Search results

Although it is assumed that school district governance by districts leaders can impact schools’ capacity to improvement and educational quality, there is little systematic evidence to support this claim. The purpose of this paper is to discuss how governance goals and interventions affect school districts’ social capital.

The empirical enquiry used quantitative data on district leaders enacting governance as perceived by their school principals. These data were collected among 399 school principals of 23 Dutch school districts in elementary education, using a survey. Social network data on social capital within school districts were collected using a social network survey among educational administrators (i.e. district leaders, central office administrators and school principals). Additionally, examples of the relation between school district social capital and governance at six school districts were described.

Results suggest that district leaders can promote the organizational social capital of their school districts through focusing on educational goals. In addition, the findings show that they can reinforce their impact by using interventions varying in coercion level, of which offering support to school principals appears to be “a golden button” to make organizational social capital thrive.

Limitations to the study are the generalizability of the findings (they can be questioned because “convenience sampling” was used) and warrant a longitudinal design to examine how organization social capital develops over time.

The study is unique as it addresses the impact district leaders may have on their districts’ social capital by focusing on social network approach in the study of school district governance.

The purpose of this paper was to assess empathy dimensions in Tunisian psychiatry trainees and to evaluate their relationship with relevant professional and extra-professional factors.

An online questionnaire survey was administered to the psychiatry trainees affiliated in the four faculties of medicine of Tunisia (n = 120). It comprised, in addition to sociodemographic and professional variables, the interpersonal reactivity index, a multidimensional instrument that evaluates perspective taking, empathic concern, personal distress and fantasy. Other self-report measures were used to assess emotion regulation, social support and self-efficacy. Data were analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences.

The response rate was 71%. Descriptive statistics showed that personal distress’ scores were lower than the other empathy dimensions’ scores. Perspective taking scores were negatively correlated with emotion regulation difficulties. Personal distress scores were positively correlated with emotion regulation difficulties. Hierarchical regression analysis revealed that being an only child significantly contributed to perspective taking and having an extra-professional activity significantly contributed to less personal distress. Perceived stress, social support and having a master’s degree were significant predictors for empathic concern. Self-efficacy was a significant predictor of perspective taking, with emotion regulation difficulties mediating this relationship.

Interventions dedicated to improve psychiatry trainees’ empathy should focus not only on clinical practice and medical education but also on emotional support and recovery activities.

A unique feature of this study is the investigation of the potential impacts of emotion regulation difficulties and perceived self-efficacy on empathic abilities of psychiatry trainees.

This chapter uses Goffman’s concept of total institutions in a comparative case study approach to explore the role of psychotropic drugs in the process of transinstitutionalization.

This chapter interprets psychotropic drug use across four institutionalized contexts in the United States: the active-duty U.S. military, nursing homes and long-term care facilities, state and federal prisons, and the child welfare system.

This chapter documents a major unintended consequence of transinstitutionalization – the questionable distribution of psychotropics among vulnerable populations. The patterns of psychotropic use we synthesize suggest that total institutions are engaging in ethically and medically questionable practices and that psychotropics are being used to serve the bureaucratic imperatives for social control in the era of transinstitutionalization.

Psychotropic prescribing practices require close surveillance and increased scrutiny in institutional settings in the United States. The flows of mentally ill people through a vast network of total institutions raises questions about the wisdom and unintended consequences of psychotropic distribution to vulnerable populations, despite health policy makers’ efforts regulating their distribution. Medical sociologists must examine trans-institutional power arrangements that converge around the mental health of vulnerable groups.

This is the first synthesis and interpretive review of psychotropic use patterns across institutional systems in the United States. This chapter will be of value to medical sociologists, mental health professionals and administrators, pharmacologists, health system pharmacists, and sociological theorists.

This paper aims to evaluate the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on startups performance and the moderating effects played by several resilience-related startup characteristics during times of crisis.

To achieve this, 94 Brazil-based startups were surveyed, and multivariate data techniques (PLS-SEM) were applied.

The results show that despite the startups performance having been affected by the pandemic crisis, the response measures, when influenced by the resilience characteristics of these companies, moderated this effect. Furthermore, our findings suggest the future challenges to be faced by these organisations in the post-pandemic period.

Proposing a framework, our survey research contributes to the dynamic capabilities theory by showing that startups resilience is linked to the micro-foundations of sensing (e.g. innovation systems, resilience culture, pivoting practices, innovativeness products), seizing (e.g. leadership/focused skills, people development and selection, agility, clear vision of business process) and reconfiguring capabilities.

Not only for theory, but this paper also contributes insights and guidelines for business practice in the face of challenges arising from times of crisis. By demonstrating the positive effect of early response measures based on resilience, our findings provide genuine managerial input that can help managers, funders and decision-makers in these companies operations against turbulent crises early on, thereby supporting the traction phase and sustaining their performance.

Previous research has examined the effects of the COVID-19 crisis in several sectors and perspectives. However, this study is the first to empirically test and clarify how the resilience and singularities of these new business models based on innovation could react to the changes caused by the pandemic.

This paper focuses on social innovation dynamics in extreme contexts where institutional volatility is deeply rooted and enduring. In other words, the authors focus their discussion on the challenges that social innovators are facing in their endeavor of solving wicked social problems within an extreme institutional environment. This research is guided by the following question: How does an extreme institutional environment influence social innovation processes?

This qualitative research builds on the unique case of the Palestinian non-governmental organization (NGO) sector, a rarely studied context in organizational studies. The authors combine archival sources with 24 semi-structured interviews with Palestinian NGOs.

The authors theorize three barriers that hinder social innovation in such contexts: institutional trap, effectiveness trap and sustainability trap. The authors also theorize five mechanisms through which these barriers influence each other dynamically: mingling, surviving, undermining, binding and reinforcing. Taken together, these barriers and mechanisms shed light on social innovation processes taking place within extreme institutional environments.

The main limitation of this study is the methodological design, based on an extreme single case-study which, on a bunch of features, is quite unique in the world. The authors argue that the results are all the same transferable to other relatively similar contexts.

By theorizing the institutional barriers to social innovation in an extreme institutional context, the research thus sheds light on how social innovation could be sustained and stimulated in Palestine and other contexts that face similar institutional challenges.

From an engaged scholarship perspective, studying Palestine cannot be more relevant than today considering the turmoil in which Palestinians are. The research thus provides a deeper understanding of organizational and institutional dynamics with crucial social repercussions.

The social innovation literature has overemphasized success stories to the detriment of the struggles that hinder social innovations in extreme institutional environments. By focusing on the barriers that social innovators experience in these contexts, the authors provide novel empirical insight. Furthermore, this study enriches the understanding of the institutional dynamics of social innovations by proposing a process model that elucidates how an extreme institutional context can influence social innovations.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effects of knowledge management (KM) processes on human resource management’s (HRM’s) performance in family-owned organizations. Therefore, a model is proposed to explain the core processes of KM and their effects on HRM's performance.

A field study is conducted based on data collected from family-owned companies in Turkey. The survey instrument is a self-administered questionnaire composed of 36 questions in total. There are three demographic questions, 18 questions aim to investigate KM processes and 15 questions aim to investigate HRM practices.

The results show that KM processes have significant positive relationships with HRM performance. Among the processes of KM, knowledge generation (KG) is found to have the most significant effect. This study shows that KM processes are enhancing HRM performance in family-owned organizations.

First of all, it is conducted on family-owned companies. Hence, the results may change based on types of organizations. Second, convenience sampling was used in data collection. The majority of data were collected through HRM departments who were available, reliable and easy to access. Despite many advantages of this sampling technique on major disadvantage is lacking clear generalizability. For this reason, it is presumed that HRM awareness is high in the selected participants. Different sampling methods may lead to different results. Thus, for future research, it would be useful to make cross-cultural and cross-sectorial studies to compare the business cultures and to find more accurate outcomes related to KM and HRM implementations.

Nowadays, most of the family-owned companies are well aware of the statement that both KM and HRM have significant positive impacts on organizational outcomes. This research's findings indicate that KM processes enhance HRM performance in family-owned organizations. Therefore, family-owned organizations should pay more attention on KM processes and the linkage between KM and HRM in order to obtain better HRM results.