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The purpose of this paper is to test the relationship between subjective job insecurity and self-rated job performance, and to assess how this association is different across different employment groups.

The authors used a data set owned by TNO and Statistics Netherlands of more than 89,000 Dutch workers and self-employed that is a representative sample of the Dutch workforce. The authors included data from 2014 and 2016 assessing subjective job insecurity in terms of “a concern about the future of one’s job/business” and self-rated job performance.

The effect size of the association between subjective job insecurity and self-rated job performance is small. For temporary agency workers and on-call workers, the association between subjective job insecurity and job performance is weaker compared to permanent workers and fixed-term workers. However for self-employed workers with and without employees, however, the relation between subjective job insecurity and job performance is stronger compared to permanent workers.

The biggest limitation is the cross-sectional design of the study, which limits conclusions about causality.

The finding that subjective job insecurity goes together with less work performance shows that job insecurity has no upside for the productivity of companies.

The study provides a deeper understanding of the relationship between subjective job insecurity and self-rated job performance on a national level.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect various pathways for public sector accounting and accountability research in a post-new public management (NPM) context.

The paper first discusses the relationship between NPM and public sector accounting research. It then explores the possible stimuli that inter-disciplinary accounting scholars may derive from recent public administration studies, public policy and societal trends, highlighting possible ways to extend public sector accounting research and strengthen dialogue with other disciplines.

NPM may have represented a golden age, but also a “golden cage,” for the development of public sector accounting research. The paper reflects possible ways out of this golden cage, discussing future avenues for public sector accounting research. In doing so, it highlights the opportunities offered by re-considering the “public” side of accounting research and shifting the attention from the public sector, seen as a context for public sector accounting research, to publicness, as a concept central to such research.

The paper calls for stronger engagement with contemporary developments in public administration and policy. This could be achieved by looking at how public sector accounting accounts for, but also impacts on, issues of wider societal relevance, such as co-production and hybridization of public services, austerity, crises and wicked problems, the creation and maintenance of public value and democratic participation.

Application of the numerical method to the art of Medicine was regarded not as a “trivial ingenuity” but “an important stage in its development”; thus proclaimed Professor Bradford Hill, accepted as the father of medical statistics, a study still largely unintelligible to the mass of medical practitioners. The need for Statistics is the elucidation of the effects of multiple causes; this represents the essence of the statistical method and is most commendable. Conclusions reached empirically under statistical scrutiny have mistakes and fallacies exposed. Numerical methods of analysis, the mathematical approach, reveals data relating to factors in an investigation, which might be missed in empirical observation, and by means of a figure states their significance in the whole. A simplified example is the numerical analysis of food poisoning, which alone determines the commonest causative organisms, the commonest food vehicles and the organisms which affect different foods, as well as changes in the pattern, e.g., the rising incidence of S. agona and the increase of turkey (and the occasions on which it is served, such as Christmas parties), as a food poisoning vehicle. The information data enables preventive measures to be taken. The ever‐widening fields of Medicine literally teem with such situations, where complexities are unravelled and the true significance of the many factors are established. Almost every sphere of human activity can be similarly measured. Apart from errors of sampling, problems seem fewer and controversy less with technical methods of analysis then on the presentation and interpretation of figures, or as Bradford Hill states “on the application of common sense and on elementary rules of logic”.

This paper aims to create a social constructivist perspective on collaborative architecture that is complementary to the rational‐analytic perspective as embodied in the “hard” project management tools.

Two theoretical perspectives from the field of design methodology, “design as co‐evolution”, and “design as a social process”, form the base for an integrated perspective of collaboration. This integrated perspective describes in detail the social process among multi functional actors involved in co‐creational processes. A third theoretical framework discusses the process of maturing conflicts and conflict prevention using the integrated perspective on collaboration. Data from two empirical studies are used to illustrate both perspectives. The first study used a protocol study approach and the second a grounded approach.

This paper shows the similarities in design methodology and conflict literature by introducing a social constructivist perspective on collaborative architecture. Especially, the notion of cognitive errors as root cause of “conflictuous” situations becomes apparent. The paper describes in detail the role of perceptual differences that can make and break collaborative architecture.

Based on these findings some hypothetical intervention strategies are proposed that collaborating actors can apply in order to prevent “conflictuous” situations to grow beyond control and even bend those situations towards innovations. Actors engaged in multi functional and multi actor creational processes might benefit from building a rudimentary mental model representing the world of the other function or other organization.

The paper brings together the intra‐subjective and inter‐subjective level in the context of co‐creating (architectural) processes by combining two very different streams of literature, design methodology and maturing conflicts. In both streams one could identify a similar distinction between cognitive processes and social processes. Collaborative architecture without having social‐emotional conflicts is realized by explicating implicitly held knowledge, understandings and perceptions. An individual cognitive effort as well as a social‐interactive effort is needed in which actors explicitly discuss differences in perception before these perceptions evolve into misleading truths. As a basis for such synchronizing discussions the actors need to have some sort of rudimentary understanding of each other's thought world and trust in each other's professionalism and factuality. Thus, preventing conflicts is not about having more communication, but about different communication!

While school leaders have commonly functioned as school managers, the urgency for improving learning outcomes highlights the need for school leaders to function more as instructional leaders. However, a number of barriers exist in exercising instructional leadership in the developing country context. School leaders often lack capacity for instructional leadership and operate under significant constraints, such as chronic shortage of materials, operating funds, and staff development resources. Knowledge about cultural and organizational factors influencing school leadership behaviors can inform conditions for strengthening instructional leadership. This discussion essay provides a framework for expanding comparative and international inquiry into the challenges of instructional leadership in terms of the principal–agent problem, school leader sense of self-efficacy, and the integration of teacher incentives.

In the continuing endeavour to work towards ever better management, the project manager has a crucial role to play. This monograph assesses the requirements of project management in terms of training and experience, demonstrates what sort of person the project manager should be, and also the role that should be played by the project team. In order to illustrate the manner in which the essential qualities in both the project manager and his team are displayed in action a number of completed projects worldwide are reviewed. Both successful projects and disastrous projects are used to demonstrate the way in which the problems encountered in real life can be met and overcome. In conclusion both the prospects and the problems that the future may hold for the project manager are assessed.

The aim of this survey study among N=180 Dutch teachers was to examine the moderating role of calendar age and proactive personality in the relationships between developmental opportunities, on the one hand, and work engagement and self-perceived employability, on the other. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Hierarchical regression analyses have been used, illustrated by means of quotes – gathered through open questions in the survey – to support the quantitative findings.

A significant interaction effect between calendar age and developmental opportunities in relation to self-perceived employability, but not to work engagement, has been found, revealing stronger positive effects for developmental opportunities among older workers than among younger ones.

The present study provides a starting-point for further research on professional development in other occupational settings.

The use of age-conscious developmental opportunities is a powerful tool in encouraging life-long learning.

Improvement in teachers’ engagement and employability will enhance their performance, will consequently lead to better pupil performance, and will contribute to the wider status of the profession, meaning that more young talented people will seriously consider working in the field and thereby helping to address the urgent need for more teaching staff.

This study increases the knowledge of professional development among teachers and examines to what extent age and proactivity play a role in this regard. The results of the empirical work challenge dominant views on age-related declines and losses, and invite the authors to continue scholarly work in this field focussing upon long-term intra-individual development.

To map nurses’ actions performed during the care transitions from hospital to home of Covid-19 patients.

A scoping review based on the Joanna Briggs Institute guidelines was carried out. We searched in seven databases: PubMed/MEDLINE, BDENF, LILACS, SciELO, Embase, Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar. A two-step screening process and data extraction was performed independently by two reviewers. The findings were summarized and analyzed using a content analysis technique.

Of the total 5,618 studies screened, 21 were included. The analysis revealed nurses’ actions before and after patient’ discharge, sometimes planned and developed with the interprofessional team. The nurses’ actions included to plan and support patients’ discharge, to adapt the care plan, to use screening tools and monitor patients’ clinical status and needs, to provide health orientation to patients and caregivers, home care and face-to-face visiting, to communicate with patients, caregivers and other health professionals with phone calls and virtual tools, to provide rehabilitation procedures, to make referrals and to orient patients and families to navigate in the health system.

The results provide a broader understanding of the actions taken and challenges faced by nurses to ensure a safe care transition for Covid-19 patients from hospital to home. The interprofessional integration to discharge planning and the clinical nursing leadership in post-discharge monitoring were highlighted.

The nurses’ actions for Covid-19 patients performed during care transitions focused on coordination and discharge planning tailored to the needs of patients and caregivers at the home setting. Nurses monitored patients, with an emphasis on providing guidance and checking clinical status using telehealth tools.

The purpose of this paper is to report on a study investigating the limits of the applicability of the focused factory concept (FFC) in health care. The case setting comes from the Dutch obstetric care system, which is organised by principles in sync with the FFC; the organisation for “simple” pregnancies (independent midwifery practices) is fully separated from that for “complex” pregnancies (obstetric departments in hospitals). The paper investigates the degree of fit between how the Dutch obstetric care system is organised and how it operates (internal fit).

This study analyses one year of patient data from one obstetric hospital department and from one midwifery practice in its immediate geographical proximity. Data were collected regarding the medical condition, consultations, and delivery. These data were used to test the degree to which the obstetric care system operates in line with the FFC; one would expect the midwifery practice to operate as a “line process”, and the obstetric department as a “jobbing process”.

Findings suggest that the Dutch obstetric care sector is designed in line with the FFC, but does not operate accordingly. Root causes for this misalignment can be found in the characteristics of the medical condition of pregnancy.

The fact that the data concern only one region must raise caution for generalisation. However, the fact that medical conditions, which can be assumed to be universal, lead to an intrinsic mismatch between the FFC organisation and medical operational reality, suggests that this paper may have broad implications for theory and practice.

For the Dutch obstetric case system, this paper is one in a series that casts doubts on the sustainability of the two‐tiered system. For obstetric care in general, integrated care seems preferable to the FFC. For health care in general, this paper suggests that caution is required in applying the FFC. Moreover, in OM research for health care, more efforts should be made to understand how medical conditions affect the daily operational processes and, hence, the organisational design.

Most of the studies focusing on the applicability of the FFC look at financial and medical outcomes. This paper is original in that it looks at what drives these outcomes, i.e. the degree of fit between strategy, organisational design and operational performance.