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The purpose of this paper is to present how the social learning theory of Bourdieu (1990; Bourdieu and Passeron, 1990) can be a valuable tool to investigate mentoring relationships of beginning teachers with their more experienced colleagues. Bourdieu’s work provides a lens to magnify the social exchanges that occur during the mentoring relationship, so that what tends to be hidden in the “logic of practice” (Bourdieu, 1990) is drawn into view. The paper shows how the mentor is ascribed power that enables domination, and how this tends to result in cultural reproduction. A case study is used to identify aspects of social and cultural learning that demonstrate this process.

The paper draws on a year-long narrative inquiry of beginning secondary teachers’ mentoring experiences in the state of Victoria, Australia. The data were generated through in-depth interviews and participants’ diary entries to answer the research question “What personal, professional knowledge is developed through beginning teachers’ early experiences with induction and mentoring?”

The researcher found that attention to minutiae of mentor/mentee interactions can suggest how symbolic violence shapes personal, professional knowledge.

This small-scale study has some limitations. However, as an illustration of organisational learning, with strong connections to Bourdieu’s theoretical work, it can provide some illuminating insights into how policy can be enacted at the micro-level. In particular, there are implications for how mentor teachers engage in their roles and understand the potential impact of their interactions with beginning teachers.

This study applies Bourdieu’s framework of cultural reproduction as an analysis tool for a qualitative study of the mentoring of beginning teachers.

At the outset of the 21st century, confidence in the effectiveness and legitimacy of established forms of governance is ebbing. This article considers historical developments in governance, the driving forces likely to transform governance worldwide and the policies that might have the best chance of enhancing governance capacities in line with the desires and needs of the future. Challenges and propects are discussed which entail the dual policy of: encouraging a virtuous circle between governance and technological, economic and social dynamism; and targeting improvements in learning infrastructure, the frameworks for establishing confidence, and the standards (mission/values) within which society functions. By improving the capacity to make and implement decisions throughout society these policies are likely to provide one of the main stepping stones to the realization of people’s aspirations in the 21st century.

Past studies of lean have failed to sufficiently address the importance of social factors for successful lean implementations. This paper aims to broaden and deepen the understanding of lean as a socio-technical paradigm by conceptualizing lean implementation as an organizational change process.

This study draws on the organizational sense-making literature to conceptualize and validate lean implementation as an organizational change process that necessitates a focus on the ability of organizational actors to construct a shared meaning of lean. This study posit that this shared understanding shapes the collective behaviour and attitudes of people towards a future desired organizational state such as a successful implementation of lean. Survey data were collected from various manufacturing and services firms to test the hypothesis derived from literature using a structural equation modelling approach.

The mutual social interactions of organizational actors contribute to an enabling lean organizational attitude that has a dominant effect on the lean practices of employee involvement, internal technical practices, supplier and customer management. This study also established boundary conditions for these relationships by identifying firm size as a moderating variable.

The findings establish a supportive organizational attitude as an antecedent for lean implementation, which goes beyond the current socio-technical characterization of lean management. This conceptualization draws the attention of researchers and practitioners towards the critical role of the cooperative behaviours of organizational actors in lean implementations.

The statistical results add a novel perspective to the discourse on the social dimension of lean implementation by conceptualizing and validating lean management as a combination of organizational attitude and the process facilitators comprising of employee empowerment, internal technical practices, supplier and customer management.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the main determinants of winegrowers’ profitability in Eastern Europe with the ultimate purpose to improve the wine industry competitiveness.

The research is focussed on the Moldova region (Romania), a little studied wine-growing area that presents potential for the future development of the wine industry. A hierarchical approach is applied to consider the simultaneous effects of climate aspects, vineyard features, winegrowers’ characteristics and management practices on vineyards’ profitability. The model is based on data from 274 vineyards managed by 64 winegrowers, where 32 different grape varieties are cultivated in different districts. Different scenarios are simulated and alternative policies are analysed.

Climate aspects and human factors, particularly the educational level and type of agriculture practiced, emerge as main determinants. Farmers’ climate change perceptions also have a primary role. The grape variety affects profitability differences across vineyards at a lower extent.

The study suggests an approach easily replicable to other viticultural contexts.

Results are useful for policymakers in order to forecast the impact of policies devoted to improving the wine industry competitiveness in Eastern Europe.

The study presents a micro-scale analysis in which the effects of climate aspects, vineyard features, winegrowers’ characteristics and management practices are simultaneously estimated. It also produces new knowledge in a little studied wine region.

In this paper, the authors examine the impact of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) technologies on the relationship between total productive maintenance (TPM) practices and maintenance performance.

Data collection was carried out through a multinational survey with 318 respondents from different manufacturing companies located in 15 countries. Multivariate data techniques were applied to analyze the collected data. Diffusion of innovations theory (DIT) was the adopted theoretical lens for our research.

The authors’ findings indicate that I4.0 technologies that aim to process information to support decision-making and action-taking directly affect maintenance performance. Technologies oriented to sensing and communicating data among machines, people, and products seem to moderate the relationship between TPM practices and maintenance performance. However, the extent of such moderation varies according to the practices involved, sometimes leading to negative effects.

With the advances of I4.0, there is an expectation that several maintenance practices and performance may be affected. Our study provides empirical evidence of these relationships, unveiling the role of I4.0 for maintenance performance improvement.