing organizations, and the scale was validated by Cronbach’s a, composite reliability (CR) and average variance extracted (AVE). Reliability and validity were verified, and correlation and regression analyses were used to test the impact of the book publishing transmedia storytelling model on business performance and to analyze the moderating role of the innovation environment.

The results show that the book publishing transmedia storytelling model (content production, technology integration, organizational innovation, marketing integration) helps to improve business performance (market performance, financial performance), and the innovation environment has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between the book publishing transmedia storytelling model and business performance, which provides a guarantee for the transformation and upgrading of book publishing. The market information reflected in the innovation environment has a certain role in promoting the innovation and business performance of the book publishing transmedia storytelling model.

The empirical evidence provides a theoretical link between the book publishing transmedia storytelling model and business performance, but there are still some shortcomings, and more factors, such as equity structure, government subsidies and research and development investment, should be included in future research. In addition, the scope of the research should be broadened on this basis to make the results of the data analysis more objective.

This paper introduces the transmedia storytelling model and deeply analyzes the relationship between the book publishing transmedia storytelling model and business performance, which is of great practical significance for optimizing the application and service quality of book publishing, prolonging the industrial chain, enhancing the interaction and participation of users and perfecting the business management system of the book publishing industry.

The application and research of the book publishing transmedia storytelling model are imperfect. Therefore, this paper not only helps to promote the innovation of book publishing organizational structure and improve the management system of business performance, but also may help to improve the innovation environment of book publishing enterprises and promote the diversification of industrial structure.

The aim of the paper is to analyze how actors in foodservice companies organize for inbound open innovation (OI).

This paper conducted a case analysis of a large and successful foodservice company operating in the Dutch market. Furthermore, drawing on 18 interviews and archive data, we identified the main organizational practices involved in the implementation of inbound innovation activities and the ways they are embraced are defined.

The results provide a holistic view of the main organizational practices a foodservice company implemented at different organizational levels, to exploit external knowledge coming from third parties and to promote the sharing and recombination of knowledge resources within the organization. The identified organizational practices reveal the main interaction patterns between relevant internal actors and other external parties in the company network, as well as between actors on different hierarchical organizational levels which allows processing relevant innovation information and make relevant decisions about it.

Implications are provided in terms of both theory and practice. This paper helps foodservice companies to create an internal organizational environment that supports the exploitation of customer knowledge.

There are few studies on how companies organize themselves for OI in general, and especially in the foodservice sector.

This paper aims to present insights on the governance of sustainability transitions in higher education in Africa. The authors interrogate the research literatures on the governance of socio-technical transitions in water, electricity, transport and waste management, and identify barriers and enabling factors that enhance transformative practices in universities.

The analytical framework proposed in this paper combines the elements of governance network theory (GNT) and transition topology. The framework of this study is grounded in an actor-centric approach using GNT to understand networks conducive to sustainability transitions. Events and governance networks were mapped on a transition topology to visualise organisational and institutional changes over time. The study engaged students, management, academic and administrative staff in building a community of practice towards sustainability. This research is based on qualitative content analysis grounded in interview data, focus group discussions, workshops, webinars and secondary data analysis.

The findings show that the university has consolidated a sustainability vision and targets, but several factors prevent the community from achieving these targets, including hierarchical decision-making processes, a multitude of disjointed committees and fragmentation in the campus community.

This research adds to an emerging body of literature in the field of sustainability in higher education with two contributions. Firstly, the study presents a novel perspective(s) on the governance of sustainability transitions by combining the literatures on governance and sustainability transitions using a new methodological approach of transition topology to show organisational and institutional changes. Secondly, the study presents new empirical evidence for improving the governance of sustainability transitions in a diverse and highly unequal African university community in the process of (de)colonisation of knowledge and governance.

Conflict and violence are the main drivers of globally escalating humanitarian needs. Local grassroots initiatives are pivotal in distributing humanitarian supplies in the acute response phase until more established humanitarian aid organizations can enter. Nevertheless, scant research exists regarding the role of grassroots associations in providing humanitarian assistance during a military conflict. The purpose of this paper is to understand the role of grassroots associations and identify important themes for effective operations.

This paper adopts a case-study approach of three Ukrainian grassroots associations that began operating in the immediate days of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The findings are based on analyzing primary sources, including interviews with Ukrainian volunteers, and are supported by secondary sources.

Grassroots associations have local contacts and a contextual understanding of population needs and can respond more rapidly and effectively than large intergovernmental agencies. Four critical themes regarding the operations of grassroots associations emerged: information management, inventory management, coordination and performance measurement. Grassroots humanitarian response operations during conflict are challenged by personal security risks, the unpredictability of unsolicited supplies, emerging volunteer roles, dynamic transportation routes and shifting demands.

Grassroots responses are central to humanitarian responses during the acute phase of a military conflict. By examining the operations of grassroots associations in the early months of the 2022 war in Ukraine, the authors provide a unique perspective on humanitarian logistics. Nonetheless, more inclusive models of humanitarian responses are needed to harness the capacities and resilience of grassroots operations in practice.