Search results

This chapter aims to discuss methods for promoting student engagement to counteract declining academic motivation and achievement in the contemporary setting.

In this chapter, two studies are presented that describe ways to promote student engagement in and out of the classroom. The in-class study was conducted with psychology students at the University of Nebraska at Kearney (UNK). The Student Course Engagement Questionnaire (SCEQ) developed by Handelsman, Briggs, Sullivan, and Towler (2005) was used to measure student engagement. Study 2 examined the extent to which four high-impact educational practices promoted student engagement. Undergraduate UNK students who had participated in undergraduate research, learning communities, service learning, or internships were surveyed.

The results of the first study indicated that instructors can promote engagement by how the structure of the classroom (discussion classes), individuation (knowing student names and keeping class sizes small), and teacher support in the form of being responsive to student questions, encouraging students to seek assistance, and assigning effective aids to learning. The second study indicated that undergraduate research and internships were more engaging than service learning or learning communities.

These results suggest practical methods for meeting a variety of student needs, including their need for relatedness — by encouraging them to seek assistance and knowing their names, competence — by assigning effective learning aids and autonomy — by encouraging intrinsically motivating activities.

TQM philosophy is that continuous improvement within an organization is possible. It is people‐oriented and customer focused. To be successful it must involve all people within the organization and must have customer feedback. Discusses in detail the reasons why this fails: managers do not delegate quality to involve everyone in the organization; appropriate consultants to implement the system are not evaluated properly; lack of employee involvement; failure of management leadership with too much emphasis on cost cutting and profits, not customer service; poor communication with workforce; resistance to change. Benchmarking must be established to measure the effects of TQM and a long‐term plan to establish goals. A good supplier relationship, teamwork and employee participation are all required concepts within a successful TQM programme.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of a self‐managed transition process on the performance of mid‐level managers, specifically company commanders serving in the US Army.

The transition process provided the new commanders with a flexible outline of topics used for interviewing key personnel within the larger organization (battalion) prior to and immediately following assumption of command. The authors measured the performance of commanders using a standardized Battalion Command Evaluation Form completed by the battalion commander. In addition, the effects of leader experience and locus of control were examined.

It was found that use of the transition process enhanced the performance of company commanders who had an external locus of control and/or did not come directly from a job proximal to command.

The paper provides a model that can be used with mid‐level managers in order to minimize the performance deficit often associated with turnover.

Most research on managerial transition has focused on upper‐level management. The paper examines mid‐level managerial turnover and provides new information about how means and opportunities can affect leader effectiveness.

As a means of extending Fiedler's contingency model of leadership effectiveness to followership behavior, this study examined the relationship between followers' motivational disposition as measured by the least preferred co‐worker scale, modified to refer to leaders (LPL), situational favorability as reflected in leader‐member relations and follower experience, and followers' performance as measured by US Army enlisted efficiency report (EER). Participants were male, junior enlisted personnel serving with the US Army, Europe. The results indicated that in accordance with Fiedler, relations‐oriented followers performed better in moderately favorable situations while task oriented followers performed better in highly unfavorable situations. In contrast to Fiedler, relations‐oriented followers performed better in highly favorable conditions.

Job losses that are the result of mergers, sale of a company, restructuring, and downsizing as organizations struggle for profitability in a highly competitive corporate world are common. The reduction process forces organizations to employ a variety of exit strategies as they deal with the most difficult aspect of downsizing – the reduction of personnel from their organization as a means of rapid reduction of expense to the company. Considers some employee‐sensitive exit strategies.

No one would argue that leaders have a myriad of significant responsibilities. Using a premise the authors support – leadership is a people business – they aim to utilize their more than 100 years combined leadership to answer the question: what, then, is the real work of the leader?

Narrative based on over 100 years of leadership and consultation on leadership with a wide variety of organizations.

The result is the eight roles of the leader, which are as follows: collaborative developer of mission, vision, and organizational core values; creator of a humanistic work environment; developer of people, builder of capabilities; Initiator of organization‐wide communications; role model of emotional intelligence; utilizer of strategic data; consensus seeker – risk taker; change agent.

The paper discusses each of the roles of the leader in some detail, using a model developed for this purpose. The paper does not attempt to deal with the production, product quality, financial, etc. responsibilities of the leader, only what the authors feel is the principal focus of leadership – the people.

The authors are leaders with over 100 years combined leadership experience. Some are leading theorists and practitioners as well. Defining exactly what is leadership has been a persistent problem for researchers and theorists. Discovering how to create or produce leaders likewise has been a difficult challenge over the years. This paper provides a model that encompasses both challenges to answer the fundamental question, what is the real work of the leader?

The problem of workers at risk should be reframed to reflect the impact of social stratification, power relations and divergent interests in occupational health practices. The past two decades have seen rapid developments in technology for detecting genetic traits and abnormalities in individuals that may indicate damage from chemical exposure. Occupational physicians, industrial managers and biomedical scientists increasingly favour this technology. However these methods have only selective appeal and are quite controversial. Their accuracy in identifying high‐risk workers is disputed as well as their value and consequences. Social factors that shape the way workers at risk have been defined are discussed. These social processes help to explain the way issues of risk are framed and industrial practices are conducted. They also explain patterns of support and opposition to genetic technology.