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With the growing need for employees to be innovative, public-sector organizations are investing in employee training. This study aims to examine the effects of a combined Lean Six Sigma and innovation training, using action learning, on public-sector employees’ creative role identity and innovative work behavior.

The authors studied a public service agency in Singapore in which a five-day Lean Innovation Training was implemented, using a combination of Lean Six Sigma and Creative Problem-Solving tools, with a simulation on day one and subsequent team-based project coaching, spread over six months. The authors administered pre- and postintervention surveys among all the employees, and initiated group interviews and observations before, during and after the intervention.

Creative role identity and innovative work behavior had significantly improved six months after the intervention, enabled through senior management’s transformational leadership. The training induced managers to role-model innovative work behaviors while cocreating, with their employees, a renewal of their agency’s core processes. The three completed improvement projects contributed to an innovative work culture and reduced service turnaround time.

Starting with a role-playing simulation on the first day, during which leaders and followers swapped roles, the action-learning type training taught all the organizational members to use various Lean Six Sigma and Creative Problem-Solving tools. This nimble Lean Innovation Training, and subsequent team-based project coaching, exemplifies how advancing the staff’s creative role identity can have a positive impact.

By older adulthood, the majority of individuals will have experienced at least one traumatic event. Trauma-informed care (TIC) is proposed to improve effectivity of health-care provision and to reduce likelihood of services causing retraumatisation. This study aims to assess the effectiveness of staff training in TIC in older adult services.

TIC training was delivered across eight Older Adult Community Mental Health Teams in the same UK organisation. Questionnaires were administered before and after training: a psychometrically robust measure, the Attitudes Related to Trauma-Informed Care, was used to assess TIC-related attitudes, and a service-developed scale was used to measure changes in TIC competence. Data was analysed using linear mixed effects modelling (LMM). Qualitative data regarding the impact of training was gathered one month after training through a free-text questionnaire.

There were 45 participants, all of whom were white British. LMM on pre- and post-data revealed that staff training significantly increased competencies across all measured TIC domains. Overall, staff attitudes were also significantly more trauma-informed after training. Qualitatively, staff identified time as the only additional resource required to deliver the skills and knowledge gained from training.

Training was found to be effective in increasing TIC-related skills and attitudes. Organisations aiming to become trauma-informed should consider staff training as one aspect of a wider development plan.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to examine TIC training for staff working in Older Adults Mental Health Services. Recommendations for services aiming to develop a trauma-informed culture have been provided.

In the mid-2000s, the operator of New York City’s mass transit network committed more than a half-billion dollars to military contractor Lockheed Martin for a security technology capable, in part, of inferring threats based on analysis of data streams, of developing response strategies, and taking automated action toward alerts and calamities in light of evolving circumstances. The project was a failure. This chapter explores the conceptualization and development of this technology – rooted in cybernetics – and compares its conceptual underpinnings with some situated problems of awareness, communication, coordination, and action in emergencies as they unfold in one of the busiest transport systems in the world, the New York subway. The author shows how the technology, with all the theatrical trappings of a “legitimate” security solution, was apparently conceived without a grounded understanding of actual use-cases, and the degree to which the complex interactions which give rise to subway emergency can be anticipated in – and therefore managed through – a technological system. As a case-study, the chapter illustrates the pitfalls of deploying technology against problems which are not well-defined in the first place, to the neglect of investments against much more fundamental problems – such as inadequate communication systems, and unstable relationships with emergency response agencies – which might offer guaranteed benefits, and indeed lay a firm groundwork for future deployment of more ambitious technology.

This study aims to explore the relationships between employees’ training orientation, organizational support for training and employees’ training satisfaction. It also investigates the mediating role of perceived value of training in the relationships.

Based on a literature review on training, the study proposes a theoretical model that links employees’ training orientation and organizational support for training to training satisfaction directly and indirectly via perceived value of training, while employees’ training satisfaction may influence affective commitment. The model was tested using responses from 364 Chinese employees in Macao.

Results of partial least square-structural equation modeling showed that employees’ training orientation influenced training satisfaction directly and indirectly through perceived value of training, while organizational support for training also influenced employees’ training satisfaction indirectly through perceived value of training. Training satisfaction had a positive effect on affective commitment.

The study’s limitations include a cross-sectional design and the characteristics of Macao’s economic structure. Although the causality of relationships was grounded in prior studies, reverse relationships might exist between some selected variables. It is suggested that a longitudinal study shall be carried out to confirm the causality of relationships. Additionally, Macao’s economy is dominated by its service sector. Future research can be carried out in other cities that have the manufacturing and high-technology sectors.

The study unveiled that employees’ training orientation including their general attitude towards training and training goal orientation and organizational support for training are key antecedents of training satisfaction. Human resources professionals in organizations must develop innovative ways, such as simulation games and competitions, to enhance the awareness of the importance of training to their employees. Additionally, they must advocate and demonstrate organizations providing supportive environments for training.

This study makes an enquiry of the existing sustainable development goals (SDGs) knowledge of English language teacher trainers (ELTTs), who remain an overlooked stakeholder in education for sustainable development. Despite the literature on SDG integration into traditional teacher education curriculum, how massive open online courses (MOOCs) can help with capacity building of ELTTs is unclear. This study aims to further explore how the knowledge and capacities of ELTTs on SDGs could be promoted through MOOCs.

For the study’s action research approach, data of 28 ELTTs from higher education institutions in Ankara, Türkiye, were collected for six weeks using a survey, reflective reports and focus group interviews.

ELTTs with no previous training experience have a partially fragmented understanding of SDGs. MOOCs proved to be highly practical and cost-effective in building ELTTs’ capacity for building knowledge of and improving motivation to address SDGs in training programs. Further findings are drawn from ELTTs’ reflections on the lack of pedagogical content knowledge and collegial interactions in MOOCs.

There is little to no literature on ELTTs’ existing knowledge of SDGs and whether MOOCs can be used for their capacity building to achieve SDGs. The present findings may encourage higher education institutions to launch professional development programs that will equip ELTTs with the competencies to apply education for sustainable development in in-service English language teaching and teacher training programs.

This study aims to assess the impact of visual multimedia in improving entrepreneurial competence and economic self-efficacy among widowed women farmers.

The participants received entrepreneurial training through visual multimedia package. The sample size was made up of 540 widowed women farmers. The entrepreneurship competence and economic self-efficacy scales were used as the instruments for data collection. The purpose of the entrepreneurial competence scale was to measure the mental competence of the participants to engage in entrepreneurial ventures. On the other hand, the economic self-efficacy scale measured the ability of the women to solve their financial problems, thus, meeting their financial needs. Both scales were administered face-to-face to the participants before, and after the training and during follow-up assessment after three years.

The result of the study showed that the women farmers reported low entrepreneurship competence and economic self-efficacy before the training. After the training, the women farmers who received the multimedia training reported an improvement, but those who did not receive the training did not show an improvement. A follow-up assessment after three years revealed stability in the improvement among women farmers who received the training. It was also indicated that interactive visual multimedia was found to be more effective than noninteractive visual multimedia.

This study has provided empirical evidence on how best to empower widowed women farmers by improving their entrepreneurial competence and economic self-efficacy. This information could be useful for policy formulation and advocacy in relation to women’s empowerment.

At present, there is no reference to Attention Autism (AA) as a framework and therapeutic tool with autistic children in occupational therapy (OT) literature. By way of introducing AA as a potential intervention to the OT community, this study aims to investigate the extent to which participation in a two-day AA training could contribute to increasing confidence and inspire changes in practice for Irish occupational therapists (OTs) supporting autistic children.

A pilot study design with mixed qualitative and quantitative methods was used to evaluate the impact of a two-day AA training on six OTs. The OTs support autistic children throughout Ireland across public, private and voluntary sectors. They completed brief, non-standardised questionnaires 2 weeks before the training (Time 1) and again 12 weeks post (Time 2) training session. At Time 2, additional exploratory questions were answered by OTs regarding their use of AA in practice.

This explorative study’s quantitative findings presented percentage change increases within three areas of confidence for all OTs. These include establishing attention, motivating and developing functional skill goals with autistic children. One of the participants did not score any change in confidence in a fourth area, building rapport, however, the five other participants scored percentage change increases. Qualitative data provided by participants showed that they were implementing AA in practice since attending the training. Five of the participants reported positive experiences of using AA and one participant reported the programme was not suitable for her caseload because of their level of understanding and need.

This was a small, exploratory, practice-based study. As this is the first study exploring this area of practice for OTs, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, there were no standardised methods of assessment available, therefore a self-designed survey was used by the author which had a limited number of open-ended questions and four Likert scale questions. This study was also limited in that there was one main researcher who also delivered the two-day AA training. The sample data set was small which resulted in the limitation of the choice of methods used to analyse the quantitative data. Percentage changes were used as the only available and reliable method for a small data set.

Findings of this study, despite their preliminary nature, indicate that AA training may be a useful professional development consideration for OTs who provide a service for autistic children. Further AA research in OT is required including larger and more rigorous studies. An alternative training option of The Curiosity Programme may be considered for OTs supporting children who may not yet be ready to participate in AA.

The purpose of this study was to identify the relationship between training and financial performance in cooperative organizations.

To achieve this goal, the fixed-effect panel regression technique was used, from a single database containing hours and amounts invested in training by 35 large Brazilian agribusiness cooperatives over 10 years as the main independent variable of the econometric model. Financial performance was operationalized by the Net Margin and ROE.

It was possible to identify a positive relationship between expenditure on training and the future rate of return and profitability of the organizations in question. The results also indicate that this relationship grows stronger over the first three years after the investments are made and ceases to exist after this period. The findings are robust with regard to a series of alternative explanations and contribute to understanding the relationship between training and organizational performance in financial terms, considering the extent and duration of training.

The originality this study is justified by the pioneering spirit of presenting direct evidence linking investment in training and financial performance and the duration of this relationship. Thus, the study makes a significant contribution to the construction of knowledge on the subject.

The purpose of this study is to introduce the top-level design ideas and the overall architecture of earthquake early-warning system for high speed railways in China, which is based on P-wave earthquake early-warning and multiple ways of rapid treatment.

The paper describes the key technologies that are involved in the development of the system, such as P-wave identification and earthquake early-warning, multi-source seismic information fusion and earthquake emergency treatment technologies. The paper also presents the test results of the system, which show that it has complete functions and its major performance indicators meet the design requirements.

The study demonstrates that the high speed railways earthquake early-warning system serves as an important technical tool for high speed railways to cope with the threat of earthquake to the operation safety. The key technical indicators of the system have excellent performance: The first report time of the P-wave is less than three seconds. From the first arrival of P-wave to the beginning of train braking, the total delay of onboard emergency treatment is 3.63 seconds under 95% probability. The average total delay for power failures triggered by substations is 3.3 seconds.

The paper provides a valuable reference for the research and development of earthquake early-warning system for high speed railways in other countries and regions. It also contributes to the earthquake prevention and disaster reduction efforts.

This study aims to synthesize existing findings in the gig worker training literature and identify the training rationales adopted by these studies, using a synthesized framework of organizational training rationales. This study seeks to delineate the rationales behind gig worker training and highlight unaddressed training needs within digital platforms, ultimately proposing a research agenda for future studies in this area.

A systematic review methodology is adopted to synthesize and analyze empirical, peer-reviewed studies on gig worker training.

The systematic review reveals that competency and economic rationales are predominantly adopted in gig worker training studies, with the relationship rationale, common in traditional training, notably absent. This study also outlines seven future research directions to highlight identified challenges and unaddressed training needs.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is the first work that systematically reviews existing findings on gig worker training.