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Work-based research is the applied form of work-based learning (WBL) and has been described as the systematic and methodical process of investigating work-related “problems”. Such problems can either be associated with specific workplaces and domains of practice or may more broadly be described as practical, social or real-world in nature. However, the specific characteristics of work-related problems for organisations and society have yet to be explained, and inadequate problem definition, multiple and competing goals, and lack of agreement on cause-effect relationships have hampered understanding. The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature of work-related problems and provides examples from real-world contexts in Australia.

The paper provides models and examples of standard and non-standard work-related problems based on prior research and current practice.

Research paradigms view work-related problems as either definable and solvable or ill-defined, complex, difficult to describe and not easily rectified. The former view is concerned with “high ground problems” associated with traditional research methods; the latter with “lowland, messy, confusing problems” more frequently associated with the social sciences. Irrespective of orientation and definition, work-related problems have one thing in common: they are typically messy, constantly changing and complex, and many are co-produced and wicked.

Despite difficulties with identifying and isolating the various types of work-related problem, the paper establishes the importance of doing so for the practitioner. The definition and examination of work-related problems contribute to an evolving formulation of WBL and its application to private organisations, government agencies and work more generally.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact competency frameworks as standardisation can have on the employee engagement of academic staff within higher education (HE) through their employment as managerial tools.

A literature review is conducted from which the conditions for effective competency frameworks are evaluated and the influence of changes in the HE environment in the form of political agendas and tight resources are explored.

This paper provides insights into the dynamics of public service modernisation and the tensions between the dominant discourse of managerialism and the degree of agency afforded to professional academics. It highlights the relevance of informal peer relationships in setting the climate to generate collegial bonding and professional engagement that underpin successful teacher fellowship accreditations. It further highlights the key role managers play in this process and provides a conceptual framework highlighting the dynamics and combined effect of employee engagement and competency frameworks set within complex HE environment.

This paper brings together the prerequisites for effective implementation of competency frameworks to implement successful employee engagement strategies set within the complexities of the HE context, which has not been studied to date. Armed with such insights, Human Resource Development (HRD) departments and universities can implement competency assessments that generate greater staff engagement.

The paper provides a critical approach in reviewing the impact of Continued Professional Development and its link to professional status and thus helps British Universities and others to understand how the mechanisms at work affect engagement levels of academic staff. Armed with this depth of understanding of how the change initiative works, with whom and under what circumstances, universities will be better able to meet target UK Professional Standards Framework membership levels required by the higher education academy (HEA) and, subsequently, the HEA to meet their targets for the government.

The purpose of this paper is to examine, evaluate and analyse the degree to which effective leadership can contribute to the success of any business including, in this instance, a specific higher educational institution (HEI).

The current challenging economic climate views most leaders within the public and private sectors, as having to manage in an époque of heightened uncertainty. Thus, the majority of businesses today seek ways in which they can work smarter within the perimeters of their valuable, but, nonetheless, limited, resources. The paper argues a successful work‐based learning (WBL) leader can improve the learners’ performances by instilling a degree of purpose and value into the learning process, achieved through mentoring and coaching of students, thus enabling their rapport to identify what is of importance, or value to themselves during their individual period of study.

The HEI examined, with its hierarchical structure and traditional learning programmes, seems appropriate to adapt to the challenges of the external environment whilst appreciating and recognising its internal assets. Within WBL, the leadership role is not “clear‐cut” as its collegial approach enhances the knowledge transfer process as it is at a pace set and agreed to the ability of the WBL students, who adopt responsibility for their own learning. Leadership and teacher development, through the concept of “Distributive Leadership”, can support an environment of “calculated risk”, to advance the HEI's reputation and corporate social responsibilities to its surrounding community.

The paper discusses the concept of leadership and how the WBL approach to learning/teaching, within HEIs, has helped to develop and advance this concept. It illustrates how WBL enhances the performance of an HEI, and the teaching/learning experience, through considering the role of the head teacher, teachers and students. All these elements are discussed against a backdrop of the challenges that an uncertain business environment presents; the main impact being that many HEIs are having to operate like a business and find practical methods to meet these challenges to attract new business and secure its existence.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and capture workforce perceptions, experiences and insights of the phenomena of integrated care (IC) in a community health and care NHS trust in England; including whether there are any associated factors that are enablers, barriers, benefits or challenges; and the level of workforce engagement in the process of integrated health and care.

A qualitative design based on an interpretivist research paradigm was used with a purposive sampling technique. Five in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with community nursing, social workers and allied health professionals. Colaizzi's (1978) descriptive phenomenological seven-step method was applied to analyse data, with the emergence of 170 significant statements, 170 formulated meanings and 8 thematic clustering of themes to reveal 4 emergent themes and 1 fundamental structure capturing the essential aspects of the structure of the phenomenon IC.

This study revealed four interdependent emergent themes: (1) Insight of IC and collaboration: affording the opportunity for collaboration, shared goals, vision, dovetailing knowledge, skills and expertise. Professional aspirations of person-centred and strength-based care to improve outcomes. (2) Awareness of culture and professionalism: embracing inter-professional working whilst appreciating the fear of losing professional identity and values. Working relationships based on trust, respect and understanding of professional roles to improve outcomes. (3) Impact of workforce engagement: participants felt strongly about their differing engagement experience in terms of restructuring and redesigning services. (4) Impact of organisational structure: information technology (IT) highlighted a barrier to IC as differing IT platforms prevent interoperability with one system to one patient. Shared positivity of IC, embracing new ways of working.

This study proposes considerations for future practice, policy and research from a local, national and global platform, highlighting the need for any IC strategy or policy to incorporate the uniqueness of the “voice of the workforce” as a key enabler to integration developments, only then can IC be a fully collaborative approach.

This paper aims to explore the perceptions and experiences of a group of extra care tenants, who, as novice internet users, began to maintain their social relationships online. Housing transitions in later life may jeopardise existing social relationships, leading to loneliness and social isolation. More recently, Covid-19 restrictions have limited familial face-to-face contact and wider social interactions. Thus, extra care tenants, who are not already online, may benefit from acquiring internet skills. This paper aims to enhance understanding of the participants’ transition from novices to experienced internet users and the impact on their social relationships and sense of self.

A longitudinal, hermeneutic phenomenological study was conducted over eight months in two extra care housing schemes in north east England. Ten participants (56–98 years) with age-related physical, sensory and cognitive losses were recruited to the study. A series of semi-structured interviews and participant diaries captured the participants’ experience as they developed internet skills and communicated online.

All participants, including a blind individual, learnt to communicate online. Personalised adaptive strategies, peer support, training and management involvement facilitated internet uptake. Participants felt their social relationships were supported, and they regained biographical continuity, through being and feeling they belonged in the modern digital world.

The online experiences of extra care tenants are rarely voiced. Their perceptions may assist others to engage online, maintaining social connections, which could otherwise be lost.

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to challenge healthcare systems worldwide. The authors examined the lived experiences and perceptions of healthcare workers (HCWs) in managerial and senior positions to explore the pandemic's effects on well-being and valued organisational responses.

Using purposive sampling, the authors conducted 39 semi-structured interviews with senior staff including health service administrators, heads of department and senior clinicians at a designated COVID-19 facility in New South Wales, Australia. Interviews were conducted from November 2020 to February 2021 to reflect on experiences during the height of the pandemic in 2020 (mid-March to the end of May 2020).

Workplace experiences affecting HCWs' well-being included being shunned by others, fear of infecting family, fear of the unknown, concerns about personal protective equipment, lack of direction from above and increased workload. Organisational interventions to protect the health and safety of HCWs and their patients included redeployment, improved communication, effective management committees, education and mental health supports.

Organisations can minimise worker-identified factors threatening their well-being during a health crisis by applying broad-ranging initiatives including inclusive and open communication, promoting flexible work practices, providing up-to-date guidelines and policies and fostering camaraderie between workers.

The voices of senior clinical and managerial staff have been largely unheard during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors addressed this deficit by describing their experiences and insights regarding the pandemic's impact on well-being and the organisation's responses to simultaneously safeguarding its staff and providing quality patient care.

This research aims to study the coping experience of visually impaired (VI) bankers in India after they have received reasonable accommodation from their employers, that is, the work process or environment has been suitably modified to ensure a barrier-free environment for them.

Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 12 VI bankers working with public sector banks in India. A phenomenological approach was adopted during data analysis.

Despite the provision of reasonable accommodations, VI employees often find it difficult to fulfill their job responsibilities. This is on account of extensive paperwork required for completion of their jobs and the partially accessible information systems available to them. As a result, these VI employees are found resorting to workarounds to carry out their jobs, with the nature of workarounds adopted varying with the type and extent of visual impairment. Furthermore, it is observed that VI employees require social support not only from their superiors and peers but also from their subordinates and customers to carry out their tasks.

Data collection was done through snowball sampling which could have resulted in sampling bias. Due to confidentiality issues, observation of workarounds in practice by VI employees could not be carried out as part of the study.

The study contributes to the literature on integration of persons with disabilities (PwDs) by examining their coping experience after provision of reasonable accommodations. It emphasizes the role of workarounds, an under-studied area in PwD integration, as well as support of other stakeholders in the experience.

Although the core phenomenon of events is the experiences and the meanings attached to them, there is limited management research on the experiential, existential and ontological dimensions of events. Phenomenology provides a sound philosophical framework for studying the multifaceted dimensions of experiences and associated meanings of events. However, quite surprisingly, phenomenology has not yet been systematically applied on the event management field. The purpose of this conceptual paper is to introduce phenomenology to the study of events, demonstrate its value for the field and encourage as well as guide its application on event management research.

A review and synthesis of the main phenomenological streams of thought was undertaken in order to develop a research paradigm for the application of phenomenology on the event management field.

The paper explains why phenomenology is needed in the study of events and their management, its conceptual underpinnings and streams of thought and finally suggests a research framework for conducting phenomenological studies in event management.

The consequences of the phenomenological perspective are delineated for explaining how the study of event meanings and experiences can be undertaken from this perspective. The limitations of phenomenology are noted such as the emphasis on “lifeworld” subjectivity and subsequent difficulty to claim the generalizability of research findings.

The suggested research framework can guide future event management research on how to apply phenomenology to the study of event experiences and meanings. On this basis, practitioners can get insight regarding how to develop and design events that optimize the perceived experiences of attendees.

While the experiential paradigm and the phenomenological turn have been spread across many disciplines emphasizing the essence of lived experiences in a variety of human interactions and exchanges, the event management field lags behind. This is unfortunate and has to be addressed as the experiences and meanings shape the essence of events. Therefore, this conceptual paper hopes to inspire, encourage and guide event management researchers to embrace and apply the phenomenological perspective on their future research endeavors, which can profitably complement and expand the predominant research paradigms in the field.

This study addresses the issue of teaching in entrepreneurship courses in selected European universities in Malta and the UK. The paper aims to explore the views of students in different educational institutions about their understanding of entrepreneurship and the pedagogical aspects of teaching it.

Qualitative case study data were collected through one-to-one interviews with 31 students engaged in entrepreneurship course in four educational institutions in Malta and the UK.

Students identified four essential components that reflect the nature of entrepreneurial education. These consist of pedagogy, content, assessment and role model lecturer. Pedagogy of entrepreneurial courses was broadly seen as a mixture of traditional teaching and entrepreneurial learning. Students showed a preference for content aimed at developing creativity in practice-based situations. Preferred assessment strategies included individual assignments perceived as useful to deepen the concepts learned and stimulate individual thinking. Role model lecturers are inspiring to students. They should be individuals that are creative, have experience in entrepreneurial roles and hold academic knowledge that is useful to teach about entrepreneurship. There were variations in the views expressed by different groups of students interviewed in this study.

Due to the relatively small sample sizes, this study has limited generalisability implying the need for similar research more broadly across other universities in Europe.

The study proposes a model for enhancing the teaching of entrepreneurial courses in universities in Europe. The model comprises teaching pedagogies responsive to the student learning needs; application of features present in the KTP model and proposes a structure for determining worthwhile knowledge that should be delivered in adherence to students learning needs.

This study expands the understanding of the learning process of students and provides a methodological framework that can be used to research entrepreneurial education.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the specific field of arts entrepreneurship by focussing on the practices of vertical dance; a language of contemporary dance where dancers act on a vertical axis, moving suspended on the surface of buildings and walls. The authors’ focus on vertical dance as a meaningful corporal practice to explore the particular combination of dance and human movement, going beyond its purely metaphoric dimension.

The authors’ adopt a micro-social perspective, observing the practices (Gherardi, 2012; Nicolini, 2012; Sicca, 2000), that took place from 2013 to 2015 in the daily work of Wanda Moretti, a Venetian choreographer and co-founder of the company “Il posto”, observed in different contexts of artistic practices (Zembylas, 2014).

Deconstructing the overlapping dimensions that compose the space in our daily experience (force of gravity and the supporting surface), vertical dance clarifies how often we undervalue the complexity of the space and, at the same time, opens up the way for a better understanding and investigation of entrepreneurship in artistic fields.

The study sheds light on the way in which different categories, such as the human body, space, and movement, are a particular entanglement of elements, useful in highlighting some of the fundamental assumptions at the heart of the field of entrepreneurship. The heterogeneous complexity of space and bodies is emphasised, challenging its ordinary conceptualisation.

Este trabajo tiene como objetivo investigar el campo específico de las iniciativas empresariales artísticas, centrándose en las prácticas de la danza vertical, un lenguaje de la danza contemporánea donde los bailarines actúan sobre un eje vertical, moviéndose suspendidos sobre la superficie de edificios y paredes. Nos centramos en la danza vertical como práctica corporal significativa para explorar la combinación particular de la danza y el movimiento humano, que va más allá de su dimensión puramente metafórica.

Adoptamos una perspectiva micro-social, focalizándonos en las prácticas (Gherardi, 2012; Nicolini, 2012; Sicca, 2000) que tuvieron lugar desde 2013 hasta 2015 en el trabajo cotidiano de Wanda Moretti, coreógrafa veneciana y co-fundadora de la empresa “Il posto”, observado los diferentes contextos de las prácticas artísticas (Zembylas, 2014).

En deconstruir las dimensiones superpuestas que componen el espacio en nuestra experiencia diaria (la fuerza de la gravedad y la superficie de apoyo), la danza vertical aclara la frecuencia con la que subvaloramos la complejidad del espacio y, al mismo tiempo, abre el camino para una mejor comprensión y la investigación del espíritu empresarial en los ámbitos artísticos.

El estudio subraya cómo diferentes categorías, como el cuerpo humano, el espacio y el movimiento, son un enredo particular de elementos, útil para poner de relieve algunas de las premisas fundamentales en el campo del espíritu empresarial. La complejidad heterogénea de espacio y los cuerpos se enfatiza, desafiando a su conceptualización ordinaria.