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The authors analyse drivers and barriers of implementing and scaling-up a pilot project of a dual vocational and education programme in Nepal.

The 5C protocol distinguishes five categories of drivers and barriers of education reforms: commitment, capacity, clients, content and context. The authors build on the 5C protocol to develop a qualitative empirical framework based on semi-structured interviews amongst stakeholders.

The results show that involved actors are committed. Capacity in terms of available resources also represents an implementation driver, but companies lack information about the programme. Consequently, industry associations should receive a more prominent role in the motivation of companies to provide training places. The content category is the most challenging implementation barrier because the programme represents a substantial change, compared to the current vocational education and training (VET) programmes in Nepal.

First, the authors propose a framework for a qualitative content analysis to analyse the drivers and barriers of implementing and scaling-up education reforms. Second, the authors provide novel information about drivers and barriers of an education reform in Nepal.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the questions as to how important skills are; which skills can best be learned at school, and which skills can be acquired better in the workplace.

The authors exploit data from a survey among professional tertiary education and training business administration students and their employers in Switzerland.

The authors find that skills used in the business processes strategic management, human resource management, organizational design, and project management are most suitable to be taught in school. However, the results further suggest that soft skills can be acquired more effectively in the workplace than at school. The only exceptions are analytical thinking, joy of learning and organizational soft skills, for which school and workplace are similarly suitable.

The paper provides empirical evidence regarding the optimal choice of the learning place for both human resource managers as well as educational decision makers who aim to combine education and training, e.g. in an apprenticeship.

Little evidence regarding the optimal learning place exists.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

In cold psychology, the “nature versus nurture” debate has raged for decades, or perhaps even longer under different guises. Do children learn and develop behaviors because of how they were brought up or is it down to genes, pure and simple? As usual, the right answer includes aspects of both theories, but it is more than that. It is immeasurable – and that always presents a problem for scientists seeking the truth and only finding mystery and unknowns.

The paper provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world’s leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

We investigate whether women are more likely than men to choose to pursue a competency-based labour market integration programme, rather than the time-based labour market integration programme. We further investigate whether women with existing but uncertified skills are even more likely to pursue a competency-based labour market integration programme.

We test our hypotheses using ordinary least squares applied to linear probability models. We discuss the relative advantages of this methodology. We show the robustness of our results through multiple specifications and estimation methods. Finally, we discuss the reasons preventing us from granting our results a causal interpretation and discuss how they are surmountable in future research.

Women are significantly more likely to enrol into competency-based programmes, relative to time-based. Women with existing but uncertified skills are significantly more likely to enrol into competency-based programmes, whereas women without skills or with college degrees are not significantly different from the baseline. Our findings are robust to various specifications, and we include a comprehensive set of fixed-effect vectors, addressing industrial, occupational and time-varying state specificities.

First, our empirical test of hypothesis H2 is hindered by the construction of the “some college or associate’s degree” variable in RAPIDS data. “Some college” is very different from an associate’s degree. Second we had to choose between omitted variable bias and selection bias. Because of the demonstrated importance of the occupation and industry variables in existing literature, we included those variables at the risk of selection bias. Occupation and industry fixed effects reduce, but do not eliminate, omitted variable bias. Finally, the third limitation of this paper is external validity. Registered Apprenticeship programmes are quite idiosyncratic to the United States.

The rollout and expansion of CBRA may thus be an avenue through policymakers may reduce the gender training gap. This may in turn give more women access to the labour market and allow more women to benefit from the “wage premia” of Registered Apprenticeship completion on the labour market (Lou and Hawley, 2019).

This article is the first that applies econometric methods to investigate women’s choices of labour market integration programmes, using Registered Apprenticeship as a case study. We discuss the implications of our findings, highlighting how competency-based programmes may be an approach to better serving more diverse populations in Registered Apprenticeship.

Presents a new theory about the communication structure used by ocean‐living odontocetes. Draws conclusions from eight biological singularities in dolphin communication found in empirical research but not yet put into a systematic context. They suggest the interpretation that in dolphin communication information is encoded by way of SOund PAttern VAriation. Discusses the formal prerequisites of this theory; negative and positive predictions are made. Interprets both the results of Bastian's communication experiment and the scouting behaviour observed in the wild as evidence that dolphins possess a highly developed SOund PAttern VAriation LAnguage (SOPAVALA). Complements this by examining considerations concerning the evolutionary process which may have made this development possible. Discusses characteristic features of the proposed new language structure and suggests how to decode successfully and understand a dolphin's SOPAVALA, should it exist.

Diversity of people, knowledge and resources has been identified as a determinant of firms' growth. This paper focusses on innovation propensity as a critical dimension of firm's growth path, aiming to analyse the effects of the firm's horizontal educational diversity (HED) on the propensity to conduct different technological innovation activities (TIAs). In addition, considering the evidence showing that these effects are neither direct nor linear, the authors analyse the moderating role of the firm's organizational practices oriented to knowledge sharing (KS) on the association between HED and the adoption of TIAs.

Following the theoretical arguments of the resource-based view (RBV), the evolutionary economics and the dynamic capabilities approach and related empirical evidences, the authors proposed four hypotheses regarding the effect of HED on TIAs and the moderating role of work organization practices oriented to promote KS. Empirically, the authors calculated different HED diversity indexes capturing two basic dimensions: variety and balance. Hence, using instrumental variables and panel data techniques to control endogeneity biases, the authors tested the proposed hypotheses using a data set of Uruguayan manufacturing firms between 2004 and 2015.

In line with previous evidence, results showed idiosyncratic context effects. The authors found a robust, linear, positive and significant relationship between HED and TIAs, but the effect can only be consistently associated with the adoption of internal or external research and development (R&D) activities. Moreover, the moderating role of work organization practices oriented to promote KS is positive and significant when firms engage in TIAs. For technological innovations that only involve the acquisiton of technology (AT), a positive effect is also observed but always associated to organizational practices oriented to promote KS.

This paper revisits the analysis of workforce diversity for a relatively less explored context. This research contributes to the field by linking HED and work organization practices to understand firm's innovation propensity in a developing context. Moreover, while other studies have focussed only on top management or R&D team diversity, the authors have analysed the whole professional's workforce. It allows the authors to discuss the effects of diversity on innovation propensity in the light of the ongoing debate on the effects of innovation in employment.

This study aims to investigate the new connotations, key antecedents, outcomes and contingency factors of value-based selling (VBS) in the context of business to business (B2B) industrial marketing.

This study develops a comprehensive conceptual framework of VBS by analyzing and synthesizing the existing literature on VBS and associated solutions.

The paper describes the research streams of VBS; proposes a comprehensive conceptual framework consisting of the factors influencing VBS at the organizational, individual, customer and environmental levels, together with 12 research propositions; and provides an agenda for future research.

The paper is conceptual; empirical studies are required for examining the suggested propositions and agenda.

VBS is a process-oriented sales approach that involves multiple value creation and plays a crucial role in industrial solution selling. The successful implementation of VBS depends on the micro-foundations of an organization’s dynamic capabilities and considers the influence of individual, customer and environmental factors.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to introduce value co-creation and dynamic capability theory into VBS research in the context of industrial marketing. It discusses the antecedents, outcomes and contingency factors of VBS in detail in the form of a comprehensive research framework and proposes a future research agenda. These discussions expand the theoretical research on VBS and provide useful implications for B2B marketing practice.

This annotated listing of 125 United States Government bibliographies is the first annual supplement to BIBLIOGRAPHY OF UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT BIBLIOGRAPHIES 1968–1973 (Pierian Press). Most publications included bear a 1974 imprint, though there are some with earlier imprints which are not included in the 1968–1973 BIBLIOGRAPHY.

The purpose of this paper is to identify whether the prior industry experience (IE) or industry leadership experience (ILE) of the head might influence the department’s publication output, the ability to acquire external research funds or its entrepreneurial activities (e.g. the commercialization of research results through patents).

The study is based on data from 208 Austrian university departments and combines data from different sources (CVs of the heads of departments, commercial register, funding data and publication data).

The results show a positive relationship between ILE and the patent output of the departments as one indicator for the commercialization of research activities. Low positive effects of IE on the extent of third-party funding were also found. Furthermore, the scientific experience of the head of department has a positive influence on the publication output of the whole department.

The findings suggest that the scientific ability of researchers should be key when selecting the head of a department, due to the fact that scientific performance is still essential for most of these units. However, when universities seek to focus more strongly on other, for example, entrepreneurial activities, then additional competencies come into play. As the actual focus of universities is currently subject to change, former IE and ILE will become increasingly more important and the heads of departments will play a decisive role in the transition toward becoming an entrepreneurial university. Therefore, universities are well advised to integrate these experiences in the job specifications and to establish processes that facilitate the change from an industrial to a university job or which allow “double lives” in university and industry.

Previous studies have mostly investigated the role of the scientific experience of academic leaders in the research performance of their institution in later decades. This study examines the actual relevance of previous entrepreneurial experiences of heads of departments to the departments’ research performance, the ability to acquire external research funds or their entrepreneurial activities.